Unraveling the Rainbow Richard Dawkins. Translated from English: Emanuel Lotem, Hed Artzi Publishing House, Maariv Library, 287 pages, NIS 89
by Shimon Adaf *
The tussle between poetic thinking and scientific thinking and the division of cultural resources between them has been going on for many generations, and is carried out and conducted through different writings. Which ones are shiny, dark or tasteless. Scientist Richard Dawkins' new book, "Unraveling the Rainbow", is another challenging chapter in the struggle, but as is the way of recruited reporters whose purpose is to open the eyes of those who walk in the dark, it is not without problems.
Dawkins opens the book with a sincere attempt to deal with a common claim: the cold, merciless fingers of scientific thinking are placed on the neck of the human spirit, slowly tightening over the years and murdering the poet and the longing for the beautiful, the sublime, the heights to which the soul can soar. Dawkins borrows the name of the book from the criticism directed by the poet John Keats towards the famous experiment in which Newton broke the light into different colors in a prism. Keats claimed that Newton broke not only light but also the magic of light. More than 180 years after Keats' claim, Dawkins, rightly, seeks to save the dignity of science, the place of the immense beauty, breathtaking at times, that exists in the scientific way of seeing.
However, Dawkins' preoccupation with the question of the beauty of science in the book is accompanied by a problematic and jarring tone. The book is not satisfied with a defense of science, but becomes a band-aid for everything that is not science, or what seems to be the dark methods of thought that the light of science has not yet shone upon and redeemed. In fact, Dawkins, through his essay, wants to reorganize the relationship between scientific thinking and poetic thinking. He wants to show that at their peak, science and poetry kiss each other, and that the same passion for the sublime and mystery drives poets and scientists alike.
Two conclusions emerge from this: first, a genuine interest in the sciences can contribute to the quality of poetry, and second - and the important conclusion for Dawkins - everything that is not poetry or science - what he calls "bad poetic science", that is, mysticism, witchcraft, superstitions, and in general The drive of the masses for the irrational is actually a corruption and degeneration of that pure desire. "We have", he states, "a need for wonder, we have a hunger for poetry, and real science should feed these".
Thus, the excellent and long passages in which Dawkins manages to demonstrate with sensitivity and good taste how scientific discoveries open wonderful and new playgrounds and amusement parks before the human imagination, and fall into a project whose goal is to burn from the world all "bad poetic science", and the blandness in which one can begin to understand from the hypothesis Dawkins' dawnless that the poetry of Keats, Wordsworth, Yeats and other poets would have improved if they had been well acquainted with the scientific discoveries of their time and their value. According to him, if Wordsworth had trusted the different types of rainbows and the ways of their formation, if Lawrence had known a little more about the scout and its evolution, and if Yeats had discovered an interest in science in the middle of his life, and if he would have returned and sunk into the darkness of Ireland's fairy tales, the three would have been successful and their poetry would have been even more magnificent. .
Dawkins' methodology regarding the relationship between poetry and science is completely flawed, and especially when it comes from the pen of a renowned scientist and a person who claims to eliminate all unscientific schools of thought in a book. He makes a puzzling assumption, which arises from the reflections of his heart, admits that he has no way to test it, and at the same time piles on its back a whole set of arguments that should shake the reader and instruct him in the radiant, shining, uncompromising light of reason. And all this while there are findings in front of him that he can organize, analyze and ask for their cause; Throughout the twentieth century, science as a cultural stain and as an inexhaustible source of ideas and ways of seeing the world was placed before the poets. Poetry inspired by science was written, but it was not really great poetry. why?
In order to answer, one must find out the difference between poetic and scientific thinking. Poetry, as the clear representative of the poem, is bound only to the internal reliability of a reality it presents, a reality that is closed within the work, that is, to the experience it has to offer. Science, on the other hand, is committed to a traceable, reliable and exclusive presentation of reality in the greater world, the day-to-day reality, which is impossible in the pitfalls it burdens the senses, which has one acceptable explanation. Poetic thinking is freed from the test of conformity to reality because it renounces any truth that is not experiential, and in many ways - although there are still bitter debates about this assertion - subjective. Scientific thinking does not.
From this difference arises the different relationship of poetic and scientific thinking to the mystery and to the sense of wonder, which must not be neglected by any human being. Science shows an interest in the mystery only out of a desire to decipher it, to reduce it to the concept and the understandable. Poetry is interested in mystery as an area where words and concepts have no encroachment, where the recognition of the invisible is unmediated, the wording and formula of the poem are a bridge, not a purpose, especially in good poetry. The world amazes the scientist and the poet in different ways, which cannot be translated into each other. And it does not matter at all if it is possible (and this is also extremely doubtful) to scientifically explain the effect of a certain work on its audience.
Dawkins refuses to accept the fact that there is a moment when one looks at the thick, amber transparency of the light before sunset, and one's heart is broken by sheer expansion and no other beauty, not even that which describes the vibrating leap of photons into the dark space of the retina, can heal the fracture, and well That is, otherwise man would be less man than possible. There are two reasons for Dawkins' refusal, and the blurring between the different types of wonder. The first is that Dawkins does not want to eradicate poetry. He recognizes its value and importance, but also understands that if he, as a scientist, prepares the unmediated awe of the unexplained and closed that poetry offers, he opens the door to the claim that science is only one of many methods of knowing the world. That's why he seeks to convince, in a way that borders on well-made demagoguery and with clearly unscientific arguments, that the mystery that strikes the poet is no different than the one that befits the scientist when they meet in the world.
The second reason is no less prosaic. Dawkins, despite the impressive proficiency in poetry he displays in the book, doesn't really understand anything about poetry. He treats poems as content-bearing texts, as documents, and not as works in which the content is only one of the components, and not necessarily the main component. He takes, for example, a poem by D.H. Lawrence, which deals with the poet's attempt to compare in his mind the ancient past of the scout, and comments on it: "D.H. Lawrence's poem about the scout is almost entirely wrong...
If only Lawrence had heard a few courses in evolution and taxonomy, he could have brought his poem into the framework of scientific accuracy, and it would still be just as fascinating and thought-provoking, in terms of poetry."
Dawkins misses the fact that the poem uses the world of science as a setting for human emotion, the whole point of which is not whether scouting actually existed in past ages and how, but rather the horror at the sight of the eternity and cruel continuity of nature, which every human being faces when he imagines the scouting that existed in ancient times, before he was born The memory of the human race. Lawrence's entire poem echoes Keats's cry, a year before his death, to the nightingale: "You were not born to death, immortal bird!"
Dawkins is wrong. Scientific accuracy - and for that matter, knowing the exact life span of the nightingale or if only the male nightingale sings - would have prevented Keats from expressing it, the consciousness of inadequacy that is so necessary for a masterpiece like "Ode to the Nightingale", and would have also destroyed Lawrence's beautiful poem.
The Hebrew version of the book faithfully continues this line. The poems embedded in it were all translated by the book's translator, Emmanuel Lotem, and are literal and prosaic despite their eloquence. They miss the understanding that the power of poetry is not found in the meaning of the words alone, but in its relationship to the inner music, the rhythm, the cultural associations and the sounds of the words. Lotem does try to maintain a reasonable rhyme and weight, but like the book itself, a commendable effort is only half a job.
*Shimon Adaf is the literary editor at Keter Publishing
From the cover of the book
Summary of the book Unraveling the Rainbow - Science, Illusion and the Passion of Wonder
"Doesn't all the magic fade at the mere touch of cold philosophy?" Many claim that scientific understanding impairs our ability to appreciate the beauty of life. Maybe the scientist understands the mechanisms of nature, but what about its beauty? Newton created an artificial rainbow with the help of a prism, and thus discovered the spectrum inherent in white light; Will the poetic beauty of the rainbow fade at that moment? Richard Dawkins answers the question with a vigorous negative, whose power is beautiful to all aspects of nature, and not just to the rainbow alone. The wonders of the universe and our place in it are revealed through science in ways that, without them, we could not understand or imagine for ourselves.
Dawkins implores us to understand that our pursuit of beauty should not stand in the way of our search for truth. All the more, we should not be fooled by the false charms of pseudo-science and superstition. The science that analyzes starlight and sound waves, the footprints of animals and human DNA, discovers new and wonderful worlds whose beauty can inspire poetry. Richard Dawkins' earlier books placed him at the forefront of the new literature of science. In this book, he turns away from the role he assumed before - yes, explaining evolution, and deals with science as a whole. In his graceful, witty and sometimes touching style, he presents his personal self-believer. This is an impassioned defense of the scientific imagination, as entertaining and uplifting as it is important in these days of anti-science.
Richard Dawkins was born in Nairobi in 1941. He studied at the University of Oxford, and held positions as a scientist in California and Oxford. In 1995 he received the new Charles Simoni Chair at the University of Oxford for communicating science to the public. His books saw the light of day in Hebrew, The Selfish Garden and The Blind Watchmaker. His books, a river from Eden and the mountain, are likely to be published in Hebrew in the near future.
