Common grounds

A British mathematician and physicist, Dirac, made the following statement:

"The aim of science is to make difficult things understandable in a simpler way; the aim of poetry is to state simple things in an incomprehensible way. The two are incompatible."

Dirac was a mathematician and physicist. He was also autistic. Which perhaps says something about his grasp of the world. He 'created' quantum physics in response to the field theories of other physicists of the time.

If one understands something but doesn't understand the other, it is a simplicity to describe the two in polar ways. The problem with this is that you don't necessarily get an accurate definition of what you don't understand. As a matter of fact, just by saying that you don't understand something calls into question your definition.

Science and art are often considered to be polar opposites. Even the manner in which we understand them and how we comprehend them is dialectical. We refer to the right brain and the left brain, as if they were two completely divided organs, when, in fact, they represent two allied portions of a singular organ: the brain.

When Dirac stated that the purpose of science was to make the difficult understandable in a simple way, he was attempting to define science by directing its purpose toward a unified end: simple understanding. That assumes that every scientific theory ends in a simple understanding. I would assume that quite a few students find science an endeavor which ends in more complex understandings of the workings of the world.

At the same time, using a dialectical definition of poetry, as opposed to science, really doesn't allow us to define poetry for poor Dirac at all. On the contrary, it simply shows that Dirac appreciated science at the expense of poetry.

Poetry is not an endeavor in which the poet attempts to make the simple difficult. On the contrary, poetry is the use by the poet of his own subjective thoughts, emotions and understandings to describe something in the world by use of his own thoughts, emotions and understandings. When we read the poem, if the poem touches something within us and allows us to understand about ourselves or the world in which we live, then the poet has transcended the subjective and reached the universal. The more universal the reach, the better the poem.

Art is achieved when the poet's words translate something within him which allows us to read the words and see or feel something within ourselves. The subjective becomes the universal by allowing us to feel the subjective truth within us. Ultimately, there is a connection between the poet and the reader which overcomes the differences between us.

In some sense, I prefer the earlier concept of philosophy as a study of truth. The early philosophers such as Socrates, Plato and Aristotle did not divide the truth between the scientific and the artistic. On the contrary, I believe they would have seen it as all of one thread in the tapestery of knowledge.

In this regard, there seems to be a connection between music and mathematics which belies Dirac's sense of the dialetical nature of the two. It is interesting to note that Dirac was autistic. One aspect of autism is the inability to handle noise and light. Another aspect is the inability to relate to others. I find it interesting that Dirac seemed to misunderstand the nature of poetry and the ability to relate to the thoughts and feelings of others as depicted in poetry.

Perhaps there are more things in common between science and poetry.