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Walt Whitman when science and mysticism collide.

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From: Skeptical Inquirer
Date: 20030301
Author:Sloan, Gary

Whitman was the first important American poet to celebrate science. He rejected the Romantic notion that science despoils the virgin purity of nature and preys on the poetic imagination. But Whitman was a false paladin. He violated the spirit of science the better to gratify his cosmic affirmations and mystical worldview. Despite his putative defense of science, Whitman was imbued with a Romantic mentality.

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Walt Whitman was the first important American poet to extol science. In 1855, when the first edition of Leaves of Grass, his epochal volume, came out, the ...

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