The more we know about everything, the better off we are
Many things in this world confound me, but the recent tendency to privilege science over humanities because the former is supposedly perfectly rational and fact-based, whereas the latter allegedly amounts to groundless opinion and emotion, has me flummoxed. The idea that science and humanities are mutually exclusive is false and always has been. Just ask the DH. He’s a mathematician who does history as well! Time was when educated people appreciated all types of intellectual endeavor; great scientists dabbled in art, and poets wrote about math. They did not despise one another; nor did the public revere ‘scientists’ as if their every utterance were sacrosanct. Face it, there’s as much junk science out there as overly theorized humanities BS. But let us leave that debate for the moment and move back to the days when scholars knew enough about one another’s fields to participate.
Did you know, for example, that famous Swiss mathematician Jacob Bernoulli (1655-1705), an early contributor to calculus and probability, included this lovely verse (translated from the Latin) in his Treatise on Infinite Series.
Even as the finite encloses an infinite series And in the unlimited limits appear, So the soul of immensity dwells in minutia And in narrowest limits no limits inhere. What joy to discern the minute in infinity! The vast to perceive in the small, what divinity!
Obviously, Bernoulli thought poetry a legitimate means of expressing deep and strongly felt ideas.
Some scientists produced art. Andreas Vesalius, the 16th century Flemish philosopher and physician, also created his own allegorical illustrations. Here’s his “learning skeleton”.
I could cite myriad examples, including everyone from Archimedes to modern physicist Richard Feynman. Scientists are more than their discipline. Being human, they enjoy the arts and use them to express themselves.
The opposite is also true and famous poets, authors and artists have always found inspiration in the sciences, including math. Samuel Taylor Coleridge composed a poem about Euclid’s proposition 1.
Here’s the first stanza of Coleridge’s poem:
This is now -- this was erst, Proposition the first -- and Problem the first. On a given finite Line Which must no way incline; To describe an equi -- lateral Tri -- -- A, N, G, L, E. Now let A.B. Be the given line Which must no way incline; The great Mathematician Makes this Requisition, That we describe an Equi -- lateral Tri -- angle on it: Aid us, Reason -- aid us, Wit!
People rightly prefer “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” and “Kubla Khan”, but the point is that Coleridge found Euclid a natural source of inspiration.
Even Hans Christian Andersen, beloved author of sad fairy tales, wrote a longish, densely mathematical poem about the Pythagorean Theorem. If you’re interested, you can find a translation here. It does not lend itself to pretty illustrations in the same way that the Little Mermaid does, but it won an audience nonetheless.
I have concentrated on mathematics because the DH is a mathematician and feeds me good examples, but I could have cited any other STEM field just as easily or found additional paintings, poetry, novels, music and historical works dedicated to the sciences. So, the next time someone dismisses the humanities as useless, remind them that scientists across the planet and throughout history would disagree. Anyone interested in learning will embrace both STEM and Humanities. In the meantime, fight the public tendency to reduce people to meaningless labels and to reject them summarily by judging what they do out of context and without the least understanding.
Poems sourced from Sarah Glaz’s article “Poetry Inspired by Mathematics” . Photos found through Google image.
dual personalities 