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CP Snow famously lamented the division of Western culture into separate worlds of Science and Humanities, to which Vladimir Nabokov (novelist and lepidopterist) replied: \u201cI would have compared myself to a Colossus of Rhodes bestriding the gulf between the thermodynamics of Snow and the Lawrentonmania of Leavis, had that gulf not been a mere dimple of a ditch that a small frog could straddle.\u201d Judith Hawley\u2019s 2-volume compilation Literature and Science, 1660-1834 <\/i> (reviewed be Peter D. Smith in the TLS <\/i> ) bears this out, at least for the period that the volumes cover. Of the many specific examples given by the reviewer that there was no cultural divide (partly because \u201cliterature\u201d had not narrowed down to poetry and fiction, nor had science narrowed down to the \u201chard sciences\u201d), this is the most delightful: In 1791, Erasmus Darwin produced The Botanic Garden <\/i> , a poetic introduction to botany: \u201cIn this 4000-line poem, Darwin explores geology, meteorology, as well as the Linnaean \u2018sexual system\u2019 of classifying plants.\u201d Nor was Darwin the first explore the latter connection: \u201cThomas Stretser\u2019s two erotic texts of 1732, Frutex Vulvaria <\/i> and Arbor V <\/i> itae, wittily exploit botanical metaphors to describe human genitalia.\u201d <\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
CP Snow famously lamented the division of Western culture into separate worlds of Science and Humanities, to which Vladimir Nabokov (novelist and lepidopterist) replied: \u201cI would have compared myself to a Colossus of Rhodes bestriding the gulf between the thermodynamics of Snow and the Lawrentonmania of Leavis, had that gulf not been a mere dimple […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3021,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-834","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-literature"],"yoast_head":"\n