Poetry and Science

Among the contributions in Challenging the Divide is the essay 'Partial Truths and Glimpses of Light' in which Dr Juliette Woods speaks of the 'element of the numinous in both poetry and science'. Dr Woods has a degree in applied mathematics and puts her talent to the service of our water resources as a groundwater modeller.

*********************************

Simon Armitage, an English poet, has a different perspective in his essay in Contemporary Poetry and Contemporary Science. There he states that, sometimes, the poet needs to have an adversarial role where science is concerned.

*********************************

The following quotations, one from the early 19th century, one from now will take a browser to an issue where there have been very different views of the ethical considerations in this aspect of experimentation in the interest of human wellbeing.

 Fears of the hardening of the heart if science became too influential were being expressed in the early nineteenth century by the great Scottish poet and novelist Sir Walter Scott, author of Ivanhoe and many other novels and poems.

 In a letter to Miss Edgeworth – Maria Edgeworth, a novelist, sometimes called ‘the Irish Jane Austen  - Sir Walter Scott made this observation. ‘I am no great believer in the extreme degree of improvement to be derived from the advancement of Science; for every study of that nature tends, when pushed to a certain extent, to harden the heart.’ [Wilkie Collins Heart and Science: A Story of the Present Time, Chatto & Windus, Piccadilly, London 1884 p viii] Wilkie Collins was the first English writer of detective stories. Some say he is still one of the greatest. In Heart and Science he was opposing vivisection.

  In his contribution to Challenging the Divide: Approaches to science and poetry, Laureate Professor Peter Doherty brings in a poem by Miroslav Holub. ‘Animal Rights’ is heavily ironic.

 I have given these examples to highlight an issue that is still provoking different emotions. Poetry can provide an avenue for the emotional, the heart-felt response. For example, that happened after the world became aware of the devastating long-term effects on people of fallout from the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. That knowledge however did not stop nuclear experiments, for example, at Maralinga by the British government or in the South Pacific by the French and Americans.

 Would the ‘hardening of the heart’ be spoken of today as ‘collateral damage’? How does Miroslav Holub's view differ from that of Sir Walter Scott and others who have followed him?

More issues will be raised on the website as responses come in.