Definition
A poetic movement integrating scientific philosophy, theory, and method into creation.
Scientism Poetry is an emerging poetic movement that integrates scientific philosophy, theory, and method into poetic creation, with scientific structure as a source of poetic form, to express the realities of the world and the mind.
The name uses “-ism” in the literary sense of a movement or orientation. Within this poetics, scientific inquiry participates alongside imagination, cultural memory, and feeling. These give knowledge its significance in a particular poem.
Scientific presence concerns what understanding contributes to perception, thought, and feeling. One useful reading question is what changes if the scientific element is removed: does an image lose precision, a question lose difficulty, or a formal choice lose its reason? This helps explain the poem’s choices without exhausting its value.
Web reading edition adapted from Part I, section 2.1, of the revised English manuscript of Schrödinger’s Cat.