A Glass of Wine ---By Prof. Feynman

A poet once said, "The whole universe is in a glass of wine." We will probably
never know in what sense he meant that, for poets do not write to be understood.
But it is true that if we look at a glass of wine closely enough we see the entire
universe. There are the things of physics: the twisting liquid which evaporates
depending on the wind and weather, the reflections in the glass, and our imagination
adds the atoms. The glass is a distillation of the earth's rocks, and in its
composition we see the secrets of the universe's age, and the evolution of stars.
What strange array of chemicals are in the wine? How did they come to be?
There are the ferments, the enzymes, the substrates, and the products. There in
wine is found the great generalization: all life is fermentation. Nobody can
discover the chemistry of wine without discovering, as did Louis Pasteur, the cause
of much disease. How vivid is the claret(a wine made in France), pressing its existence into the consciousness
that watches it! If our small minds, for some convenience, divide this glass
of wine, this universe, into parts—physics, biology, geology, astronomy, psychology,
and so on—remember that nature does not know it! So let us put it all
back together, not forgetting ultimately what it is for. Let it give us one more final
pleasure: drink it and forget it all!