''Literature and Science, '' published in September 1963, was Aldous Huxley's last book - he died two months after it was published. In it, he strives to harmonize the scientific and artistic realms. He argues that language is what divides the two realms and makes communication between them difficult. He analyzes the ways in which scientists and fiction writers use language differently to achieve their desired effects.
Although he concedes that many differences in language use are inevitable, he urges both camps to seek mutual understanding and appreciation. He directs his argument primarily to fiction writers: "Whether we like it or not, " he tells them, "ours is the Age of Science."
In this book, Huxley bemoans the disregard for science shown by many if not most literary contemporaries. He dismisses as "literary cowardice" the artists' professed bewilderment in an era when "Science has become an affair of specialists.
Incapable any longer of understanding what it is all about, the man of letters, we are told, has no choice but to ignore contemporary science altogether." Huxley takes T. S. Eliot to task for his retreat into "the traditional raw material of English poetical feeling and poetical expression" in Eliot's depictions of nature in The Waste Land. For Eliot and others, Huxley writes, "From their writings you would be hard put to it to infer the simple historical fact that they are the contemporaries of Einstein and Heisenberg, of computers, electron microscopes and the discovery of the molecular basis of heredity...."
''Literature and Science, '' published in September 1963, was Aldous Huxley's last book - he died two months after it was published. In it, he strives to harmonize the scientific and artistic realms. He argues that language is what divides the two realms and makes communication between them difficult. He analyzes the ways in which scientists and fiction writers use language differently to achieve their desired effects.
Although he concedes that many differences in language use are inevitable, he urges both camps to seek mutual understanding and appreciation. He directs his argument primarily to fiction writers: "Whether we like it or not, " he tells them, "ours is the Age of Science."
In this book, Huxley bemoans the disregard for science shown by many if not most literary contemporaries. He dismisses as "literary cowardice" the artists' professed bewilderment in an era when "Science has become an affair of specialists.
Incapable any longer of understanding what it is all about, the man of letters, we are told, has no choice but to ignore contemporary science altogether." Huxley takes T. S. Eliot to task for his retreat into "the traditional raw material of English poetical feeling and poetical expression" in Eliot's depictions of nature in The Waste Land. For Eliot and others, Huxley writes, "From their writings you would be hard put to it to infer the simple historical fact that they are the contemporaries of Einstein and Heisenberg, of computers, electron microscopes and the discovery of the molecular basis of heredity...."
