ABSTRACT
John Milton’s optimistic assertion of the powers of ‘universal learning’ in Prolusions (1628-32; published 1674) is emblematic of the complexities of seventeenth-century views of the capacities and promise of natural knowledge. Earlier in the century, Francis Bacon’s aphorism ‘Plus ultra’ rather than ‘ne plus ultra’ had encapsulated the ambition of the age in its representation of the scientist as hero,2 and the Baconian influence on Milton is here evident. Furthermore, there is a radical political agenda apparent in this quotation. For Milton, the male natural philosopher becomes, as it were, the elected ‘governor’, even Protector, of the world.3 This fantasy of bloodless revolution is made possible by the resignation of the ‘god’ or previous monarch from his ‘throne’. Just as Jupiter replaced Saturn and ushered in a Golden Age, so new science will introduce a time of wisdom, justice and prosperity. In contrast, though, to the power struggle between Jupiter and Saturn for control of the classical world, and to the bitter rivalry between the Stuart monarchs and their Parliaments in the seventeenth century, here the monarch willingly ‘abdicate[s]’ the throne to welcome in a new, more popular, regime. Indeed the vicissitudes and uncertainties of early-modern existence will be rendered obsolete since new science will be able to predict, and hence control, the future. We have here, then, a conflation of mystical, prophetic rhetoric with empirical language and ideals. Furthermore, there is a powerful sense of anticipation within Milton’s vision. He contemplates a supine, feminised, natural world colluding in her own submission to this virile new
patriarchal authority. Similar to colonial propaganda of this period in which Britain attempted to invent itself as an Imperial power and to fashion, often imaginatively, an Empire, Milton imagines new science capable of ‘command[ing] earth and sea’.4 Implicit in Milton’s representation of natural philosophy is an ethical concern with working for the greater good of society and of humankind as a whole. Despite the collaborative tenor of the early Royal Society (founded 1662), as expressed in Thomas Sprat’s 1667 History of the Royal Society, Milton’s new scientist remains resolutely solitary.5 Solus, he stands contemplating the world before him. There is a palpable sense too that, as Bacon and Sprat had imagined in The Advancement of Learning and History of the Royal Society respectively, the new philosopher can restore man’s lost dominion over nature.
