The science of poetry and vice versa

Ruth Padel considers the science of poetry and the poetry of science in The Guardian, arguing against the idea that poetry is all about feeling and science is all about knowing, and never the twain shall meet. "I think this over-romanticises both poetry and science," she writes, "which have got on fine for two millennia and today are enriching their dialogue."

She begins with a few lines from John Keats' "Lamia," a notorious slapdown of "philosophy" (meaning science) which Keats said would "clip an Angel's wings," continuing, "Conquer all mysteries by rule and line, / Empty the haunted air and gnomed mine – / Unweave a rainbow..."

Padel wonders why the relationship between poetry and science would provoke this kind of passion and theorizes that the angst is partly a matter of parentage. Poetry got to ask the big questions until science came along and stole its thunder. She writes:

Poetry was the first written way we addressed such questions as what is the world made of, and how did it come to be? In the sixth and fifth centuries BC, the pre-socratics reworked these questions, writing on physics, chemistry, geology, astronomy, theology, metaphysics and epistemology; and often in verse. Science was born in poetry. Lucretius's epic on atoms, On the Nature of Things continued this tradition; so did the 18th-century doctor Erasmus Darwin, whose poem "The Temple of Nature" outlined a theory of evolution, following life-forms from micro-organisms to human society.

In the end, Padel argues that poetry and science are more alike than different, sharing an interest in revealing connections, a reliance on metaphor, and a focus on the particular:

Darwin built his theories from scrupulous focus on tiny concrete entities. He spent seven years on barnacles before tackling a general species book. Furthermore, both arrive at the grand and abstract (when they have to) through precision. Scientists and poets focus on details. Poetry is the opposite of woolly or vague. Vague poetry is bad poetry – which, as Coleridge said, is not poetry at all. Woolly science is not science.

Padel points to a couple of recent collections (Corpus by Michael Symmons Roberts and Of Mutability by Jo Shapcott Read) that are neither woolly nor vague, and bridge the disciplines in interesting ways. Read the whole article here.