Patterns of Creativity – Class 11 English Chapter 23 Notes & NCERT PDF

About the Author

S. Chandrasekhar (1910–1995) was a distinguished astrophysicist and Nobel Laureate, Professor Emeritus in the Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics at the University of Chicago. The extract comes from Truth and Beauty, a collection of seven lectures on aesthetics and motivation in science. It is part of the Nora and Edward Ryerson Lecture titled 'Shakespeare, Newton and Beethoven, or Patterns of Creativity' (the book prints the name as "Byerson").

Summary

The extract is from a lecture, so it opens mid-argument: "But I must return to the question: why is there a difference in the patterns of creativity among the practitioners in the arts and the practitioners in the sciences?" Chandrasekhar says he will not answer directly but will offer "an assortment of remarks" that bear on the answer.

1. How poets see science — Wordsworth and Keats

He first quotes the famous hostile lines of the Romantic poets:

"Our meddling intellect / Misshapes the beauteous forms of things: / We murder to dissect." (Wordsworth)

"Do not all charms fly / At the mere touch of cold philosophy? … Philosophy will clip an Angel's wings." (Keats)

To these poets, science (called "philosophy" then) destroys beauty by analysing it — Keats complains that the rainbow, once "awful" (awe-inspiring), is now in "the dull catalogue of common things". Lowes Dickinson echoes them: "When Science arrives, it expels Literature." The scientist Peter Medawar replies by turning it round: "when literature arrives, it expels science", adding that science and literature often compete rather than cooperate.

2. Shelley — "a scientist's poet"

Chandrasekhar refuses to point "accusing fingers" and says Wordsworth and Keats are not typical. A scientist should consider Shelley. The best criticism of Shelley's thought is by a scientist, Desmond King-Hele, who says Shelley describes nature's mechanisms "with a precision and a wealth of detail unparalleled in English poetry". A.N. Whitehead adds that Shelley's attitude to science was at "the opposite pole" to Wordsworth's — he loved it.

Two examples:

"I am the daughter of Earth and Water, / And the nursling of the Sky; … I change, but I cannot die."

The poem describes the water cycle accurately — evaporation, rain, the cloud "unbuilding" its own "cenotaph" (the empty blue sky) — while telling it as the cloud's own adventure.

3. Scientists' own attitudes — Darwin and Faraday

4. Shelley's A Defence of Poetry

To Darwin's confession and Faraday's reply Chandrasekhar applies Shelley's judgement that the sciences have enlarged man's "empire… over the external world" but, lacking the poetical faculty, shrunk the internal world: "man, having enslaved the elements, remains himself a slave." Shelley still respects technology — its promoters "follow the footsteps of poets". Yeats called A Defence of Poetry "the profoundest essay on the foundation of poetry in the English language". Its famous claims:

"Poetry is the record of the best and happiest moments of the happiest and the best minds."

"Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world."

5. The ending

"Why there is no similar A Defence of Science written by a scientist of equal endowment?" — and by raising this question, Chandrasekhar says, he has "in part" suggested an answer to his original question. The implication: scientists rarely articulate the imaginative, creative basis of their own work, while poets have done so powerfully.

Beyond the text: Chandrasekhar's interview

The chapter adds extracts from a 1994 Deccan Herald interview: he left for America in 1936 for better facilities and peace from "science politics"; he had "no mentor"; his mother told him of Ramanujan's death when he was about ten; teaching and research "support each other"; and he wonders whether a true scientist can have "a complete personal life".

Themes

Literary Devices & Style

Word Power

Exam Focus

Q. How does Shelley's attitude to science differ from that of Wordsworth and Keats?

Outline: Wordsworth ("We murder to dissect") and Keats ("Philosophy will clip an Angel's wings") see science as destroying beauty; Shelley loved science, described nature with precision (King-Hele), and Whitehead says his attitude was at the opposite pole.

Q. What do you infer from Darwin's comment?

Outline: intense specialised work "grinding general laws" made his aesthetic faculties atrophy; creativity in science can narrow the mind unless balanced by art — Shelley's point about the "internal world" shrinking.

Q. What is the central argument of the speaker?

Outline: poets and scientists differ in patterns of creativity; poetry and science need not be hostile (Shelley); scientists have not defended the imaginative side of their work as poets have — hence no "Defence of Science".

Common Mistakes