Galileo, Donne, and Poetry

After hearing some of Mala Radhakrishnan’s poetry in class this week, I was inspired to look up further examples of scientific concepts that had been captured by poetry. In my research I came across a poem written by the 16th century poet John Donne that captures his skepticism at some of Galileo and Copernicus’ findings that the Earth revolves around the sun. The poem was originally commissioned as a funeral elegy for Elizabeth Drury, who died at age 14, the daughter of a wealthy London landowner. However, Donne seizes the poem as an opportunity to exclaim his confusion at Copernicus’ theory that the earth revolves around the sun:

An excerpt from “An Anatomy of the World” (1611)

And new philosophy calls all in doubt,
The element of fire is quite put out;
The sun is lost, and th’ earth, and no man’s wit
Can well direct him where to look for it.
And freely men confess that this world’s spent,
When in the planets, and the firmament
They seek so many new …
‘Tis all in pieces, all coherence gone …

The fire gone out is a reference to the placement of the sun and Donne makes frequent references to “new planets that are sought” that he claims to have lost all coherence. The new theories of Galileo and Copernicus confuse him and he does not know who or what to believe at this point. All of his prior understandings of the universe have been contradicted.

This poem is fascinating in the fact that it shows that the relationship between science and poetry has been present for a long time. Artists and poets have been striving for many centuries to both question and simultaneously explain the scientific phenomena that they are witnessing.