The Wax Argument & Other Thought Experiments, Stephen Payne
HappenStance Press, 2022 £6.00
Poetic mind games
This pamphlet comprises nineteen poems that are each based on a specific philosophical idea or thought experiment. The opening poem, for example, considers recurring email in-box pile-ups in light of Zeno’s fifth-century BC account of the tortoise’s race challenge to the young Achilles; and another poem muses on Lucretius’s first-century BC ‘javelin argument’ to show that the universe has neither a boundary nor an ‘edge’ but rather ‘stretches for ever’.
Classical ideas also frame other poems, and two medieval philosophers are included — Jean Buridan and Avicenna — but the chapbook is dominated by modern philosophy, particularly twentieth-century philosophical ideas.
‘The Chinese Room’, based on John Searle’s argument that a digital computer executing a program cannot be said to have anything like a human ‘mind’, is to be sung to the tune of Frank Loesser’s ‘On a Slow Boat to China’:
It’s no fun working
as a programmed computer,
stepping through lines of code.
Processing symbols
that don’t make any sense.
Hanging on hoping
nobody will spot the pretence.
This light touch is evident in many poems, but never used in a way that might undermine key philosophical points. ‘The Infinite Monkey Theorem’, regarding Émile Borel’s well-known suggestion that infinite random typing by a monkey would eventually include Shakespeare’s works, states plainly:
And please, don’t agonise about the monkey.
It simply signifies a random process
that won’t grow old and won’t get stuck in ruts.
Thomas Nagel’s thought experiment concerning the experience of being a bat also appears:
Do vampire bats feel blessed or cursed
to wake up nightly with a raging thirst?
And when those teeth get bared above
a sleeping man, what are bats thinking of?
That longing — is it anything like love?
Some poems borrow stanza forms (from poems by Donne, Keats, Pound, and Frost) and, as in the examples given here, rhyme is a central device throughout.
Overall, this highly recommended pamphlet constitutes a successful marriage of the rational-analytical and the creative-poetic. The poems stimulate and assist philosophical reflection while retaining a poetic clarity and directness. A stimulating and enjoyable treat for poets and philosophers alike.
Tim Murphy
Rhyme & reason
Rhyme and reason go well together. ‘The Missing Shade of Blue’ draws me in with its opening words: ‘There’s one particular shade of blue / you’ve never seen’. A note tells us that ‘One particular shade of blue’ is ‘David Hume’s own phrase’, while the epigraph places the relevant source (A Treatise of Human Nature) in 1739. The poet explains that Hume ‘claimed you could restore / the missing shade of blue by pure / thought’ and wonders in his concluding lines:
Maybe this is what thought’s for,
to make or find
a colour you’ve not seen before
inside your mind.
‘Pure thought’ is itself such an entrancing thought, and I love the poem’s gentle rhymes. Everything about this poem seems right.
‘The Prince and the Cobbler’ sounds like the title of a fable. However, this poem looks back at and considers John Locke’s An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. I like the way the poem moves: the sharp contrast between the first two stanzas, the way the third takes us back to the moment at the beginning, and how the strong end rhyme keeps on going, slipping from one stanza into the next. The poem begins with a cobbler, ready to cobble, surrounded by his tools. The middle stanza keeps us wondering:
But things are not as simple as they look.
Somehow a prince’s soul and consciousness
has found a cobbler’s body to possess.
This person surely is a prince, his mind
a slate already chalked-on by the kind
of life no cobbler ever even dreamt.
Meanwhile, ‘The Ship of Theseus’ considers Plutarch’s question about the repaired vessel: ‘When all components had been replaced, / was it the same ship?’ This makes me wonder at what point the ship loses its soul. Answers are found in the Octagon of the Bath Assembly Rooms, where disappointment turns to enlightenment:
Disappointment makes me answer no —
the material is material.
In the Octagon, though,
design strikes me as vital
Illumination comes in the poem’s final lines as the light floods in, bringing the image I’m still seeing in my mind.
Enid Lee
Poems as thought experiments
Liquids take the shape of their containers, as I recall from school days. A note here explains that, ‘Some of the poems borrow stanza forms from particular poems: for example, Donne’s ‘The Flea’, Keats’ ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’. . .’ The author fills these existing forms with new poetry.
He calls them, ‘Thought Experiments’ and Wikipedia says, ‘A thought experiment is a hypothetical situation in which a hypothesis, theory, or principle is laid out for the purpose of thinking through its consequences.’ Each poem in the series does just that — a familiar philosophical argument is explored or exemplified for the reader to ponder.
The strong shapes of the poems are filled with fluid ideas. One is not directed to particular conclusions and, while the poems ring true, the final lines of many point to uncertainty or abstraction: ‘I couldn’t catch it’, ends ‘Achilles and the Tortoise’; ‘pointing at something’ closes ‘The Edge of the Universe’. Other closing phrases include: ‘heard, or conjured’ (‘The Infinite Monkey Theorem’); ‘beautiful and true at one remove’ (‘The Allegory of the Cave’); ‘a world that’s almost this one, but not quite?’ (‘Twin Earth’); and ‘to be thought about’ (‘Bertrand Russell’s Teapot’).
Although dealing with big ideas and imponderables, Stephen Payne’s poems are playful and entertaining, even jokey, as in this two-line one:
In a Parisian Café
—Jean Paul Sartre (1943) Being and Nothingness
The café-goers disappear in smoky air:
leaving Pierre, who isn’t here.
The subject of each poem in this collection is a ‘thought experiment’, and they left me wondering to what extent every poem could be considered such. Any poem could be described as a container made of words, and the ideas they hold never quite settle into a definitive reading, however familiar or closely studied.