Symbol under Gravitation: S. T. Coleridge’s Theory of Life and Physics

This essay reads Coleridge’s theory of life as grounded in physics. His organic theory of life, as articulated in Hints towards the Formation of a More Comprehensive Theory of Life, has largely been discussed in relation to his interest in chemistry, for example, his admiration for Humphry Davy, or in relation to physiology and biology viewed from the perspective of the chemical conception of life. Underlying this account is the assumption that Newtonian physics was opposed to Romantic poetics, while chemistry, as the basis of physiology, supplied Romanticism with a new organic theory of life. However, a lesser-known fact is that Newton himself played a formative role in early chemistry, introducing terms such as gravity, attraction, and repulsion. By extending these physical concepts into chemistry in his Opticks, Newton laid the foundations for what later came to be known as Newtonian physiology. Immanuel Kant’s The Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science and Friedrich Schelling’s Ideas for a Philosophy of Nature likewise reinterpret gravity within this physiological framework. Like many gravity-based physiological theories in the eighteenth century, Coleridge’s organic theory of life is deeply embedded in this tradition of Newtonian physics and physiology. For him, organicism is not simply opposed to mechanism; it is rather a form of mechanism immaterialized. Coleridge’s organic poetics can be understood as a version of immaterialized physics. After outlining a brief history of Newtonian physiology and examining Coleridge’s Theory of Life together with Aids to Reflection and the Notebooks in relation to Newtonian physics, this essay turns to his poetry as a site where physics is transposed into the immaterial.