The Poetry of Knowledge and the 'Two Cultures'

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xix

   PDF

2. Unity in Knowledge: Eros and the Cosmological Urge

   • John G. Fitch

   Pages 1-12

3. Unity in Poetry

   • John G. Fitch

   Pages 13-20

4. The Death of Objectivism: Constructivism and Implication

   • John G. Fitch

   Pages 21-29

5. Viewpoints in Poetry: Hesiod, Sackville-West, Vergil

   • John G. Fitch

   Pages 31-42

6. The Fascination of Knowledge: Natural Creativity, Time’s Arrow, and Reciprocity

   • John G. Fitch

   Pages 43-54

7. Knowledge as Story; Bodily Knowledge: Emotional and Aesthetic Components; Knowledge and Information

   • John G. Fitch

   Pages 55-69

8. Acquisition of Language and Knowledge: Logical Positivism and Structural Linguistics

   • John G. Fitch

   Pages 71-81

9. Metaphor in Cognition, Poetry and Science

   • John G. Fitch

   Pages 83-91

10. Pleasure as the Heart of Poetry and Knowledge: Lucretius

    • John G. Fitch

    Pages 93-100

11. Thinking in Poetry: Heidegger on Memorialising and Dis-closure; Vergil and Comprehensiveness

    • John G. Fitch

    Pages 101-116

12. Dualism and Duel-ism: Kant and the Separation of Poetry from ‘Pure’ Reason

    • John G. Fitch

    Pages 117-129

13. The Two Cultures; the Strangeness of Knowledge; the Demand for Originality

    • John G. Fitch

    Pages 131-144

14. Back Matter

    Pages 145-155

    PDF

This book argues that poetry is compatible with systematic knowledge including science, and indeed inherent in it; it also discusses particular poems that engage with such knowledge, including those of Lucretius, Vergil, and Vita Sackville-West. The book argues that there are substantial similarities between knowledge-making and poetry-making, for example in their being shaped by language, including metaphor, and in their seeking unity in the world, under the impulse of eros and pleasure. The book also discusses some of the obstacles to a ‘poetry of knowledge’, including scientific objectivism, the Kantian tradition in philosophy, and the separation of the ‘two cultures’ in our academic and intellectual institutions. The book is designed to be accessible to all those interested in the issue of the ‘two cultures’, or in the role of poetry and of science in contemporary culture.

• Science
• Systematic knowledge
• Objectivism
• Epistemology
• Heidegger

• Victoria University , Victoria, Canada

  John G. Fitch

John G. Fitch is Professor Emeritus, University of Victoria, Canada. His publications focus on the Roman writer Seneca, and include a two-volume text and translation of Seneca’s dramas in the Loeb Classical Library (revised edition 2018). He farmed sheep and fruit trees on Vancouver Island, and published a book of poems on wildflowers of the British Columbia coast (2013).  

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