Telescoping Faith

Chapter 6 examines Coleridge’s recourse to the discoveries of William Herschel to conceptualize and communicate his conversion to Trinitarian theology, explaining it as part of a complicated effort to break free from Joseph Priestley’s Socinianism, materialism, and philosophical necessity. Modernizing Priestleian science with a set of spiritual symbols taken from William Herschel was a way in which Coleridge hoped to escape from Priestley’s metaphysics. The handling of Herschelian science—especially infra-red and triple stars—is thus seen as a seismometer for Coleridge’s faith. The implications of this symbolic logic on Coleridge’s epistemological categories of the Reason and the Understanding are explored, together with his persistent use of a telescope as a symbol for faith.