Responding to Nature: Science, Poetry, and the Imagination
Popper’s ‘World Two’ enfolds our subjective personal perceptions and experiences. In common with Popper’s other two worlds, this world is better seen as broadly descriptive, rather than precisely analytic. Yet it is a world that many intuitively recognize as plausible and meaningful, mapping broad aspects of human existence and reflection that are not adequately rendered by a purely objective account of reality. For many, this aspect of human existence is of defining importance.1 Yet it seems to be excluded by a purely objective account of the natural sciences. David Hume, for example, contrasted the objectivity of human reason with the risk of a subjectivity based on taste:
The distinct boundaries and offices of reason and of taste are easily ascertained. The former conveys the knowledge of truth and falsehood: the latter gives the sentiment of beauty and deformity, vice and virtue. The one discovers objects as they really stand in nature, without addition or diminution: the other has a productive faculty, and gilding or staining all natural objects with the colours, borrowed from internal sentiment, raises in a manner a new creation.2
Yet it is one thing to make knowledge dependent on taste, and quite another to acknowledge the existential importance of the subjective world of human experience, and attempt to weave this into an overall account of the human encounter with nature. In what follows, we shall consider the importance of some subjective aspects of human existence.
As human beings, we are both observers of nature, and part of nature. We are participants in the historical process, who try to make sense of it as it unfolds.3 Yet this is only one way of framing our inhabitation of the world of space and time. One of the most striking features of Newton’s Principia Mathematica is its mathematization of the notions of absolute time and absolute space.4 Although Newton regarded space and time as distinct entities, this view was successfully challenged by Hermann Minkowski in a lecture of 1908, in which he reconceptualized Einstein’s new theory of special relativity, formulated in 1905, in terms of a four-dimensional ‘spacetime’, which unified the notions of space and time.5 This development raised some difficult philosophical questions, as a unified ‘spacetime’ seemed to bear little relationship to how humans subjectively experience living in space and time.6
In his 1928 classic The Nature of the Physical World, Arthur Eddington noted how there was a significant disparity between the pure objectivity of physics and the subjective experiential world of individuals. While stressing the physical adequacy of Minkowski’s representation of the world, Eddington noted that ‘something must be added to the geometrical conceptions comprised in Minkowski’s world before it becomes a complete picture of the world as we know it.’7 For Eddington, who played a critical role in confirming Einstein’s theory of General Relativity in 1919, this ‘picture as it stands is entirely adequate to represent those primary laws of Nature’; it is not, however, adequate to engage our inner perceptions of the passage of time. Something important seems to be missing from such a purely objective account of time.
From the perspective of physics, Einstein held that the ‘distinction between past, present and future has only the meaning of a persistent illusion’.8 A purely physical account of the present moment, as distinguished from the past and future, can easily be offered; yet this fails to account for why human beings both consider the present to be distinct from the past and the future, and regard it as having special significance. Past, present, and future can be represented chronologically and spatially using a world line—yet their significance cannot be represented existentially in this way. Most people find it difficult to think neutrally and dispassionately about the transition from a past in which we did not exist, through a present in which we live and think, to a future in which we will no longer exist. Rudolf Carnap, reflecting on his discussions with Einstein about the ‘present moment’ at Princeton during the late 1940s, suggested that Einstein had concluded that scientific descriptions cannot satisfy our human needs, in that there is something essential about the ‘present moment’ that lies beyond the reach of science.9
The difficulty here is that the objective scientific language of ‘time’ and ‘space’ is inadequate to account for these aspects of human existence. For example, an objective account of the physical geography of Australia is not capable of capturing the subjective importance of features of that landscape to Australian aboriginal populations, in terms of the memories which are linked with certain places, or to the meaning that individuals and communities attach to them.10 A purely objective account of physical geography is incapable of identifying and preserving these aspects of the cultural landscape. Alongside the spatial realities of physical geography, there exist important and identity-giving networks of memory and attachment to place.11 A holistic account of the significance of such landscapes needs to bring both these objective and subjective aspects together. Each demands quite different methods of investigation and representation in order to do them justice.
For Aristotle, a ‘place’ (topos) was essentially an inert container, an abstract point that was not fundamentally different from any other point.12 Yet Aristotle fails to take account of history, memory, and the human tendency to attach significance to places. We have seen how this is significant in relation to Australian aboriginal culture; it is also a highly significant issue in relation to the land of Israel, in which these factors play a decisive role in Jewish tradition.13 Walter Brueggemann captured this entanglement of history, memory, belonging, and place in ancient Israel in his landmark work The Land, in which he argues that to make sense of the preoccupations of ancient Israel, a fundamental distinction had to be made between ‘space’ and ‘place’: ‘Place is space which has historical meanings, where some things have happened which are now remembered and which provide continuity and identity across generations.’14 Brueggemann’s analysis of the history of Israel rightly emphasized the manner in which specific places play a critically important place in human life, not least in that they function as anchor points for memory, identity, and aspiration. They continue to be important for many Jews to this day.15
To be clear, there is nothing wrong with the objectivity of physical geography, or any other science. My point is simply that there is more that needs to be said. The case of natural landscapes is particularly significant, in the light of their affective impact on people—not merely in evoking a sense of beauty or awe, but in terms of their memories, associations, and attachments, which are so important to some individuals and people groups in shaping personal identity.16 The problems arise when we are asked to believe that there is nothing more to reality than what the physical realm discloses. This foreclosure and abbreviation of a complex reality may be appropriate for certain analytical enterprises, but it fails to deal with the complexities of the human interaction with the natural world.
The conceptual space once known as ‘natural philosophy’ allowed engagement with both the objective and subjective aspects of time and space, holding them together in a creative tension. It is not that one is right and the other wrong; it is that each represents a different, yet important, aspect of the complex dynamic of human existence within the natural order. They offer different modes of envisaging and representing our place in the universe, shaping our understanding of who we are, and how we should inhabit the natural world. They both need to be integrated within a richer and deeper understanding of our world—such as that which might be offered by a reconceived natural philosophy.
Many would argue that one of the gateways to the study of the natural sciences is a subjective experience of wonder or awe at the immensity or beauty of the natural world.17 These experiences both compel attentiveness towards nature, and reward it. People often experience a sense of wonder at the beauty of some aspects of nature—such as sunsets, night skies, and expansive landscapes.18 Yet beauty elicits desire, creating a sense of longing for participation that goes beyond mere observation. This, as C. S. Lewis observed, is an immersive desire.
We do not want merely to see beauty, though, God knows, even that is bounty enough. We want something else which can hardly be put into words – to be united with the beauty we see, to pass into it, to receive it into ourselves, to bathe in it, to become part of it.19
Lewis’s point is that we are not merely drawn towards beauty; we are drawn into it, in a process that demands what John Cottingham has helpfully styled an ‘epistemology of involvement’ rather than an ‘epistemology of detachment’.20 There are clear parallels with Gadamer’s account of the relation of theory and participation, noted earlier (pp. 133–5). The observer of nature is affected by this encounter, and drawn into a deeper relationship with the natural world.
This point is particularly significant in relationship to landscapes and environmental issues. The environmental philosopher Holmes Rolston draws attention to the implications of this observation for attempts to construct a coherent account of the human response to natural landscapes that is appropriate to the environmental challenges that we face.
We do not always need science to teach us what happens on landscapes, though science enriches that story.…Science brings insight into continuing organic, ecological, and evolutionary unity, dynamic genesis; but such unity may also have already been realized by pre-scientific peoples in their inhabiting of a landscape. Science can engage us with landscapes too objectively, academically, disinterestedly; landscapes are also known in participant encounter, by being embodied in them.21
As we noted in the previous section, these multiple responses to natural landscapes and vistas highlight the dangers of limiting the human engagement with nature to what can be measured or weighed.22
For Rolston, one of the issues concerns the sensitization of the human observer to what is being observed—a process which is certainly informed by science, yet which transcends scientific or utilitarian considerations. Engagement with a natural landscape—as with nature in general—has two focal points: first, that ‘aesthetic experience must be participatory, relating an actual beholder to a landscape’; and second, ‘that nature is objective to such beholders, actually known in the physical and biological sciences’.23 These can be correlated; they are not, however, identical. ‘We humans carry the lamp that lights up value, although we require the fuel that nature provides.’24 There has to be a way of holding together objective and participatory engagement with such landscapes.
In observing and valuing nature, we bring a plurality of interpretative frameworks to bear, which are often unconnected in terms of the manner in which these are derived and acquired, the manner in which they are integrated within an individual’s mind, and the manner in which they are applied. These theories may originate from rational reflection, or from the radical epistemic transformations that are often associated with religious conversion. William James noted that this often led to ‘a transfiguration of the face of nature’, in which a ‘new heaven seems to shine on a new earth’.25
As Rolston stresses, human beings develop their own distinct outlooks on nature, which are shaped by many factors—such as personal experience, religious beliefs, scientific knowledge, and the desire for happiness—which are woven together to create a way of seeing—and hence valuing—the natural world.26 The observer of a beautiful landscape might find herself overwhelmed with its beauty, intrigued as to what scientific explanations might be offered for its shape and structures, and impelled to preserve its beauty through appropriate ecological strategies. These responses are connected primarily by the order-creating mind of the individual observer.27
Yet a question might arise here: if beauty is a subjective matter, how are we to account for the widespread interest in aesthetic evaluations of supposedly objective scientific theories?28 Not only are such theories often described in subjective terms as ‘elegant’, ‘beautiful’, or ‘ugly’; many of the core terms historically associated with ‘natural philosophy’ are clearly dependent on human aesthetic judgements—such as symmetry, simplicity, coherence, elegance, and harmony.29 In 1954, the brilliant quantum theorist Paul Dirac declared that ‘physicists generally have come to believe in the need for physical theory to be beautiful, as an overriding law of nature. It is a matter of faith rather than of logic.’30 This resonance between aesthetic and scientific theorizing is clearly significant, even if it is not fully understood.
The hallmarks of scientific understanding are similar to an aesthetic feature associated with literature, music, and the visual arts. It is the feature described as coherence, harmony, and inevitability of fit. Aesthetics thus plays an epistemic role in science as an indication of understanding.31
This puzzling resonance between theoretical beauty and scientific truth can be accounted for in a number of ways—for example, through an appeal to the traditional Thomist idea that beauty is a transcendental reality, or the suggestion that supposedly aesthetic judgements are actually disguised epistemic assertions.32 Yet whatever its explanation may be, this correlation is an important indication of the need to interconnect subjective human perceptions and objective scientific accounts of the world.33
What language should we use to try and represent nature? In the case of the physical world, the most appropriate language is that of mathematics, which proves remarkably capable of rendering its contours and interconnections. We have already noted Galileo’s firm conviction that mathematics was the natural language of the cosmos.34 This broad picture, which emerged within early modern natural philosophy, arguably reached its peak in Newton’s Principia. The ‘mathematization’ of nature was admirably suited to objects in Popper’s ‘World One’—for example, in describing and then explaining the orbits of the planets. But what of Popper’s ‘World Two’?
One of the reasons for offering an extended conversation with the history of natural philosophy in the first part of this work is to make it clear that what we now know as ‘science’ evolved slowly in constant and mutually enriching dialogue with other disciplines that would now be seen as constituting a different intellectual domain—the humanities. Tom McLeish makes the important and entirely fair point that ‘claiming science as an exclusive property of the modern world removes the deep and slow cultural development of an imaginative and creative engagement with nature that develops, at least chronologically, alongside the story of art in its own multitude of forms.’35 Each has an important place in the spectrum of human knowledge and cultural engagement.
It seems as if a different language has to be used in order to express the affective impact of the natural world upon us—a language that is capable of evoking something of this impact, and not merely describing it. It is now widely accepted that different disciplines develop their own distinct research methods, conceptualities, and languages, adapted to their specific areas of concern and exploration.36 Poetic language aims to describe the impact of nature on human beings, not through the precise analytical language of mathematics, but using language that both displays and elicits desire, amazement, wonder, or awe.
Some might suggest that this linguistic dichotomy could be mapped onto the neurological lateralization of the left and right human brain hemispheres, perhaps in the manner suggested by Iain McGilchrist in The Master and His Emissary (2009). While concerns might be raised about aspects of his approach,37 McGilchrist avoids any simplistic equation of the left hemisphere with the cold rationalities of scientific logic and the right with the intuitive capacities of artistic creativity, yet notes the complex interaction between our inclination to dissect and our desire to make whole: ‘Our talent for division, for seeing the parts, is of staggering importance – second only to our capacity to transcend it, in order to see the whole.’38
In its original forms, natural philosophy was as much about the celebration of the totality of nature, as an analysis of its individual components. The personification of nature—as in ‘Mother Nature’—was one of several devices used to affirm the fundamental unity of the natural world, while encouraging exploration of its multiple aspects.39 Yet the fragmentation of natural philosophy in England during the nineteenth century led to tensions between those who saw nature in essentially objective scientific terms, and those who stressed its subjective impact on the beholder, especially in terms of arousing a sense of beauty and wonder. The former assumed that ‘the world of natural objects, of bare, clear, downright facts, is unproblematically given’;40 the latter regarded this as unacceptably reductionist, failing to give due weight to the aesthetic and affective impact of nature on humanity.
Robert Hunt, a Victorian poet who was sympathetic to the sciences, nevertheless expressed concern about the suppression of the imagination in an age that seemed to be increasingly shaped by concerns about matters of fact and questions of utility.41 In his Poetry of Science (1848), Hunt offered what is in effect a disciplinary imaginary, in which the natural sciences are concerned with an ‘inductive search’ for basic principles, philosophy with the deduction of ‘large generalities from the fragmentary discoveries of severe induction’, and poetry unifies the ‘facts of the one and the theories of the other’, allowing observation of the world to be connected with ‘exalted ideas’.42 It is not necessary to accept Hunt’s specific understanding of individual disciplines to appreciate the point he is making; in effect, his plea is for a unified vision of reality that transcends the specific individual forms of human knowledge production, and a language that is capable of doing justice to the beauty and wonder of nature.43
Hunt’s point is developed by the environmental activist Wendel Berry, who argues that the language of science fails to excite and engage those who could—and should—be concerned about the destruction of natural habitats. How, he asks, can these people be plausibly invited to ‘save’ a world which their technological language has reduced to an assemblage of utterly featureless abstractions? A new language has to be found that is capable of evoking compassion and concern for its protection and renewal on the part of human agents.
The problem, as it appears to me, is that we are using the wrong language. The language we use to speak of the world and its creatures, including ourselves, has gained a certain analytical power…but has lost much of its power to designate what is being analyzed or to convey and respect or care or affection or devotion toward it.…It is impossible to prefigure the salvation of the world in the same language by which the world has been dismembered and defaced.44
Hunt’s unificationist aspirations are echoed in the poetry of Rebecca Elson, an observational astronomer at the University of Cambridge until her early death in 1999, at the age of 39. Elson’s poems—published posthumously as A Responsibility to Awe—are remarkable attempts to explore the ‘antithesis between matters of the mind, such as mathematical and logical reasoning, and matters of the heart, which connotes her more creative, intuitive, and emotional faculties’.45 How are we to visualize dark matter, when it cannot be seen? And what is its deeper significance?
Above a pond,
An unseen filament
Of spider’s floss
Suspends a slowly
Spinning leaf.46
In this remarkable haiku-like poem, Elson ‘transformed the “dark matter” of her scientific study into poetic mystery, even into the mystery of her own impending death’.47 Elson’s poetry allowed her to explore the feelings and existential anxieties that contemporary cosmology evoked within her—feelings that the objective language of science could not adequately or appropriately express, but which were integral to Elson’s perceptions of the cosmos, and her place within it.
Elson and Hunt can both be seen as what Mary Midgley describes as ‘bridge builders’ between science and poetry, who were convinced that the ‘antithesis between thought and feeling’ was false, and needed to be overcome or subverted.48 Other examples could easily be given—think, for example, of Wittgenstein’s positive reflections on the mutual engagement of poetry and philosophy.49 The musical notion of harmony can be expressed objectively at the mathematical level, but is experienced subjectively by the listener; as Kepler showed, it could also be connected with a wider frame of discourse within natural philosophy.50 Midgley herself cites an entire untitled early poem of 1864 by Gerard Manley Hopkins to illuminate the need for an informed ‘reshaping of our whole conceptual background’ in response to the emergence of a scientific culture:51
It was a hard thing to undo this knot.
The rainbow shines, but only in the thought
Of him that looks. Yet not in that alone,
For who makes rainbows by invention?
And many standing round a waterfall
See one bow each, yet not the same to all,
But each a hand’s breadth further than the next.
The sun on falling waters writes the text
Which yet is in the eye or in the thought.
It was a hard thing to undo this knot.
Midgley’s choice is judicious and appropriate, although she does not offer a commentary on the poem. Hopkins makes the point that the rainbow is not a fabrication, residing solely in the observer’s imagination. Yet while two observers might indeed see a rainbow, and agree it is not an invention, they each see it in different ways. It is ‘not the same to all’. While Hopkins holds that the rainbow is something that is objectively present and external to an observer, it cannot be isolated from the subjective perceptions of each individual observer.52 Their response to these aspects of nature will mingle the cognitive and affective, the objective and subjective. For example, Christian theologians have traditionally acknowledged a range of subjective responses to the natural world,53 including an ‘affective’ appreciation in response to the beauty of nature; an ‘affective–cognitive’ appreciation triggered by the beauty which is disclosed through detailed study of the natural order; and a ‘cognitive’ appreciation arising from contemplation of the harmonious functioning of the natural order as a whole.54 While some of these are informed by the natural sciences, others are clearly not.
Yet—and this is the critical point—these subjective and objective accounts of the natural world can be woven together, in a comprehensive account of what any individual makes of nature, and how this is perceived to be significant to that individual. Popper’s three worlds can helpfully be distinguished, but they cannot be separated in the lives of individuals. The issue is not how we divide up our experiences of this complex world—for example, into the objective, subjective, and theoretical. It is rather that, however we might choose to organize and distinguish these experiences, the process of distinguishing them cannot be detached from the task of bringing them back together again. As McGilchrist rightly observed, we might begin with the division of nature, allowing us to see its parts; yet what is of greater importance is the human capacity to ‘see the whole’.55 And that, as we shall see in the final chapter of this work, is what a reimagined natural philosophy might be able to do.