Tyger Tyger burning bright

Noël Staples muses on some universal questions

by Noël Staples 9th November 2018

Derek Guiton’s thought-provoking ‘Thought for the Week’ on William Blake’s poem ‘The Tyger’ (10 August), big bang theory, and beauty and transcendence reminded me of Jocelyn Bell Burnell’s 2013 James Backhouse lecture A Quaker Astronomer reflects. Derek Guiton wonders whether: ‘…through us and through the rest of the evolved animal world, the universe itself is moving towards new forms of transcendence that may ultimately reconcile the “fearful symmetry” of the tiger with the “graceful symmetry” of the gazelle.’