“Matter No More”: Edgar Allan Poe and the Paradoxes of Materialism

Unsettled by doubt, we reach for matter; we clutch a tool, pound a table, drive a spike into the earth. We think our grip on something solid will catapult us past uncertainty, deception, delusion. But grasping for solidity often leaves us displaced. The more anxiously we reach, the quicker terra firma recedes. This is the case when we study the “material culture” of matter itself—when historians of science, for instance, inspect devices of observation and inscription in chemistry, physics, or the earth sciences. Though often taken to be more reliable than fugitive perceptions or beliefs, instruments in action are revealed as temperamental links in fragile chains of mediation, riddled with gaps. We see the sustained efforts needed to stabilize phenomena—glass, light, dirt—and the tremendous labor involved in getting people to agree that a given technical setup speaks reliably for the world. Looking closely at theories of matter leads to even more puzzling detours. Historians of physics gather tracings that reveal vast empty spaces in seemingly solid matter; they chase diagrams marking particles’ oscillation into and out of existence. Treating the molecular structure of metals and crystals, we find patterns of latent motion