The Poetry and Music of Science

Tom McLeish is a physicist who currently holds an interdisciplinary Chair of Natural Philosophy at the University of York, reviving the old terminology that evokes a wider view and remit for the field. In this brilliant, lyrical and encyclopaedic study of the roots of creativity, he challenges the two cultures thesis by showing how imaginative processes are just as essential and indeed seminal in the sciences as in the arts. Already in the introduction, he demonstrates the power of verbal associations with two lists. The first consists of creativity, inspiration, passion, form, imagination, composition, representation - all commonly associated with the arts. Then we have experiment, design, formulation, method, theory, observation, hypothesis, computation, trial, error - more typical of what we would associate with science, and yet both activities require imagination on the one hand, and form, structure and limitation on the other: the spirit metaphorically informs the letter, while the letter gives expression to the spirit.

The scope of the book is unusually wide, beginning with creative inspiration in science, then visual imagination and the unconscious, experimental science and the art of the novel, music and mathematics, emotion and reason in scientific creation, and the end (in the sense of goal) of creation. Readers can sense an overall duality here, which runs through the book in diverse forms. A basic distinction arises from the interplay between unconscious and conscious processes, the intuitive and the rational, inner and outer, holistic and reductionist, moral and natural law, passive and active modes of creation, right and left hemispheres (p. 262). Creative imagination is absolutely critical, but the expressions of art and science are both necessarily constrained within a form, whether a musical composition or a scientific theory, which are representations in their respective fields: 'imagination within constraint', as the author puts it.

Using a galaxy of examples - among them Newton, Feynman, Einstein, Poincare, Schumann, Anselm of Canterbury, Grosseteste, Picasso, Henry James, William Beveridge, Medawar, Milton, Nabokov, Defoe, Wordsworth, Stravinsky and Virginia Woolf - the author delves into the creative process and comes up with a seven stage schema as what he calls an ur-narrative of the creative experience: an initial vision, desire as an emotional drive, industry involving focus and persistence, constraint also manifesting as frustration and failure, incubation, followed by illumination then verification and arrival in terms of the final work. The rich narratives throughout the book vividly illustrate the detail of this unfolding process, for instance in close-readings involving Schumann's Konzertstuck for Homs and Orchestra and the fluctuation-dissipation theorem. This particular chapter on creating the sublime concludes that 'both music and mathematics illuminate wordless spaces within the human mind….and have given witness to the deep role of aesthetics at every point of their creative journeys.' (p. 260) We also learn about Schumann's study of mathematical harmony in Bach while at the same time he is reading the romantic literature of John Paul Richter.

In his chapter on Seeing the Unseen, the author points out that the act of visual perception rests upon the act of visual imagination, and these in turn are predicated on neural and perceptual processes embedded in the human body. He discusses complementary extramissive and intromissive understandings of perception corresponding to active intentionality and passive receptivity, both of which are required in the creative process. In this respect, he could have brought in the scientific work of Goethe in more detail as he not only activated both observation and contemplation, detachment and immersion, but also spoke of new organs of perception required for creative advance. The author rightly observes, though, that 'the thought process is continually in tension between the representation and the thing represented.' (p. 83) This involves 'both projection of imagination onto the world, and reception of impressions from it, that are interpreted through the structures of our inner, mental world.' (p. 85) Later in the chapter, he applies this to cosmological models as they have evolved through history; the models involve imaginative and inductive recreation. Not only do we think as we see, we also see as we think, in accordance with prior mental frames that condition what William James called apperception - the appropriation of the new into our overall scheme of knowledge.

Experimental Science and the Art of the Novel uses texts from William Beveridge - The Art of Scientific Investigation and Henry James's The Art of the Novel. In both modes of experiment and fiction we do not necessarily know the outcome in advance, but must have confidence in our creative skill and ability. The author conducts a fascinating exploration of the 'orbits' of the early novel and science, discussing Robinson Crusoe, Newton, Milton and Boyle. A further parallel is indicated by Beveridge when he writes that 'scientific research is not itself a science; it is still an art or craft.' This and other passages put me in mind of the philosopher of science Gerald Holton's distinction between what he calls Science 1 and Science 2, where the first is the actual lived process and the second the (usually third person) report lending a certain detachment and objectivity not necessarily present in the actual experience of the experimental scientist. This chapter contains more reflection on the phases of incubation and illumination, along with a fascinating account of the work the novelist Vladimir Nabokov on butterflies, where his morphological comparisons gave rise to a migration theory only confirmed 60 years later by modern genetic analysis.

The chapter on emotion and reason draws on a variety of historical and contemporary sources, explaining the mediaeval distinction between aspectus as intellectual apprehension and affectus as will or desire. There is an appreciative commentary on the work of Iain McGilchrist and a discussion of the significance of the work of Hume, Spinoza, Humboldt, Bohm and finally of Picasso's Guernica as a powerful artistic and emotional statement. As the author puts it at the beginning of his final chapter, 'at every turn we have found the process of creation to draw on the deepest human energies, most radical thought, and most powerful emotion. Hope, desire, cognition, vision, dreaming, craft, skill, expertise, and passion are all summoned in the task of conceiving and realising our imagination.' (p. 301) His foregoing analysis amply supports his thesis and he also returns to the theme of his earlier book Faith and Wisdom in Science by reminding us that wisdom and understanding are the ends of all human artistic and scientific endeavour, and that while visual perception tends to create distance, hearing is immersive [T.S. Eliot – we are the music while the music lasts]. The major achievement of this landmark study lies in its demonstration of the common sources of creativity in the sciences and the arts and therefore its contribution to healing our cultural rift and creating a harmonious balance between heart and head, emotion and reason, intuition and analysis: we need both in order to be fully human.