Edgar Allan Poe Should've Read Carl Sagan

Throughout the ages, it seems as if poets, writers and those of any artistic temperament have seen science as the enemy of the creative process. Science has been, and still is, viewed as reductionist and therefore unable to posses beauty. A prime example of this is Edgar Allan Poe’s Sonnet: To Science (emphasis mine) -

Science! true daughter of Old Time thou art!
Who alterest all things with thy peering eyes.
Why preyest thou thus upon the poet's heart,
Vulture, whose wings are dull realities?
How should he love thee? or how deem thee wise?
Who wouldst not leave him in his wandering
To seek for treasure in the jewelled skies,
Albeit he soared with an undaunted wing?
Hast thou not dragged Diana from her car?
And driven the Hamadryad from the wood
To seek a shelter in some happier star?
Hast thou not torn the Naiad from her flood,
The Elfin from the green grass, and from me
The summer dream beneath the tamarind tree?

For the sake of a brief note on taste and my less than authoritative poetic judgement, I don’t think this is Poe at his best anyway. The Raven, stereotypically, is my top Poe poem. But let’s focus on the phrase “dull realities” that the “vulture” of science lays bare. What does Poe mean here? It seems that he believes by removing the veils of ignorance from cosmic mystery, we dampen the universes’ aesthetic qualities. Knowing that a star is a burning ball of light elements means something is missing when we lie down and stare at those pinpricks of light on a cloudless night.

Nonsense. Absolute nonsense. Knowing how something works not only takes nothing away from its immediate qualities of beauty, but it adds, not subtracts, mystery and awe. An interesting question arises regarding the nature of reality in this context though – is any reality beautiful by definition? In other words, if this world was different, would we still be saying its scientific mechanisms were beautiful simply because it happens to be that they are the case?

I would answer this question with a tentative yes. Any reality that can produce creatures capable of asking the question ‘is this beautiful?’ must be marvellous. But in our own particular universe, we do find unique beauty. A peek through the Hubble telescope far surpasses anything written by Poe. Of course, poetry can be equally or more beautiful than science, since it reveals the complex nature of what it means to be human. A poem, essentially, will always be about humanity because it is inescapably written with perspective. But Grand Indifference, a phrase I’ve used before, can only be achieved with science.

Bertrand Russell likened the beauty of mathematics to that of sculpture:

Mathematics, rightly viewed, possesses not only truth, but supreme beauty — a beauty cold and austere, like that of sculpture, without appeal to any part of our weaker nature, without the gorgeous trappings of painting or music, yet sublimely pure, and capable of a stern perfection such as only the greatest art can show. The true spirit of delight, the exaltation, the sense of being more than Man, which is the touchstone of the highest excellence, is to be found in mathematics as surely as poetry.

Although this may seem a little dated to modern ears, it expresses the kind of sentiments shared by many scientists and mathematicians. But, of course, (and I bet you saw it coming), feelings of this kind have, in my view, always been expressed most eloquently by the late Carl Sagan. In his epic Cosmos he writes:

The Cosmos is all that is or ever was or ever will be. Our feeblest contemplations of the Cosmos stir us — there is a tingling in the spine, a catch in the voice, a faint sensation of a distant memory, as if we were falling from a great height. We know we are approaching the greatest of mysteries.

The greatest of mysteries indeed. To those who say science is nothing but “dull realities”, why not take a look at what’s out there? If you’re still unimpressed, then Poe certainly isn’t going to offer anything better...