Science And Poetry has very important relationship.The vale of strangeness and mystery, which is but the veil of poetry, is drawn from the face of nature. The moon and the stars, the sky and the rainbow, the eclipse and the earthquake had each its own poetry to tell to the childhood of man; but where is that poetry gone? what a solace was there in thinking of the distant twinkling stars as souls of the pious dead and the rainbow as the sign of God’s covenant of peace with mankind ! What comfort is now left to the average man to know that the stars are but so many world and the a prism of colours ! The cheer and the charm are gone and naked fact remains. The wine of life is drawn, they say, and the mere are left.
Antagonism Between Science And poetry
Man likes knowledge but reveres and loves what is unknown. “Our consciousness of the unknown wherein we have being, life a meaning and grandeur which must of necessity be absent if persist in considering only the things that are known to us, if we too readily inclined to believe that these must greatly transcend in importance the things that we know not yet”, says Maeterlinck. When therefore men find that science is bent on conquering the unknown by fire and line and when they observe the myth-making power of unity fading away in the glare of reason, they regard science as ruthlessly waging war on poetry. What wonder then that they speak of ice versus poetry, as if there is a real antagonism between them!
Poetry Is The Great Demand Of Science
This idea of antagonism is further strengthened by the methods followed in science and poetry’. The first wants to know things by adding and dissecting them, by critical acumen, observation and research. It lakes a butterfly, dissects it, destroys its natural beauty to icon it minutely. The rainbow is reduced to the prismatic colours. The beauty of a flower disappears under a microscope and the mystery at the moon is marred by a telescope. Poetry, on the other hand, loves to appreciate and enjoy things as a whole, as a part and parcel of the mysterious entity which we call Nature. No doubt poetry also require observation and acumen, but only to love and not to understand When Tennyson speaks of “A million emeralds break from ru budded lime”, his observation of nature is not less keen than that Newton profiting by the fall of an apple. But the two observations differ. The one follows the method of analysis and regards relations of things simply as relations. The other adopts the principle of synthesis and has for its objects those forms which are common universal nature and existence itself.
What You Should Have Asked Your Teachers About Science And poetry
Science Directly Helps Poetry
Moreover, at the altar of science millions of lives are sacrificed. The frog, the guinea-pig and the monke its hourly victims. Man himself is laying down his own life that s may prosper and smile more and more. If not anywhere, at least in realm of science manslaughter ends in man’s laughter. On the of innumerable lives is built the palace of science—its lordly pi house to minister to the wants of man. Not so cruel is poetry: It no one but saves many. Science kills and benefits, poetry soothes saves. This difference in procedures also leads men to believe in their antagonism.
The faculties required in the pursuit of science and po also different. Science has staked everything on reason, beyond reason is to it unknown and unknowable. It takes no a of such things. It sees through the eyes of reason and what reason to grasp, is ignored by science. Poetry, on the other hand, d chiefly on imagination. Hence it has been defined as “the expression of imagination.” It is this imagination which gives to airy nothing habitation and a name;
Shelley has finely contrasted these two great fac ‘Reason is the enumeration of qualities already known, imagine the perception of the value of those qualities, both separately a whole. Reason respects the differences, imagination the similitude of things. Reason is to imagination as the instrument to the agent body to the spirit, as the shadow to the substance”.
Difference Between The Role of Science And poetry
Lastly, they apparently differ in their objects. To the popular mind aims at utility and beauty, and poetry at joy. To increase comforts of man, to cure him, and to bring pleasure to his mind, is unravelling the mysteries of this world. It is due to the oi achievements of science in the latter half of the nineteenth ike twentieth centuries that man has been able to enjoy the ‘ comforts of the present day life. But these comforts are more transitory.
In Spite of them man is becoming more and more and more miserable. There is food and comfort in abundance in the present orid, yet man starves and leads a miserable life.-Poetry, on the hand, aims at giving us not bread but that kind of joy which is , universal permanent. This joy strengthens life and brings . Science raises men’s wants, but it is poetry alone which can satisfy them. Gift of gold, wealth and physical comfort will certainly alleviate misery for the time being, but the man returns a beggar again. It is only the consolations of poetry and philosophy that make him really forget these wants.
These are some of the reasons for the popular belief that there is a real antagonism between science and poetry. When their Mods and outlook differ, it is inferred that they also fundamentally r. But this is a delusion due to the narrowness of our outlook. A der vision will reconcile their opposition and teach us that both of : ultimately serve the same end, namely, truth. In the revelation of h these are but ways. A great scientist must have a poet’s ;inaction to unravel the mysteries of things, and a true poet must the observation and acumen of a scientist to understand and excite the marvels of this universe. A Doctor Sir Iqbal must sess a poet’s vision to fathom the mysteries of plant-life, and a Jonson must possess the scientist’s observation to understand the visible universe. Science and poetry are closely linked up together, and is our short-sightedness that ignores their affinity and emphasises their difference.
Everything You Wanted to Know About science and poetry and Were Too Embarrassed to Ask
In fact, far from science being antagonistic to poetry, it directly helps it by its inventions and discoveries. The language of poetry bristles with scientific figure and images and the thoughts are often coloured by the scientific tendencies of the age. For example, when Tennyson says.
Break, thou deep vase of chilling tears That grief has shaken into frost
He is simply telling us that he belongs to a great age of science.
Conclusion:
Moreover, science may destroy one form of popular charm and beauty, but it compensates by revealing to us more delicate, more truthful and varied forms of charms. These captivate us and show that truth is stranger than fiction. On these discoveries a new imagination shall work, a new poetry shall arise. So science may advance but the poetry of the world shall never be dead. Knowledge shall grow from more tu more but more of poetry shall dwell in us. The beauty of the rainbow might have been destroyed by Newton, but on its prismatic colours new poetry shall rise. The colour and fragrance o( a flower may disappear under a microscope but the formation of its cells shall reveal a higher poetry of divine skill and wisdom. So poetry, instead of being conquered by science, shall walk hand in hand in its forward march to the temple of truth.
