Comparative Study of Science and Poetry

 Comparative Study of Science and Poetry

Science deals with the world of facts, the world of appearances. Poetry deals with what is not seen by our eyes, what we can't listen to with our ears, what we can't feel with our hearts.

If you ask a gardener pointing out at a flower, he would answer, "It's a Lily." A scientist or a botanist would answer, "It is a Hexandria Monogynia." But for a poet like Spenser, it is "the lady of the garden." Similarly a scientist measures the beauty of a lady by considering the Golden Ratio of Beauty Phi - a measure of physical perfection. But on the other hand, a poet beauty is something which appeals his heart. That's the reason why Kalidasa, a famous Sanskrit poet calls Shakuntala as "अनाघातम् पुष्पम्". (Untouched flower).

Moreover, as opposed to science, poetry has a deeper relationship with philosophy. Science has nothing to do with philosophical ideas. Like philosophy, poetry dives deeper into the things, ideas and brings about the connotative meanings. Science can explain only denotative meanings. Matthew Arnold believes in the grand power of poetry. He says that this grand power of poetry is the power which can awaken in us a full and intimate sense of things.

Interpretations given by science don't give us this intimate sense of objects. It appeals to a limited faculty and not the whole man.

William Wordsworth, a Romantic poet, in his ‘Preface to Lyrical Ballads’, considers poetry to be superior to science. He shows that the scientist studies only the appearance of things while the poet investigates the inner reality of human soul. The realization of the unity of nature and man gives absolute pleasure to the poet. A scientist is devoid of this pleasure; he enjoys pleasure in solitude whereas poetic truth can be shared by all. The poet’s appeal, says Wordsworth, is to the intellect as well as to the heart of man, unlike the appeal of the scientist’s truth, which is to the intellect alone.

Wordsworth thinks that the time may come when science will change and alter the very material conditions of life. When that happens, the poet will give feeling and emotional coloring to the factual achievement of science and present it in a vivid form to the reader. The dry and dull skeleton of science will be given life and vividness, flesh and blood through the art of poetry.

The Victorian poet Mathew Arnold in his critical writing The Study of Poetry, echoes Wordsworth’s view that science would remain incomplete without poetry and quotes Wordsworth: poetry is “the breath and finer spirit of knowledge”. In a fact the atmosphere of sensation only matters and he takes his surroundings for his subject. Even the ‘objects of the science” are put to poetic sensation and the discoveries of the chemist, the Botanist, or Mineralogist will also be the objects of the poet’s art. Not only that the poet will aid the science to ring it before all in a decisive form in the coming days with its “divine spirit”. Thus Wordsworth elevates the position of poet over the man of science and so says, “it is as immortal as the heart of man.”

 

Poetry is not a photographic presentation of the world of appearances and all its mundane trivialities. Poetry’s truth is based on the basic elements of human nature, the everlasting, universal aspects of human life. Poetry ignores the nonessentials, removes irrelevances, and concentrates on the essentials. It presents the ‘universal’, while history deals with particular events. Poetry takes the particular and makes it into the universal. But the process of imitation is in keeping with the law of logicality, probability and necessity. Poetic truth is higher than that of history. The particular object taken by the poet is transfigured, “so that the higher truth, the idea of the universal, shines thought it”.