On Dec 30, 1:42Â am, Sir Frederick
fuzzysys.com> wrote:> On Sat, 29 Dec 2007 22:20:42 -0800 (PST), turtoni
fastmail.net> wrote:>>****QUOTING****:
>
>
>>Romanticism, also known as the "Age of Reflexion," describes the
>>intellectual movement from 1800-1840 that originated in Western Europe
>>as a counter-movement to the Enlightenment of the late 18th century.
>>Romanticism incorporated many fields of study, including art, music,
>>poetry and drama, painting, prose, theology, and philosophy, yet it
>>also had a major impact in sciences of the 19th century.[1]
>
>>European scientists, disillusioned with the mechanical natural
>>philosophy of the Enlightenment as well as the Newtonian model of
>>physics, supported the belief that observing nature meant
>>understanding the self and that the answers that nature could give us
>>should not be obtained by force. They warned that Enlightenment
>>encouraged the abuse of the sciences and sought to advance a new way
>>of increasing scientific knowledge, one they felt would be even more
>>beneficial to not only mankind but to nature as well.[2]
>
>>Romanticism set forth different themes: it was anti-reductionist (the
>>whole was more valuable than the parts alone), championed
>>epistemological optimism (man was connected to nature), and encouraged
>>creativity, experience, and genius.[3] It also emphasized the
>>scientist's role in scientific discovery as understanding that
>>acquiring knowledge of nature meant understanding man as well;
>>therefore, these scientists had a profound respect for nature.[4]
>
>>The decline of Romanticism occurred because a new movement,
>>Positivism, began to take hold of the ideals of the intellectuals
>>around 1840 that lasted until about 1880. Like the intellectuals who
>>were disenchanted with the Enlightenment and preferred a new approach
>>to science, people lost interest in Romanticism and wanted to study
>>science using a stricter process.
>
> The "folk theories" do resist removal. They have the
> cultural "inertia" of eons of use. It's just that "the times
> they are changin". Thus new paradigms must be told.
> Romanticism served the hubris needs of humans, but lost
> functional value. We must find our hubris needs met elsewhere
> or perhaps attenuate them. Even today we struggle
> in Romanticism quagmires :
>
> The human race, in whole and in part, has such
> false models of what it is and means to be human,
> and considers those false models to be reality, that
> the human race is dysfunctional. Those models may
> have worked through the eons of evolution,
> they no longer "work".
>
> My sympathies.
