An Appetite For Wonder By Richard Dawkins – Review (richard Fortey)

Is science the poetry of reality?

Dawkins is on less secure ground when he claims that "science is the poetry of reality". Poets would no doubt claim that poetry is also a portrait – sometimes of a scientific sort – of reality, since it seeks to express in precise words emotions that otherwise defy categorisation. Mathematicians often assert that certain equations or solutions are beautiful, and I believe them, even though that beauty is understandable to perhaps one person in 10,000. That is a pretty esoteric kind of poetry. I suspect this neat phrase is what Dawkins's friend Daniel Dennett recently termed a "deepity" – sounds profound but fades under closer examination. I once spent an enjoyable evening with mystics in India swapping deepities such as: "The tree has many branches, but the trunk is one … "

#poetry #reality #phrases