‘Science, Freedom and the Truth…’

Abstract

From the time of the early poem in which he asserted his allegiance to ‘Science, Freedom and the Truth in Christ’, Coleridge displayed an acute interest in the new discoveries that were being made in his time and in the wide conspectus of scientific knowledge that was by now available. He catalogued the range of scientific subjects he would feel it necessary to master if he were to embark on the writing of an epic poem for the new age and engaged himself with the various theories of life that were being bandied about. In the 1790s his chief contemporary hero was Joseph Priestley, well known in scientific circles for his work on oxygen, whose liberal political attitudes were accompanied by Unitarianism. As has already been mentioned, he was disturbed by some of his religious doctrines, which seemed to open the gates to pantheist beliefs; yet he could not find unattractive a man who struggled so valiantly for freedom in every sphere. A few years later he was even more drawn to Humphry Davy, whom he encountered at the end of the decade and who brought a poetic intellect to the work he was pursuing, initially in Bristol and then at the Royal Institution in London. For a time he even envisaged an alliance between Wordsworth, Davy and Godwin and himself in the hope of renovating English intellectual life.