Abstract
The author shows, in a fascinating and beautiful article, the bond which can exist between chemistry and literature. Neither is chemistry completely ruled by reason and intellect, as it is believed, nor is poetry by feelings and emotion. Where did these fields, apparently so different from each other, reunite, or when did they become separated? Separation came with the appearance and development of positivism, until it became scientism in the end of the 19th Century, with science as the engine of universal progress; this led to neglecting religion, metaphysics and the arts. In the development of the theories of natural philosophers, alchemists, chemists and scientists in general, observation, imagination and reason are mixed together to reach an explanation of the world and its phenomena; however, the process does not exclude the aesthetic experience nor the appreciation of beauty, because the senses are always involved.