- CL , II 709 – 709 . To Thomas Poole, 23 March 1801.
- IS , 139 – 140 . ‘Notes on Kant's “Vermischte Schriften”’.
- CC , XIV 243 – 243 . (Part 2) 4 July 1833.
- Some useful treatments of this theme can be found in: Ault Donald Visionary Physics: Blake's Response to Newton Chicago 1974 Frederick Burwick, The Damnation of Newton: Goethe's Color Theory and Romantic Perception (Berlin, 1986); Dennis L. Sepper, Goethe contra Newton: Polemics and the Project for a New Science of Color (Cambridge, 1988).
- TL , 30 – 31 .
- Some important treatments of Coleridge's ‘dynamic’ alternative are: Levere Trevor Poetry realized in Nature: Samuel Taylor Coleridge and early Nineteenth-Century Science Cambridge 1981 Raimonda Modiano, Coleridge and the Concept of Nature (London, 1985), pp. 138–206; Craig W. Miller, ‘Coleridge's Concept of Nature’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 25 (1964), 77–96; M. H. Abrams, ‘Coleridge's “A Light in Sound”: Science, Metascience, and Poetic Imagination’, in The Correspondent Breeze: Essays on English Romanticism (New York, 1984), pp. 158–91.
- On Coleridge's reading of eighteenth-century Newtonianism, see Wylie Ian Young Coleridge and the Philosophers of Nature Oxford 1989 34 43 47–8, 81–2; H. W. Piper, The Active Universe: Pantheism and the Concept of Imagination in the English Romantic Poets (London, 1962), pp. 31–5, 38. Coleridge's mathematical illiteracy, which he sorely regretted later in life, would of course have prevented him from comprehending much of Newton's work. See Levere (footnote 6), pp. 138, 250, n. 62.
- See, for example, Wylie Young Coleridge and the Philosophers of Nature Oxford 1989 36 37
- Levere , Trevor . 1978 . S. T. Coleridge: A poet's View of Science . Annals of Science , 35 : 33 – 44 . (p. 39). See also Levere (footnote 6), 58–61; Abrams (footnote 6), p. 168. Sepper similarly suggests that Goethe's early attacks on Newton were also largely directed against eighteenth-century ‘Newtonian’ texts rather than Newton. Sepper (footnote 4), 17. See also Keld Nielsen, ‘Another Kind of Light: The Work of T. J. Seebeck and his Collaboration with Goethe. Part 1’, Historical Studies in the Physical and Biological Sciences, 20 (1989), 107–78 (p. 139). On the wide variety of ‘Newtonianisms’ in the Enlightenment see: Robert E. Schofield, Mechanism and Materialism: British Natural Philosophy in an Age of Reason (Princeton, N. J., 1970); idem, ‘An Evolutionary Taxonomy of Eighteenth-Century Newtonianisms’, Studies in Eigheeenth-Century Culture, 7 (1978), 175–92.
- See Buchdahl Gerd The Image of Newton and Locke in The Age of Reason London 1961
- Nevertheless, Coleridge did seem to entertain grave doubts about the anti-Newtonian sentiments expressed in this letter. Several years later, on learning that it had been lent to a mutual friend for transcription, he twice begged Poole to destroy it, anxiously maintaining that, if what he wrote ‘with dreamlike imagination respecting Sir Isaac Newton’ be made public, he would be considered ‘as a man mad with Presumption’, CL II 1046 1047 1013–4. To Thomas Poole: 30 January, 1804, 14 October, 1803. It is easy to see why Coleridge was so distressed. In nineteenth-century Britain, Newton's name was commonly invoked in support of national prestige. It would therefore have been construed as highly unpatriotic to denigrate him, particularly in a period when British sovereignty was under threat from France. Moreover, there was a strong tendency at this time to associate scientific method, especially Newton's, with questions of morality. See Richard Yeo, ‘Genius, Method, and Morality: Images of Newton in Britain, 1760–1860’, Science in Context, 2 (1988), 257–84. Criticism of Locke, however, was quite acceptable, principally because his thought was so closely associated with anti-Establishment politics. See Hans Aarsleff, ‘Locke's Reputation in Nineteenth-Century England’, The Monist, 55 (1971), 392–422.
- CL , III 414 – 414 . To John Rickman, 17 July 1812. The work Coleridge was referring to here was Saumarez's 1812 Principles of Physiological and Physical Science. Coleridge later claimed that this work and Saumarez's earlier New System of Physiology (1798) made this author ‘the first instaurator of the dynamic philosophy in England’. CC, vii (Part 1), 162–3.
- CC , I 189 – 190 .
- ‘Religious Musings’,, ll. 364–8; PW I 122 123
- From a translation by Robert Southey of Coleridge's Greek ‘Ode on Astronomy’, cited in Beer John Coleridge the Visionary London 1959 299 299
- Hartley, also, had been a member of Jesus College, and was most probably discussed in the radical Unitarian milieu within which Coleridge mixed. See Gasgoigne John Cambridge in the Age of the Enlightenment: Science, Religion and Politics from the Restoration to the French Revolution Cambridge 1989 128 128 227
- Hartley , David . 1749 . Observations on Man, His Frame, His Duty, and His Expectations London facsimile reprint Gainesville, Fla., 1966), Part 1, pp. 13–34. Hartley admitted to an incomplete grasp of Newton's concept and referred his reader to ‘what Sir Isaac Newton has himself advanced concerning the Existence of this Aether … in the last Paragraph of his Principia, the Questions annexed to his Optics, and a Letter, from him to Mr. Boyle …’ (p. 14). Title of Hartley's work hereafter abbreviated to Observations.
- ‘Religious Musings’, ll. 368–70; PW I 123 123
- CL , II 686 – 686 . To Josiah Wedgwood, 24 February 1801. See also CC, vii (Part 1), 92.
- ‘Religious Musings’, l. 371; PW I 123 123
- See Roe Nicholas Wordsworth and Coleridge: The Radical Years Oxford 1988 94 110 Paul Deschamps, La Formation de la Pensée de Coleridge (1772–1804) (Paris, 1964), pp. 315–21; Gascoigne (footnote 16), pp. 226–33.
- See McEvoy J.G. McGuire J.E. God and Nature: Priestley's Way of Rational Dissent Historical Studies in the Physical Sciences 1975 6 325 404 (pp. 348–57); John G. McEvoy, ‘Electricity, Knowledge, and the Nature of Progress in Priestley's Thought’, The British Journal for the History of Science, 12 (1979), 1–30 (p. 7).
- See Priestley Joseph Disquisitions Relating to Matter and Spirit London 1777 reprint New York, 1975), pp. 16–18; idem. Hartley's Theory of the Human Mind, on the Principle of the Association of Ideas: with Essays Relating to the Subject of it (London, 1775; reprint New York, 1973), p. xx.
- CL , I 147 – 147 . 137. To Robert Southey: 29 December 1794, 11 December 1794.
- J of A , 41 – 41 . Bk 2, l. 34 The end of the line also mentions ‘essences’. The target in this instance is not obvious, but is possibly Locke who made extensive use of the term. The footnote is on pp. 41–2. Coleridge incorporated 255 lines of his contribution to Joan of Arc in his poem ‘The Destiny of Nations’ (1796).
- See Baxter Andrew An Enquiry into the Nature of the Human Soul; wherein the Immateriality of the Soul is evinced from the Principles of Reason and Philosophy London 1733 16 16
- Baxter , Andrew . 1733 . An Enquiry into the Nature of the Human Soul; wherein the Immateriality of the Soul is evinced from the Principles of Reason and Philosophy 16 – 16 . London Similar arguments against the Newtonian aether were presented by Priestley in Disquisitions Relating to Matter and Spirit (footnote 23), 350–1.
- See Heimann P.M. Ether and Imponderables Conceptions of Ether: Studies in the History of Ether Theories 1740–1900 Cantor G.N. Hodge M.J.S. Cambridge 1981 61 83 in (p. 66). On the radical active spirit/inert matter distinction of seventeenth-century natural philosophers, see: Keith Hutchison, ‘Supernaturalism and the Mechanical Philosophy’, History of Science, 21 (1983), 297–333 (passim, esp. p. 320); Stephen Toulmin, Cosmopolis: The Hidden Agenda of Modernity (New York, 1990), pp. 111–13. A view dissenting from this standard interpretation is argued by John Henry, ‘Occult Qualities and the Experimental Philosophy: Active Principles in Pre-Newtonian Matter Theory’, History of Science, 24 (1986), 335–81 (passim).
- CN , I entry 203. Kathleen Coburn dates this between 9 November and 13 December, 1796 (see footonote 30).
- CN , I entry 203n. Coleridge had borrowed this work from the Bristol Library between 9 November and 13 December 1796, which leads Coburn to the same dating for Coleridge's note. Ibid., entry 200n. The citation Cudworth used from Aristotle is actually transcribed by Coleridge in a slightly later note. Ibid., entry 208.
- Cudworth , Ralph . 1678 . The True Intellectual System of the Universe London reprinted in 2 vols, New York & London, 1978), I, 153–4. See also CC, XII (Part 1), 557.
- Alexander , H.G. , ed. 1956 . The Leibniz-Clarke Correspondence 29 – 30 . Manchester 42–3.
- CL , IV 768 – 768 . To C. A. Tulk, September 1817.
- See Hobsbawm E.J. The Age of Revolution 1789–1848 New York 1962 259 259
- J of A , 42 – 42 . ‘Adytum’ is explained in The Oxford English Dictionary (2nd edition; Oxford, 1989) as ‘The innermost part of a temple; the secret shrine whence oracles were delivered’.
- CC , VII 107 – 107 . (Part 1) Title of this work hereafter abbreviated to Biographia Literaria. See also PL, p. 146.
- CL , II 709 – 709 .
- Newton , Isaac . 1952 . Opticks, or a Treatise of the Reflections, Refractions, Inflections & Colours of Light 345 – 345 . New York based on 4th edition, London, 1730 353
- Newton , Isaac . 1952 . Opticks, or a Treatise of the Reflections, Refractions, Inflections & Colours of Light 353 – 354 . New York
- Newton , Isaac . 1952 . Opticks, or a Treatise of the Reflections, Refractions, Refractions, Inflections & Colours of Light 403 – 403 . New York Newton used the analogy of human perception and volition elsewhere to convey a picture of the way in which God exercised His omnipotence. For example, in a draft manuscript from the 1690s, he compared God's power to ‘the thinking part of a man [which] perceives the appearances of things brought into the brain and thence rules its own body’. Cited in J. E. McGuire, ‘Force, Active Principles, and Newton's Invisible Realm’, Ambix, 15 (1968), 154–208 (p. 190). Newton also saw a parallel between the power of mind over body and the operation in nature of ‘active principles’ that were manifestations of divine agency. Ibid., 170–1.
- See CL II 676 676 To Thomas Poole, 13 February 1801.
- CL , II 706 – 707 . To Thomas Poole, 16 March 1801. See also ibid., 746. To Robert Southey, 22 July 1801. Coleridge here informs Southey that he is reading Duns Scotus, ‘burning Locke, Hume & Hobbes under [Scotus'] Nose’.
- CL , IV 670 – 670 . To Hugh J. Rose, 17 September 1816; ibid., 776. To C. A. Tulk, September 1817. It is interesting to compare these statements with the Advertisement to the 4th edition (1839) of Aids to Reflection, written by Coleridge's nephew, Henry Nelson Coleridge, in which Locke is presented as the chief perpetrator of the philosophy that Coleridge is attempting to subvert. AR, p. ix.
- See, for example CC VII 106 115 (Part 1)
- CC , VII 120 – 121 . (Part 1) Hume's sensationalist psychology, also, is criticized here for contributing to ‘the equal degradation of every fundamental idea in ethics or theology’.
- CL , II 677 – 703 . To Josiah Wedgwood, February 1801. The background to these letters has been documented by R. Florence Brinkley, ‘Coleridge on Locke’, Studies in Philology, 46 (1949), 521–43.
- CL , II 675 – 675 . To Thomas Poole, 13 February 1801. Only the preliminary lecture of Mackintosh's series was published as ‘A Discourse on the Law of Nature and Nations’ in The Miscellaneous Works of The Right Honourable Sir James Mackintosh, 3 vols (London, 1846), I, 341–87.
- CL , II 699 – 699 . 686, 684. Coleridge also intended to take Mackintosh to task over the latter's claim that Hobbes had discovered the principle of the association of ideas. Coleridge only undertook this much later in Biographia Literaria, where he also castigated Mackintosh for maintaining that ‘the law of association … formed the basis of all true psychology; and any ontological or metaphysical science not contained in such (i.e. empirical) psychology was but a web of abstractions and generalizations’. CC, VII (Part 1), 91–2.
- See Aarsleff Locke's Reputation in Nineteenth-Century England The Monist 1971 55 392 422
- CL , II 701 – 703 .
- CN , II entry 3156. September 1807.
- See CL II 1046 1047
- CC , V 208 – 208 . (Part 1) 542, 546, 583–4.
- Gascoigne , John . 1988 . From Bentley to the Victorians: The Rise and Fall of British Newtonian Natural Theology . Science in Context , 2 : 219 – 256 . (pp. 233–4).
- Robison , John . 1797 . Proofs of a Conspiracy against all the Religions and Governments of Europe, carried on in the Secret Meetings of Free Masons, Illuminati, and Reading Societies 484 – 484 . Edinburgh
- Priestley . 1775 . Hartley's Theory of the Human Mind, on the Principle of the Association of Ideas: with Essays Relating to the Subject of it xiv – xiv . London
- Robison . 1797 . Proofs of a Conspiracy against all the Religions and Governments of Europe, carried on in the Secret Meetings of Free Masons, Illuminati, and Reading Societies 482 – 483 . Edinburgh
- The opinion, already advanced in Coleridge's letters of 1801 to Wedgwood, that Locke's reputation was due partly to the patriotic association of his name with Newton's was subsequently reiterated. See, for example: CC XIV 563 563 (Part 1) PL, p. 380.
- CL , IV 574 – 574 . To William Wordsworth, 30 May 1815.
- CL , IV 579 – 579 . To R. H. Brabant, 29 July 1815. Thomas Carlyle also complained that ‘our whole Metaphysics … from Locke's time downwards, has been physical; not a spiritual philosophy, but a material one’. Thomas Carlyle, ‘Signs of the Times’, in Critical and Miscellaneous Essays, II, 56–82 (p. 64); originally published in Edinburgh Review, 49 (June 1829), 439–59.
- CL , IV 956 – 956 . To the Editor of Blackwood's Magazine, October 1819.
- AR , 330 – 330 .
- CL , IV 775 – 775 . To C. A. Tulk, September 1817, Coleridge considered the primacy accorded to active spirit in German idealist philosophy to be the foremost influence on his dynamic conception of nature. In one place he declared that it was particularly Fichte who could be commended for ‘having prepared the ground for, and laid the first stone of, the Dynamic Philosophy by the substitution of Act for Thing’. Ibid., 792. To J. H. Green, 13 December 1817.
- Coleridge's mature philosophy of nature is sketched out in the Hints towards the Formation of a More Comprehensive Theory of Life. This work was probably conceived around 1816, but composed afterwards with various revisions. See Levere Poetry realized in Nature: Samuel Taylor Coleridge and early Nineteenth-Century Science Cambridge 1981 42 45 Some letters from this period are also a useful source for Coleridge's thinking at this time. These are found in CL, iv: 688–90. To James Gillman, 10 November 1816; 757–63. To Lord Liverpool, 29 July 1817; 767–76, 804–9. To C. A. Tulk: September 1817, 12 January 1818.
- 1833 . CC , XIV June : 394 – 394 . (Part 1) 29
- On the problematic interpretation of this dualism, see Heimann P.M. Ether and Imponderables Conceptions of Ether: Studies in the History of Ether Theories 1740–1900 Cantor G.N. Hodge M.J.S. Cambridge 1981 61 83 in
- CC , VII 129 – 130 . (Part 1) and PL, 349–50. On the primacy of powers in Coleridge's ontology, see Levere (footnote 6), 108–13.
- Matter, for Coleridge, was thus inferior to and distinct from spirit: it was the observable result of spiritual activity—what our senses register of any physical event. To reinforce this difference, he proposed using the term ‘body’ instead of ‘matter’ to indicate corporeality, ‘body’ signifying the sum of spiritual energies and their phenomenal manifestation. CC VI 81n 81n See also PL, 370, and Miller (footnote 6), 91. Despite his preference for Kant's philosophy, in marginal annotations to the Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science (1786), Coleridge complained about Kant's apparently inconsistent treatment of the relationship between fundamental immaterial forces and the phenomena they caused. At times, Coleridge argued, these forces were portrayed as being properties of matter rather than the other way around. See Modiano (footnote 6), 156. Coleridge's concern to maintain a distinction between matter and spirit made him wary also of some the views of Schelling and other Naturphilosophen, which he saw as tending dangerously toward pantheism and atheism. See Modiano (footnote 6), 180–2; Thomas McFarland, Coleridge and the Pantheist Tradition (Oxford, 1969), pp. 154–5, 159–60.
- Alexander , H.G. , ed. 1956 . The Leibniz-Clarke Correspondence 94 – 94 . Manchester
- See Metzger Hélène Attraction Universelle et Religion Naturelle chez quelques Commentateurs Anglais de Newton Paris 1938 95 103 113–76. The similarity between the dynamic, immaterial aspect of Newton's philosophy and Coleridge's conception of matter has been noted by Levere (footnote 6), 122–3.
- Newton to Bentley, 25 February 1692/3, in The Correspondence of Isaac Newton et al. Cambridge 1959–77 III 253 254 See R. W. Home, ‘Force, Electricity, and the Powers of Living Matter in Newton's Mature Philosophy of Nature’, in Religion, Science, and Worldview, edited by Margaret J. Osler and Paul Lawrence Farber (Cambridge, 1985), pp. 95–117.
- AR , 334 – 335 .
- Kant , Immanuel . 1900 . Universal Natural History and Theory of the Heavens, or an Essay on the Constitution and Mechanical Origin of the Whole Universe Treated According to Newton's Principles Glasgow translated by W. Hastie Ann Arbor, 1969), p. 35. See also Ronald Calinger, ‘Kant and Newtonian Science: The Pre-Critical Period’, Isis, 70 (1979), 349–62 (esp. pp. 349–54).
- Heimann , P.M. and McGuire , J.E. 1971 . Newtonian Forces and Lockean Powers: Concepts of Matter in Eighteenth-Century Thought . Historical Studies in the Physical Sciences , 3 : 233 – 306 . On Newton's role in the formation of the new dynamic physics emerging from seventeenth-century mechanical philosophy, see also Richard S. Westfall, Force in Newton's Physics: The Science of Dynamics in the Seventeenth Century (London, 1971), pp. 377–400.
- CC , XII 1203 – 1203 . (Part 2) Marginal note to James Hutton, An Investigation of the Principles of Knowledge, and of the Progress of Reason, from Sense to Science and Philosophy (1794).
- AR , 335 – 336 .
- CC , VII 295 – 296 . (Part 1) The editors point out that Coleridge's source for this quotation was the second edition of F. H. Jacobi's Über die Lehre des Spinozas, in Briefen an den Herrn Moses Mendelssohn (1789).
- 1956 . Leibniz: Philosophical Papers and Letters Vol. II , 712 – 712 . Chicago translated and edited by L. E. Loemker On Leibniz's dynamics, see: Max Jammer, Concepts of Force: a Study in the Foundations of Dynamics (Cambridge, Mass., 1957), pp. 158–70; William Henry Barber, Leibniz in France from Arnauld to Voltaire: A Study in French Reactions to Leibnizianism, 1670–1760 (Oxford, 1955), pp. 11, 36–9; Stuart Brown, Leibniz (Brighton, Sussex, 1984), pp. 150, 202–3.
- Dobbs , B.J.T. 1988 . “ Newton's Commentary on the Emerald Tablet of Hermes Trismegistus: Its Scientific and Theological Significance ” . In Hermeticism and the Renaissance. Intellectual History and the Occult in Early Modern Europe Edited by: Merkel , Ingrid and Debus , Allen G. 182 – 191 . London in
- See also Dobbs B.J.T. Newton's Alchemy and His Theory of Matter Isis 1982 73 511 528 idem, ‘Newton's Copy of Secrets Reveal'd and the Regimens of the Work’, Ambix, 26 (1979), 145–69 (esp. pp. 162–4).
- 1818 . CL , IV : 806 – 806 . To C. A. Tulk, 12 January
- Cited in Dobbs Newton's Commentary on the Emerald Tablet of Hermes Trismegistus: Its Scientific and Theological Significance Hermeticism and the Renaissance. Intellectual History and the Occult in Early Modern Europe Merkel Ingrid Debus Allen G. London 1988 184 184 in
- CC , IV 94 – 94 . (Part 1) CC, vii (Part 1), 144–51, 161.
- CN , III entry 4414. May–July 1818.
- See IS 139 140
- For a telling example of the way in which developments in eighteenth-century optics foreshadowed this contrast between a Neoclassical conception of nature as uniform and regular, and a Romantic fascination with nature's diversity, see Hutchison Keith Idiosyncrasy, achromatic lenses, and early Romanticism Centaurus 1991 34 125 171
- CC , V 494 – 495 . (Part 1) The Romantic interest in organic process accompanied new conceptual formulations of the nature of the work of art and of artistic creativity. See M. H. Abrams, The Mirror and the Lamp: Romantic Theory and the Critical Tradition (New York, 1953), pp. 168–75, 202–13. The fascination with organicism, however, began much earlier. Both literary and scientific historians have noted how, toward the middle of the eighteenth century, artists and philosophers turned from mechanical to biological metaphors and imagery. This coincided with a growing interest in vitalistic biology, due to recent physiological discoveries. See: Aram Vartanian, Diderot and Descartes: A Study of Scientific Naturalism in the Enlightenment (Princeton, N.J., 1953), pp. 252 et seq.; Jacques Roger, Les Sciences de la Vie dans la Pensée Francaise du XVIIIe siècle: La Génération des Animaux de Descartes à l'Encyclopédie (2nd edition, Paris, 1971), pp. 457 et seq. In literary works, this change manifested itself in a movement away from examples taken from astronomy toward a preference for the more popular and readily accessible field of natural history. See William Powell Jones, The Rhetoric of Science: A Study of Scientific Ideas and Imagery in Eighteenth-Century English Poetry (London, 1966), passim, esp. pp. 160–80. John Gascoigne demonstrates that a similar transition occurred in late Enlightenment and early Victorian natural theology. God's design in nature was no longer supported by reference to the increasingly complicated and remote world of celestial mechanics revealed by Newton, but through illustration drawn from the living creation closer to hand. Gascoigne (footnote 54), 231–3.
- TL , 63
- CL , V 309 – 309 . To Dr. Williamson, 11 November 1823; CC, iv (Part 1), 470–1. Coleridge also frequently contrasted Newton with Kepler. For the Romantics, Kepler was the paradigmatic scientific genius whose intuitive insights the likes of Newton had had the good fortune to build upon. In one place, Coleridge wrote that ‘Galileo was a great genius and so was Newton; but it would take two or three Galileos and Newtons to make one Kepler. It is in the order of Providence that the inventive, generative, constitutive mind—the Kepler—should come first; and then the patient and collective mind—the Newton—should follow and elaborate the pregnant Queries and illumining Guesses of the former’. CC, xiv (Part 1), 210–11. 8 October 1830.
- See McGuire Force, Active Principles, and Newton's Invisible Realm Ambix 1968 15 176 178 204–5.
- See The Leibniz-Clarke Correspondence Alexander H.G. Manchester 1956 14 14 See also Hutchison (footnote 28), 298, 318–9; John Brooke, ‘The God of Isaac Newton’, in Let Newton be!, edited by John Fauvel et al. (Oxford, 1988), pp. 169–83.
- AR , 338 – 338 .
- Cajori , Florian , ed. 1934 . Sir Isaac Newton's Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy and his System of the World 546 – 546 . Cambridge (1729 translation by Andrew Motte)
- Coleridge was in fact acquainted with the physico-theology of William Derham and John Ray, See, for example: CN March 1802 I entry 1147 ibid., entry 1616. October 1803; CN, iii, entry 4029. 1810. On the physico-theological tradition in eighteenth-century Britain, see Jones (footnote 87).
- Wylie . 1989 . Young Coleridge and the Philosophers of Nature 12 – 26 . Oxford Discussion of Newton and a tradition of ancient wisdom can be found in: J. E. McGuire and P. M. Rattansi, ‘Newton and the “Pipes of Pan”’, Notes and Records of The Royal Society of London, 21 (1966), 108–43; B. J. T. Dobbs, The Foundations of Newton's Alchemy or ‘The Hunting of the Greene Lyon’ (Cambridge, 1975), passim; idem, ‘Newton's Alchemy and his ‘Active principle’ of Gravitation’ in Newton's Scientific and Philosophical Legacy, edited by P. B. Scheurer and G. Debrock (Dordrecht, 1988), pp. 55–80.
- See Wylie Young Coleridge and the Philosophers of Nature Oxford 1989 47 61
- CL , IV 589 – 589 . To John May, 27 September 1815.
- In a paper currently in preparation, I argue that Coleridge's construction of Newton has the same motivation as the widespread idealization of the Middle Ages in the early nineteenth century. Both can be seen as a reaction to philosophical, political, and social developments of the Enlightenment. The semimythical re-creation of the past was a means to counteracting these developments. On this question, see Chandler Alice A Dream of Order: the Medieval Ideal in Nineteenth-Century English Literature London 1971 A clear indication that Coleridge saw a correlation between philosophical trends and contemporary social developments is provided in a well-known letter written in 1817 to the British Prime Minister, Lord Liverpool. Here Coleridge repeatedly urged his correspondent to recognize the disturbing connections between ‘the predominant system of speculative Philosophy’ and ‘the Religious … and the Political tendencies of the public mind’. CL, IV, 757–63, (759). To Lord Liverpool, 28 July 1817.
Annals of Science
Volume 50, 1993 - Issue 1