ABSTRACT
If there really are two cultures, then we might expect that science and poetry would be polar opposites. Music has intimate links with mathematics and with physics, the great name of Hermann Helmholtz being prominent amongst its theorists; while Alexander Borodin was both chemist and composer. Any good poetry has to express the human condition, and poets must be concerned with the words that make worlds: occasionally, these aims may come together as they did for Erasmus Darwin in promoting science; but not very often. Coleridge spoke of increasing his stock of metaphors; and yet the ideal of a clear and distinct language, like Lavoisier's, is to stamp out metaphors. Making intuitive leaps, taking metaphor seriously, spotting analogies, seeing significance in experience that to others seems ordinary; these are an essential part of the scientific process.
