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It compares poetic imagination with scientific method and examines how both contribute to compatible 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Archivein 2022 with funding fromKahle/Austin Foundation  \nTHE  \n# POET’S WAY OFKNOWLEDGE\n\nBY  \nC.DAY LEWIS411  \nC.B.E.,M.A.  \nSometime Professor of Poetry in theUniversity of Oxford  \nTHE HENRY SIDGWICKMEMORIAL LECTURE,I956  \nCAMBRIDGE  \nAT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS  \nI957  \n808.  \n275。  \nN1083  \n338  \nNCE upon a time poetry and science were one,andits name was Magic.Magic,for our earliestancestors,was the most effective way of under-standing nature and their fellow-men,and of gainingpower over them.It was not till some three centuriesago that science finally broke away from magic:thescientific revolution of the seventeenth century with-drew from the ‘supernatural'as a field of study;and ifscience since then has led to other varieties of super-stition,wemust blame,notthe scientists,but thelayman,who finds superstition a difficult thing to live without.The course ofpoetry has been different.If the first greatpre-scientifichypothesis was animism,and the first greatpre-scientific method was imitation,then poetry,in sofar as it still rests upon imitation and animism,mustseem a very primitive procedure.  \nNevertheless,I believe poetry to be a possible way ofgaining and imparting knowledge—a son of the samefather as science:the brothers may quarrelfrom time totime,but eachin his ownfield they are working towardscompatible ends.To define the field of poetry shouldmake it clear in what sense we may claim that poetry isconcerned with knowledge.This I shall try to do.AndI shall also suggest that there are remarkable affinitiesbetween the method of the scientist and the method ofthe poet—between the ways their minds work,particu-larly at one crucial stage of their investigations.  \n3  \nMAR 51958  \nAlthough no one has ever succeeded in definingpoetry,there have been many praiseworthy attempts tosay what poetry is for.These have always been boundedby two extremes—the idea of poetry as an end in itself,and the idea of poetry as a means.In the I89o's,forexample,reacting no doubt against the prevalent utili-tarianism of their day,poets proclaimed‘Art for Art'ssake’.Poetry should be a ritual,a mystique,detachedfrom morality,from the factual and the topical,fromany religious preaching or scientific teaching:its jobwas to be beautiful,and useless.The young Yeatscould deplore 'that brooding over scientific opinionwhich’,he believed,had ‘extinguished the centralfame in Tennyson’.And it is noticeable that thismanifestation took place at a time when science,flushedwitha century of practical success,had got rather aboveitself and was claiming the whole world of know-ledge,achieved or potential,as its own.Let me quotefrom a popular handbook of science first published inI892:  \nThere is no short cut to truth,no way to gain a knowledgeof the universe except through the gateway of scientificmethod.The hard and stony path of classifying facts andreasoning upon them is the only way to ascertain truth.It isthe reason and not the imagination which must ultimatelybe appealed to.The poet may give us in sublime language anaccount of the origin and purport of the universe,but in theend it will not satisfy our aesthetic judgment,our idea ofharmony and beauty,like the few facts which the scientistmay venture to tell us in the same field.  \nNowonder,faced withsuchadelugeofcomplacencythere was a scramble for the summit of pure poetry.Tothe passage Ihavejust quoted—and it does not representthe scientific attitude today—one might reply like this:Let us suppose that,not a 'few facts’,but everythingthere is to be known about the oceans had been dis-covered by hydrographers,marine biologists and therest;and let us suppose that psychologists and neuro-logists had arrived at a complete comprehension of theworkings of the human mind;and let us suppose thatsome artist-scientist,some Leonardo,had incorporatedall this knowledge in a lucid and commanding book:would that","cbCaitbSdGgH1zae","https://ap.wps.com/l/cbCaitbSdGgH1zae","pdf",2184462,"English","# The Poet’s Way of Knowledge\n## Poetry and knowledge\n## Poetry as an end vs a means\n## Science, method, and superstition\n## Poetry’s special kind of knowing","[{\"question\":\"What is the central claim about poetry in this lecture?\",\"answer\":\"Poetry is presented as a possible way of gaining and imparting knowledge, closely related in purpose to science despite differences in method.\"},{\"question\":\"How does the lecture contrast poetry with the scientific worldview?\",\"answer\":\"It contrasts poetry’s reliance on imitation and animism with science’s break from magic, then questions whether scientific method alone can satisfy all judgments about knowledge and beauty.\"},{\"question\":\"Why does the author argue that poetry still relates to “real things”?\",\"answer\":\"Because the felt qualities and the meaningful sequence of experiences symbolized in poetry are treated as facts about human behavior, offering an experiential form of knowing distinct from case histories.\"}]","The Poet’s Way of Knowledge - Henry Sidgwick Memorial Lecture 1956 | PDF",1790677295,62]