Erica Wagner disagrees with the idea that ‘the study of science or engineering must, necessarily, exclude the study of the arts’ & points to the fact that last year’s Wellcome Trust Prize (for which she was a judge) went to a novel, alternating this year with ‘a non-fiction book about William Harvey & the circulation of the blood.’ This, disappointingly, risks leaving readers of her contribution to this debate with the impression that Thomas Wright wrote a ‘mere’ science book, not one which beautifully places Harvey’s scientific discovery in the (undivided) culture of the C17th, through its references to the images of poetry as well as economics, water engineering & traffic congestion - which actually makes her point a more forceful one.
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