Science in Literature

Abstract

Huxley named the relations between literature, science and philosophy as ‘the most important and the most interesting of the subjects which may, theoretically, be made into poetry, but which have, as a matter of fact, rarely or never undergone the transmutation’ (Margin 27. 1923). He thought it the literary artist’s cultural responsibility to maintain a dialogue between literature and science and disseminate scientific ideas to a lay audience or at the very least draw their attention to the importance of such ideas. He believed literature could humanize science, could make it felt both as an intellectual achievement and something which profoundly shapes material culture.¹ It was also a moral imperative: ‘one of the prime duties’ of the twentieth-century artist, he affirmed, is to draw attention to the evil ends for which a morally neutral science is being used (Literature 78–9).