"What if the sun be centre to the world?": milton's epistemology, cosmology, and paradise of fools reconsidered

Modern Philology

Volumn 99, Issue 2, 2001, Pages 231-265

  Martin, Catherine Gimelli ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF MEMPHIS   (United States)

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EID: 47749114396     PISSN: 00268232     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1086/493063     Document Type: Article

References (89)

1. Arthur O. Lovejoy, The Great Chain of Being: A Study in the History of an Idea (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1936), pp. 161, 212
2. and "Milton's Dialogue on Astronomy," in Reason and the Imagination: Studies in the History of Ideas, 1600-1800, ed. Joseph A. Mazzeo (New York: Columbia University Press, 1962)
3. and Kester Svendsen, Milton and Science (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1956)
4. The recent editor referred to is Roy Flannagan, ed., The Riverside Milton (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1998)
5. see esp. pp. 324-27
6. Milton can also be linked to the Boyle Circle and John Pell, a prominent mathematician and disseminator of early English atomism. See A. Rupert Hall, From Galileo to Newton, 1630-1720 (New York: Harper & Row, 1963) pp. 17-18
7. and Robert Kargon, Atomism in England from Hariot to Newton (Oxford: Clarendon, 1966), pp. 40-42, 52-53
8. See G. E. McGuire, "Neoplatonism and Active Principles: Newton and the Corpus Hermeticum," in Hermeticism and the Scientific Revolution, ed. Robert S. Westman and G. E. McGuire (Los Angeles: Wlliam Andrews Clark Memorial Library, 1977), pp. 103-4. Like Milton {PL 5.469-90), Newton wanted to unite "under one principle, life and nature, vitality and matter" (p. 123)
9. On Milton and Hobbes, see George Williamson, "Milton and the Mortalist Heresy," in his Seventeenth Century Contexts (University of Chicago Press, 1969)
10. and Stephen Fallon, Milton among the Philosophers: Poetry and Materialism in Seventeenth-Century England (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1991)
11. Ironically, Stanley Fish's Surprised by Sin: The Reader in "Paradise Lost" (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967) helped to resolve the Milton controversy only by reinforcing older ideas about the epic, namely, that it upheld exclusively theological and ethical as opposed to empirical values. For a telling critique of this approach
12. see Karen Edwards, Milton and the Natural World: Science and Poetry in "Paradise Lost" (Cambridge University Press, 1999), pp. 15-39, esp. pp. 31-33 (my review of Edwards's book appears in this issue, pp. 299-303)
13. Fallon specifically refutes the main tenets of Lovejoy's Great Chain of Being. In The Matter of Revolution: Science, Poetry, and Politics in the Age of Milton (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1996), John Rogers complements Fallon's study by showing that Milton's vitalism places him in the forefront of contemporary natural philosophy
14. Finally, in Contemplation of Created Things: Science in "Paradise Lost" (University of Toronto Press, 1992), Harinder Singh Marjara takes issue with Svendsen's assessment of Milton's "medieval" science by showing that it rests upon an untenably linear view of scientific progress, while Edwards argues that Milton only employs "backward" biological "lore" for satiric purposes. None of the studies above discusses Milton's cosmology or epistemology in relation to contemporary debates over the Ptolemaic/Aristotelian world-view, although all assume his divergence from Aristotelian traditionalism
15. According to the seminal historian of science William Whewell, "if we must select some one philosopher as the hero of the revolution in scientific method, beyond all doubt Francis Bacon must occupy that place of honor."
16. See his Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences Founded upon Their History, 2d ed., 2 vols. (London, 1857), 2:230
17. On the continuing accuracy of his judgment, see Ernan McMullin, "Conceptions of Science in the Scientific Revolution," in Reappraisals of the Scientific Revolution, ed. David C. Lindberg and Robert S. Westman (Cambridge University Press, 1990), pp. 45-54
18. and Peter Ur-bach, Francis Bacon's Philosophy of Science: An Account and a Reappraisal (La Salle, 111.: Open Court, 1987)
19. On the complex of factors at work in the development of scientific method, see Paolo Rossi, "Hermeticism, Rationality, and the Scientific Revolution," in Reason, Experiment, and Mysticism in the Scientific Revolution, ed. M. L. Righini Bonelli and William R. Shea (New York: Science History Publications, 1975), pp. 247-73, esp. pp. 250-51
20. See John Gascoigne, "A Reappraisal of the Role of the Universities in the Scientific Revolution," in Lindberg and Westman, eds., pp. 225, 234. Bacon's influence on Newton has often been noted; see, e.g., Kargon, p. 79
21. Robert S. Westman provides a convenient summary of the limitations of Coperni-can theory listed above in "Proof, poetics, and patronage: Copernicus's preface to De revolutionibus," in Lindberg and Westman, eds., pp. 169-70
22. In the same place, Westman traces "Vulgar Triumphalism" to the highly polemical, anticlerical, and simplistic histories of science of Voltaire and Condorcet, whose views unfortunately continue to resurface in "science textbooks, newspaper editorials, and a few undergraduate examinations." On Copernicus's medieval roots, see A. Rupert Hall, The Revolution in Science, 1500-1700 (London: Longman, 1983), p. 54
23. On the Continent, Milton's exact contemporary G. B. Ricciolo (1598-1671) remained so staunchly committed to Ptolemy that he produced a new version of his Almagest an Almagestum Novum in 1651. According to Marie Boas, the situation was only a little better in England. See her The Scientific Renaissance: 1450-1630 (New York: Harper, 1962), pp. 311-12
24. On Milton's postgraduate studies in mathematics, see his Second Defence in Complete Prose Works offohn Milton, ed. Don M. Wolfe et al., 8 vols. (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1953-81), 4.1:514; hereafter cited in the text by volume and page number as CPW
25. On Barrow, see Gascoigne, p. 225
26. Charles Webster, The Great Instauration: Science, Medicine and Reform, 1626-1660 (New York: Holmes & Meier, 1975), p. 113
27. On Milton's Baconianism and his influence on others in this camp, see esp. pp. 144, 190, 199
28. but Webster's entire chap. 3 (which opens with a quotation from Of Education) is relevant here
29. Ernest Sirluck inaccurately cites Geminus as simply teaching "the geocentric theory of the universe" (CPW, 2:392, n. 100)
30. for Fletcher's remarks, see his The Intellectual Development off john Milton, 2 vols. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1956), 1:373
31. on Milton's departure from Bacon's attitude to mathematics, see p. 371. Fletcher also intriguingly suggests that Milton's lingering humanism may be a response to "the unfortunate vogue of teaching several vernaculars from Latin, all at the same time," derived from Comenius's/janua (1:330). On Clavius, see Gascoigne, p. 222; and Boas, p. 323
32. Cited in Pierre Duhem, To Save the Phenomena, trans. Edmund Doland and Cha-ninah Maschler (University of Chicago Press, 1969), p. 11
33. William R. Shea, Galileo's Intellectual Revolution (New York: Science History Publications, 1972), shows that often in place of actual experiment, Galileo's method loosely consisted of thought experiments to be solved by his Archimedean geometry; see esp. pp. 34-35
34. Raphael's view can be instructively compared to the preface that Snecanus added to Georg von Peurbach's Theoricae novae planetorum (Bologne, 1591), which remarks that "in order to satisfy the experience [of the senses], the Astronomers are obliged to assign so monstrous a form to the celestial spheres, that if they speak truly, it would be impossible to think of anything more deformed than Heaven. And nonetheless, reason refuses to admit that such a deformity could be attributed to the very noble celestial bodies. One can therefore learn from Astronomy that the blindness of human intelligence is so great that it is not even capable of reconciling diverse sense experiences." Unpaginated preface cited in Fernand Hallyn, The Poetic Structure of the World: Copernicus and Kepler, trans. Donald M. Leslie (New York: Zone, 1990), p. 299, n. 40. But unlike Peurbach, Raphael does not regard human intelligence as blind, instead insisting that it becomes even less so when it concerns itself with matters naturally near at hand. This conclusion closely echoes the First Day of Galileo's Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems
35. All quotations from Paradise Lost are taken horn John Milton: Complete Poems and Major Prose, ed. Merritt Y. Hughes (New York: Odyssey, 1957)
36. Robet S. Westfall, Science and Religion in Seventeenth-Century England (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1958), p. 24
37. on the conventional pieties, see Howard Schultz, Milton and Forbidden Knowledge (New York: Modern Language Association, 1955)
38. The fact that Satan speaks the first quoted lines (3.662-63) does not logically invalidate the attitude that he assumes here, which is used to gain Uriel's approval and assistance in his exploratory journey. Milton's own approval of this unfeigned attitude is signaled by his attributing it to the unfallen Adam and Eve, who spontaneously praise the "translucence" of a God-in-nature "dimly seen / In these thy lowest works, yet these declare / Thy goodness beyond thought, and Power Divine" (5.157-59)
39. This fabler can be clearly identified with Plato as "next" to Socrates, the philosopher who said "he nothing knew" in the previous line. The Platonic myth Milton had in mind is less clear, but the Timaeus is proposed here both because it explicitly announces itself as a myth and because Bacon's Descriplio Globi Intelltciualis (considered below) exhibits a similar scorn for the "immaterial heavens and spaces" by which the Platonists, "not without superstition, arrogance, and some disorder of mind," attempt to give "their philosophy a diviner character."
40. See The Works of Francis Bacon, ed. James Spedding, Robert Ellis, and Douglas Heath, 7 vols. (London, 1861), 4:523
41. hereafter cited in the text as Works by volume and page number
42. Hallyn, pp. 43-44
43. Michael Hunter, Science and Society in Restoration England (Cambridge University Press, 1981), pp. 9-10
44. Since Hunter here regards Joseph Glanville as typifying this school of thought, it is interesting to note the quasi-Miltonic ideology behind his encouragement of "freer and better disposed spirits to vigour and endeavor in the pursuits of knowledge, and to raise the capable and ingenuous, from a dull and drowsie acquiesce in the Discoveries of former Times" (Plus Ultra, 1668), cited in Hunter above, p. 10
45. My brief description of Aristotelian method summarizes Peter Dear's discussion in Discipline and Experience: The Mathematical Way in the Scientific Revolution (University of Chicago Press, 1995), pp. 21-26
46. Hallyn, pp. 58, 265, and 351, n. 19
47. David Masson, The Poetical Works of John Milton (London, 1874), p. 39
48. Whether or not Bacon's method included the use of hypothesis is a vexed question, but Peter Urbach very convincingly refutes modern detractors of Baconian method by showing that they misinterpret what he meant by "anticipations of nature." See Urbach (n. 7 above), pp. 30-45
49. Hunter's important work in Science and Society in Restoration England also supports Urbach's contention that Baconian induction was not opposed to hypothesis but strongly approved its uses so long as it was subjected to rigorous testing and avoided premature systematization (p. 17). Historically, however, there does seem to have been some confusion among Bacon's own followers; on the seventeenth-century debates on the subject, see Barbara Shapiro, Probability and Certainly in Seventeenth-Century England: A Study of the Relationships between Natural Science, Religion, History, Law and Literature (Princeton University Press, 1983)
50. For this objection, see Theodore H. Banks, Milton's Imagery (New York: Columbia University Press, 1950), pp. 172-73
51. On Kepler's obscurity (especially in England, although even Galileo largely ignored him), see Boas (n. 9 above), pp. 288, 293, 311-12
52. Shapiro, p. 172. But as Michael Hunter points out, the members of the Royal Society were so diverse not only in their scientific sophistication and political affiliations but also in their methodology that their own historian (Thomas Sprat) actually slights the role of hypothesis. See his Establishing the New Science: The Experience of the Early Royal Society (Woodbridge, Suffolk: Boydell, 1989), pp. 28, 54, 207-15
53. Steven Shapin and Simon Schaffer present the contrary view of the Royal Society as promoting uniformity through the public witnessing of experiments in Leviathan and the Air Pump: Hobbes, Boyle, and the Experimental Life (Princeton University Press, 1985)
54. For a similar opinion, see Alastair Fowler, ed., The Poems of John Milton (London: Longmans, 1968), p. 820, n. 8.117-22
55. On cosmic dances, see Fowler, p. 596, n. 3.579-81, which also usefully corrects Hughes's error concerning the "three different Motions" described in this passage: "The three motions attributed to the earth by Copernicus: namely, diurnal rotation, annual orbital revolution about the sun and a 'third motion' or 'motion in declination' ⋯ later Tycho Brahe was able to dispense with this third motion" (p. 821, n. 8.130)
56. In the broader context the celestial dances refer to astronomical observation, since charting their "wandr'ing" courses ('planet' means "wanderer") is to follow dancelike perambulations. Thus Bacon's De-scriptio Globi Intellectualis asks "whether there be many different centres in the system, and as it were many dances?" (Works, 5:523)
57. See George Coffin Taylor, Milton's Use of Du Bartas (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1934)
58. Guillaume de Salluste Du Bartas, Bartas, His Devine Weekes and Works (1605), trans. Joshua Sylvester (Gainesville, Fla.: Scholars' Facsimiles and Reprints, 1965), pp. 119-20. I have slightly modernized the spelling of the facsimile edition
59. Du Bartas, pp. 120-21
60. On this and related points, see Judith Scherer Herz, "'For whom this glorious sight?': Dante, Milton, and the Galileo Question," in Milton in Italy: Contexts, Images, Contradictions, ed. Mario A. Di Cesare (Binghamton, N.Y.: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1991), pp. 147-57
61. Herz concludes that "there is little doubt that Milton knew Galileo's work" well, "but how he read it and what weight he gave it in Paradise Lost remains an open question" (p. 155)
62. As Fowler notes, the "accuracy and subtlety of this line is generally missed, rhomb is ⋯ a magic wheel [in Greek], and refers to the imaginary primum mobile or tenth sphere, which in the medieval planetary system revolved diurnally about the earth with incredible swiftness, carrying the interior spheres of the stars and planets with it" (p. 822, n. 8.834). Significantly, Adam regards the earth as a mere "point," an increasingly accepted conception that helped prepare the way for the new astronomy; see Victor Harris, All Coherence Gone (University of Chicago Press, 1949), p. 25
63. For a similar evaluation of his theology, see Edwards (n. 5 above), p. 32
64. See Hallyn (n. 21 above), pp. 158-59
65. This statement represents Bacon's most favorable consideration of Copernican-ism, but it must be remembered that his reflections do not necessarily invalidate the Ty-chonic system, where all the planets except the earth revolve around the sun
66. Hughes confirms my sense of 'officiate' as here suggesting to dispense or furnish (p. 363, n. 8.22). As Hughes also notes on p. 273, n. 3.608-12, the idea that solar rays engender gems in the earth appears in stanza 8 of Cowley's The Extasie, which indicates its currency even among such scientific promoters of the Royal Society as Cowley
67. See Hallyn, pp. 89-93, 127-29, 186-98
68. and Roberts. Westman, "Magical Reform and Astronomical Reform: The Yates Thesis Reconsidered," in Westman and McGuire, eds., p. 32
69. Anti-Galilean or "fallen" interpretations of these lines appear in Flannagan, ed., Riverside Milton (n. 1 above), pp. 363, n. 105, 433, n. 157, and 483, n. 79
70. See also Roy Flannagan, "Art, Artists, Galileo and Concordances," Milton Quarterly 20 (1986): 103-5
71. Joan Webber, Milton and His Epic Tradition (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1979)
72. and Neil Harris, "Galileo as Symbol: The 'Tuscan Artist' in Paradise Lost," Annali dell'Istituto e Museo di Storia delta Scienza di Firenze 10 (1985): 3-29
73. Masson's own theory is that Milton wished not to offend more conservative Puritan associates like the Smectymnuanns, who as late as the 1640s cite the Copernican doctrine "as an unquestionable instance of a supreme absurdity," although Masson finds Milton "even then ⋯ far in advance of his contemporaries on this question." See Masson (n. 24 above), pp. 38-39
74. Masson's evaluation is fair even Boyle remained skeptical of Copernicanism in the 1640s but Francis R. Johnson rebuts this position in Astronomical Thought in Renaissance England: A Study of the English Scientific Writings from 1250 to 1645 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1937), pp. 285-87, quotation on p. 286
75. Balachandra Rajan takes the same view as Johnson in "Paradise Lost" and the Seventeenth Century Reader (London: Chatto & Windus, 1962), as have most scholars ever since
76. Johnson, p. 221
77. Grant McColley shows that Milton's dialogue had followed the debate between Wilkins and Ross in his "Milton's Dialogue on Astronomy," PMLA 53 (1937): 728-62
78. In part, Johnson seems overeager to refute the admiring attitude of Thomas Orchard in The Astronomy of Milton's "Paradise Lost" (London, 1896)
79. Adam reductively reasons that since he and Eve are literally "one flesh," he must join her in eating the forbidden fruit. This anthropomorphic literalism is specifically rejected in Milton's Tetrachordon (1645), which goes on to show how this kind of biblical exegesis is based upon bad logic, since it subordinates what should be understood as the preeminent efficient and final causes (i.e., the human and divine purpose of marriage) to far weaker formal causes. See CPW, 2:603-9
80. Masson, pp. 41-42
81. For complete details, see Hughes (n. 17 above), p. 268, n. 3.438-39
82. Paradiso, in The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri, trans. John D. Sinclair, 3 vols. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1961), vol. 3; hereafter cited by canto and line
83. Richard Strier comes to much the same conclusion in "Milton's Fetters, or, Why Eden Is Better than Heaven," although he personally prefers Dante's plenum and cosmic stasis to Milton's more strenuous system; unlike Strier I do not find its expansive-ness at all inconsistent with Eden's. See "Milton's Fetters" in Milton Studies, vol. 38, ed. Albert C. Labriola and Michael Lieb (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2000), pp. 169-97
84. Both Harris Fletcher in The Intellectual Development of John Milton, 1:301-2
85. and Frances Yates, Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition (University of Chicago Press, 1964) have found connections between Milton and Bruno
86. Boas, pp. 119-20
87. Fowler (see n. 29 above) remarks on Milton's "sophisticated optics" (p. 594, n. 3.555-61)
88. Boas, pp. 107-8
89. Thomas Digges, "To the Reader" preface to A Perfit Description of the Coelestiall Orbes, appended to A Prognostication Everlasting (London, 1576), n.p