“Do not all charms fly/ At the mere touch of cold philosophy?” wrote Keats. What the poet thought of as “philosophy” we would call “science”, but the message was clear: the advance of scientific knowledge is unravelling all those suggestive mysteries of God and Nature. Keats was not alone in this view. William Blake expressed his contempt for Isaac Newton’s coldness, let alone those “dark, Satanic Mills” of industry. Wordsworth lamented: “Our meddling intellect/Mis-shapes the beauteous forms of things:- /We murder to dissect.” He would later claim that poetry was a “science of feelings.”
I thought of the Romantics’ argument with science when viewing Olafur Eliasson: Presence at Brisbane’s Gallery of Modern Art. Eliasson’s work relies heavily on science and technology to achieve its effects, to the extent that his Berlin studio is more like a laboratory (he calls it “the Lab”) in which ideas are tested and workshopped with a large team of assistants. Yet Eliasson is also a latter-day Romantic, with a deep respect for nature that verges on the mystical.
Science may have outlived its use for God, but there is always a point at which our ability to explain the world reaches its limits. It’s here we find Eliasson’s explorations of natural phenomena such as rainbows, waterfalls, and the many aspects of light. Born in Denmark to Icelandic parents, the artist has spent his life travelling back and forth to Iceland, a process he claims has allowed him to see things in its unique landscape that permanent residents simply take for granted.