Contributions to Challenging the Divide have come from significant Australian scientists including Laureate Professor Peter Doherty as well as from Laureate Professor Roald Hoffmann of Cornell University who generously gave us permission to include reference to his essays for young American students and two of his poems. Roald Hoffmann is a quantum chemist, poet and has co-authored plays with Carl Djerassi. One is Oxygen. Another American scientist, astro-physicist, novelist and essayist, Professor Alan Lightman of MIT gave us permission to include two of his essays. 'Pas de Deux' and 'Words'. Some scientists are poets. They include Rebecca Elson, Miroslav Holub and Primo Levi. Lewis Thomas does not claim to be a poet but his verses have been collected. and two are in Challenging the Divide. He has been called 'the poet of science' for the evocative quality of his writing. In his essay, ‘Words’, in Challenging
the Divide: Approaches to Science and Poetry, Alan
Lightman points out the difference between the words that a scientist needs to
use and the words available to a poet. The scientist needs to be judicious. The
poet may release his or her feelings about some aspect of life and his poem
will be infused with or influenced by his or her imaginative responses to
aspects of life. When the poet is also a scientist, that difference becomes
significant. For example,
the poems of Rebecca Elson, an astronomer studying dark matter who died of
cancer, contain her love of the career that she embraced. The collection, A
Responsibility to Awe, Oxford Poets,
published by Carcanet Press Ltd., Manchester, 2001 is beautiful. I would have
interested browsers find this volume with its delicacy and connection with the
natural world and enjoy, for example, ‘To the fig tree in the garden.’ Another scientist and poet, Miroslav Holub, immunologist and poet, will write in a very different way in a poem. He can express his anger as he does in the heavily ironic ‘Animal Rights’. Such a style will not be appropriate for a scientific article for a peer-reviewed journal. The context of the poem will matter. The background of the author will have its effect on his approach. Even if the author is anonymous, the poem came out of some time and space or space/time. In Miroslav Holub’s collection The Rampage, translated by David Young with Dana Hábová, Rebekah Bloyd, published by Faber & Faber, London, 1997 explore ‘Whale Song’ and discover where it might take a reader. In Challenging the Divide, his poem ‘Animal Rights’ is in the essay by Peter C. Doherty. Another collection, Vanishing Lung Syndrome, translated by David Young with Dana Hábová, published by Oberlin College Press, FIELD Translation Series 16, 1990 contains poems that might have more impact than all the advertised warnings on television. The title poem is one such poem. Primo
Levi, industrial chemist, great writer and poet, is influenced by his
experiences in a concentration camp. He asks the question – why did he survive
when so many did not. Explore his biography and his autobiography. The
Search for Roots: A Personal Anthology,
translated with an introduction by Peter Forbes - the editor of Scanning the Century: the Penguin
Book of Poetry of the Twentieth Century - ,
published by Ivan R. Dee, Publisher, Chicago, paperback edition 2003, shows the
range of Primo Levi’s literary and intellectual interests. In Chapter 4 ‘To See Atoms’ Primo Levi begins with Sir William Bragg’s essay ‘Concerning the Nature of Things’. The writing of this Nobel prize winner who, with his son Lawrence, received that prize for their work on the X-ray spectrometer, early educated at the University of Adelaide, is part of the search for roots in by this ‘delicate forceful enchanter’, so called by Philip Roth. Primo Levi says that he read Sir William Bragg’s essay, by chance, when he was sixteen and decided to become a chemist. In his introduction Peter Forbes writes: ‘Primo Levi was a man for whom the Two Cultures debate initiated by C.P.Snow was redundant. He had a lifelong innocent and equal love of both science and literature, a love uncorrupted by academic training in the case of literature or great ambitions in the case of science.’ [p vii]. In Memory Effects: Poems by Roald Hoffmann, Calhoun Press, Columbia College, Chicago, 1999 Roald Hoffmann has written a poem dedicated to him. 'Speaker for the Dead' in memory of Primo Levi. [p 18] Where do we find our ‘roots’? They are not only in a family’s genealogy. They might be in words we have read, paintings we have seen, a moment’s study of a cloud or a leaf or an ant, music we have heard, a film we have seen, a journey we have taken. Primo Levi found some of his roots in the writing in the Old Testament – the story of Job -, Homer’s Odyssey, Charles Darwin’s The Origin of Species, and Jonathan Swift and Rabelais, Marco Polo and so many others – scientists, novelists, philosophers – and his chapter, ‘TV according to Leonardo’ is linked with the writing of Arthur C. Clarke. Challenging the Divide provides access to other scientists and poets but it is the hope that this website with encourage others to identify those who, like Primo Levi, refused to be caught up in that ‘two cultures’ notion. In his essay 'The Sounds of Science', which forms the appendix to Challenging the Divide, Stephen Lawrence brings in the work of some of Australia's contemporary poets. ************************
Dr Elizabeth Truswell of Canberra contributed to Challenging the Divide: Approaches to Science and Poetry. She sees the sciences and poetry as ‘two sides of the one coin’. Her essay flows from her early life to her career as a palaeontologist, to the poetry she read and loved and to a suggestion about the possible historical origins of Coleridge’s timeless ‘Rime of the Ancient Mariner’. Here she speaks as a visual artist. ARTIST’S STATEMENT  Trilobite I am fortunate enough to work both as a research scientist and an artist. My work as an artist has its roots in a deep conviction that art and science are very closely related activities; that they are driven by similar intuitions and by a need to respond to the natural world. While I am conscious that science and art use different languages to express this response, I also believe that the processes of working – of making work in response to this inner conviction – are very similar. Both the artist and the scientist, when tackling a subject, go through the same processes of collecting information, of gathering data, and then testing a whole range of different ways of expressing what that data might mean. These are very similar processes of exploration. In a working life as a geologist - a palaeontologist - I have spent much of that working with time, in deciphering various elements of earth history, a field very rich in diverse imagery, and demanding imaginative visualizations. Being involved in the visual arts has given me the opportunity to stand back and look in a different way at the changes that are a fundamental part of the natural world. Trying to express this sense of time and of change remains a constant struggle. The media selected for much of my work - clay, charcoal and water - reflect the natural elements. And serendipity often plays a part. Happy and unexpected discoveries made by accident are a feature of both art and science.  Elizabeth Truswell - palaeontologist and artist *********************** Contributions to this website have come from different directions. As an Associate Professor working in the field of neuro-science, this zoologist at Flinders University decided to change direction and took her passion for science into the career she has taken up as a visual artist. Here are her reflections on the connections between her two passions.
Artist and Scientist
Reflections on art and science Judy Morris
After retiring from a 30-year career as a neuroscience researcher, I am now a full-time artist. On reflection, the similarities between these activities is clear – how innate traits that attracted me to a scientific path are also fundamental to my art, whilst skills I learnt and were honed as a biological scientist inform my practice of art.
In short, both my art and my science rely on acute observation, interpretation of complex 3-dimensional structures and representation of these in a clear and compelling manner.
Both activities entail an appreciation of the aesthetics of the natural world – the beauty of form at the macro and the micro scales, and how the detailed structure below the surface contributes to the whole form.
Both my art and my science rely on fine manual control of my instruments, skills that must be practised and mastered, and which provide me with deep satisfaction. The Craft is an essential part of my love for both art and science.
My attraction to clean, uncluttered presentation, often involving multiple forms of graphic and photographic representation, is also fundamental to both my art and science. The work must first catch the eye of the viewer – it must stand out from the neighbouring work. Then it must readily convey the essential message. While personal satisfaction is important for both activities, the real buzz comes from others “getting it”. Despite these similarities, my view of the world has shifted since becoming an artist. Collaborating with Catherine Truman and Ian Gibbins on the installation Michael’s Cage, a visual and aural representation of tools used in the research laboratory, brought about this shift. I learnt to see past the electronic jungle of equipment that was so familiar to me, and focus on the human interventions and ingenuity that are so critical for successful experimentation. The coiled wires taped conveniently out of elbow’s way now took on an animalistic character. I learnt to see the aesthetics of the laboratory for the first time, and to look more deeply at other aspects of daily life. Erica Jolly’s poetic response to my drawing of Michael’s Cage suggests that my new representations of the world reflect this humanity.
Judy Morris, Michael’s Cage, 2009, charcoal and pastel on paper montage, from installation by Catherine Truman, Judy Morris and Ian Gibbins in Not Absolute: Translating the Body, Flinders University City Gallery, 2009. Michael’s cage
in charcoal and white pastel
take me to a quartet of photographs but all I see are the colours.
about ‘Michael’s cage’ - instruments protected in a box from outside forces
by the soft shaping of charcoal and white pastel on grey I feel a human presence – not a camera.
What gives these bits and pieces this microscope, those lenses, the right to bear this name?
a scientist I’ve come to know through the love of a maker of bells who showed me his discovery
I had never seen before connections that brought us the force of electro-magnetism.
given the gift of reading and writing all their love could afford, and given the same by his employer,
let him discover chemistry, and a brother who paid for him to hear the great Humphry Davy.
took opportunities when they came, no matter if they came with disrespect or denigration.
a spiritual strength that helped him find his way, choose any path that might light the way ahead.
for children in Christmas lectures, his gift would help to light for them the candle of curiosity.
in the loving soft grey depths an artist brings to the cage he made to protect his work.
fulfilling the same purpose protecting delicate research probing the unknown.
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