As 'synapses' become 'protoplasmic kisses': Symmetry across clinical reasoning and poetry.

Using the example of clinical reasoning and attendant diagnostic work, we show that reductions from the connotative to the denotative not only mask but also contradict the complexity of implicit, embedded and distributed cognitive structures, creating a tension that medical education consistently fails to either resolve or draw upon as a resource. Further, poetry too has a complex set of implicit rules and formative structures that shape composition. These structures show symmetry, correspondence or even isomorphism with medical cognition, where both can aspire to activity that is aesthetically rich, intense and cognitively elegant.