ABSTRACT
A shift in scientific paradigms in the first quarter of the twentieth century was what happened, not a collapse of the fundamental division of science and poetry. Science in all its forms, from academic study to technology, to the daily administration of life-"rationality" as Max Weber spoke of it-characterized modernity. Therefore, it was not antiquated of Richards to think in terms of the split between the scientific and aesthetic world views, though some of his arguments and optimism had a nineteenth-century flavor. Arnold was his model. At a time when the natural and social sciences were just beginning to have an impact on society, Arnold wrote of science as "a divider and a separatist, breaking arbitrary and fanciful connections, and dissipating dreams of a premature and impossible unity." 1 Since the sciences were becoming more and more specialized, and unity seemed further and further away, there was an even greater need for literature, for the arts, and for criticism to mediate between science and contemporary life: "How, finally, are poetry and eloquence to exercise the power of relating the modern results of natural science to man's instinct for conduct [and] beauty?" Arnold answered: "I do not know how they will exercise it, but that they can and will exercise it I am sure."2 Richards took up this challenge and committed himself to the process of mediation in his neurophysiological model, his foraging expeditions in diverse fields of psychology, his resort to communications theory, his reading experiments and designs, his teaching machines, and critique of technology. More than any other twentieth-century critic in the English-speaking world, he is associated with an attempt to bridge the chasm between science and art, and, moreover, to do so by establishing a "science" of criticism.
