Literary Synthesis Essay

The sciences and the creative humanities have reached a novel level of conflict in the recent years with one striving toward the literal, rational, and purged of literary creativity and the other, literature, wholly embracing its history as an artistic commentary on the human experience. Does all scientific writing take this approach? Is there benefit in poetics in science? These are difficult questions to answer, and may depend substantially on context and desired audience.
Journal writing remains notoriously dry, consisting for the sole purpose of conveying recently discovered knowledge. One such journal publication, Genome expansion via lineage splitting and genome reduction in the cicada endosymbiont Hodgkinia by Matthew A. Campbell et

The writing avoids irony, paradox and metaphor. It focuses on what it is (the known) as compared to what it is like (the assumed, the conscious). This, being the primary conflict between the two field’s styles lends insight into the necessity of limiting the potential for misinterpretation. Dissimilarly to poetry, science does have a correct answer and a proper interpretation, it is the language of fact, effectively describing the universe as it can be accepted and observed. Imaginative language easily undermines the one proper reading, removing the strength of the facts and facilitating unsubstantiated

What is it like? Where are we going? Science does this through experimentation looking outward at the universe through an objective lens whereas poetry and literature does this by looking in at what ‘we’ as a collective comprehend, feel, and see. It is here that poetics shine. Through self understanding and emotion we learn to care. It would appear that there is little to no cause for anyone in the general public to care about incomprehensibly microscopic mutualist bacteria deep within the flesh of a long lived cicada. But, it is here where nonmedicinal bioscience much incorporate emotion, arouse the “cool factor”, and gain the interest of the public.
Science media is abounding; found, to an extent, in just about every periodical. National Geographic attempted to gain the interest of the public in the convoluted lineage splitting of Hodgkinia in 2015 in an article poetically named The Slow-Motion Symbiotic Train Wreck of the 13-year Cicada by Ed Yong. Immediately, the analogy in the title conveys images of a mesmerizing disaster that is slow but unstoppable, observed but not fully understood. The metaphorical work of the title alone is enough to stir interest in what otherwise could stir disappointing thoughts of the mishandling of tax