PATAPHYSICS-THE-POETICS-OF-AN-IMAGINARY- SCIENCE_C_Bok

numerous elegies to scientists, particularly N ewton, despite
the fact that science follows a principle of antipoeisis). 7
Newton berates poetry for its "ingenius nonsense" (Bush
40) even though Glover portrays him as the paragon of
poetry: "O might'st thou, ORPHEUS,
now again revive,/ And
NEWTON should inform thy list'ning ear" ([Pemberton 231).
Poetry indulges in scientific sycophancy, largely because
the gravity of force in the Princi~ia lends itself to the
idea of a poetic sublime just as the levity of light in the
Opticks lends itself to the idea of a poetic beauty. 8
Glover writes that "Newton demands the muse" ([14]), but
soon Thomson w onders:
"How shall the Muse, then, grasp the
mighty theme," particularly "when but a few/ Of the deepstudying
race can stretch their minds/ To what he knew"
(1853:337). Science has unveiled so many universal
mysteries that, ironically, it threatens to become a poetry
of truth more sublime than the truth of poetry itself.
Poetry makes an effort to dispute this omniscience of
science (its will to power), as Swift does, for example, but
poetry cannot dispute the conscience of science (its will to
truth). While science ascends to a state of greater
complexity, becoming more abstract, theoretic, and
autocratic, poetry descends through science to a state of