How_Does_the_Idea_of_Scientific_Observation_Influence_the_Poetic_Voice_

Q: How does the idea of scientific observation influence the poetic voice' In your answer you should discuss at least one poem in detail, analysing quotations carefully and paying attention to rhetorical and stylistic features. Dr. Johnson, thought by many to be the leading intellectual of the 18th century, “considered factual ‘scientific learning’ among the best types of knowledge a man could possess”, and thus it is no wonder the poets of the age – who imagined themselves to be at the forefront of intellectual thought – were greatly influenced by the nascent legitimacy science had found within society in this period (Rousseau 163). This is particularly evident in the writings of two Scottish poets, James Thomson and Mark Akenside, specifically in their poems ‘Spring’ and ‘The Pleasures of Imagination’ respectively. The dominance of scientific attitude throughout the 18th century was largely a result of the “great age of scientific discovery” that had occurred in the previous century, and these discoveries were made in particular due to sweeping advances in the area of observation (Rousseau 154 ). The telescope had been perfected by the “lensmakers of Holland” in 1608, while in 1634 the earliest “English reference” to the microscope was made, enabling people to view both the vast infinity of the universe and the smallest collections of atoms, and as a result, fundamentally changing man’s perspective on the human world (Nicolson 10, 160). Additionally, Galileo’s astronomical findings in the 17th century had been furthered by the groundbreaking works of Newton’s Optiks, published in 1704 , while in 1735 Systema Naturae, Carl Linnaeus’s book expounding his novel system of taxonomy, brought a clinical order to the otherwise chaotic biological world, as well as establishing the binominal system of nomenclature. These advances manifested themselves in the poetic voice of the age in three broad areas: the change and expansion in the subject matter with which the voice was concerned, through the popularisation of scientific terms in the average person’s vocabulary, as well as through the increased confidence in man’s own intellect. The first thing that must briefly be established, however, is what the poetic voice changed from. The loosely termed ‘Metaphysical Poets’ had been the prominent poetic movement of the 17th century and their works were primarily concerned with exploring existentialism, philosophy and the soul. The metaphysical enthusiasm found in the philosophical, and the popular poetic device of ‘metaphysical conceits’ – defined as “an extremely ingenious or fanciful parallel between apparently dissimilar or incongruous objects or situations” – filled Marvell and Donne’s poetry, while images of nature and classical allusions were considered passé (Britannica). The advance of fact and reason in the 18th Century, however, saw poetry abandon “tricks of metaphors” and “reject amplifications, digressions and swelling of style” in favour of a “close, natural way of speaking” (Horne 139). The most significant way in which poetic voice was influenced was in the vast amount of new material upon which the poets of the age could draw new inspiration. As Horne has suggested in his essay Literature and Science, poets of this era were “unconsciously striving to fill the gap in the creative imagination left by the exhaustion of Classical and Christian mythology”, and thus the new influx of new detail about the natural world provided them with the perfect unadulterated subject matter in which to find fresh inspiration from the overused and stagnated themes of the past (144). As Thomson explicitly asks in ‘Spring’, “But who can paint/Like Nature' Can Imagination boast,/Amid its gay Creation, Hues like hers'”, in almost a direct affront against the abstract material of the Metaphysical poets, while praising the limitless poetic beauty to be found in nature – specifically in its ability to display an array of colour, an attribute favoured greatly in his Seasons (468-70). Within the pages of Newton’s Optiks, for instance, were descriptions of the behaviour of light that “helped bring descriptive power back to English poetry” by pioneering a “new fascination [with] the play of light and colour” amongst scenes of nature and “caused so many poets …‘to demand [Newton’s] Muse’” as their poetic plaything (Horne 144; Rousseau 156). Thomson uses this device throughout Spring, such as when he describes how the “penetrative Sun” is wont to “wander o’er the vernant Earth,/In various Hues” (79-83). Before Newton’s discoveries it was not known that the sun was responsible for the entire spectrum of colours through the process of refraction of light, but the popularity of his discoveries means that Thomson is able to personify its movement in a far more various manner than before. This is also shown in his description of the rainbow, whose “every Hue” in the “grand ethereal Bow” is explained by the “showery Prism” nature has created in rainfall (204-209). Some idea of the celebrity and the fashionable position of his science at the time is shown in the fact that Thomson is even bold enough to mention “awful Newton” by name in this passage (208). The idea of light being split, and thus the possibility of an infinite assortment of colours, appears more subtly in ‘Spring’ as a result of the frequency with which he mentions different shades. An example of such a burst is the arrival of “whitens…Crimson…Blush…white-empurpled […and] yellow” all within a period of only twenty lines or so (90-113). This gives the rhetorical effect of a verbal rainbow in and amongst the description of the garden. Though science undoubtedly had a positive influence on the poets of the age, it necessitated certain stylistic changes in order to avoid alienating the audience through the inundation of sterile scientific terms and dry subject matter. Chief amongst these was the abundance of personification, which was useful in “keep[ing] human warmth among the de-personalising forces of science”, and used by Thomson extensively, especially when illustrating the sun’s character (Horne 144). The sun takes on human qualities as it variously “looks out” with “his lively ray” and is free to “to wander o’er the vernant Earth”, while even the mountains are said to “lift their green Heads to the Sky” (Thomson 189, 395, 81, 17). The increasingly common public knowledge of the telescope and the microscope provided poets with a far more expansive sense of perspective, which was used by Thomson to roam over the bounteous details of the beauty of the world’s natural environment. At the smallest end of the spectrum, insects and the minutiae of plant life were mused upon for the first time: the miniscule sap vessels found in plants are referred to with the utmost technical precision as “Plastic Tubes”, while not even the smallest example of nature’s beauty is wasted, such as the minute “dewy Gems” of water glistening on plants like tiny precious stones, and the mechanical workings of bees who harvest flowers as “with inserted tube” they proceed to “Suck its pure Essence” (Thomson 220, 196, 510). From this microscopic focus, Thomson’s winged Muse is able to move with graceful ease from the highly magnified plant’s cellular “twining mass of tubes” to the skies above in the space of three lines, like a bird taking off into the sky: “rising from the vegetable World/My Theme ascends, with equal Wing ascend,/My panting Muse;” (566, 572-74). In Akenside’s The Pleasures of Imagination, an even more microscopic example of nature is considered when he speaks of “atoms moving with incessant change/Their elemental round” when describing the most fundamental stage of the life’s creation within the cells of plants (516/17). Again, the perspective speedily shifts within the same piece of verse from the infinitesimal atom to the vastness of the universe when he considers the extra-terrestrial beauty “Of planets, suns and adamantine spheres/Wheeling unshaken thro’ the void immense” (Akenside 488/89). Improved scientific observation led to an increased understanding of the natural world, which created an extensive new vocabulary of scientific labelling which quickly took on a more pertinent meaning to the educated public. Linnaeus pioneered the binominal system of classification, in which two Latin words depicted first the genus of the creature and secondly its species, most famously deployed in the description of humans as ‘Homo sapiens’. This development placed people in the same system as other animals for the first time, thus highlighting the shared aspects of our fight for survival and reproduction. In poetry, however, this was manifested in the introduction of “more poetic equivalents for scientific jargon” which mirrored this binominal system (Horne 148). Thomson used a form of semi-scientific personification whereby the class of creature is described through a “precisely descriptive epiphet” called ‘periphrases’ which served to further push together the characteristics of humans and animals (148). Examples of these in Spring include “Finny race” for fish, which combines the iconic image of the fin which is found on most fish with a physically-descriptive division of human-kind in ‘race’, and “Plumy people” which more straightforwardly draws attention to the feathery plumes found on the vast majority of birds (Thomson 395, 165). Another influence from the scientific sphere is that of the Latin language itself, which was favoured in the academic world due to its orderly structure and trans-national understanding amongst the educated class. The Latinate system of syntax whereby the verb or adjective comes last in a clause was invoked by Thomson where he occasionally ends clauses with the verb, for example in his illustration of how “The Swallow sweeps/The slimy Pool, to build his hanging House/Intent”, the enjambment drawing attention to this device and cementing an affinity with its scientific aura (655). Linneus’s division of Earth’s animal life into kingdoms – mammals, birds, fish, amphibians and insects – also seems to have influenced Thomson, who mimics these rough divisions when he mentions certain ‘tribes’ and ‘nations’. Examples include the “insect tribes” and “vegetable tribes”, as well as “busy nations” and “tuneful nations” of birds which show the same taxonomical generality as is found in Linneus’s work (Thomson 60, 561, 510, 594). One of the more subtle, yet overarching, effects of the scientific revolution was a greater confidence in man’s own intellect that was inspired by the latest scientific breakthroughs in the self-knowledge of our earth and universe. God’s workings became less incomprehensible and the conflict between Christianity and Science which had previously split and preoccupied much intelligent thought in previous centuries was bridged, to an extent, with even the great Newton claiming that a scientist “could also be a pious and humble Christian” (Rousseau 164). Poets were chief amongst those at the forefront of assuaging this divergence; indeed, both Thomson and Akenside were originally educated at Edinburgh University with a view to becoming ministers of the Church before they fully committed themselves to poetry, with the latter abandoning his theological studies to complete a degree in medicine instead, giving him a thorough knowledge of contemporary science (Fairer 211, 330). Both poets described the fierce and striking imagery at work in nature using blank verse, a style which had largely been rejected due to it’s association with Milton’s epic describing the Fall of man, Paradise Lost. Thomson uses this association to present the epic stature of the newly-observed features of the natural world, strengthening the link between Milton’s seminal work and his own Spring with constant references to the “finish’d Garden[s]” created by man to best display God’s creations, as well as sweeping passages describing Eden’s “Harmonious Nature” and “uncorrupted Man” before the Fall, in comparison to the “foul Disorder” and “Bitterness of soul” found after it (258, 243, 281, 288). Thomson builds on the relationship with Milton’s work, showing that advances in scientific observation have furthered our ability to see the evidence of the intricacy of God’s creations on earth, asking “who can paint/Like Nature'” and declaring God the “SOURCE OF BEINGS!” whose “Master-hand,/Hast the great Whole into Perfection touch’d” (468/9, 556-560). Thomson also argues in this work that scientific advances and instruction, as well as the rise of fact and reason that these advances heralded, elevate man’s status so that he might glean more satisfaction from nature, and thus find himself closer to God. When describing how the “grand ethereal” rainbow is created as the rain forms a “showery Prism” and splits the “various Twine of Light”, it is only the “sage-instructed Eye” who can fully appreciate this complexity and extract additional pleasure from this knowledge (204-211). “Not so the swain”, in contrast, who watches the “bright Enchantment”, unable to comprehend the wondrous depths of magnificence it holds (212/13). Akenside’s poetic voice, meanwhile, is changed differently by scientific advances. He argues for the importance of the poet/scientist in the role of translator for the rest of human-kind who have not been blessed with understanding of nature’s increased beauty – a beauty realised due to a more refined scientific observation. As he says, “not alike to every mortal eye/Is this great scene unveiled”, but the poet is one who can unwrap the potential of man he describes as the “capacious pow’rs”, which “lie folded up in man” and unrealised in the majority of un-enlightened man (Akenside 79, 222). The importance Akenside attaches to the imagination of the poet, whom he sees as “the mediator between the internal and external worlds, between the aesthetic order (beauty) and the moral order (truth and virtue)” and thus the translator of sensual feelings into moral and intellectual thoughts, can be seen in the frequency of the individual ‘I’ – the poet – which appears throughout The Pleasures of Imagination (330). “I see them dawn!/I see the radiant visions” he exclaims in the voice of the “poet’s tongue”, the first person singular being particularly visible in the final lines of the poem, thus giving Akenside – and the direct voice – great prominence, as he believed it deserved (145-7). Advances in scientific observation acted primarily to enhance the poet’s own means of gathering inspiration through their sense, most importantly by vastly improving the ability of our sight to provide a wealth of source material for verbal imagery. As well as this, the popularity of scientific advancement, largely due to the fame found by Isaac Newton and the other wealthy and influential members The Royal Society, allowed poets to appropriate and adjust the new scientific lexicon into their work as the saw fit. This had the effect of adding another layer of intellectual subtlety and exclusivity to the poetic voice, something which had been limited until then to classical allusion. However, perhaps the most important and long-lasting influence on the poetic voice had by science’s monumental advances in this period was on the poet’s notion of individuality. Although this period saw poets glorifying God as a result of our increased knowledge of his majestic creations, it would soon dawn on man that our individual discoveries would allow us to abandon our reliance upon religion, instead choosing to be comforted by our almost infinite collection of facts about our universe as well as our ability to use reason to explore the unknown.