Poetry and Science

From the "Quodlibet" section of the most recent issue of Touchstone:

When the spring breeze comes through the window of my library and billows the curtains, or I see the breath of God make the trees outside dance, I wonder about wind. I think briefly about oxygen, carbon dioxide, water vapor, nitrogen, whatever. But when I reach for an explanation, I don't reach for science. I wish I were a poet. I feel poetic.

Poetry as a mode of explanation. That's an ancient and medieval instinct. Lucretius chose poetry as the vehicle for exploring the nature of things because it sweetened the hard doctrines of his Epicurean atomism. But he also thought poetry was a suitable, even revelatory, medium of explanation. Apparently, so did David, and Isaiah, and the author of Job, and Jesus, and John on Patmos.

Grateful for all the gains of science, I cannot help but wonder what we have lost in the several centuries since science secured its monopoly of explanation.

--Peter Leithart