Mark Lussier, from Arizona State University, writes an article, “Scientific Objects and Blake’s Objections to Science”, that compares the science and imagination within a scientific object. Lussier writes about scientific instruments that display his beliefs. A compass took role in one of Williams Blake’s paintings; “Newton” to represent that Newton could not get out of his circle of thought and reason. In this painting, a nude scientist, Newton, bends over and draws with a compass to create a perfect circle at the bottom of the ocean. “The compass imposes an imaginary order…” (Lussier 120). He describes how Blake took scientific instruments, such as the microscope and telescope, and used them to influence others about his beliefs on imagination. “In Blake’s age, the telescope created the most sensational results, a cultural phenomenon perhaps best exemplified by the forty-foot reflecting model invented by William Herschel and used in discovery of the planet Uranus thus enlarging the solar system, and to map the Milky Way, thus expanding contemporary views of the universe itself.” (Lussier 121). Blake includes these scientific instruments in his paintings and poems to symbolize imagination and how imagination is endless. Before the telescope and microscope, no one believed in what they couldn’t see. Blake wants people to see that at the end of our understanding, is where the endless domain of our imaginations begins.
Blake intellectually compares and contrasts the human imagination to scientific instruments. He does not believe in science because there are rules that set limits to the thought process and what could be possible. He believes in a never ending imagination within our brain, locked up by our perception. Although Blake does not believe in science, he was able to use scientific instruments, such as the telescope, that provided support to his beliefs. Even though Blake uses these instruments to represent his ideas, he does not believe that seeing the details prevailed beneficial. For example, looking through a telescope to see the colors and shapes of Mars diminishes our opportunity to imagine all the possibilities of what could exist there. For example, if I had to choose between reading a book and watching a movie about the same story, choosing to watch the movie first hinders my opportunity to imagine all the details within the story; what the characters look like, what the places look like, and so on. If I want to read the book after seeing the movie, I would already have an idea of what everything looks like in a movie, versus what I could imagine. Blake believes in reading the book first so that our imagination can create the details for us. Reading is a great way to exercise imagination. Blake did that by expressing his imagination through his poetry and paintings. In order to understand the message he conveys, he encourages us to broaden our imagination so that we can make the connections he makes and see what he sees. As children we have dreams about things we’ve never seen, or dreams that our imagination creates based off of all the things we have seen throughout our life. Blake tells us that imagination creates these images and ideas of things that seem impossible. Today almost nothing seems impossible. So many people doubted the idea of electricity, but Thomas Edison invented the light bulb. The invention itself starts with an idea and turns into reality. Referring back to one of his paintings, “Newton”, the compass was invented using imagination, but Blake does not agree that the compass should obtain an imaginary view. “The compass imposes an imaginary order, thereby providing an instrumental mediation for mental projection onto what Blake termed “The Vegetable Glass of Nature,” yet this imaginary order should not be (but often is) confused with both the imagination and its perception of the real.” (Lussier 120). Although it took imagination to create the compass, the compass creates something that does not pertain to nature. A perfect circle does not exist in nature, and Blake believes that “’Nature is Imagination.’” (Lussier 120). The Circle that Newton is drawing in Blake’s painting represents his thoughts and ideas and how he stays within his comfort zone of thought and reality. This defies Blake’s thoughts of endless imagination.
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