The Age of Milton and the Scientific Revolution

ONE. Milton among Early Modern Scientists

ONE Milton among Early Modern Scientists John Milton famously denounces individual teachers as well as the horde of dreadful pedagogues who are the bane of his education, of his beloved nation, and of humankind in general. He pillories the men “who pollute all learning, divine and human, by their frivolous subtleties and barren disputations” as “grievous Wolves,” “unbending tutors,” “babblers,” “false Doctors,” “hirelings,” “driveling monks,” and more.1 For the most part, he leaves the despised pedagogues unnamed, as if to “Nameless in dark oblivion let them dwell,” just as his epic narrator leaves the despised rebel angels in Paradise Lost (6.380).2 Infamous exceptions, of course, are the “unpracticed ignoramus,” “crackbrained, moneygrabbing Frenchman” Claude Saumaise (Salmasius) (1588–1653), scholar-in-residence at the University of Leyden, and the “noxious and infamous” Alexander More (1616–1670), Swedish professor of Greek (YP 4:1.324, 527; 4:2.751). Similar invectives embellish the writings of chief figures of the English Scientific Revolution. In the preface to On the Loadstone and Magnetic Bodies (1600), William Gilbert (1540–1603) inveighs against the “incompetent and shallow philosophers” who are so mired in Aristotelianism that they will be baffled by his findings.3 In the front matter of Thomas Sprat’s History of the Royal-Society 31 32 The Age of Milton and the Scientific Revolution of London for the Improving of Natural Knowledge (1667), Abraham Cowley’s (1618–1667) panegyric “To the Royal Society” blames the miserable state of “Philosophy” or “Science” on “oh, the Guardians and the Tutors . . . (Some negligent, and some ambitious men)” (1.1, 12, 14–15). Even the mild-mannered Robert Boyle censures the “Peripateticke Infidells” and “jarring & litigious Ergoteers” whose practices impede learning.4 Many biographers, historians of science, and literary critics have extended these condemnations onto the teaching profession of England’s early modern period in general. However, such a totalizing assessment is undermined by a number of compelling facts. Milton and early modern English scientists penned numerous effusive panegyrics to their admirable teachers, Milton was a teacher in the 1640s, and many of the chief English scientists of the period taught at universities and founded institutions of learning in or surrounding London. In this chapter, I will argue that neither Milton nor his scienti fically minded contemporaries held pedagogy in contempt, but rather that the condemnations of poor practitioners reveal their fervor for a profession in which they placed their great hopes. Concurrently, it gathers evidence that clarifies the extent to which early modern English scientists were a part of Milton’s life and work. As stated in the introduction, I do not use biography and history as a validation of the science to be found in Milton’s poetry. Instead, this chapter focuses on reviewing and resituating some of the many personal associations Milton had with leaders of the English Scientific Revolution as part of the larger premise that Milton’s detailed and faithful representations of the advancement of learning derive from his participation in an active intellectual community that included leading scientists. This chapter’s focus, then, is instrumental in demonstrating that the Scientific Revolution was part of a larger culture of educational reform.5 In Milton’s poetry and coeval scientific texts, the educational ideal depends most heavily upon teachers. Teachers are given the heroic task of instructing pupils on the fine and broad points of all the traditional topics, diligently attending to the specific needs of each unique student, basing instruction on extensive life experiences , displaying innovative thought and physical athleticism, and willingly deferring to other specialized teachers for effective, collaborative instruction. At first glance, these demanding and diverse characteristics appear rather idealistic. But the model was founded on firsthand youthful educational experiences and mature observations of the changing face of early modern English educators . In Milton’s works, we have a veritable chronicle of that transformation , one that enables us to see how select pedagogical qualities that had been in demand since antiquity were filtered and then combined with new skills demanded by the English Scientific Revolution in order to produce a pedagogical model that remains powerful in educational settings and popular culture today.6 Because, as has been noted, “the humanist movement was in essence an educational program designed to produce morally informed men and women,” the status of teachers had already been significantly elevated in the sixteenth...