Being both a scientist and a (sort-of) writer, this essay really struck a chord with me. Re-reading it now I did have a few comments to add with respect to my experience growing up enamoured with both science and creative literature.

One genre which has seemed to start to take off recently and seems to marry creative and scientific trains of thought is that of speculative fiction. While the vast majority of the fiction produced in the genre is concerned with technological advancements and their effect on society—rather than the poetic explanation of the natural world that King might prefer seeing in print—it’s still science, and it’s holding hands with creative fiction. That said, I do think there is room for writers to engage more thoroughly with science, but I’m not holding my breath.

The reason why I am not is down to my experience during high school. When I went through high school, the divide between the two sides of creativity-whether art, literature, or photography—and science was very much in place. You were either going to focus your attentions on list one subjects (i.e. physics, chemistry, maths) or list two subjects (i.e. english, social studies, art, photography). Any ability to do both was shot down at the end of year ten when you chose the path you wanted to go down to get to university. For me, that was the list one side of things. This meant I dropped photography, which I loved, and took up physics, chemistry, two mathematics units, economics, and finally the token TEE English unit (which I really only need to obtain a pass mark in). This choice was made when I was aged 15.

I’m not decrying this method. I did well in my entrance exams and I was more fully prepared for my chosen university degree than others in the same course. And I do love science. But my experience does go some way to highlighting the degree to which the split is present in the minds of kids that went through that particular system. Now, I have no idea what the method of education of high school kids is currently—apart from the temporary switch to outcomes-based learning which systematically destroyed a few years' worth of kids' educations—but I’d bet that there is still that mode of thought in place that you cannot go through being a jack of all trades. At some point, young adults are made to choose between a creative life and a scientific one. Specialisation is the aim from day one.

Of course, that doesn’t stop them from peeking over the fence later on in life. Many scientists I know have creative hobbies: knitting, photography, and, of course, writing. But if writing is something they adopt at this later stage, the learning of it is akin to that of a new language—exponentially more difficult the later in life you start. Which is why there is such a rarity of scientists that can spin a good metaphor and engage their audience or readership in the same way a good writer might.

King says: “I can’t think of a better summary of the kind of writing I’m trying to describe. It is a kind of writing in which, I think, analogy must edge out metaphor, as the poet or writer tries to puncture the anaesthetic of familiarity without trying to turn the thing described into a signpost or counter for something else.”

This is absolutely the case for writing about science in a beautiful way. A lot of the time, an explanation is needed to give the reader some foundation of knowledge from which to build understanding. Analogy can provide that foundation and some of the best science writers around, such as Brian Greene or the late Richard Feynman, can turn an analogy like nothing else. But once that foundation has been built, to truly engage the audience, the writer needs to be able to instil that understanding with a sense of wonder. And at this point metaphor and simile and the poetry of languages need to be invoked. Otherwise that fundamental understanding will remain just that: an understanding; a static, uninspiring thing; a golem without the spark of life.

You might argue the case for the crop of ‘scientific communication’ degrees that are gaining in popularity. While I do think that a modicum of creativity is involved in communicating scientific principles to the layman, it’s more along the lines of marketing than anything else (which is not to say that marketing can’t be brilliant and creative, as evidenced by the many fantastic advertisement campaigns that could be considered artworks if they weren’t disfigured by the branding of corporate sponsorship). True embraces between scientific thinking and creative thinking are like those that King has shown in his essay—poetic, delicate, graceful, elegant solutions that approach the problem of taking an idea from one person’s head and transplanting it intact—or nearly so—in another’s from an equal and opposite direction from that of creative writing. Building wonder from fact is just as much an art as building wonder from fiction.

Anyway, I’ll finish my rambling there, but thank you very much for posting this up and getting me thinking about the topic again. Makes for a welcome distraction from my calculations. (:

Thanks so much for commenting here Phill and opening with ‘Being both a scientist …’ – because I had no idea when I saw the title of Richard King’s essay in my print Meanjin that it was about science – so you sent me back to it. Think I overlooked his essay initially because – interestingly in the context of his discussion – I’d taken the ‘stardust’ of the title metaphorically, and had assumed the essay was about showgirls or something (flesh and stardust). If only I’d known to read the title literally I’d have read the essay immediately. Which is a very long way of saying that thanks to your fascinating comment here I have now devoured King’s essay. I’m more of a writer obsessed with maths and science (mostly physics) and I always long for more science in my literature. (I love Donne and Goethe was first and foremost a scientist. As for Keats and his metaphoric nightingale, turning away from science was almost the raison d'etre of Romantic poetry.) I remember being very excited by the prospect of Luke Davies' book of poetry ‘Absolute Event Horizon’ with its allusion to 20c physics – but then slightly disappointed because in the poetry analogy did not edge out metaphor. It was all metaphor and I wanted the science to be ‘doing’ more. And then ‘Copenhagen’, the brilliant play King mentions about Heisenberg and Bohr, was frustrating because it was all explication and for me not enough metaphor. Anyway, thanks for your thoughts Phill and Meanjin for King’s essay. By the way, there’s a newish degree at USyd combining science and literature/arts and I know several people taking drama and English as well as biology and chemistry … promising.