"Science"

This poem hit my inbox a few days ago in The Writer's Almanac (with Garrison Keillor). Because I have a soft spot for poems about science (amazing, I know), I thought I'd re-post.

Science

 What little we have ever understood
is like an offering we make beside the sea.
It is pure worship when pursued
as its own end, to find out. Mystery,
the undiminishable silent flood,
stretches on out from where we pray
round the clear altar flame. The god
accepts the sacrifice and turns away. 

"Science" by Ursula K. Le Guin, from Finding My Elegy: New and Selected Poems 1960-2010. 

I like the poem at first blush but I'm not sure I agree with the portrayal of science as a sort of Mayan god who only accepts sacrifices.  I like the vastness of the sea, the perpetually lapping waves, as a proxy for science, but I think a better imagery would have been to somehow use rivers as a proxy for scientists -- with our increasing knowledge adding to the overall concept of the sea... though, ultimately, understanding that our "offerings" of knowledge are not unique or independent of the whole. Hrm. Not sure if that works, 100%; using the water cycle as a proxy for the complicated, fairly incestuous relationship between science/scientists, but I think it could work, if spun by the right hand. 

Then again, I'm an aquatic biologist with heavy leanings towards restoration ecology, so I may be slightly biased!

(from USGS.gov)