Poesia e musica della scienza

Author: Tom McLeish. Traduction by Chiara Veltri

Which skills are required to be a scientist, and which to be an artist? Many people would certainly say "imagination" and "creativity" in the second case, but rarely in the first. However, Tom McLeish challenges the assumption that devoting oneself to science is somehow less creative than pursuing art, music, writing and poetry. The stories of famous personalities in both spheres reveal many points in common: from Robert Boyle to Daniel Defoe, Alexander von Humboldt, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Claude Monet, Albert Einstein, Robert Schumann and Jacques Hadamard, all shared the desire to achieve their goals, managed problems, had sudden intuitions and experienced the beautiful and the sublime, as well dealing with frustration and failure. McLeish wisely selects themes shared by both spheres: visual thought and metaphor, the transcendence of music and mathematics, the contemporary rise of the English novel and experimental science, and the role of aesthetics and desire in the creative process.