Before answering whether both poetry and science enjoy equal success in expanding human knowledge, one must first understand what poetry and science are and what they do.

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Before answering whether both poetry and science enjoy equal success in expanding human knowledge, one must first understand what poetry and science are and what they do.  Poetry is an artist’s way of abstractly conveying his or her ideas through writing so as to stimulate the emotional side of the readers.  Science on the other hand, is an objective way of clearly stating facts so as to stimulate the “formal” or fact craving side of the readers.  Poetry presents an object in order to convey a particular message or feeling, whilst science merely presents an object objectively and describes how it is, clearly, in every way possible.  Therefore, it is clear that the purpose of these two approaches is quite different.  Furthermore, the ways of knowing in poetry and science are somewhat different. Poetry’s ways of knowing are mainly emotion and language, while sciences are mainly language and reason.  However, although they have language in common, both of them utilize language in different ways and for different purposes.    

        As is obvious from above, both approaches aim to expand two completely different parts of human knowledge.  Poetry aims to expand the aesthetic while science the scientific.  Therefore, they cannot be assessed on their ability to expand human knowledge based on the same criteria but rather, they should both be assessed based on individual criteria in their own specific areas of knowledge and then compared after being assessed.  Assessing them based on the same criteria would much be like comparing a desert with a main course, which would be wrong since they both have different purposes and, although the dessert may not be good at achieving the purpose of the main dish, it could well be excellent at achieving the purposes of a dessert.  

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        Since poetry tries to “touch” the reader’s emotional side aesthetically it must be scrutinized as an art.  The purpose of art is to aesthetically touch an emotion which all people supposedly have.  Through techniques specific to each art, good artists are able to do this, and this in itself is an expansion of human knowledge in that it causes people to be aware of their emotions.  Humans “have to turn to poetry to interpret life for us, to console us, to sustain us.” (Matthew Arnold, 'The Study of Poetry')  The purpose of Shakespeare’s Macbeth is not to scientifically understand how ambition ...

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