Where were your songs, my bird, when you spent your nights in the nest?
There was a beautiful poem belonging to Mediaeval India, recited by Tagore, which not only describes function of poetry but also allows us to draw out an analogy with what a scientific mind creates. The poem contains question and answer:
Where were your songs, my bird, when you spent
your nights in the nest?
Was not all your pleasure stored therein?
What makes you lose your heart to the sky, the
sky that is limitless?
The bird answers:
I have my pleasure while I rested within bounds.
When I soared into the limitless, I found my songs!
Using this poem, Tagore describes the function of poetry as a detachment of an individual idea from its confinement of everyday facts and to give its soaring wings the freedom of the universal. Isn’t this the purpose of creative interdisciplinary research as well? – detaching from the confines of disciplinary boundaries and allowing our imagination to soar into the limitless reality?
