Editing Negative capability (section)

==Use of the word 'negative'==
Negative capability can be difficult to grasp, as it is not a name for a thing but rather a way of feeling or of knowing. The word "negative" is defined in opposition to the [[positivism]] prevalent at the time.<ref>{{Cite web|date=2020-12-09|title=Selections from Keats's Letters by John Keats|url=https://www.poetryfoundation.org/articles/69384/selections-from-keatss-letters|access-date=2020-12-10|website=Poetry Foundation|language=en}}</ref> In the same way that chameleons are 'negative' for ''colour'', according to Keats, poets are negative for ''self'' and ''identity'':<ref>{{Cite web|title=John Keats – "The Chameleon Poet" – Letter to Richard Woodhouse, October 27th, 1818|url=https://genius.com/John-keats-the-chameleon-poet-letter-to-richard-woodhouse-october-27th-1818-annotated|access-date=2020-12-09|website=Genius|language=en}}</ref> they change their identity with each subject they inhabit.<ref>{{Cite thesis|title=Ut pictura poesis: Keats, anamorphosis, and Taoism|url=https://open.library.ubc.ca/cIRcle/collections/ubctheses/831/items/1.0088866|publisher=University of British Columbia|date=1995|first=Richard W.|last=Li}}</ref> The intuitive knowing of the inner life of, for example, [[Ode to a Nightingale|a nightingale]] or [[Ode on a Grecian Urn|a Grecian urn]], could not be grasped as a concept, and would known through actual living experience of one's everyday changeable being.{{cn|date=May 2024}}

Another explanation of the word ''negative'' relies on hypothesising that Keats was influenced in his studies of medicine and chemistry, and that it refers to the [[electric polarity|negative pole]] of an [[electric current]] which is passive and receptive. In the same way that the negative pole receives the current from the positive pole, the poet receives impulses from a world that is full of mystery and doubt, which cannot be explained but which the poet can translate into art.<ref name=":1">{{Cite thesis |last=Goellnicht |first=Crichlow Donald |date=1976 |title=Negative Capability and Wise Passiveness, MA Thesis. |url=https://macsphere.mcmaster.ca/handle/11375/9563 |access-date=2024-05-05 |website=McMaster University |language=en}}hdl.handle.net/11375/9563</ref>