Can a mathematician be a good poet? An emerging discontinuity between science and art in China in 1923
Abstract
The famous Chinese poet Xu Zhimo started a controversy in 1923 by suggesting that good poets have always been bad with numbers. Older intellectuals, such as the editor of the magazine Chenbao Fukan (Morning News Supplement) saw it as a manifestation of a general Chinese trait, contempt of numbers, which blocked modernization.
The resulting polemic was in fact mostly about the role of poets in modern society: should they educate, as traditional Confucian intellectuals, and even cultivate the modernizing nation to facilitate the acceptance of sicentific spirit? Or should they express their individuality and emotions as the true content of modern age? This paper suggests analyzes the attitudes expessed by Xu Zhimo's critic Sun Fuyuan with reference to his contribution to another polemic in 1923, the debate about science and life views.
