By URARIAN MOTA*
Forgotten scientist-writers (Freud, Galileo, Primo Levi) and writer-scientists (Proust, Tolstoy), in a manifesto against the artificial separation between reason and sensibility
1.
In an internet post with the same title as above, Isaac Asimov, Carl Sagan and Miguel Nicolelis are listed. Without a doubt, scientists worthy of the name of writer. But there are many omissions, oversights or gaps in the post.
From memory, I mention some who are absent.
The first observation is that certain scientists in the exercise of their function and profession are not recognized as true writers. Of course, I will not refer to the great Albert Einstein in Theory of relativity, that I'm not crazy. But I want and must say that I refer to Freud in the beautiful The interpretation of dreams, for me, a must-read book by the scientist, which has illuminations about our life in magnificent prose. I also remember Galileo, who when talking about stars and celestial bodies discovered writes a beautiful and mature text. What can we say, for example, about The Star Messenger, in which he announces the discoveries made using his telescope?
But there is no greater gap than forgetting the eternal Primo Levi, a chemist by profession and knowledge, who bequeathed us Is this a man?. This is an essential book of memory and denunciation of the crimes of the Nazis in concentration camps. Later, in a field more suited to his specialty, let's say, Primo Levi published the book of short stories The Periodic Table. This work was chosen as the best science book by Royal Institution. I don’t want to give any spoilers, but I can tell you that the writer associates the characters’ actions and psychologies with each element of the periodic table. Genius. Just imagine someone calling us oxygen…
2.
Among us, we cannot forget Mário Schenmberg, a world-renowned physicist, art critic and communist, all rolled into one. And what about Paulo Freire, a thinker and social scientist who wrote so well about the education of the exploited and about Recife in a beautiful poem? And what about Josué de Castro, who is universally recognized as a scientist and writer? And I don't even want to mention Joaquim Cardozo, a genius mathematician and poet, equal or greater than the mathematician. You might even say that mathematicians are not scientists. But we don't need to make things so difficult; we are talking to civilized people, not to Bolsonaro supporters.
But the problem is deeper. It's more complicated. We should talk about writers who wrote science. I mean, writers who are in the field of writing, writing, narrating people, characters, their stories, who were cutting-edge scientists. If in doubt, look at what Honoré de Balzac did when he wrote The Human Comedy and the economic history of France. Friedrich Engels has already spoken definitively about this. Think, and this is my trump card, think of Marcel Proust, with his discovery of time, of taste and the recovery of something old in a food, which recreates and revives an era and our oppressed heart. Before him, such a feeling existed, without a doubt, but it had never been narrated in such a brilliant way.
I think of Greek tragedy and its insights into the love between mother and son, about virile homosexuality (which comes from Odyssey), about incest between siblings. I think of Tolstoy and Father Sergio, when narrating the repression of sexual desire of a virtuous man struggling with his own erection. And what about his novels that lie somewhere between denunciation and the discovery of hidden crimes in society (Resurrection, for example) and the illumination of this miserable self of which we are all made? Profound writers and scientists, I add.
*Urarian Mota is a writer and journalist. Author, among other books, of Soledad in Recife (boitempo). [https://amzn.to/4791Lkl]
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