Abstract: In his novel Moby-Dick , Herman Melville demonstrates a detailed knowledge and understanding of fundamental physics concepts such as the properties of fluids, Newton’s laws of motion, and electromagnetism. Building on the previous work related to Melville’s scientific sources and expression I examine three passages in Moby-Dick that show how Melville invoked principles and used accurate mathematics and language to create scientifically plausible scenes. I explore how Melville likely acquired his physics knowledge, including a reader he used in primary school, The Literary and Scientific Class Book , which I conclude was a more significant source for his scientific education than scholars have acknowledged. I also show how Melville’s handling of electromagnetism was influenced by Joseph Henry at the Albany Academy and how it is particularly noteworthy that Melville conjectures that electricity and magnetism are intimately related phenomena united by the same underlying force—an idea that would not be scientifically established for many decades. Finally, I provide a brief assessment on the scientific merits of scholarly research on Melville’s metaphorical use of physics concepts, and I suggest that the idea of physical duality might be a fruitful topic for future literary analysis.
Bruce Fishbein (Sun,) studied this question.