It is perhaps my greatest ambition, if it qualifies as one, to be able at some point to reconcile the worlds of art and science (in that order). It goes without saying that such an ambition is -in my case- to be undertaken at a passive level, that of the receiver and not the one of the transmitter.
On today's El Pais, in a very interesting article , Antonio Muñoz Molina came to encourage this ambition of mine, by comparing Darwin's "Origin of the species" to the works of Dickens and Balzac. It's been a long time since I read the "Origin", mostly out of curiocity than out of literary or scientific interest. Back then I was a young student of chemistry with no particular interest in literature or biology. Therefore, I am not ashamed to admit that I never noticed the special style that Molina is talking about.
Almost a decade has passed since then, I now hold a PhD from a biology department, I have grown more interested in literature and forms of art other than football, I have read a number of books, among them "The voyage of the Beagle", Darwin's log of the most famous journey in the history of science. I still cannot admit being able to perceive what Molina sees in Darwin that reminds him of Flaubert or Verne, or Tolstoy. Nonetheless I agree that the pleasure we get out of a great idea is very similar to the spell cast upon us by a great book.
And in this sense, the austere simplicity of Darwin's greatest idea, its development and final conclusion and the influence it still has today, can only be compared with the finest of prose.
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