On science and poetry

It's pretty obvious that Gene Doty, chair of our department of English and technical communication, has a deep interest in poetry. He is, in fact, a poet himself. He specializes in the writing of ghazals (such as For Rose, a 30th Valentine, which is especially nice), and he publishes the works of other ghazal poets and writers on his website, The Ghazal Page. (Ghazal is pronounced guzzle.) But Doty is also interested in science, and he's written some reflections about a couple of books on science and poetry on his blog.

Doty's latest post discusses some of his recent reading in the area -- namely, Mary Midgley's Science and Poetry -- and contrasts it to Richard Dawkins' Unweaving the Rainbow. (Dawkins has been in the news more recently for his book The God Delusion.) Doty refers to Midgley's book, published in 2000, as "a rejoinder of sorts" to Dawkins' earlier work.

I say "of sorts" because it isn't clear to me that Midgley has read Dawkins carefully or really understood what he says. There's very little discussion of poetry or quotations of poetry in her book, where Dawkins discusses poetry and quotes a lot. (He's especially fond of Keats.)

There's more good stuff -- about science, poetry and mainly ghazals -- on Doty's blog (which he writes under the "nom d'web" of Gino Perigrino). It's worth a read. He's no science expert, but "has always been fascinated by science and read nontechnical books about physics and evolution especially, as well as technical books on linguistics, information theory, and semiology," so he brings a well-informed lay perspective to the subject. If you're interested in more discussion about science and poetry, Doty promises to blog about Aldous Huxley's Literature and Science, "which," he says, "looks promising."