Analysis of the Transformation of Lamia

This extraordinary creation is both sexually alluring and yet clearly menacing and ‘demonic’. By using the term ‘rainbow-sided’ of her body, Keats even seems to be recalling his old Newtonian joke, and inventing his own mysterious biological rainbow, a living creature who is both a spectre and a spectrum. There are many other passages which play with medical and scientific imagery in the poem — for example Hunter’s theory of ‘inflammation’ as proof of vitality. When Lycius des...

 Newton's Apple Gave New Meaning to the Garden of Eden Story

Part of the power of the story was that it replaced the sacred Biblical account of the Fall from Innocence in Genesis (Eve and the apple) with a secular parable of the Ascent to Knowledge. See Patricia Fara, Newton: The Making of Genius (2005); and for a broad visionary perspective, Jacob Bronowski’s scientific classic The Ascent of Man (1973).