eighteenth centuries saw rapid development
The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries saw rapid development of reliance upon reasoning as the basis for worthwhile knowledge of the natural world and of ourselves. This approach had a profound effect on the rise of modern science, technology, philosophy, and social thought, completing the promise of the Renaissance with a self-conscious appropriation of intellectual clarity that came to be known as the Enlightenment. During the same period, artistic expression took a different path, with florid Rococo decoration and the evocative emotionalism of the Romantic.
Applying mathematical methods to the study of nature, Johannes Kepler, Galileo Galilei, Isaac Newton, and Robert Boyle expanded our conception of the universe and our understanding of the way it works. One key to their success was a careful distinction between the intrinsic features of things in themselves (which may be unknown to us) and the extrinsic qualities they bear only in relation to our perception of them. Focusing on what we can know, they developed laws of nature that operate independently of human values. Thus, René Descartes drew a sharp contrast between scientific knowledge, which we use instrumentally in an effort to control the natural world, and our own intrinsic nature as thinking beings.
Other philosophers of this period developed alternative ways of understanding and expressing fundamental ideas, but always in service of the advances being made by the new sciences:
· Leibniz and Spinoza deployed mathematics even for comprehension of ultimate reality.
· Locke and Hume explored the extent (and limits) of empirical study of natural phenomena.
· Montesquieu, Rousseau, and Smith worked out political and economic implications of Enlightenment thought.
· Kant sought to transcend dichotomies by emphasizing the active participation of the human mind in apprehension of reality.
· Hegel and Schopenhauer expanded this approach in more explicitly idealistic directions.
Though sometimes mocked by satirists like Swift and Voltaire, each of these Enlightenment philosophers aimed to show that rational thought and scientific knowledge provide a solid basis for apprehension of the truth and practical mastery of the natural world.
Meanwhile, the visual and discursive arts focused instead on the emotional side of human nature. Inspired by exciting political revolutions, painters like David, Goya, and Delacroix portrayed the social leaders as heroic individuals worthy of admiration and respect. For Constable, Turner, and Bierstadt, even landscape became an opportunity to arouse deep feelings about the natural world. Goethe’s Faust similarly elevated the individual hero, and the poets Shelly, Keats, Byron, and Blake took relied on their emotional appeal. The female novelists of the day—the Brontë sisters, Mary Shelly, and Jane Austen—heightened the personal feelings of their characters.
Thus, in the span of a few generations, we see amply illustrated the contrast between instrumental and intrinsic value. It is one thing to regard the natural world as something to be manipulated and controlled for other purposes, to employ our knowledge—however provisional and imperfect—in service of mundane needs. It is quite another to appreciate the beauty of nature and to revel in the emotional delight we feel in relation to it and to each other.
Through it all, the distinction between instrumental applications of scientific knowledge and intrinsic human values continued to guide the separation of practical from abstract thought.
