Carrol Cox wrote:
> Joanna wrote:
>
>> By the 19th century the two truths of science and art were an
>> established fact.
>>
>> In the 17th century you see the beginnings of that distinction. Bacon
>> talks about it, as does Sidney in the Defense of Poesy. And there are
>> lots of others. The whole notion that Donne was reacting to the truth of
>> the scientific revolution also depends on a perceived difference in the
>> 17th century.
>>
>
>
> Well, yes and no. Science (or, rather, Natural Philosophy) at that time
> (esp. in Bacon) was pretty close to pure empiricism; Keats on the other
> hand was clear that science was essentially abstract explanation of
> facts rather than a mere accumulation of facts. His objection to the
> rainbow disappearing in Newton's equations was a far better
> understanding of science than you can find in Bacon or the Royal Society
> of the 17th c. As Susanne Langer remrks, had scientists followed Bacon's
> advice to put their notions aside there never would have been any
> science.
>
Yes and no. Bacon also said that "mathematics was the language of
nature" -- by which he meant more than arithmetic.
But you're mostly right about Bacon.
> That aside, I'm not sure what y9u mean by the "notion that Donne was
> reacting...." I would think that a v ery debatable question:
Yes it's a debatable question. But there was about 20 years worth of
criticism, (from 50's on) that argued exactly this: that metaphysical
poetry and Donne in particular were reacting to the "scientific
revolution."
> I don't
> think one should put too much weight on his reference to the new science
> [knowledge] putting all in doubt, and his moving of the earth was almost
> certainly a reference to earthquakes, not to Galileo.
>
Possibly. But he was a very learned man, certainly knew about the claims
of the new science and pointedly refers to it at the end of the Sunne
Rising: "This bed thy center is/ These walls thy sphere."
Joanna
> Carrol
>
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