Science and Romanticism HST 112 Lecture 5 Prof. Ethan Pollock

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Science and RomanticismHST 112 Lecture 5Prof.
Ethan Pollock

• -- The Expansion of Science
• The Natural Sciences
• The Social Sciences
• -- Romanticism
• Poetry
• Philosophy
• Art
• -- Frankenstein

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Science

• Timeline
• 1774 Goethes Sorrows of Werther
• 1795 Ecole Polytechnique
• 1794 T. Malthus, Essay on the Principle of
  Population
• 1794 Schiller, The Aesthetic Education of Mankind
• 1808 Beethovens Fifth Symphony
• 1812 Cuviers study of fossils

• The Organization of Science
• Natural Sciences
• -- Physical Science
• -- Chemistry
• -- Geology and Biology
• Revolution in 1) Age of the Earth
• 2) Idea of Fixity of Species
• 3) The Scale of Being
• But not 4) God as Designer/Creator
• Social Sciences
• -- Applying Mathematics
• -- History

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Romanticism

• Timeline
• 1774 Goethes Sorrows of Werther
• 1795 Ecole Polytechnique
• 1794 T. Malthus, Essay on the Principle of
  Population
• 1794 Schiller, The Aesthetic Education of Mankind
• 1808 Beethovens Fifth Symphony
• 1812 Cuviers 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

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Romanticism

• Timeline
• 1774 Goethes Sorrows of Werther
• 1795 Ecole Polytechnique
• 1794 T. Malthus, Essay on the Principle of
  Population
• 1794 Schiller, The Aesthetic Education of Mankind
• 1808 Beethovens Fifth Symphony
• 1812 Cuviers study of fossils

• Poetry
• Wordsworth, from The Tables Turned (1798)
• One impulse from a vernal wood
• May teach you more of man,
• Of moral evil and good
• Than all the sages can.
• Sweet is the lore which Nature brings
• Our meddling intellect
• Misshapes 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 heart
• That watches and receives.

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Romanticism

• Timeline
• 1774 Goethes Sorrows of Werther
• 1795 Ecole Polytechnique
• 1794 T. Malthus, Essay on the Principle of
  Population
• 1794 Schiller, The Aesthetic Education of Mankind
• 1808 Beethovens Fifth Symphony
• 1812 Cuviers study of fossils

• 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)

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Houdon, Benjamin Franklin (1778)
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Rude, La Marseillaise (1833-36)
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Benthams, Panopticon (1791)
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Nash, Royal Pavilion in Brighton (1815-1818)
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David, The Death of Socrates (1787)
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Delacroix, Liberty Leading the People (1830)
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What about Frankenstein?