"I Love Science, I Love it Not," Quoth the Raven

I'm a huge fan of Poe, but I've always felt uncomfortable reading some his rambling, flakey comments on science. And Eureka is just painful.

On further reflection, though, if you look at Poe's ouvre, I'm starting to think that what Poe was talking in the broader sense is that the emergence of modern science made Poe's work more difficult, but, on the other hand, made it *necessary* in a way it wouldn't have been if he were just another run-of-the-mill gentleman-poet.

Unlike the Romantic and Neoclassical poets who preceded him, Poe couldn't simply invoke nature or God, use some elevated prose, and be done with it. I think that the problem science posed for Poe was that, in order to invoke in the reader a sense of awe, wonder, horror, the uncanny, etc., he needed to invent whole new literary techniques and devices to bring these feelings alive in his readers without relying on prior generations' metaphysical shorthand.

Poe realized that science posed a problem for poetry. And out of his struggle to resolve that problem, we got the invention of the modern short story, the modern mystery story, and the modern horror story. We got The Tell-tale Heart and The Raven, C. Auguste Dupin and the Gold Bug, Arthur Gordon Pym and the Imp of the Perverse. Pretty good deal, I'd say.

"Basically, his approach to science was unscientific."
I find it interesting how we are linguistically tangled when it comes to science, knowledge, and inquisition. As generally used, the term Science includes all three-- the method, the product, and the act. This makes it difficult to discuss the product or the act without falling under the tyranny of the method. Don't get me wrong-- the method is a damn fine one, and we would not be where we are without it. Nevertheless, as Science gets bigger and more complicated, perhaps we would be better served by teasing apart those ideas.
As always, nice find and great post.

Great points, Michael.I'd like to get a little more into that issue. Based on my limited knowledge of Poe, I view him as an amateur natural philosopher rather than a scientist, mainly becuase he didn't attempt hypothesis testing by experimentation. And while a requirement for traditional experimentation might be cruel, given that he was thinking about astrophysics over a hundred years ago, limited by the technology and knowledge of his era, still - Poe didn't set up any objective hypotheses that later scientists could test, either. His writing is entwined with untestable, unquantifiable spiritual and metaphorical ideas (as opposed to, say, Darwin, whose writing was objective and precise enough to map onto later science, such that his insights have been repeatedly validated.)

That doesn't make Poe's efforts valueless - this blog is all about crossdisciplinary efforts that mix scvience with art or humanities - but I can't call Poe's philosophy "science" as I define it. I appreciate that Poe had an interest in science and involved himself in scientific discourse, but did he generate any "product" that answered a specific question, or contributed to the later progression of astrophysics as a field? That's doubtful, in my view. If you know more about this, please share.

"I'm starting to think that what Poe was talking in the broader sense is that the emergence of modern science made Poe's work more difficult, but, on the other hand, made it *necessary* in a way it wouldn't have been if he were just another run-of-the-mill gentleman-poet."

Great point, HP!

Jessica:
No, I agree with your judgement of Poe as 'unscientific.' I do, however, think that the wild, 'anything is possible' spirit of the turn of the century was as much a part of capital-S Science as the little-s science that was actually doing the experimenting. That wide-eyed fervor and credulity gave Science (the cultural institution) the vigor and respect that were necessary to change our society as radically as it did. It would be easy to say that Science ascended because of its efficacy, but the era around 1900 is littered with programs and products that were based on false theories or outright mumbo-jumbo. While earlier successes were crucial to instigating the expansion of Science, I think that the real boom can be credited to the messianic, utopian desires of the era. (This is a bit of chicken or egg I know)
My initial comment was largely tangential, but I do think that it is valid to say that Poe and subsequent authors of science-fiction are a vital part of Science. They do little to directly advance the science in question, but they play a crucial role in the advancement of Science-- that cultural behemoth filled with celebrity, pride, politics, hope, imagination, and all the other virtues and vices of mankind.

Thanks for posting the great video clip of Sonnet- to science! I also like the pairing of the pictures from that science-loving period with Poe's message.

Poe's Eureka was written at a time when the institutional status and methodologies of science were not as firmly rooted as later. That does not make Poe "a scientist" even by the standards of his time (the only standard applicable, we shouldn't judge him by our standards, 160 years later), but it goes a bit to explain why he even bothered to write, perform (it grew out of a lecture) and publish that speculative tract of natural philosophy that is Eureka.

Had it reached the same popular success as another scientific speculation by a non-scientist, Chambers'Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation which sold 20 000 copies between 1844 and 1860 (Poe's was printed in 500 copies, probably not all were sold - he had anticipated so much more), he would probably have been extensively criticized just like Chambers, who was attacked for not having done real scientific work himself before publishing bold speculative theories.

For more about Chambers: Richard Yeo, "Science and intellectual authority in mid-nineteenth-century Britain: Robert Chambers and Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation", Victorian Studies vol 27 (1984), 5-31.

mainly becuase he didn't attempt hypothesis testing by experimentation.