| Chapter 1: | Thomas Traherne, Hobbism, and the Seventeenth-Century Sciences: “Handmaids” to Felicity |
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can lead to “paradise within thee, happier far” (12.587) than even Eden. Indeed, the fall in the garden may be read as Milton’s caveat concerning a cultural falling away from knowledge of the self through Eve’s “sad experiment” (10.967)—her tragic eating of the fruit that is infused with “the sciential sap” (9. 837).18 As Adam is told by the “sovran Presence” (10.144), he could have avoided all the shame and misery “had’st thou known thy self aright” (10.156).
Traherne similarly vacillates between the two competing models of the solar system, while expressing conditional excitement at the speed at which the planets must travel around the earth:
Like Milton, whose prototypical man was advised by the angel to “be lowlie wise” (8.173), Traherne also rejoices in the profound wonder of it all and, as his other statements show, regards outer knowledge as ancillary to cultivating inner Felicity.
Traherne and the Baconian Method
Traherne himself was not a scientist, but he had an avid interest in the theoretical and practical science of his time, as the above examination of his engagement with Copernican astronomy suggests. His knowledge of scientific advances and issues dates from his studies at Brasenose College, Oxford, where by midcentury science was included in the university curriculum along with the long-established traditional techniques of logic (Day, Thomas Traherne iii). Oxford was also the