The scientific developments of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries have traditionally been associated with the revival of Platonism. The natural philosophers who invented the methods of classical physics have usually been depicted as men who repudiated the principles of Aristotle and embraced conceptions provided by the writings of Plato and his school. The characteristic feature derived from Platonism was the emphasis on mathematics and it is with the application of mathematics to experience, under specially devised conditions, that modern science arose. (...) In this sense, it is the Piatonism of Copernicus, Kepler and Galileo, which forms the distinctive quality of the scientific revolution that culminates in the work of Newton. (shrink)

Poets, like other men, have their speculative moods. Some poets have been widely read in the literature of philosophy and have wrestled continuously with the intellectual problems of their times. From Euripides to Mr. Eliot large expanses of dialectical argument have appeared in verse, and in our own tongue Spenser, Shakespeare, Pope, Wordsworth and many other supreme writers have questioned the semblance of nature and mind, and have sought to trace the ideal forms of reality. Men of letters in every (...) generation have naturally discussed the problems of knowledge and existence and have offered emphatic opinions on them. The views of poets have been accorded particular honour and attention. Illustrious poets have declared that poetry opens a more penetrating road to truth than that which is provided by science or academic philosophy. Certain modern critics repeat these claims. “The mind of man,” writes one, “has a knowledge of truth beyond the near-truths of science and society. Poetry tells us this truth.” I will not pause here to inquire whether anything of value can be observed of poetry in general any more than can be stated of prose in general. Nor do I wish to enter into the subject of poetic truth. The questions I desire to raise concern assumptions about the philosophical ideas of poets. Recent criticism has shown a notable tendency to fasten on these ideas. The tendency revives the practice of the nineteenth century when theologians, philosophers and literary thinkers were fond of expounding the rational systems of Wordsworth, Tennyson and Browning. The present vogue of this prosaic treatment of poetry may be due to a strong recoil from the literary fashion prevalent a generation ago which minimized the intellectual feature in the art of poetry. (shrink)

Among the manifold tendencies that contributed to the philosophical revolution of the seventeenth century was a revival of Greek atomism. The ancient particulate theories of nature had been rediscovered by way of Lucretius and Diogenes Laertius in the fifteenth century and later scholars explored the principles of Democritus and Epicurus.