Science, Literature and Rhetoric in Early Modern England

David Burchell, Juliet Cummins

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN:
  9780754657811
• eBook ISBN:
  9781351901789
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

These essays throw new light on the complex relations between science, literature and rhetoric as avenues to discovery in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Scholars from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds examine the agency of early modern poets, playwrights, essayists, philosophers, natural philosophers and artists in remaking their culture and reforming ideas about human understanding. Analyzing the ways in which the works of such diverse writers as Shakespeare, Bacon, Hobbes, Milton, Cavendish, Boyle, Pope and Behn related to contemporary epistemological debates, these essays move us toward a better understanding of interactions between the sciences and the humanities during a seminal phase in the emergence of modern Western thought.

Chapter 1

“The Fashioned Image of Poetry or the Regular Instruction of Philosophy?”: Truth, Utility, and the Natural Sciences in Early Modern England

Peter Harrison

Debates over the relative merits of various disciplines within the university curriculum and the benefits they confer upon society are not particularly new. In the current educational context the setting of national priorities and research agendas tends to pivot on which sub-disciplines within the applied sciences are likely to be recipients of government largesse. It is taken for granted that the natural sciences have many and varied socio-economic objectives and that they make a major contribution to the material welfare of society. The disciplines of the humanities, by way of contrast, are regarded as contributing, if at all, in vague and unspecific ways to our cultural resources. The notion that study ought to contribute to the moral formation of the individual and that the primary function of education is to produce well-rounded individual citizens, capable of steering society towards common social and religious goals, is now regarded as at best quaint, at worst, sinister. The study of things, rather than the study of words, has become the main priority, and it is taken for granted that it is the former that confers tangible social benefits in a way that the latter seemingly cannot.

It was not always so. These twenty-first century priorities contrast starkly with those of the early modern period when, for the first time, challenges were issued to the dominance of the written word in the domains of learning. Yet while it is often assumed that the study of things—exemplified in the labors of such individuals as Galileo, Francis Bacon, Descartes, Robert Boyle and Isaac Newton—swept all before it, the path to social acceptance of the new scientific knowledge was far from smooth. We need only consider the public mockery with which various projects of the Royal Society met in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries to see the extent of the transformation of attitudes to science and technology that has taken place in the intervening period. Consider, too, Pascal’s four-word assessment of the merits of one of the period’s preeminent natural philosophers: “Descartes useless and uncertain”.¹ Pascal’s judgement illustrates the extent to which the current situation contrasts with that of the Renaissance and early modern period. The emergence of modern science over the course of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries brought with it robust debate about the usefulness of various forms of knowledge. And for much of the seventeenth century and beyond, the burden of proof lay with the purveyors of the new forms of scientific knowledge to establish the social utility of their enterprises against the established claims of the more secure disciplines of theology, literature, history, and moral philosophy.

This chapter explores changing views of the utility of knowledge in early modern England, contrasting justifications for a humanist program that elevated literature, history, and moral philosophy, with arguments promoting the study of nature and in particular the disciplines of natural history and natural philosophy. As we shall see, rhetorical defenses of the new learning sought to establish the moral credentials of the sciences, arguing that study of nature could make an important contribution to the moral formation of individuals—as was traditionally argued for the study of literature and moral philosophy. By the same token, we also encounter in apologies for the new sciences attempts to redefine the utility of learning by emphasizing the importance of material benefits and social welfare.

The Renaissance Background: The Defence of Poesy

Philip Sidney’s Defence of Poesy (1595) is a typical Renaissance defense of the social utility of literature, and it provides important clues as to the kinds of criteria then in play for determining the usefulness of the various forms of knowledge. While some of its claims are overstated, and while discussions of the usefulness of knowledge ranged more broadly than a consideration of the merits of literature, the Defence is helpful in identifying a number of key issues that inform the more general debate. Sidney makes the standard claim that the “highest end” of knowledge is “the knowledge of a mans selfe, in the Ethike and Politique consideration, with the end of well doing, and not of well knowing onely.” The moral aims of learning are reinforced throughout the piece, with Sidney later claiming that “the ending end of all earthly learning” is “verteous action.”² The major branches of knowledge that might claim to achieve this end were, on Sidney’s account, [moral] philosophy, history, poetry. While on the face of it moral philosophy might seem best suited to this role, Sidney argues that it is encumbered with “definitions, divitions and distinctions.”³ Philosophers thus announce abstract and general moral precepts, but do so in so obscure a fashion that they are not understood. Philosophers, moreover, fail to inspire and motivate their audiences. Sidney thus leaves the reader in little doubt as to the appropriate response to his somewhat loaded question: “whether the fashioned Image of Poetrie, or the regular instruction of Philosophie, hath the more force in teaching.”⁴

Turning to history, Sidney observes that the historian, for his part, “is so tied, not to what should be, but to what is, to the particular truth of things, that his example draweth no necessary consequence, and therefore a lesse fruitfull doctrine.”⁵ This statement might be regarded as an inchoate formulation of the principle that one cannot derive an “ought” from an “is”—later formally articulated by David Hume—but more importantly, it points to the fact that history deals with particulars and not general principles. Philosophy and history thus compare unfavorably to poetry. The poet can use a single striking example to exemplify a general moral principle: “so as he coupleth the generall notion with the particuler example.”⁶ Poetry thus uniquely uses an account of the particular to exemplify the general principle, and to motivate its audience to conform themselves to it.

Sidney’s assertion of the superiority of poetry in this regard was by no means new, and one of his major claims goes back to Aristotle. The Greek philosopher had also observed that poetry is more valuable than history on account of the fact that the former can present events as they ought to be, rather than how they always have been: “Hence poetry is something more philosophic and of graver import than history, since its statements are of the nature rather of universals, whereas those of history are singulars.”⁷ It is worth pointing out that for Aristotle universal premises also provided the starting point for genuine scientia. For Aristotle, certain knowledge (scientia) was thus grounded in universal propositions, and this was the issue on which he differed from a number of the moderns, and in particular Francis Bacon (1561–1626). For the latter, “histories” of particular events or things were to provide the foundations for natural philosophy. The issue of the logical relation between what Sidney called “the generall notion” and “the particuler example” were thus of central importance for determining the issue of the certainty of knowledge which was, of course, related to issue of its usefulness.

The more immediate background for Sidney’s claims about the usefulness of poetry is that of sixteenth-century humanism. In enquiring into the relative merits of the various branches of learning, Renaissance humanists had already narrowed the field of possible contenders to “the humanities.” The studia humanitatis—grammar, rhetoric, poetry, history, moral philosophy—were upheld as superior disciplines inasmuch as they were deemed useful in the production of good citizens. In keeping with Sidney’s priorities, the ultimate justification of the study of the humanities lay in their moral and social utility.⁸ During the Renaissance, moreover, it was not merely the content of these subjects that was thought to lead to the development of virtue within the student. The very discipline entailed in the grammatical aspects of the humanistic education was also held to play a central role. In order to understand the purported moral utility of this pedagogy, write Anthony Grafton and Lisa Jardine, “it is necessary to make the crucial assumption of the equivalence between humanistic discipline (the habits of systematic use of language inculcated by the humanistic program of education) and moral probity.” This, they suggest, led ultimately to “a confusion of the methodical with the morally sound.”⁹ To make this assessment, however, is to forget that the virtues, both moral and intellectual, were essentially habits.¹⁰ Thus it was not implausible to assume that the cultivation of intellectual habits would have a bearing on the cultivation of moral habits. Moreover, the goal of learning lay not primarily in its applications, but in its capacity to form character. The various schemes of humanism claimed as their ultimate justification their utility, understood in this context as the production of responsible, pious, and moral citizens able to contribute to the common weal.¹¹ The Renaissance was thus witness to a strong humanist bias against the speculative sciences in favor of those disciplines concerned with human action and social welfare.¹² The Aristotelian humanist Alessandro Piccolomini (1508–79), for example, contrasted the lesser “physical, mathematical and metaphysical sciences” (in other words, the traditional Aristotelian speculative sciences of natural philosophy, mathematics, and metaphysics) with “the most honorable of the sciences which teach the art of living, that is, the ways of virtue and morals which lead us to happiness.”¹³ “Happiness” is here understood, it should be noted, as the proper telos or “end” of the human being.

These, too, had been the priorities shared by Petrarch (1304–74) who, at the dawn of the Renaissance, on the occasion of his famous ascent of Mount Ventoux, had been deeply moved by this passage in Augustine’s Confessions: “People are moved to wonder by mountain peaks, by vast waves of the sea, by broad waterfalls on rivers, by the all-embracing extent of the ocean, by the revolutions of the stars. But in themselves they are uninterested.”¹⁴ Inspired by Augustine’s words, Petrarch resolved to commit himself to dignified and useful objects of study—human nature and society: “What is the use—I beseech you—of knowing the nature of quadrupeds, fowls, fishes and serpents and not knowing or even neglecting mans nature, the purpose for which we are born, and whence and whereto we travel?”¹⁵ Petrarch’s uncompromising position on the study of the creatures came to represent a common humanist priority. However, there were those who provided at least a partial answer to his rhetorical question.

Renaissance Apologies for the Study of Nature

The Renaissance preference for the study of the human sciences did not completely rule out the study of nature. There were a number of defenses of natural history and philosophy during this period, most of which pointed out that while such knowledge was not useful in its own right, it did make important contributions to “humane learning.” First, the medieval conception of “man as microcosm” had provided a justification for the study of other creatures on the assumption that the human being comprehended all creatures. To study other creatures was thus to study one’s self. Second, animals served as moral exemplars. Thus the scriptural injunction to “go to the ant” (Proverbs 6:6) suggested that we can learn industry from these modest insects. To some extent the moral aims of the humanist education could thus be served by histories of animals, or at least so champions of natural history argued. Third, allegorical interpretation of scripture h...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Contributors
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 “The Fashioned Image of Poetry or the Regular Instruction of Philosophy?”: Truth, Utility, and the Natural Sciences in Early Modern England
• 2 Mapping Regeneration in The Winter’s Tale
• 3 “A Plain Blunt Man”: Hobbes, Science, and Rhetoric Revisited
• 4 Reformed Catechism and Scientific Method in Milton’s
• 5 Rewriting the Revolution: Milton, Bacon, and the Royal Society Rhetoricians
• 6 A Philosophical Duchess: Understanding Margaret Cavendish and the Royal Society
• 7 Literary Responses to Robert Boyle’s Natural Philosophy
• 8 Milton’s Chaos in Pope’s London
• 9 Global Analogies: Cosmology, Geosymmetry, and Skepticism in some Works of Aphra Behn
• Bibliography
• Index