Romantic Science and Poetry: A Cultural Study

Ravindra Singh; Deepa Sehrawat

Romantic Science and Poetry: A Cultural Study

Author(s)	Mr. Ravindra Singh, Dr. Deepa Sehrawat
Country	India
Abstract	Abstract Rationalists portray science as reason’s crown and see any deference to feeling and imagination as an attack on reason. They dismiss Romanticism as mere regression and ignorance. The Romantic period (late eighteenth to mid-nineteenth century) is, arguably, a fertile overlap of science and poetry. Rather than functioning as isolated disciplines, science and poetry in the Romantic era shared a language of wonder, imagination, and veneration for nature that defied the mechanistic rationalism of the Enlightenment. This paper reviews the collaboration between poets and scientists that reshaped cultural conceptions of knowledge, the natural world, and the human mind. Romantic thinkers such as Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Keats, along with natural philosophers like Humphry Davy and Goethe, treated imagination as a valid mode of inquiry. Their writings present nature not as an inert machine but as a dynamic, living organism. Wordsworth’s Prelude frames scientific observation as a moral and spiritual journey, while Coleridge’s theory of the “esemplastic imagination” parallels the unifying ambitions of contemporary natural philosophy. Similarly, Goethe’s morphological studies combined meticulous empirical methods with aesthetic insight, anticipating integrative approaches in modern science. Romantic literature registered ambivalence toward industrial and technological change. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein dramatized anxieties about unchecked scientific ambition, reflecting broader cultural tensions between vitalist and mechanistic worldviews. Romantic women writers such as Anna Laetitia Barbauld interrogated the gendered power structures of scientific discourse, widening the cultural conversation. By foregrounding feeling, creativity, and ecological sensitivity, Romanticism forged an integrated epistemology in which scientific discovery and poetic expression reinforced one another. This synthesis influenced Victorian literature, early environmental thought, and contemporary science communication, demonstrating the enduring relevance of Romantic ideals. The paper argues that revisiting Romantic science and poetry reveals a historical model for bridging today’s perceived divide between the sciences and the humanities. It attempts to show that imagination and empirical inquiry can coexist as complementary ways of knowing.
Keywords	Romanticism, Science and Poetry, Imagination, Nature as Living Organism, Vitalism vs. Mechanism
Field	Sociology > Linguistic / Literature
Published In	Volume 6, Issue 6, November-December 2025
Published On	2025-11-06

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Romantic Science and Poetry: A Cultural Study

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