Science and Surrealism

«Occasionally some people have referred to some kind of contradiction between scientophilia and scientophobia within surrealism. To say that, for example, Breton, Césaire, Colquhoun, Baskine, Seligmann, Artaud, Miró, Péret, Legrand, Jouffroy, Brauner, Chazal, Tarnaud, Jouffroy, Dax, Carrington, Mabille, the majority of the french, czech and latin american surrealists, were against science and Paalen, Mabille, Matta, Rybak, Brunius, Jennings, Davies, Pailthorpe, Hérold, Caillois, Leiris, Nougé, Senecaut, Masson, Ernst, Onslow-Ford, Seligmann, Jorn, Breton, perhaps the majority of english, belgian and scandinavian surrealists plus the whole groups of Dyn and La Main à Plume, were for science is extremely superficial. The function of the thematisation of science in the works of individuals may be predominantly polemical or predominantly curious, but this is only about where individuals like to put the stress. (And any such sorting, such as this one here, will be extremely dubious as it necessarily extrapolates from mere hints in their works, from anecdotal evidence and from the most stupid denial of ambivalence and conflicting data.) The surrealist viewpoint in itself in its historic continuity is fairly unproblematic as long as the questions asked are made more specific.»

http://www.surrealistgruppen.org/surrscience.html