We murder to dissect

'Patterns of Creativity' is from a lecture by the Nobel-winning scientist S. Chandrasekhar. He asks why artists and scientists seem to create in different ways, and answers through a set of remarks.

Some poets feared science. Wordsworth wrote that our 'meddling intellect' spoils the beauty of nature: 'We murder to dissect.' Cutting a thing up to study it kills what made it beautiful.

Keats wrote that 'cold philosophy' (by which he meant science) turns the rainbow into a dull fact, and would clip an angel's wings.

But Shelley loved science. Indeed, the best criticism of his poetry was written by a scientist, Desmond King-Hele.

In Shelley's poem 'The Cloud', the cloud speaks. It calls itself the daughter of Earth and Water, describes the water cycle in poetry, and says that, though it seems to vanish, it rises again, 'like a child from the womb, like a ghost from the tomb'. The poem combines science and poetry.

Some poets feared science; Shelley embraced it.