While a divide exists between the sciences and the humanities, the two share a number of characteristics across a variety of fields, according to Nobel Prize-winning chemist Roald Hoffmann.

The poet, playwright, author and scientist discussed the similarities and differences between the two Friday at UT in his lecture, "One Culture or the Commonalities and Differences Between the Arts and the Sciences." He said Charles Snow, an English physicist, was incorrect in thinking of humanists as destructive of the sciences.

He noted that scientists don't often appreciate great works of literature, and humanists don't often know pertinent details of scientific achievements. To that extent, the two worlds are shaped by their ignorance of each other, he said. Hoffmann said this divide can be seen in Cornell University's $500 million in research funds.

"Of that $500 million...$480 million is for science and engineering, $19.5 million is for social sciences and half a million is for arts and humanities," he said. "And this is a liberal arts university."

However, by using stories from the fields of chemistry, poetry and the visual arts, Hoffmann made three case studies to show some similarities between the two.

He examined his own research on the triethylene nickel molecule, poems from German Rainer Maria Rilke and American Archie Ammons and art such as Diego Velazquez's "Las Meninas." Despite their distinctions, they are similar in several ways, according to Hoffmann.

"All of these are acts of human creation," he said. "What makes them good is that they are surprising or capture something. It's in the nature of human beings to create."
Beauty resides at some tense edge where simplicity and complexity, order and chaos, compete in our minds.
-Roald Hoffmann, Nobel Prize-winning chemist
He also noted both can fail in different ways, and artists can hurt people just as much as scientists even though they are creating intangible objects. For instance, a scientist might let someone else worry about whether or not cloning is good for people, and artists might fall into trances where they think anything they do is good for humanity, he said.

Hoffmann said that in both the arts and sciences, there is a desire to communicate something beautiful.

"Beauty resides at some tense edge where simplicity and complexity, order and chaos, compete in our minds, and struggle with each other on both the cognitive and emotional plane," he said.

He ended the lecture by comparing one of William Blake's drafts of his poem "The Tyger," with a draft of Dmitri Mendeleev's periodic table of elements. They closely resembled one another, with sketches, notes and numerous edits.

"Here are two people trying to understand this world that is within them or around them," he said.