The Pharmaceutical Journal Vol 267 No 7179 p894
22-29 December 2001

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Wishing and wisdom [more]
Fiction and science [more]
Rhyme and rhythm [more]

Wishing and wisdom

If you study children's stories, from the classical fairy tales to more sophisticated modern works, you will come to the sad conclusion that being in a position to have one's wishes granted is far from being enviable. If the number of wishes has a limit, things are even worse, since there is limited scope for undoing the unanticipated results of a foolish and ill-considered wish.

You may remember the celebrated story by William Wymark Jacobs, usually a broadly humorous writer, entitled 'The monkey's paw' (1902). In it a bewitched monkey's paw carries three wishes. As in most wish stories, the owner first wishes for riches. When the son of the family is reported to have had a fatal accident, his mother wishes for his return home. When his feet are on the threshold, it is suddenly remembered that he has been gruesomely disfigured, and he is hastily wished back to the scene of his accident. The three wishes have thus been granted, the first in the shape of an unexpected compensation for the factory accident. One wish has inevitably counteracted another.

There are lessons for us in these wish-granting stories, of which we can find plenty more in the Arabian Nights' Entertainments and in the works of the Grimm brothers and Edith Nesbit. The custom still survives of dropping coins or even bent pins into wells, which may either be genuinely ancient structures or contrivances designed to empty the pockets of tourists. The custom of making a secret wish when stirring the Christmas pudding still seems to be widespread, although it is difficult to be sure how many people retain a sneaking belief that such wishes will come to pass. I wonder how effective it might be to make a wish every time you swallow a medicine. The question is, what wish?

If you stop for a moment and consider how often you express a wish regarding your best friend or your worst enemy, without giving it a brief consideration, you will be kept awake at night thinking of the possible outcome if it came true.

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Fiction and science

A fascinating but neglected aspect of science fiction is discussed by Gregory Benford, a physicist at the University of California, in Nature for November 22. His experience is that few working scientists read fiction, yet some disparage science fiction for lacking the constraints that govern serious scientific endeavour, while only a handful have allowed it to bring them inspiration to undertake research. True it is that if fiction becomes too influential it may degrade science into an activity calculated to induce sensationalism in those writers who pander to public taste.

Nevertheless, writes Benford, science could legitimately convey much of its mystery and excitement for the lay mind if scientists took more heed of the viewpoint of writers. It was Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley in her 'Frankenstein' of 1818 who first widened the perception of the scientific prospects and hazards in our culture. Jules Verne in his tales in the 1860s and 1870s inspired several serious scientists, including Marconi and Casteret. And H. G. Wells in 1912 was responsible through his fiction for stimulating research into nuclear fission. The term "robot", which we use extensively today, was invented in 1921 by the playwright Karel Capek.

In the mainstream of literature, ideas regarding scientific inventions and their potential consequences for society are virtually unknown, writes Benford, but writers of science fiction indulge in thoughtful speculations long before the ideas are assimilated into culture. In its more serious aspects science looks to abstract values but tends to turn a blind eye to their potential impact upon society at large. And the tension experienced by scientists who are torn between the conflicting demands of their laboratory and their domestic involvements is only rarely discussed. If we encourage it to do so, fiction allows us to take a clearer view of science and its values.

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Rhyme and rhythm

Whenever politicians argue over the merits and demerits of education they turn a blind eye to the values to be derived from poetry. Their only interest appears to be in the commercial gains associated with the ability to calculate and bargain.

I note a dismal falling off of modern young students' awareness of poetry, which they regard as a waste of time. I remember that among my contemporaries at college several decades ago it was commonplace to carry a vast store of sonnets, ballads and narrative poems in one's head. Children in primary schools could recite verse by the mile, and were mentally better balanced as a consequence. Older students could recall not only verse in their mother tongue, but also in French and German — Hugo, Lamartine, Heine and others.

Half the fun of reading modern light literature resides, I think, in the ability to identify the brief snippets of quotation turned out extempore by such characters as Jeeves and Rumpole. Such ability is fast disappearing in the wake of current educational notions.

For philosophers, poetry can represent or describe, but may also celebrate, praise, mourn, or offer alternative views of the world of the intellect. It expresses and may transform the common emotions and add to their precision. It involves sound and rhythm as well as significance, and so partakes of the nature of music, and can convey abstract concepts. It is not surprising that Shelley in 1821 should have remarked: "Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world."

Apart from this, memorised poetry has its therapeutic value. I find that my youthful education in such masterpieces as Shakespeare's sonnets and the ballads of Hugo and Heine helps me to deal with transitory depression. Who can be downhearted or mentally disabled after recalling this fragment of Victor Hugo?

Que la soirée est fraîche et douce!
Oh! viens! il a plu ce matin;
Les humides tapis de mousse
Verdissent tes pieds de satin.

And I sometimes take comfort from the Shakespeare sonnet that begins "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day". Yet these would not be available on the spur of the moment had I not had to commit them to memory at school.

I am not happy over the idea of chanting poetry in chorus, as used to be the old schoolmarm's method, but an effort to memorise should be encouraged. As Arthur Quiller-Couch put it in his Cambridge lecture "The commerce of thought" (1918), "I have often observed in life, and especially in matters of education — you, too, doubtless have observed — that what folks get cheaply or for nothing they are disposed to undervalue."

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