I Have Landed by Stephen Jay Gould Page A

the dedicated professional who achieves maximal excellence in an admittedly restricted domain of notoriety or power? After all, if Macbeth had been content to remain Thane of Cawdor—a perfectly respectable job—think of the lives and grief that would thus have been spared. But, of course, we would then have to lament a lost play. So let us celebrate Nabokov’s excellence in natural history, and let us also rejoice that he could use the same mental skills and inclinations to follow another form of bliss.
An Epilogue on Science and Literature
    Most intellectuals favor a dialogue between professionals in science and the arts. But we also assume that these two subjects stand as polar opposites in the domain of learning, and that diplomatic contact for understanding between adversaries sets the basic context for such a dialogue. At best, we hope to dissipate stereotypes and to become friends (or at least neutrals), able to put aside our genuine differences for temporary bonding in the practical service of a few broader issues demanding joint action by all educated folk.
    A set of stereotypes still rules perceptions of “otherness” in these two domains—images based on little more than ignorance and parochial fear, but powerful nonetheless. Scientists are soulless dial-twirlers; artists are arrogant, illogical, self-absorbed blowhards. Dialogue remains a good idea, but the two fields, and the personalities attracted to them, remain truly and deeply different.
    I do not wish to forge a false union in an artificial love feast. The two domains differ, truly and distinctly, in their chosen subject matter and established modes of validation. The magisterium (teaching authority) of science extends over the factual status of the natural world, and to the development of theories proposed to explain why these facts, and not others, characterize our universe. The magisteria of the arts and humanities treat ethical and aestheticquestions about morality, style, and beauty. Since the facts of nature cannot, in logic or principle, yield ethical or aesthetic conclusions, the domains must remain formally distinct on these criteria.
    But many of us who labor in both domains (if only as an amateur in one) strongly feel that an overarching mental unity builds a deeper similarity than disparate subject matter can divide. Human creativity seems to work much as a coordinated and complex piece, whatever the different emphases demanded by disparate subjects—and we will miss the underlying commonality if we only stress the distinctions of external subjects and ignore the unities of internal procedure. If we do not recognize the common concerns and characteristics of all creative human activity, we will fail to grasp several important aspects of intellectual excellence—including the necessary interplay of imagination and observation (theory and empirics) as an intellectual theme, and the confluence of beauty and factuality as a psychological theme—because one field or the other traditionally downplays one side of a requisite duality.
    Moreover, we must use the method of “replication with difference” if we wish to study and understand the human quintessence behind our varying activities. I cannot imagine a better test case for extracting the universals of human creativity than the study of deep similarities in intellectual procedure between the arts and sciences.
    No one grasped the extent of this underlying unity better than Vladimir Nabokov, who worked with different excellences as a complete professional in both domains. Nabokov often insisted that his literary and entomological pursuits shared a common mental and psychological ground. In
Ada
, while invoking a common anagram for “insect,” one of Nabokov’s characters beautifully expresses the oneness of creative impulse and the pervasive beauty of chosen subject matter: “‘If I could write,’ mused Demon, ‘I would describe,