Science and Poetry
Commonplace Newsletter #112
This fight has been going on in one guise or another in the West for centuries now. In the Red corner we have Science and in the Blue corner we have the Humanities1. Science, of course, is the reigning and defending champion and the Humanities- which I will be referring to throughout as Poetry- looks like a bloodied and bruised journeyman, a combatant who has shown up only for the payday and doubts his ability to be competitive, let alone win the bout.
Science has been the champ for so long now that its dominance is taken as a given. Science’s cheerleaders such as the chemist Peter Atkins sees Poetry as useless since it can add nothing to what Science has already revealed to us. Science is omnicompetent- as befitting a champ- and Poetry is a useless diversion, at worst a parlour game, dangerous in that it is a waste of time from the business of understanding the world scientifically, and at best as an ornamental garden within the grand estate of Science. Science reigns supreme. The intellect is the only faculty needed to solve our problems and Science has become the proper (indeed the only) way for the intellect to be exercised and utilised.
This is a one-sided, reductionist- and I believe deeply unsatisfactory- worldview, but it is nonetheless the worldview that our contemporary Western world operates under. Technological and machine progress at all costs with economic growth at all costs are its offspring. They are what truly matter, or so we are told.
As with all of the other shallow antitheses that are foisted upon us- Left vs Right, Young vs Old, Male vs Female, Body vs Mind- this dichotomy of Science vs Poetry2 divides us, not only from each other but also from the different faculties of our inner selves and the different sides of our nature3. Such ideas split us in two and rather than trying to find reconciliation and unity, we waste our time taking sides and squabbling.
So, as well as seeing this age old This vs That trick for the con that it is, we will also need to take a moment consider both Science and Poetry in turn if we are to move beyond seeing these two areas as opposing forces destined to always be at odds with each other.
Every human achievement begins with an imaginative vision.
This is what Poetry is for, what its purpose is- the articulation and dissemination of visions. Visions of what we are and what we could be. Visions of what our world is and what our world could one day become.
This is what Shelley was referring to when he said that poets are the ‘unacknowledged legislators of the world’. The poet generates the vision, the initial sparks of energy and impetus which are then taken by the intellect and made manifest in the world. The poet provides the language that we ‘see’ such things through and offer us our first impressions of what could be new realities.
Greece had Homer’s vision at its foundation just as Rome had Virgil’s. These works offer feelings yes, but they also offer ideas as well as examples of how these ideas work in reality. The poets (which in this sense also includes prose writers who utilise their imaginative faculties) are in a certain sense prophet-like. They are not foretelling what will be necessarily, but they are offering possibilities which can act as fuel.
The poet’s vision is at the forefront of moulding and guiding the spirit of their particular age, and writers such as Blake, Eliot and Nietzsche act as very clear examples of this shaping effect in action during their time. Such poets stir the imagination and show us where different paths and choices that the present offers up can take us.
But this whole mechanism is now underplayed, if even thought of at all. Poetry is no longer conceptualised in such terms. And so we are led to ask- not unreasonably- what poetry and the arts are for and what purpose they serve. Without vision, the people perish, as Proverbs says, and without an understanding of this visionary mechanism the arts themselves perish and wither into irrelevancy. And soon you have people saying they are useless. They have no ‘value’. The poet doesn’t generate much, if any, income, and not having an impact on GDP means they serve no purpose. And all that is left is Science, or at least a very narrow vision of Science.
Science, for all of its claims of neutrality, is also founded on a vision. And this overarching vision is further shaped by the multiple visions that are embedded in the tools a scientist uses to get from their hypothesis to the interpretation of their data4.
The neutrality, detachment and objectivity that it prizes are in themselves worldviews, are the products of an imaginative vision. They are a set of assumptions. They are a stance.
The Dawn of Science was hugely influenced by the promise of the technology of the time. The technology at the time was clockwork. Our technology timeline now includes steam, electricity, radio, and the computer. This vision of the promise continues with the promise of nano technologies. The way that these technologies have been used over the centuries to describe human behaviours- from letting off steam, to being hard wired- drives this point home.
And since the 17th century science has claimed itself as being driven by reason as opposed to the feeling of poetry. You could say that Science very strongly felt it was entirely reasonable. Its job was to ‘conquer and subdue’ nature, to ‘shake her to her foundations’ according to Francis Bacon who also famously said that ‘knowledge is power’. And with this power-seeking, conquest-driven worldview all kinds of distortions entered the field and the polarisation between feeling and reason grew ever wider. Eventually much of what makes us human- especially the everyday sentiments and feelings that are a big part of the human experience- had to be dismissed and rejected as folly compared to the ‘truth’ of cold abstraction.
And this had (and has) consequences. The philosopher John Stuart Mill’s purely ‘scientific’ education and his subsequent breakdown at the age of twenty are a great example of the dejection that comes when all sentiment and ‘folly’ is abandoned for detached rationality. When your world and education becomes shrunken by those- like Hard Times’ Mr Gradgrind- who teach and value nothing but facts, you tend to react in adverse ways. Dickens was not subtle in hammering this point home which is how the poet will sometimes react when they see the same wrongheadedness.
But- and this is a lesson that we need to relearn, and one that I hope I manage to get across- Dickens and Keats and Wordsworth and all of the other poets were not wholly in opposition to all facets of Science. They wanted reconciliation and synthesis. Science did not need to be kicked off the stage but it did need to share the stage with Poetry and Philosophy. It could not stand alone.
Keats, a trained surgeon before he devoted the rest of his short life to poetry, did not wholly reject and dismiss his former vocation, noting that in ‘every department of knowledge we see excellent and calculated towards a great whole. I am so convinced of this that I am glad at not having given away my medical books, which I shall again look over.’ So the supposed antithesis between rational thought and feeling was false. The great poets were not anti-intellectual (that is part of what makes them great) nor were they insensitive to what Science had to offer. They simply sought balance. A balance which we would do well to focus on once more.
We live in unbalanced times. The dominant vision of today says that progress and technology are all that matters, that machines and computers reign supreme- with the only quibbles being as to whether this is merely inevitable or rather an outright good that is to be encouraged. Either way the vision says that we as humans will be the repairers and prompters of such technology until such time as we merge with it. There seems to be little room for the humanity that the poets describe in this future.
And so a better one is required. A fuller and more three dimensional one. Of course Science will continue to a play a crucial role in our future. But the problems of today will only continue to grow and multiply if we confine ourselves to the increasingly narrow specialisms of Science alone.
Science is just one of the ways that we use to make sense of the world. It gets us from A to B. But in and by itself it cannot tell us where or what A necessarily is, or indeed how we should interpret B.
I use red and blue because they are the standard colours of the two corners in a boxing match. The fact that these colours align with the colours most associated with major political parties is just a fortunate happenstance.
The framing of this dichotomy as science and poetry was taken from the philosopher Mary Midgley’s book Science and Poetry which proved to be instrumental in writing this essay. Indeed this essay is a primer on her thoughts laid out there and is essential reading for anyone who wants to delve deeper into this topic. Midgley expanded on these ideas in the highly recommended and now classic philosophy text The Myths we Live By.
This would be the case even if Poetry somehow found the against-all-odds lucky knockout shot and became the champion again.
The microscope is an extreme example of this. The microscope created the imaginative vision that everything is simply the sum of its parts.
Great stuff sir! Thanks for bringing it up and in so eloquent way (as always).
Many influential people over the history were polymaths, they certainly understood the balance! Interesting how our contemporaries focus on particular "side" of those polymaths, whichever interests them. Often it's 'Science', as you mention. That way they miss that those great people also were in arts, practicing it or at least greatly inspired by it — they were visionaries.
Another "trend" I see is Science trying to sneak into Poetry and subdue it. Such as some people try to "study" Poetry using scientific methods, applying formulas to literature and art. Would be happy to hear your thoughts on that!
Cheers
Could it be that the "coldness" or lack of vision for science leads to the void many people subconsciously feel and nature, in her abhorrence of an empty space, beguiles us to fill it with the junk food of "content"? Marketers feel the vacuum and rush to exploit it with junk food in lieu, of say Keats Basho, Buson, or Sherman Alexie? In turn, is Substack the new vendor of a healthy balance for poetry and science. Just hoping....