The Physicality of Thought?: Images and Quotes (Part 1)

Like Cavendish, William Blake worried about attempts to reduce the mind to the brain, and about the scientific method more generally. Here, in Blake's illustrated engraving, Newton (above), we see the celebrated Newton attempting to pin down the infinitely complex world with a compass, an act Blake viewed as antithetical to organic growth and poetic renderings of cognitive intricacy. 

A quote from Blake's Jerusalem.

"O Divine Spirit sustain me on thy wings!
For Bacon & Newton sheathd in dismal steel, their terrors hang
Like iron scourges over Albion.  Reasonings like vast Serpents
Enfold around my limbs, bruising my minute articulations"  

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A portrait of Margaret Cavendish, early woman writer, forger (with Bacon) of the science fiction genre, female scientist.

The Circle of the Brain cannot be Squared

Margaret Cavendish

 

A Circle round divided in four parts
Hath been great Study 'mongst the men of Arts;
Since Archimed's or Euclid's time, each Brain
Hath on a Line been stretched, yet all in Vain;
And every Thought hath been a Figure set,
Doubts Cyphers were, Hopes as Triangles met;
There was Division and Subtraction made,
And Lines drawn out, and Points exactly laid,
But none hath yet by Demonstration found
The way, by which to Square a Circle round:
For while the Brain is round, no Square will be,
While Thoughts divide, no Figures will agree.
And others did upon the same account,
Doubling the Cube to a great number mount;
But some the Triangles did cut so small,
Till into equal Atoms they did fall:
For such is Man's curiosity and mind,
To seek for that, which is hardest to find.

 

(For those not present in class: cypher is an early-modern term for zero.  Enjoy the math.)

Also, a quote from Cavendish to add...

True it is, Spinning with the Fingers is more proper to our Sexe, then studying or writing Poetry, which is the Spinning with the braine: but I having no skill in the Art of the first (and if I had, I had no hopes of gaining so much as to make me a Garment to keep me from the cold) made me delight in the latter; since all braines work naturally, and incessently, in some kinde or other; which made me endeavour to Spin a Garment of Memory, to lapp up my Name, that it might grow to after Ages: I cannot say the Web is strong, fine, or evenly Spun, for it is a Course peice; yet I had rather my Name should go meanly clad, then dye with cold. (my italics)

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Finally, an anatomical engraving of the "Circle of Willis," a circle of arteries that supply blood to the brain. This image was published in Thomas Willis' Cerebri Anatome, or Anatomy of the Brain and Nerves (c. 1664).  The circle of the brain cannot be squared?

Note that this anatomical engraving is described as a "figure," a word that can also mean to perform a mathematical equation: "to figure."

Enjoy!

Thanks for a fantastic makeup class, all! More soon on Swift...