Science and RomanticismHST 112 Lecture 5Prof. Ethan Pollock

-- The Expansion of Science The Natural SciencesThe Social Sciences

-- Romanticism

PoetryPhilosophyArt

-- Frankenstein

ScienceTimeline:

1774 Goethe’s Sorrows of Werther

1795 Ecole Polytechnique

1794 T. Malthus, Essay on the Principle of Population

1794 Schiller, The Aesthetic Education of Mankind

1808 Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony

1812 Cuvier’s study of fossils

A. The Organization of Science

B. Natural Sciences -- Physical Science

-- Chemistry

-- Geology and BiologyRevolution in 1) Age of the Earth

2) Idea of Fixity of Species3) The Scale of Being

But not 4) God as Designer/Creator

C. Social Sciences -- Applying Mathematics -- History

RomanticismTimeline:

1774 Goethe’s Sorrows of Werther

1795 Ecole Polytechnique

1794 T. Malthus, Essay on the Principle of Population

1794 Schiller, The Aesthetic Education of Mankind

1808 Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony

1812 Cuvier’s study of fossils

General Characteristics

-- Emotional

-- Interest in Beauty/Aesthetics

-- Concern with Spirituality

-- Viewed Nature as Untamed

-- Rebel against classicism

-- Interest in the Distant Past

-- Tied to Nationalism and folk tradition

-- Belief in the role of Heroes in History

RomanticismTimeline:

1774 Goethe’s Sorrows of Werther

1795 Ecole Polytechnique

1794 T. Malthus, Essay on the Principle of Population

1794 Schiller, The Aesthetic Education of Mankind

1808 Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony

1812 Cuvier’s study of fossils

I. PoetryWordsworth, from The Tables Turned (1798):

One impulse from a vernal woodMay teach you more of man,Of moral evil and goodThan all the sages can.

Sweet is the lore which Nature brings;Our meddling intellectMisshapes the beauteous forms of things –We murder to dissect.

Enough of Science and of Art;Close up those barren leaves;Come forth, and bring with you a heartThat watches and receives.

RomanticismTimeline:

1774 Goethe’s Sorrows of Werther

1795 Ecole Polytechnique

1794 T. Malthus, Essay on the Principle of Population

1794 Schiller, The Aesthetic Education of Mankind

1808 Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony

1812 Cuvier’s study of fossils

II. Philosophy

F. von Schiller: “If mankind is ever going to solve the problem of politics in practice, he will have to approach it through the problem of the aesthetic, because it is only through Beauty that man makes his way to freedom.” (1794)

Houdon, Benjamin Franklin (1778)

Rude, La Marseillaise (1833-36)

Bentham’s, Panopticon (1791)

Nash, Royal Pavilion in Brighton (1815-1818)

David, The Death of Socrates (1787)

Delacroix, Liberty Leading the People (1830)

What about Frankenstein?