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

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productivity and applicability.
Not only the evidence of
science, but also the progress of science, provides a
consensus for the verities of a paradigm.
Al1 texts have
their usefulness at stake. Al1 texts must legitimate their
intents.
The truth of science fuifills such a requisite by
favourably gauging i L s power over the subject against the
humane power of culture. The truth of science thus aligns
its effect, its telos, with the power of a noumenal motive.
Modern science simply colonizes the identity of the
subject, leaving no space for poetic wisdom to speak the
truth about culture except through an act of defiance
against such a norm.
Poetic wisdom must evict the values of
modern science in order to state any subjective verities.
Hence, Keats condemns Newton for the "cold philosophy" that
must "Conquer al1 mysteries by rule and line" (226) just as
Blake condemns Newton for the "Reasonings like vast
Serpents" that must hang their "iron scourges over Albion"
(16). Such reasoning that allegedly discredits imagining
only creates an undead truth, an Ur-Frankenstein that, for
Wordsworth, must await a poetic rebirth:
"the Poet will
lend his divine spirit to aid in the transfiguration" when
"science, thus familiarized to men, shall be ready to put
on, as it were, a form of flesh and blood" (456) .Io