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Edgar Allan Poe
(19 Jan 1809 - 7 Oct 1849)
American writer and poet.
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Science Quotes by Edgar Allan Poe (8 quotes)
… —ev’n with us the breath
Of Science dims the mirror of our joy...
Of Science dims the mirror of our joy...
— Edgar Allan Poe
'Al Aaraaf', Poems of Edgar Allan Poe (1917), 45.
A poem in my opinion, is opposed to a work of science by having for its immediate object, pleasure, not truth.
— Edgar Allan Poe
'Letter to B——— ———', in Southern Literary Messenger (Jul 1836). Quoted in Poems of Edgar Allan Poe (1917), 169, and Appendix, 311. According to different commentators, B——— may be merely a fictional character, or Bulwer-Lyton, or the publisher Elam Bliss.
Men have called me mad; but the question is not yet settled, whether madness is or is not the loftiest intelligence—whether much that is glorious—whether all that is profound—does not spring from disease of thought—from moods of mind exalted at the expense of the general intellect.
— Edgar Allan Poe
In Eleonora (1850). Collected on The Works of the Late Edgar Allan Poe (1859), Vol. 1, 446.
Science has not yet taught us if madness is or is not the sublimity of intelligence.
— Edgar Allan Poe
In Giancarlo Livraghi, The Power of Stupidity (2009), 179, but without further citation, and not yet found by Webmaster in a work before 2009. Please contact Webmaster if you know a primary source. Perhaps it is a short restatement of the quotation which begins, “Men have called me mad… ” (also on this page).
Science! true daughter of Old Time thou art!
alterest all things with thy peering eyes.
preyest thou thus upon the poet’s heart,
Vulture, whose wings are dull realities?
How should he love thee? or how deem thee wise,
Who wouldst not leave him in his wandering .
To seek for treasure in the jewelled skies,
Albeit he soared with an undaunted wing?
Hast thou not dragged Diana from her car?
And driven the Hamadryad from the wood
To seek a shelter in some happier star?
Hast thou not torn the Naiad from her flood,
The Elfin from the green grass, and from me
The summer dread beneath the tamarind tree?
alterest all things with thy peering eyes.
preyest thou thus upon the poet’s heart,
Vulture, whose wings are dull realities?
How should he love thee? or how deem thee wise,
Who wouldst not leave him in his wandering .
To seek for treasure in the jewelled skies,
Albeit he soared with an undaunted wing?
Hast thou not dragged Diana from her car?
And driven the Hamadryad from the wood
To seek a shelter in some happier star?
Hast thou not torn the Naiad from her flood,
The Elfin from the green grass, and from me
The summer dread beneath the tamarind tree?
— Edgar Allan Poe
Sonnet, 'To Science' (1829), Saturday Evening Post (11 Sep 1830). In Poems of Edgar Allan Poe (1917), 33, and Notes, 169.
The faculty of resolution is possibly much invigorated by mathematical study, and especially by that highest branch of it which, unjustly, merely on account of its retrograde operations, has been called, as if par excellence, analysis.
— Edgar Allan Poe
In The Murders in Rue Morgue.
To speak algebraically, Mr. M. is execrable, but Mr. C. is x plus 1 -ecrable.
— Edgar Allan Poe
In The Works of Edgar Allan Poe (1849), Vol. 3, 279. Poe used this remark to summarize his low opinion of the works of two fellow writers, after stating that if Cornelius Mathews were not “the very worst poet that ever existed on the face of the earth, it is only because he is not quite so bad as” William Ellery Channing.
Were the succession of stars endless, then the background of the sky would present us an uniform luminosity, like that displayed by the Galaxy—since there could be absolutely no point, in all that background, at which would not exist a star. The only mode, therefore, in which, under such a state of affairs, we could comprehend the voids which our telescopes find in innumerable directions, would be by supposing the distance of the invisible background so immense that no ray from it has yet been able to reach us at all.
— Edgar Allan Poe
'Eureka: An Essay on the Material and Spiritual Universe' (1848). Collected in The Works of the Late Edgar Allan Poe (1857), Vol. 2, 183.
In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion.
(1987) -- 
