A Science So the Savants Say

A Science So the Savants Say - context Summary

Composed 1859, Published 1891

Written in 1859 and published posthumously in 1891, the poem places scientific curiosity at its center. Drawing on comparative anatomy and fossil inference, Dickinson likens the scientist’s ability to reconstruct an extinct creature from a single bone to the imaginative act of seeing a humble winter flower as a condensed symbol of many blossoms and butterflies. The poem frames perception as reconstruction: small, preserved details become evidence for larger truths, and the poet-scientist reads the natural world to reveal unseen plenitude and continuity between past and present.