Where does this division fragmentation come from, particularly when the
experiences of creativity and the deployment of imagination has such
similar experiential and structural form in both science and arts? Well, one reason
that they diverge - it is because people don't talk to each other and the
disciplines don't talk to each other. Our barriers are far too high. Another reason
is that some of the great early 19th century hopes for artistic communication
of science and artistic Co fruitful learn and with science have not come to
versioned because of that have commutation let me just read you a
little bit of William Wordsworth here this is this is Wordsworth in that I
quote in the first chapter of the of the book from his preface to the third
edition of lyrical ballads this this tells us something by the way of just
how close poetry and science or natural philosophy as it was then in the early
19th century was another example is Humphrey a Davian and Coleridge helping
each other with their poems and experiments but here we go here's
Wordsworth writing and about 1820 there are motifs discoveries of the chemist
the botanist the mineralogist will be as proper objects of the poet's art as any
upon which it can be employed if he says if the time should ever come when these
things shall be familiar to us and the relations under which they are
contemplated by the followers of these respective sciences shall be manifestly
and palpably material to us as enjoying and suffering beings very words worthy
and sentence science has to be communicated its symbols have to be
enjoyed commonly manifestly felt earth in effect
as well as cognition in other words as enjoying and suffering beings at that
point so if everyone feels and enjoys both the despair
and the great joy of science discovered then you can write poems about it but
not if that hasn't happened and yet we continue to present science as if it was
some clean little polished caskets of objects of knowledge and that is never
gonna do it for us so where do I hope all this might go aquos you know this is
a small drop in an ocean of contributions to the dialogue between
arts humanities sciences I think I hope for a world in which in our academic
institutions and our public world of thought we talk about this more we make
it much more democratic and we're far more open about the twists and turns of
the creative process that I mean there are even consequences for mental health
and here's one thing I've learned that no one who reflected deeply on this has
ever thought that that creative imagination in science is devoid from
emotion on the contrary the affective and emotional ride entangled with the
cognitive all the way through David Hume was good on it so she David Hume was
very saying if you if you think you're thinking with pure thoughts then think
again it's just another type of emotion I assure you but the medieval
philosophers were I found that there's a bit of medieval philosophy in the book
as well and that's really because I think the 13th century might have been
the last time which people had the last period in which people had the time and
the discipline of self-reflection a metacognition which is a word that's
come back recently in education theory I'm delighted to say reflecting on Mars
own cognitive processes to see that emotion and and thought run in parallel
so I'm hoping for a world that's more honest about that secondly I'm actually
hoping for a world that's a bit more creative I mean in my formation as a
scientist I've realised that I don't think in my PhD or my graduate studies
certainly not my undergraduate studies I can't remember a single hour seminar or
minute on which we were encouraged to reflect on
where we're going to get her scientific ideas from and yet the difference
between ordinary science and great science is is the radical innovation the
degree to which ideas are radically innovative so we should talk about that
more I think the third thing is all I've learned is that ideas really fresh ideas
don't tend to come from plowing a deep single high-walled disciplinary forum
they come as we've already discovered in these stories of creativity they come
tunneling through the unconscious as several people have said you know
metaphor is the gateway to the unconscious and science actually thinks
metaphorically all all all the time but of course the greater the distance of
the metaphor the greater is the energy of tension that can feed through into
the problem were working on now feed on as rich and broad a cultural basis as
possible it's not a new idea Isaac Barrow Newton's contemporary I'll
read you something he said it is from the 17th century he can hardly be a good
scholar who is not a general one for one part of learning
Duff confer light upon another not sure I really needed to write 350 page book
after those two lines from Barrow it's a kind of kind of footnote to Barrow
really but but that's the that's the best of the early modern conception of
how ideas form Lucas there are wonderful links in that period Pat worpress of
English at Durham who I knew well when I started writing the book pointed out to
me that the coincident conception of experimental method and the early
English novel in the 17th century is not a coincidence the artistic form of the
novel and the santak form of experimental science have a deep common
conceptual birth in in that wonderful century that's just one example of the
themes entangled themes that go on through
through through through the book so I think all that in in the form of
graduate education Oh school education and would be lovely to see