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mathematization of natural philosophy had created an approach to science that was too cold and that attempted
to control nature, rather than to peacefully co-exist with
nature.[6]
According to the philosophes of the Enlightenment, the
path to complete knowledge required a dissection of information on any given subject and a division of knowledge into subcategories of subcategories, known as reductionism. This was considered necessary in order to build
upon the knowledge of the ancients, such as Ptolemy, and
Renaissance thinkers, such as Copernicus, Kepler, and
Galileo. It was widely believed that mans sheer intellectual power alone was sucient to understanding every
aspect of nature. Examples of prominent Enlightenment
scholars include: Sir Isaac Newton (physics and mathematics), Gottfried Leibniz (philosophy and mathematics), and Carolus Linnaeus (botanist and physician).
In contrast to Enlightenment mechanistic natural philosophy, European scientists of the Romantic period held
that observing nature implied understanding the self, and
that knowledge of nature should not be obtained by
force. They felt that the Enlightenment had encouraged
the abuse of the sciences, and they sought to advance a
new way to increase scientic knowledge, one that they
felt would be more benecial not only to mankind but to
nature as well.[2]
4 NATURPHILOSOPHIE
4.1 Biology
Nichols (2005) examines the connections between science and poetry in the English-speaking world during
the 18th and 19th centuries, focusing on the works of
American natural historian William Bartram and British
4.8
Chemistry
4.5
Mathematics
3
icated to the study of the stars; they changed the public
conception of the solar system, the Milky Way, and the
meaning of the universe.[25]
4.8 Chemistry
Sir Humphry Davy was the most important man of science in Britain who can be described as a Romantic.[26]
His new take on what he called chemical philosophy
was an example of Romantic principles in use that inuenced the eld of chemistry; he stressed a discovery
of the primitive, simple and limited in number causes
of the phenomena and changes observed in the physical
world and the chemical elements already known, those
having been discovered by Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier,
an Enlightenment philosophe.[27] True to Romantic antireductionism, Davy claimed that it was not the individual components, but the powers associated with them,
which gave character to substances"; in other words, not
what the elements were individually, but how they combined to create chemical reactions and therefore complete
the science of chemistry.[28][29]
4.7
Astronomy
Decline of Romanticism
REFERENCES
[16] Bossi, M., and Poggi, S., ed. Romanticism in Science: Science in Europe, 17901840, p.31.
The rise of Auguste Comte's Positivism in 1840 con- [17] Bossi, M., and Poggi, S., ed. Romanticism in Science: Scitributed to the decline of the Romantic approach to science in Europe, 17901840, p.47.
ence.
[18] Bossi, M., and Poggi, S., ed. Romanticism in Science: Science in Europe, 17901840, p.63.
See also
History of science
Humboldtian science
Naturphilosophie
Positivism
Notes
[19] Bossi, M., and Poggi, S., ed. Romanticism in Science: Science in Europe, 17901840, p.57.
[20] Cunningham, A., and Jardine, N., ed. Romanticism and
the Sciences, p.1617.
[21] Cunningham, A., and Jardine, N., ed. Romanticism and
the Sciences, p.15.
[22] Ashton Nichols, Roaring Alligators and Burning Tygers:
Poetry and Science from William Bartram to Charles Darwin, Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society
2005 149(3): 304315
[2] Bossi, M., and Poggi, S., ed. Romanticism in Science: Science in Europe, 17901840, p. xii.
[3] Molvig, Ole, History of the Modern Sciences in Society lecture course, Sept. 26.
[4] Bossi, M., and Poggi, S., ed. Romanticism in Science: Science in Europe, 17901840, p.xiv.
[5] Bossi, M., and Poggi, S., ed. Romanticism in Science: Science in Europe, 17901840, p.xii; Cunningham, A., and
Jardine, N., ed. Romanticism and the Sciences, p.22.
[6] Cunningham, A., and Jardine, N., ed. Romanticism and
the Sciences, pp.34.
[7] Cunningham, A., and Jardine, N., ed. Romanticism and
the Sciences, p.4.
[8] Cunningham, A., and Jardine, N., ed. Romanticism and
the Sciences, pp.24.
[9] Cunningham, A., and Jardine, N., ed. Romanticism and
the Sciences, p.4.
[25] Richard Holmes, The Age of Wonder: The Romantic Generation and the Discovery of the Beauty and Terror of Science (2009)
[26] Cunningham, A., and Jardine, N., ed. Romanticism and
the Sciences, p.20.
[27] Bossi, M., and Poggi, S., ed. Romanticism in Science: Science in Europe, 17901840, p.3142.
[28] Bossi, M., and Poggi, S., ed. Romanticism in Science: Science in Europe, 17901840, p.3142.
[29] Richard Holmes, The Age of Wonder: The Romantic Generation and the Discovery of the Beauty and Terror of Science (2009)
[30] Reinhard Lw, The Progress of Organic Chemistry During the Period of the German Romantic 'Naturphilosophie' (17951825), AMBIX 1980 27(1): 110
[10] Bossi, M., and Poggi, S., ed. Romanticism in Science: Science in Europe, 17901840, p.xii.
[12] Bossi, M., and Poggi, S., ed. Romanticism in Science: Science in Europe, 17901840, p.xiv; Cunningham, A., and
Jardine, N., ed. Romanticism and the Sciences, p.2.
8 References
Alexander, Amir R. Tragic Mathematics: Romantic Narratives and the Refounding of Mathematics in
the Early Nineteenth Century, ISIS: Journal of the
History of Science in Society 2006 97(4): 714726
5
Bossi, M., and Poggi, S., ed. Romanticism in
Science: Science in Europe, 17901840. Kluwer:
Boston, 1994.
Cunningham, A., and Jardine, N., ed. Romanticism
and the Sciences. (1990). excerpt and text search
Fulford, Tim, Debbie Lee, and Peter J. Kitson, eds.
Literature, Science and Exploration in the Romantic
Era: Bodies of Knowledge (2007) excerpt and text
search
Holmes, Richard. The Age of Wonder: The Romantic Generation and the Discovery of the Beauty and
Terror of Science (2009) ISBN 978-1-4000-31870, focus on William Herschel the astronomer and
Humphry Davy the chemist
Holland, Jocelyn. German Romanticism and Science: The Procreative Poetics of Goethe, Novalis,
and Ritter (2009) excerpt and text search
McLane, Maureen N. Romanticism and the Human
Sciences: Poetry, Population, and the Discourse of
the Species (2006) excerpt and text search
Murray, Christopher, ed. Encyclopedia of the romantic era, 17601850 (2 vol 2004); 850 articles
by experts; 1600pp
Richardson, Alan. British Romanticism and the Science of the Mind (2005) excerpt and text search
Snelders, H. A. M. Romanticism and Naturphilosophie and the Inorganic Natural Sciences,
17971840: An Introductory Survey, Studies In
Romanticism 1970 9(3): 193215
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