The Poetry of Science:
A Cultural Force To the scientist there is a daily heauty in science as well as something useful. He views it as a wonderful triumph of hoth imagination and intellect. There are humanists who will concur in this view of science. But there is an ominous portent on the horizon. More than most are willing to admit, the words of C. P. Snow have focused attention on images and attitudes which continue to have a profound effect on the young intellectual mind of the campus scene. Observers of this contemporary scene on the college campus find a generation of manumitted students who have made a commitment to a variety of sub-cultures. The observer comes face to face with campus counter-culture; he soon hears the students discussing "flight from reason," "meaninglessness," and "despair." These are real philosophies; whether one of these will become a new master at the head of the table only history can tell. These voices are saying not only that the scientist is ignorant of Shakespeare and the humanist of the Second Law of Thermodynamics hut are demanding that the scientist and technologist think and act with them on the vital issues of the day: nuclear war, overpopulation, pollution, and the gap between the rich and the poor. In other words, the social values of science are heing questioned. There is no douht hut that some of these voices echo the cry of many humanists who are challenging the community of science to respond to the charge that a science-based technology is the dominant deterrent to a more meaningful life. There is no douht, too, that some of these students are using this crisis as a means of escaping from the responsibility of their academic work. It seems valid, however, to assume that most of them are in search of something which will offer meaning and purpose to their life. They are not convinced that the twentieth century science is doing this. In any event these voices have been raised in concert and to such a level that to ienore these demands will he " very foolish. There are few scientists who will not defend the i n t e d ty and poetic heauty of their science; what it is and what it can do. For some reason, however, too many of these seem to feel that the responsihility to this commitment involves an exchange of ideas among the memhers of the science community only. In some ways this commitment has become so specialized that it is progressively more difficult to communicate among the disciplines making up science. The young student senses this breakdown among humanists and scientists (even among scientists themselves) and refuses to he a slave in the same marketplace. He voices a demand for a more meaningful quality of reason, one that will he less dehumanizing and more acceptable. His conclusion is that he must make a complete hreakaway from the dull, deadening, and destructive domination of these misused forces of science. Because of these forces, he argues, man has literally been forced to neglect everything that the whole man believes, wants, and values. Science is a human endeavor and should contribute to human welfare. Society has the right to demand that it do 174 1 Journal ot Chemical Education
so. Some members of the science community will argue that scientists and science have been aware of this responsibility and have been guided by this philosophy. There are, however, a great many of the highly respected and recognized members of this culture who join in concert with these voices in the charge that science has failed to acknowledge this responsibility. The extremists in the scene have turned to a subculture of "meaninglessness." Reason, they say, is suspect. If the bombs are certain to fall, if ecological breakdown is the best that reason can produce, then life is purposeless; the only thing left is unreason-meaninglessness. "But," says Archihald MacLeish, "to surrender to such a cult is the ultimate act of folly. Even Job's demand for justice was shouted down by the voice from the whirlwind. And Job, because he was a man, took back his life and lived it notwithstanding." The less despairing turn to the purism of the humanities saying that this is the only salvation left to them if they are to resist this dehumanizing influence of science and technology. But in their very defense of the humanities, they seem to fail to realize that these same humanities, especially as they are heing taught and practiced today, have been converted to a superficial imitation of the scientific method which must of necessity eliminate the very essence of the thing they seek-the subjective life. Here is Lewis Mumford crying out as humanist and the plight of the humanities. Wylie Sypher would further add that these same humanists are making the teaching of literature an exercise in mere literary history, an empty exercise in a pseudo-scientific methodology. "Unfortunately," says Ellul, "it is a historical fact that this shouting of humanism always comes after the technicians have intervened; for a true humanism, it ought to have occurred before." I have no illusions that the time soon will come when we will see a joint meeting of the American Chemical Society and the Modern Language Association. Such a meeting, however, might produce something miraculously beneficial to hoth cultures, if nothing more than to vindicate the "House of Intellect." We dare not allow the separation and misunderstanding to increase. For as William Davenport savs. "we must understand each other or die." It woild he 20' our everlasting credit if we could prove Thoreau to he right and that "it is never too late to give up our prejudices." A statement in the revised 1972 American Chemical Society minimum standards offers some hope: "emphasis on pure theory has too often led to a neglect of the practical, aesthetic, and humanistic aspects of our science, not only in courses for the non-scientists hut in the education of professional chemists as well." The present trend does offer hope for the non-scientist in the special courses heing developed for them hut not much is heing done for the neophyte scientist. We continue to hear the same old complaint there is not time to do this in the regular program and still cover the basics. I am inclined to agree with Northrup Frye that it is not so much the humanist's ignorance of science or vice versa hut rather an ignorance on the part of hoth cultures of the
social structure of the society which supports both. Just how "Snow-hound" or "Snow-free" we are is difficult to say. The "Snow-mass" conference was certainly a start in an effort to establish a hetter understanding among the cultures but there is much yet to he done if we are to break down the "Snow-fence" which divides them. If we can not do this in the regular science courses, then some attempt must be made to deliver the message in another way. I believe it can he done and have made an attempt to do so. Six years ago I started a Science/Humanities course so constructed as to, hopefully, establish hetter communication among the disciplines. Starting with an enrollment of six students the first year, all science majors, the course has grown to a true interdisciplinary program enrolling between 30-40 students each semester. There are no prerequisites for the course and the student may opt for philosophy or non-laboratory science credit. I want the student to come to realize that a man who conceives a quantum concept in science is no more an intellectual giant than that man who creates a David out of a slab of marble. There can be a unified intellect such as we have seen in a DaVinci who was painter, sculptor, mathematician, engineer, and scientist. Furthermore, all great contrihutions represent poetic vision, each in its own way, and each has a powerful effect on the total culture of man. We must discourage the idea that the results of science have been derived from a neat set of facts and ohvious fundamentals and, in the words of Michael Polanyi, "the practice of that science is usually sound, even when conducted in the name of false principles." To drive home the point I refer, for example, to Thomas Macaulay's "Essay on Milton." The poetry of science as with any poetry represents the "art of employing words or symbols in such a way as to produce an illusion on the imagination, the art of doing by means of words and symhollic expression what the painter does by means of color. Truth is essential to all poetry hut it is the truth of mad-
ness. The reasonings are just; but the premises are false." "We do not know; we can only guess," says Popper. It is the poetic vision of Sypher and Bachelard. Wherein that first vision in science is its poetry; it is codified into laws and theories only when it has been tested. This makes the science different from the first and only vision of the poet; his is not subject to test. Science has not grown in the neat and orderly manner some have suspected. A look a t the Greek traditions embodied in the organic, the mystic, and the mechanistic concepts of their philosophy lend credence to this. Assessing the contrihutions of the Seventeenth centurv of Newton, Leibniz, Descartes, .Bacon, Kepler, and pascal lend further support to the theme being developed. Finally the theme of the comes to fruition in the essays following these initial lectures. Here the student reads and discusses contemporary contributions of Holton, Polanyi, Mumford, Davenport, Weisskopf, Bronowski . . . these bring together basic ideas to be developed. There is also a chance for fusion of ideas brought to the class by outside lecturers on Science and Art, Science and Religion, Science and Poetry, and Science and Music. The final obligation for the student is a scholarly paper on "Creativity, Curiosity, and Culture." The students (scientists and humanists) profess a better understanding of Science. I believe they come to know what Ecclesiastes means in "giving our hearts to seek and search out by wisdom concerning all things that are done under heaven" . . . "in much wisdom is much grief and he that increaseth knowledge increases sorrow." But, in the words of Einstein, "God is subtle, but he is never malicious." There is a poetry of science and it is a cultural force.
Thomas VanOsdall Ashland College Ashland. Ohio
Volume 50. Number 3. March 1973 / 175
