Dear Sohail,

I was a fan of poets long before I became a student of science and I totally understand and appreciate what you are saying. I have great admiration for creative artsists and am always in awe of them. In my mind, poets are nowhere inferior to the scientists. In fact, I have observed many scientists that had a very keen eye for good poetry and it helped them communicate their ideas more effectively, especially to the general public. I have no quarrel with poets and I would like to think that I have the ability to appreciate a piece of good poetry.

However, there is a problem which is not the creation of poets but those pseudo-mystics that you pointed out in your latest article on Chowk. When a poet utters an expression, he or she knows that that expression is not being communicated as science. These pseudo-mystics, who are not creative enough themselves to create such expressions, take that expression and run away with it. I am pretty sure that Tagore didn't mean to write that line as an attack on rationality but rest assured that in the hands of wrong people, it will become one. Here I would like to ask you if you think that poets have a social responsibility of measuring their expressions before sharing them? This has been a matter of hot debate in circles of evolutionary biology with reference to scientific expression (especially with accusations against Stephen Jay Gould for being careless about his expressions that are misused by creationists later) but I would like to know your opinion from an artistic perspective.

Your description of scientists being poets ("a scientist is a poet and conceives something with the Right Brain but then takes responsibility to use Left brain and proves it.") is beautiful and I wouldn't tarnish it's beauty by further commenting on it. Very well said.

Regards,

Rafi