When it comes to atoms, language can be used only as in poetry.

Niels Bohr, the father of quantum theory, once offered a reflection that bridged science and art: “When it comes to atoms, language can be used only as in poetry. The poet, too, is not nearly so concerned with describing facts as with creating images.” In these words he acknowledged the deep mystery of the unseen world, a world so small, so strange, and so paradoxical that ordinary language falters. Atoms cannot be captured in prose alone; they can only be hinted at, invoked, painted in images—just as poets do when they reach beyond the limits of reason into the realm of imagination.

The ancients would not be surprised by this unity of poetry and science. For the philosophers of Greece, mathematics was beauty and harmony, and Pythagoras himself believed that numbers sang. Plato declared that the visible world is but a shadow of deeper truths, truths that can only be approached through metaphor and myth. So too, Bohr teaches us that atoms, those building blocks of reality, resist plain description. They are too elusive, too contradictory. To speak of them, one must borrow the poet’s gift—of image, of symbol, of suggestion.

History offers us vivid illustrations. When Galileo looked to the heavens with his telescope, he struggled to describe what he saw. Was the moon a smooth divine sphere, or a rugged landscape like Earth’s? His words, though careful, were imbued with imagery: he compared the moon’s craters to the “shadows of valleys and mountains at sunset.” Likewise, Einstein, describing relativity, spoke of the fabric of space-time bending and curving, an image more poetic than literal. Without metaphor, without the poetry of language, even the greatest scientific truths would remain beyond human grasp.

Bohr himself was forced to speak this way. How could one describe an electron, which is both a particle and a wave, yet neither in the sense we understand? He spoke of “orbits” and “shells,” words that were not literal but poetic, meant to spark the imagination toward realities unseen. Just as the poet does not aim to document but to create images that stir recognition in the soul, so the scientist must conjure images to reveal mysteries that cannot be seen directly. Here, the poet and the physicist stand side by side, both striving to make the invisible visible.

There is something heroic in this recognition. For it humbles both reason and art. Science, though precise, admits its limits: beyond a certain frontier, we can only gesture with metaphors. Poetry, though emotional, admits its reach: it cannot give us the fact, but it can awaken in us the image that makes the fact imaginable. Both remind us that truth is larger than language, and that words, no matter how carefully chosen, are but bridges to the ineffable.

So what lesson shall we take, children of tomorrow? It is this: do not despise the language of imagery, for it is the language of the deepest truths. Whether you are a seeker of knowledge or a singer of verses, remember that some realities cannot be chained by facts—they must be approached through symbol, through metaphor, through poetry. The atom, the soul, the infinite—these will not yield to prose. They yield only to imagination.

Practical wisdom follows. When you encounter the mysteries of life, whether in science, in love, or in suffering, do not demand always the plainest facts. Allow space for poetry, for image, for symbol. Use them to illuminate what cannot be measured, to reveal what cannot be touched. Read both the scientist and the poet, for each reveals part of the same whole. And when you speak of the mysteries in your own life, do not be afraid to reach for metaphor—for it may carry the truth more deeply than any dry fact could.

Thus Bohr’s words endure: “When it comes to atoms, language can be used only as in poetry.” The smallest things in the universe, and the greatest, alike demand the poet’s tongue. For truth is not always in the fact alone, but in the image that awakens the heart to see beyond the veil.