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The Natural Philosophy of Samuel Taylor Coleridge THE NATURAL PHILOSOPHY OF SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE by Janusz Aleksander Sysak Submitted in total fulfillment of the requirements of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. March 2000. Department of History and Philosophy of Science, The University of Melbourne. p.2 ABSTRACT This thesis aims to show that Coleridge's thinking about science was inseparable from and influenced by his social and political concerns. During his lifetime, science was undergoing a major transition from mechanistic to dynamical modes of explanation. Coleridge's views on natural philosophy reflect this change. As a young man, in the mid-1790s, he embraced the mechanistic philosophy of Necessitarianism, especially in his psychology. In the early 1800s, however, he began to condemn the ideas to which he had previously been attracted. While there were technical, philosophical and religious reasons for this turnabout, there were also major political ones. For he repeatedly complained that the prevailing 'mechanical philosophy' of the period bolstered emerging liberal and Utilitarian philosophies based ultimately on self-interest. To combat the 'commercial' ideology of early nineteenth century Britain, he accordingly advocated an alternative, 'dynamic' view of nature, derived from German Idealism. I argue that Coleridge championed this 'dynamic philosophy' because it sustained his own conservative politics, grounded ultimately on the view that states possess an intrinsic unity, so are not the product of individualistic self-interest. p.3 This is to certify that: (i) the thesis comprises only my original work; (ii) due acknowledgement has been made in the text to all other material used; (iii) the thesis is less than 100,000 words in length, exclusive of tables, maps, bibliographies, appendices and footnotes. p.4 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First of all, I would like to thank my supervisor, Dr. Keith Hutchison, for his continual encouragement, abiding patience, and scholarly example. His enthusiasm and interest in this project has been immeasurably helpful, and I have learnt much from him for which I am indebted. I am also grateful to the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Melbourne for its support throughout the writing and research of this thesis. On top of the material facilities it made available, the HPS Department provided a stimulating and congenial environment for doctoral study. I would also like to acknowledge the Australian government for a scholarship provided in the initial years of research. An expression of gratitude is due to all the other people - HPS staff, fellow students, friends, and colleagues - who have been supportive and taken an interest in my doctoral labours. Finally, very special thanks must be given to my family for their unwavering encouragement and moral support throughout the thesis. p.5 CONTENTS ABBREVIATIONS .......................... 7 INTRODUCTION .......................... 8 CHAPTER I: THE 'COMPLEAT NECESSITARIAN'. YOUNG COLERIDGE AND MECHANISTIC SCIENCE ....................... 13 I.1 Introduction ..................... 13 I.2 Cambridge ....................... 16 I.3 Necessitarianism ................... 20 I.4 The Moral and Political Agenda of Mechanistic Necessitarianism ...................... 26 I.5 Mechanistic Necessitarianism and the Politics of Reason 32 I.6 Unitarian Hostility to Church and State ........ 41 I.7 The 'Patriot Sages' .................. 45 I.8 'Transfer[ring] the Proofs' .............. 54 CHAPTER II: 'JACOBIN SCIENCE'— SCIENTIFIC POLITICS IN LATE EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY BRITAIN ................... 62 II.1 Introduction ..................... 62 II.2 The 'Modern Sages' .................. 66 II.3 The Establishment Assault on 'Jacobin Science' .... 83 II.4 Coleridge's Change of Heart ............. 110 CHAPTER III: 'COMMERCIAL G. BRITAIN'— COLERIDGE'S OBJECTIONS TO THE MECHANICAL PHILOSOPHY ..................... 123 III.1 Introduction .................... 123 III.2 Reductionistic Sensationalism ........... 127 III.3 The Politics of Innate Ideas ............ 133 III.4 Coleridge's 'Platonic Old England' ......... 140 III.5 'Commercial G. Britain' .............. 148 p.6 III.6 'Epicurean' Ethics ................. 157 III.7 The Distinction between the Reason and the Understanding ............................. 166 III.8 The 'Lay Sermons' ................. 174 III.9 The Mechanical State ................ 181 CHAPTER IV: 'AN ACT OR POWER' IN MATTER AND SPIRIT— DYNAMISM AND IDEALISM ........................... 196 IV.1 Introduction .................... 196 IV.2 The Young Coleridge, 'Monads' and Pantheism .... 201 IV.3 Dynamism ...................... 210 IV.4 Idealism ...................... 215 IV.5 Naturphilosophie and the Fundamental Characteristics of the External World .................... 224 IV.6 Dynamic Chemistry and Physiology in Britain .... 231 IV.7 Coleridge's Dynamic Theory of Life ......... 243 CHAPTER V: 'PRESERVING THE METHOD OF NATURE IN THE CONDUCT OF THE STATE'— COLERIDGE'S DYNAMIC POLITICS ............. 254 V.1 Introduction .................... 254 V.2 Coleridge's 'Essays on Method' ........... 257 V.3 The Politics of Idealism .............. 260 V.4 The Idealist Elite ................. 265 V.5 'Polar' Politics .................. 270 V.6 The Organic State .................. 277 CONCLUSION .......................... 292 WORKS CITED .......................... 294 p.7 ABBREVIATIONS Abbreviated titles are used throughout the footnotes in the thesis and in most cases will be intelligible to the reader without even consulting the list of works cited. However, those that may not be obvious even after consulting the works cited are: CC - The Collected Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. General editor, Kathleen Coburn. Bollingen Series 75. London and Princeton, NJ: Routledge and Kegan Paul (Routledge, in more recent volumes) and Princeton University Press, 1969 - . CL - Collected Letters of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Edited by Earl Leslie Griggs. 6 vols. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1956-71. CN - The Notebooks of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Edited by Kathleen Coburn. 3 vols. Bollingen Series 50. Vols. 1 and 2. New York: Pantheon Books, 1957, 1961. Vol. 3. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1973. PL - The Philosophical Lectures of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Edited by Kathleen Coburn. London: Pilot Press, 1949. PW - The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Edited by Ernest Hartley Coleridge. 2 vols. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1912. NOTE ON SPELLING. I have chosen not to correct the occasionally idiosyncratic spelling used in primary sources. p.8 INTRODUCTION That the author of 'The Rime of the Ancient Mariner' and the Biographia Literaria had a keen interest in science surprises many who know of Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) primarily as a poet and literary critic. This is despite the fact that even in his poetry and literary criticism there are frequent references to science. In his own day Coleridge was certainly viewed as much more than a poet. For one thing, he was famous as a political journalist and had helped bring about significant increases in the circulation of leading newspapers. He also wrote prominent treatises of a religious and political nature, and gave well-attended lectures on the history of philosophy. Again, interspersed through all of this were comments and reflections on science, revealing a deep interest in and knowledge of contemporary scientific developments. Although Coleridge did not publish any separate exposition of his scientific thought during his lifetime, there is a substantial amount of published and unpublished material of interest to the scientific historian. Yet, relatively little has been written on Coleridge's thinking about science. Recently, some major investigations have partly remedied this omission. In particular, Trevor Levere's Poetry Realized in Nature: Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Early Nineteenth-Century Science (1981) reveals the huge breadth and depth of Coleridge's scientific knowledge. Levere shows that Coleridge was conversant with the many of the latest developments in physics, chemistry, geology and natural history, and that he kept up an active dialogue about these developments with important scientific figures in early nineteenth-century Britain such as Humphry Davy and Joseph Henry Green. Levere also examines in detail the large number of German scientific and philosophical sources that informed Coleridge's 'dynamic' natural philosophy. Poetry Realized in Nature thus Introduction p.9 offers an invaluable account of the contemporary intellectual context of the mature Coleridge's thinking about science. Coleridge's earlier views on science (in the mid-1790s) form the focus of Ian Wylie's more recent Young Coleridge and the Philosophers of Nature (1989). One particular virtue of this study is that it elucidates the young poet's thought not only through the natural philosophical sources he read, but also in the light of his theological and political preoccupations. This is a fruitful approach, for we shall discover that there is ample evidence to demonstrate that Coleridge consistently viewed science as essentially tied to these other realms of inquiry. The main aim of this thesis, indeed, is to show that throughout his life, Coleridge's thinking about science was inseparable from his social and political concerns.(1) The thesis thus takes an approach to Coleridge's thought that is informed by a recent tendency in the historiography to view science as influenced not only by intellectual considerations, but also by the socio-political
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