ABSTRACT
IS ART A LUXURY? Is there any connection between poetry and science? Academic specialization usually divides these topics today so sharply that it is hard to relate them on a single map. But there is one very simple map which does claim to relate them, a map which is worth looking at because it has quite an influence on our thinking. It is the map which the distinguished chemist Peter Atkins draws in the course of arguing that science is omnicompetent, that is, able to supply all our intellectual needs. He notes that some people may think we need other forms of thought such as poetry and philosophy as well as science because science cannot deal with the spirit. They are mistaken, he says. These forms add nothing serious to science:
Though this view is not usually declared with quite such outspokenness and tribal belligerence it is actually not a rare one. A lot of people today accept it, or at least can’t see good reason why they should not accept it, even if they don’t like it. They have a suspicion, welcome or otherwise, that the arts are mere luxuries and science is the only intellectual necessity. It seems to them that science supplies all the facts out of which we build (so to speak) the house of our beliefs. Only after this house is built can we – if we like – sit down inside it, turn on the CD player and listen to some Mozart or read some poetry.
