Literature and Science

 Literature and Science

1. Huxley in this essay, 'Literature and Science' gives a fresh approach to the controversy and the conflict between the two cultures 'Literature and Science'.

2. For almost a century we are seeing that eminent men have entered the fray taking the side of arts and science, one against the other.

3. ⤵️

1. Huxley begins his essay by referring to the experiences of people.

2. And then how they relate these experiences.

4. The essayists say how different people would relate to and interpret on one incident.

5. As for example 

1. how would a crowd react to watching a burning house   

2. Some would be horrified, sympathetic

3. Or some may take pleasure and another inhuman and malicious approach.

6.    Here we see the difference in approach to one common incident.

7. The sense impressions, emotional experiences and the process of rational thought differ.

8. Here the approach of science and Literature would be different.

9. The concern of literature would be with man's more private experiences.

10. ⤵️

1. The man of science observes and reports of other's people's more public experiences.

2. They conceptualize in terms of the same language.

3. Correlates these concepts.

4. Then they look for same ' operational definitions'.

5. They try to prove by experiments and observations.

6. Finally comes out the logical conclusion.

11. The man of letters (Literatures) is also an observer, organizer and communicator in his own and other's people's public experiences of events.

12. The essayists say that in a way such experiences constitute the raw material of many branches of Science.

13.  They are the raw material of poetry, drama, novels and essays.

14.   The man of letters never confines himself

1. For long to what is merely public.

2. To them, the outer reality is constantly related to the inner world of private experiences.

3. Huxley says for them wild individuality is forever breaking through the crust of cultural custom.

15.   ⤵

1. On the other hand, the man of Science does his best to ignore the worlds revealed by his own.

2. They also ignore other people's private experiences.

16.   Talking about literature Huxley says that literary artists treat their subject matter differently from the way which the same subject matter is treated by the man of Science.

17. The scientists examine a number of cases

1. they note all similarities and uniformities.

2. They test against the observed facts.

3. And from these abstracts a generalization.

18. ⤵️

1. The primary concern is not with the concreteness of some uniqueness of some unique event.

2. But with all events of a given class that makes sense.

19.  ⤵️

1. With the literary artist, the approach is different.

2. Every concrete particular, public or private is a window opening onto the universal.

3. Huxley gives the example of - Hamlet, Macbeth, and King Lear the three grisly anecdotes, about highly individualized human beings in exceptional situations.

20. Huxley says that Shakespeare through the records of unique and extremely improbable events occurring simultaneously in the world of private and public experiences caught a glimpse and shared them with his readers.

21. ⤵️

1. Further, the essayists say that Shakespeare saw all these and made it possible for us to see.

2. He enlightened the truth from every level, from all the two familiar humans to the divinely unknowable.

22.    Regards the physical sciences, Huxley says that these started to make progress when the investigators shifted their attention from qualities to quantity.

23. ⤵️

1. The physical sciences are 'nomothetic'.

2. i.e. they deal with general or universal laws.

3. They seek to establish explanatory laws.

4. These laws deal with the relationship between the invisible and the intangibles.

5. These invisible and intangibles cannot be described.

6. They are known only by inferences.

24.   ⤵️

1. Literature is not 'Nomothetic'.

2. It is ideographic. These deal with particular characteristics or distinguishing marks.

3. Its concern is not with the regularities and explanatory laws.

4. They deal with descriptions of appearances and the discerned qualities of objects perceived as a whole.

5. They do it with judgements, comparisons, and discrimination.

6. with 'inscapes' and essences and

7. Finally with istigkeit of things. ( The quality that individualizes an object and makes it different from others).

25. The world with which literature deals is

1. The world into which human beings are born and live and finally die.

2. The world in which they have all the emotions and feelings - all good and bad.

3. The world of shared language, rules, roles, and solemn or absurd rituals of the prevailing culture.

26.   Every human being is aware of the multifarious world. He knows where he stands.

27. By analogy, they also understand others.

28. ⤵️

1. The scientist inhabits the many-faceted world in which the human race does its living and dying.

2. but a chemist, physicist, and psychologist, he is the inhabitant of a radically different universe.

3. They live in the world of inferred fine structures, the world of quantified regularities.

4. Their world is not of the universe of given appearances, not the world of unique events and diverse qualities.

29.  ⤵️

1. Knowledge is power.

2. It is through their knowledge of what happens in this inexperienced world, scientists have acquired enormous control.

3. This world of abstractions and inferences.

30.    ⤵️

1. Every science has its own frame of reference.

2. For science in its totality, the ultimate goal is the creation of a monistic system.

3. Here the world's enormous multiplicity is reduced to something like unity.

31.   Huxley says that the data of physics, Ornithology and others are coordinated to one another in a different way.

32. ⤵️ 

1. Huxley says about other sciences that there are various sciences.

2. Each has its own system of coordinating concepts.

3. They have their own criterion of explanation.

33. The man of letters accepts the uniqueness of 

1. events 

2. diversity and manifolds of the world

3. radical in comprehensibility at their own level.

4. Finally accepts the challenge, which uniqueness and mystery give.

5. Then they give this unkindness, shapelessness a highly organized and meaningful works of art.

34.   Huxley says that there exists a rough and ready vocabulary in every language for communication and expression.

35. In good literature the blunt impressions of conventional language place to subtle and more penetrating forms of expressions.

36.  The ambition of the literary artist is to

1. speak about the ineffable.

2. The literary artists communicate in words, that, words never intended to convey. 

37.  ⤵️

1.  All words are abstractions.

2. They stand for those aspects of a given class of experiences, which are recognizably similar.

38.   The elements of experience which are unique and aberrant remain outside the pale of common language.

39. But it is these elements of experiences the literary artist aspires to communicate.

40. ⤵️

1. Huxley says for this purpose common language is not sufficient.

2. So every literary artist needs to borrow some kind of uncommon language for expressing these experiences.

41.   Donner un sens plus pur aux mots de la tribu

1. (French) = To give a fuller meaning to the words of the tribe.

2. It is only by an unusual combination of purified words, our experiences can be re-created.

3. And this can be made public and communicable.

42.     Huxley repines, saying even at their best how hopeless is the writer's task. " They are the smallest piece of mind that pass the narrow organ of the voice. The great remain behind in vast orb of the apprehension, and are never born."

43. Huxley says in "Paradise the Saint's experience of bliss" = che non gusta nouns' intended mai."

44. Further, the essayists says that the same is true of the ecstasies and pains of human beings on earth.

45. Untasted the pains can never be comprehended.

46.   Huxley winds up his views on 'Literature and Science' and saying.

         "In spite of all pens that ever poets held... and in spite of all the scientist's electron, microscopes and computers - the rest is silence, the rest is always silence.

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