A final example

Understandably, I have been subjected to some criticism for my previous post. I do not wish to prolong the dialectic but I quote in this post a specific example of how a mind capable of producing brilliant images through poetry on one instance can seem seriously deluded on another. I quote the example of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who was one of the prolific romantic poets in late eighteenth century England. He is known to have written very little poetry but all of his works are regarded for their sheer brilliance. E. T. Bell states in "Men of Mathematics" that the German mathematician Riemann is to mathematics what Coleridge is to English poetry.

Coleridge is best known for 'The Rime of the Ancient Mariner', some verses of which I happened to read as a kid in school. I distinctly remember following lines; perhaps the stern manner in which my English teacher enunciated these lines facilitated in their being imprinted in my memory,

Day after day, day after day,
We stuck, nor breath nor motion;
As idle as a painted ship
Upon a painted ocean.

Water, water, everywhere,
And all the boards did shrink;
Water, water, everywhere,
Nor any drop to drink.

Coleridge was also known for his masterful prose. In the following paragraph (which I reproduce from "Unweaving the Rainbow"), Coleridge notes his exhilaration on seeing a rainbow in the sky (Anima Poetae, published 1895):

The steadfast rainbow in the fast-moving, fast-hurrying hail-mist. What a congregation of images and feelings, of fantastic permanence amidst the rapid change of tempest- quietness the daughter of storm.

Coleridge is known to have tried his hand at science too. He attempted to dissect the light spectrum and is known to have nourished a sincere aim at some point of time in his life to write a treatise on the subject. The following is an excerpt of his 'analyses'. This was written almost a century and a half after Newton had published his authoritative 'Optiks' which had laid the foundation of the corpuscular theory of light spectra and lenses until the wave theory superseded it in many respects. In Dawkins' words, 'Coleridge's heart must have been in the right place with respect to science.....but he failed to live up to his own ideals to "unfold and arrange" his ideas in "distinct, clear and communicable conceptions"'. The following is a critique of Newton that Coleridge penned in 1817:

To me, I confess, Newton's positions, first, of a Ray of Light, as a physical synodical Individuum, secondly, that seven specific individua are co-existent (by what copula?) in this complex yet indivisible Ray; thirdly that the Prism is a mere mechanic Dissector of this Ray; and lastly, that Light, as the common result, is = confusion.

For those who find the above paragraph out of context, Coleridge was essentially opposed to Netwon's thesis that white light consists of seven component lights (which are essentially frequencies corresponding to violet, indigo, blue, green, yellow, orange and red) respectively and they are resolved on passing a ray through a prism. Coleridge had more radical ideas about the nature of colour,

So again, Colour is Gravitation under the power of Light, Yellow being the positive, blue the negative Pole, and Red the culmination or Equator; while Sound on the other hand is Light under the power or paramountcy of Gravitation.

Coleridge and Newton lived more than two hundred years ago. Perhaps, science and poetry were then luxuries that only the elite could afford. But as an individual who perpetually enjoys a healthy confluence between the two domains, I truly feel that obscurantism should be criticized. Romantics who choose science as a subject to write about should judiciously try to keep their language simple and avoid ambiguities. Mathematics and physics do not need to be exoticized to concoct poetry. The poetry is already there.