Blake's "Science"

Abstract

Blake's "Science" MARK L. GREENBERG On the twelfth plate of Jerusalem Blake demonstrates the function of science in the fallen world, as Los fixes "Systems, permanent" by mathematic power Giving a body to Falshood that it may be cast off for ever. With Demonstrative Science piercing Apollyon with his own bow!1 To the right of these lines a Newton figure engages in "Demonstrative Sci­ ence," measuring and dividing grids on a globe. The globes south pole trails a vortex, the fundamental structure of matter according to Des­ cartes.2 A few lines later on the same plate, Los resolves to create struc­ tures which formalize the void accompanying the Fall. Los manifests his decision by building Golgonooza, the city of art and manufacture, with fallen human emotions and words —in short, with what remains: The stones are pity, and the bricks, well wrought affections: The mortar & cement of the work, tears of honesty: the nails, And the screws & iron braces, are well wrought blandishments, And well contrived words, firm fixing, never forgotten. (30, 33-35; p. 154) On this plate, then, Blake conflates language and words, as intermediate structures of redemption, with another potential agency of salvation, sci­ ence. Martin K. Nurmi, Donald D. Ault, and, most recently, Nelson Hil­ ton and Stuart Peterfreund have examined Blake's relationship with con­ temporary scientific ideas, with Descartes and Newton.31 would like to extend the discussion to include another related social force to which 115 116 / GREENBERG Blake responded variously and vigorously: the multiple and dynamically shifting meanings of "science" during Blakes lifetime. They too fascinated the poet for whom language both embodied incomplete human communi­ cation and provided one agency of redemption.4 For Blake, science is fun­ damentally a logocentric activity which implies and causes the conditions it represents. Linguistic context in Blake's writings determines the range of "science's" meanings and effects. An overview of that range suggests the breadth of Blake's concerns with this protean term and his radical critique and transformation of it. Blake recognized science's essential value and capaciousness in its con­ temporary sense of "knowledge." As such, he always views the word posi­ tively. "Science" constitutes the precondition and ultimately the guarantor for culture: The Arts & Sciences are the Destruction of Tyrannies or Bad Governments Why should A Good Government endeavour to Depress What is its Chief & only Support. . . . The Foundation of Empire is Art & Science Remove them or Degrade them & the Empire is No More. ("Annotations to Reynolds," pp. 625-26) Blake understood "science" as knowledge, but also as epistemology, a mental structure which imposes form: "Thus Nature is a Vision of the Sci­ ence of the Elohim" (Milton, 29:65; p. 127). "Con-science" Blake graphi­ cally equates with inborn ideas, with consciousness: "These Principles could never be found out by the Study of Nature without Con or Innate Science"; "The Man who says that we have No Innate Ideas must be a Fool & Knave. Having No Con-Science " ("Annotations to Reynolds," pp. 635 and 637).5 Conversely, Blake figured a debased cul­ ture's perversion of the term with fallen "science" or consciousness: pity is become a trade, and generosity a science, That men get rich by. (America, 11: 10-11; p. 54) Furthermore, Blake was extremely sensitive to the term's appropriation by philosophical and religious forces he perceived limiting and thus de­ stroying its earlier meaning. Hence in "The Laocoon," he particularizes, negatively, "Deist Science . . . Antichrist Science . . . Science is the Tree of Death" (p. 271). Yet Blake also elevated "science" to redemptive status, fusing knowledge with the knower, equating humanity with true knowl­ edge, as one of the Eternals wishes to Blake's "Science" / 117 be a Man To know sweet Science. . . . (Four Zoas, 51:29-30; p. 328) Blake thus embraces this polysemous term to signify several responses to the shifting definitions of "science," its reduced and circumscribed meaning during his lifetime, and the epistemological assumptions em­ bodied in this reduction. Attacking with his own language the social forces which urged the word's contracted definition was for Blake central to the poet's mission. To accomplish that mission, Blake's "science" in some instances formalizes his...