Observations placeholder
Dawkins, Professor Richard - On inspiration
Identifier
011826
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
Most of the writers he mentions are on this site, and probably all will be in due course when I have the time to load the observations, and all were spiritually inspired. Some even had the gift of prophecy. At least one had an out of body experience.
A description of the experience
Richard Dawkins - Unweaving the Rainbow
It is my thesis that the spirit of wonder which led Blake to Christian mysticism, Keats to Arcadian myth and Yeats to Fenians and fairies, is the very same spirit that moves great scientists, a spirit which, if fed back to poets in scientific guise, might inspire still greater poetry.
In support, I adduce the less elevated genre of science fiction. Jules Verne, H G Wells, Olaf Stapledon, Robert Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, Arthur C Clarke, Ray Bradbury and others have used prose poetry to evoke the romance of scientific themes, in some cases explicitly linking them to the myths of antiquity.
The best of science fiction seems to me an important literary form in its own right, snobbishly underrated by some scholars of literature. More than one reputable scientist has been introduced to what I am calling the spirit of wonder through an early fascination with science fiction.