It is often suggested that a large and growing chasm separates scientists (including economists) from literary and artistic types (including Romantics) — a great divide in methodology, vision and values. On this view, scientists try to establish the truth through rational and objective analysis of evidence, while artists create visions out of their imaginations, and prefer intuition and inspiration to reason. Whereas the dispassionate observation of the scientist seems predisposed to present a world that is explicable and predictable in terms of universal laws of nature, this is anathema to the artist who may, as John Keats famously did, deplore the scientist for being determined to ‘clip an angel's wings’, ‘empty the haunted air’ and ‘unweave a rainbow’. When it comes to our depiction of social reality, the contrast appears no less stark between those who seek to explain it objectively in terms of the rational and therefore predictable calculations of utility-maximising agents acting within constraints and those who emphasise the less predictable influence of custom, feelings, imagination, chance events and the transforming role of particular perspective. This chapter examines the historical origins of this supposed schism — particularly between a rationalist and a Romantic outlook — and assesses how far it is, or has been, a reality. To the extent that the great divide is fact rather than fiction, it then considers how far it is possible or desirable to bridge the gap, with a view to producing a more Romantic approach to the predominantly rationalist discipline of economics.