Modern Language Association

Abstract
In The Advancement of Learning (1605), Francis Bacon defined aphorisms as “the pith and heart of sciences” since they eliminate extended descriptions and “recitals of examples.” It is not that these descriptions and examples are unnecessary, but rather that by removing them Bacon creates “a knowledge broken,” which by its very fragmentation “invite[s] men to inquire further.” The short form, in other words, intentionally targets the reader, inspiring an attentive reading that flowers into action, such as novel interpretation or innovative experimentation. For Bacon, the aphorism is thus the ideal scientific form because its brevity inspires ongoing empirical inquiry. In this paper, I analyze how this Baconian aphoristic ideal permeates early American short textual forms. This was an expansive “ecology of form” (to borrow Devin Griffiths’s phrase) in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The recent collection The Part and the Whole in Early American Literature, Print Culture, and Art (2024), for instance, features genres like fragments, scraps, and lists that form unique cultural assemblages; however, science writing is notably absent. I turn to Benjamin Franklin, who wields the short form in Poor Richard’s Almanack (1733–1758), modeling his “moral Sentences” and “wise Sayings” on the maxims of the French moralists. In his Experiments and Observations on Electricity (1751), Franklin seems not to deploy the Baconian aphorism, recording instead the very descriptions and examples that Bacon would seen expunged from science writing. Yet, with his final section of numbered “opinions and conjectures,” Franklin revises the short aphoristic form by detailing his lack of knowledge in certain areas, opening space for readers to continue the process of experimentation. While early American science writing may not be aphoristic in Bacon’s sense, I argue it maintains the focus on the reader, which becomes central to the poetic science of nineteenth-century American writers. 

Abstract
In an brief “writing note” from July 1884, Dickinson jotted down: “Science is very near us – I found a megatherium on my Strawberry.” The image is striking: the Megatherium americanum is, after all, an extinct giant ground-sloth—an elephant-sized creature bearing no obvious resemblance to strawberries. Yet, in Dickinson’s poetic imagination, the cultivated berry possesses some kinship to extinct Pleistocene-age mammals. This entanglement of the scientific and the poetic in Dickinson’s work has drawn increased scholarly attention recently. Renée L. Bergland, for instance, argues for a “re-enchantment” of science, challenging the idea that scientific progress must necessary disenchant the natural world. Juliana Chow similarly suggests that Dickinson revitalizes science by unsettling strict definitions through a process of “diminishment.” In both cases, Dickinson’s poetic language continues to enliven scientific inquiry by reimagining the very terms under scrutiny. The megatherium is not a species to merely categorize into a taxonomy; it is an entity that continues to interact with berries and beings in the present. In this paper, I trace Dickinson’s scientific thinking through her correspondence, using the newly published Letters of Emily Dickinson (2024). A quick reading suggests that Dickinson was skeptical of science: she calls science a “stranger,” and in a poem sent to Susan Gilbert Dickinson complains of the increasing prevalence of scientific terminology: “It’s very mean of Science / To go and interfere!” However, her well-documented scientific education and interests, indicated in part by her viewing of the megatherium skeleton in a “cabinet” of natural history at Amherst College. I ultimately compare her aphoristic comments on science throughout her letters and notes with the history of aphoristic science, from Francis Bacon’s aphorismoi to Charles Darwin’s notebooks. In one such notebook, Darwin suggested that “art precedes science— art is experience & observation.” I argue that Dickinson models precisely this science-preceding art, writing her own suggestive lines based on her own observations—of skeletons, of flowers, of animals—that then serve to inspire new scientific experiences in her receptive readers.