Dim drums throbbing, in the hills half heard,
Where only on a nameless throne a crownless prince has stirred,
Where, risen from a doubtful seat and half attainted stall,
The last knight of Europe takes weapons from the wall,
The last and lingering troubadour to whom the bird has sung,
That once went singing southward when all the world was young,
In that enormous silence, tiny and unafraid,
Comes up along a winding road the noise of the Crusade.
from Lepanto by G. K. Chesterton
Somewhere during my third year at UCT, while majoring in Physics and Applied Maths, I begin to detect the sound of distant drums.
There are universities in England and America where serious people go to do advanced physics. (Yes, we say “to do” physics, not “to study” physics. Physics is a vocation.) People I know have pulled up stakes and gone abroad to get a PhD, people serious and ambitious
and willing to leave home even though they don’t have to. They want to do something wonderful.
Some of them do. I first learn about overseas PhD-ers from my Oranjezicht neighbor Jeffrey Bub, the older brother of my classmate Julian. Jeffrey has left Cape Town to do a PhD in London with David Bohm on hidden variable theories of quantum mechanics and will eventually become a well-known philosopher of quantum mechanics.
The physics department likes to tell you it’s not necessary to leave UCT to do good physics. But, when we learn quantum mechanics, they teach it as though it’s mysterious and hard to grasp, something bewildering …
