"Symbiosis or Death": - Rhodes University

Nature never set forth the earth in so rich tapestry as divers as poets
have done – neither with pleasant rivers, fruitful trees, sweet-smelling
flowers, nor whatsoever else may make the too-much loved earth more
lovely. Her world is brazen, the poets only deliver a golden.
Not so. As long as we don’t destroy and diminish it irrevocably, the too-muchloved
earth will always exceed our power to describe, or imagine, or understand
it. (259)
I think Livingstone would have agreed with this.
Science and poetry
Given that Livingstone was both poet and scientist and given his distinction between
humanity’s physical and psychic elements (LZ 62), an examination of these apparently
disparate realms is required. William Howarth claims that it is difficult to connect science
and literature “for their cultures have grown widely apart” (in Glotfelty 76). But are
science and literature polar opposites? The most obvious difficulty is that science and
literature use different concepts and different ‘languages’.
I.A. Richards points out in Science and Poetry (first published in 1926) that
science “can only tell us how such and such behave” (58). His following statement on the
merits of science is interestingly ecological:
Science can tell us about man’s place in the universe and his chances; that the
place is precarious, and the chances problematical. It can enormously increase our
chances if we can make wise use of it. (58)
Richards believes that poetry is also capable of this wisdom, of “saving us” or
“preserving us or rescuing us from confusion and frustration” (90). Richards’ thesis, in
summary, is that science deals with the how, while poetry ponders the what and why of
existence (see Richards 58-9). To put it another way, science rests in the physical and
poetry in the psychic or metaphysical. Northrop Frye claims that the “polarizing of
creative power between vision and sense is the basis of the distinction between the arts
and the sciences” (153).
Brian Silver in the preface to The Ascent of Science admits that the human race
has used science to manipulate the future, but also argues that “science is also a triumph
of reason, luck, and above all imagination” (xiv). David Bohm in On Creativity asks:
“But is it true that science necessarily implies a completely meaningless and mechanical
character to the universe?”; and answers with the claim that scientists do not see “the
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