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The Two Cultures; the Strangeness of Knowledge; the Demand for Originality

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The Poetry of Knowledge and the 'Two Cultures'

Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in Literature, Science and Medicine ((PLSM))

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Abstract

This chapter examines the issue of ‘The Two Cultures’, i.e. the segregation between the Arts and the Sciences in the academic systems of the English-speaking world. This chapter also discusses two other factors that might appear to militate against knowledge-based poetry. One of these is the newness and strangeness of much of our current knowledge, which means that poets cannot draw on long-established emotional associations of such knowledge, and social adjustments to it. The other factor is the demand that poets should be ‘original’ in their subject-matter, a demand which would seem to preclude poets from writing about knowledge created by others.

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Correspondence to John G. Fitch .

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Fitch, J.G. (2018). The Two Cultures; the Strangeness of Knowledge; the Demand for Originality. In: The Poetry of Knowledge and the 'Two Cultures'. Palgrave Studies in Literature, Science and Medicine. Palgrave Pivot, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-89560-4_12

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