Chapter 65 Part Two Results Chapter 15 Science 5

5 How can we explain these scientific developments?In particular, how do we relate them to other historical changes in the dual revolution?There is no doubt that there is a clear connection between them.Theoretical problems of the steam engine prompted the genius Carnot in 1824 to formulate the most fundamental insight in nineteenth-century physics, the two laws of thermodynamics (Reflexions surla puissance motrice du feu). However, His first law was not published until much later), although this is not the only way to solve this problem.Significant advances in geography and paleontology are obviously due in large measure to the enthusiasm of industrial engineers and architects for the excavation of the earth, and the importance of mining.Britain carried out a national geographic survey in 1836 and became the country with the best geography because of it.The investigation of mineral resources provided chemists with innumerable inorganic compounds for analysis; their work was furthered by the new industries of mining, pottery, metallurgy, textiles, gaslighting, and chemicals, as well as agriculture.From the united bourgeois Radicals to the aristocratic Whigs, the enthusiasm for applied research, and for that bold knowledge that even scientists recoil, is proof enough that the progress of science in the period covered by this book was not comparable to distinguished from the stimulus of the Industrial Revolution.

The entanglement between the French Revolution and science manifested itself in similar fashion in open or covert hostility to science.Political conservatives, or moderates, treated them with such hostility as a natural outgrowth of the subversion of eighteenth-century materialism and rationalism.Napoleon's defeat brought a wave of obscurantism.The cunning Lamartine shouted: "Mathematics is the chain of human thought, and it breaks as soon as I breathe in." The struggle between the research institutes that are able to function and the anti-science right, which is trying to starve scientists, has been going on.This does not mean that scientists, in France or elsewhere, were particularly revolutionary during this period.Some of them were radical revolutionaries, such as the golden boy Galois who stormed a barricade in 1830, was persecuted as a rebel, and in 1832 when he was 21 years old, he fought a duel provoked by political mobs. was killed in.Generations of mathematicians have been conceived and grown from his profound ideas, which he worked hard to complete in his last night on earth.Some were openly reactionary, such as Cauchy the Legitimist.Although for obvious reasons, the comprehensive engineering school, which once flourished because of its location, is a militant anti-imperialist faction.Perhaps most scientists would consider themselves out of the political center in the post-Napoleonic period, but some scientists, especially in emerging countries or in apolitical societies before that, were forced into positions of political leadership, especially with Historians, linguists, and other scholars with obvious links to national movements.Palacki became the leading voice of the Czech nation in 1848; seven professors at the University of Göttingen (Cottingen) found themselves of national importance by signing a letter of protest in 1837 (seven Among them were the Brothers Grimm); the Frankfurt Reichstag during the German Revolution of 1848 was a meeting of professors and other civil servants.On the other hand, compared with artists and philosophers, scientists (especially natural scientists) exhibit only a very low level of political awareness, except when there is a practical need for their discipline.Outside Catholic countries, for example, they have shown an ability to combine science with quiet religious orthodoxy that has amazed post-Darwinian scholars.

This direct origin explains some, but not all, of the development of science between 1789-1848.Obviously, the indirect effects of events at the time were more important.It is impossible for anyone to ignore that during this period the world changed on an unprecedented scale.Any thinking person cannot help being frightened, shocked, and intellectually stimulated by these upheavals and changes.And those thought patterns derived from rapid social changes, profound revolutions, and radical rationalist innovations will naturally be accepted by people.Is it possible for the remote mathematicians to break free from the barriers that bound their minds because of this apparent revolution?We don't know, though we do know that the resistance that prevented them from accepting revolutionary new ways of thinking was not their inherent difficulties but their conflicting tactical assumptions about what was or was not "natural." The very nature of this difficulty is indicated by the terms "irrational" numbers (for numbers like the square root 2) and "imaginary" numbers (for numbers like the square root -1).Once we can be sure that they are as rational and as real as everyone else, then everything will be easy.But it may have been a time of great change for a neurotic thinker to make such a decision; and it is true that imaginary or complex numbers in mathematics were still treated with perplexity and caution in the eighteenth century, all the way down to France. It was not fully accepted until after the Revolution.

Mathematics aside, the only thing that can be expected is that patterns of thought drawn from social change will attract scientists in fields where similar patterns can be applied.For example, introducing the concept of dynamic evolution into a hitherto static concept.This situation may occur directly, or may need to be mediated by other disciplines.The concept of the Industrial Revolution, which is central to history and most modern economics, was invoked in the 1820s by the analogy of the French Revolution.Darwin deduced his "natural selection" mechanism by analogy from Malthus' capitalist competition ("struggle for existence") model.The popularity of catastrophe theory in geography between 1790 and 1830 can also be attributed in part to that generation's familiarity with violent and restless social disturbances.

It would be unwise, however, to overemphasize such external influences outside of the disciplines most characteristic of the social sciences.To a certain extent, the intellectual world exists independently: whether past or present, the movement of the intellectual world advances on the same historical wavelength as the external world, but it is not just an echo of the external world.Therefore, catastrophism in geography, for example, should be attributed to some extent to Protestantism, especially Calvinism's firm belief in God's sovereignty and omnipotence.Such theories are largely the exclusive property of Protestant scientists.If developments in the fields of science resemble developments in other fields, it is not because every development can be related in any simple way to economic or political developments.

But the connection is hard to deny.The prevailing currents of thought of the period covered by this book do indeed reverberate in the specialized spheres of science, and it is this reverberation that enables us to make a distinction between science and art, or both, and political and social ideas. Establish a corresponding relationship.It is thus that "classicism" and "romanticism" exist in science, and, as we have seen, each is adapted to human society in a particular way.Equating classicism (or, in intellectual terms, the rationalism of the Enlightenment, the mechanistic Newtonian universe) with the bourgeois liberal milieu, Romanticism (or, in intellectual terms, the so-called "Natural Philosophy") was clearly oversimplified with its counterpart, and after 1830 the correspondence collapsed.However, it does represent a certain aspect of truth.Until the rise of theories such as modern socialism, revolutionary ideas had taken root in the rationalist past, and disciplines such as physics, chemistry, and astronomy developed side by side with English and French bourgeois liberalism of.For example, the populist revolutionaries of the Second Year were inspired by Rousseau, not by Voltaire; they suspected Lavoisier (whom they executed) and Laplace, not only because of their association with the ancien régime, but because Also related to similar reasons for which the poet Blake denounced Newton. (Skepticism of Newtonian science did not extend to applied research of obvious economic and military value.) "Natural history," on the other hand, was congenial to civilian revolutionaries because it represented the path to the real without being destroyed. natural spontaneity.The Jacobin dictatorship of the French Academy was dissolved, and no fewer than 12 research positions were established in the Botanical Garden.Similarly, in Germany, where classical liberalism was weak (see Chapter 13), scientific ideology, as opposed to classical ideology, was very popular.This is natural philosophy.

It is easy to underestimate natural philosophy because of its violent conflict with what we have established as science.It is speculative and intuitive.It attempts to represent the spirit or life of the world, the mystical unity of all things, and many other things that do not allow precise quantitative measurement.Indeed, it is fundamentally a rebellion against mechanical materialism, Newton, and sometimes reason itself.The great Goethe spent a great deal of precious time in vain trying to disprove Newton's optics, simply because he did not like a theory that could not explain color by the interaction of the principles of light and darkness.Such anomalies at polytechnical schools can only cause painful wonder, and it is puzzling that, between the mysterious chaos of Kepler and the clarity and perfection of Newton's Principia Mathematics, Germany has persistently Prefer the former.It was in fact this anomaly that prompted Lorenz Oken to write:

God's action or life exists in endless unfolding, in endless meditation on unity and duality, in endless self-dividing and ever-unifying processes... Opposites are The first force that appeared in this world...the law of cause and effect is the law of opposites.Causation is a reciprocal action.Opposites are rooted in the first movement of the world...Therefore, in everything there are two processes, the one of individuation and animation, the other of generalization and destruction. What exactly is this?Bertrand Russell's bewilderment at Hegel writing in such terms is an excellent illustration of eighteenth-century rationalists' answers to such rhetorical questions.Marx and Engels, on the other hand, confessed their benefit from natural philosophy (Engels' Anti-Duehring and Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy, pp. a powerful defense of natural philosophy and Kepler's antithesis to Newton), they warn us against treating natural philosophy as a cliché.The point is, it's working.Not only did it generate scientific impetus — Okun founded the liberal "Association of German Researchers in Natural Science" and inspired the "British Association for the Advancement of Science" — but it also brought fruitful results.The theory of the cell in biology, morphology, embryology, much of linguistics, and in all scientific disciplines a great deal of history and evolution were initially motivated by "romanticism."It is admitted that even in the field of biology chosen by him, "romanticism" had to be supplemented in fact by the sober classicism of the founder of modern physiology, Claude Bernard (1813-1878).On the other hand, however, even in physical chemistry, still a bastion of 'classicism', the reflections of natural philosophers on such mysterious subjects as electricity and magnetism still brought progress.Oersted in Copenhagen, Schelling's melancholy disciple, found the connection between electricity and magnetism when he demonstrated the magnetic effect of electric current in 1820.In fact, the two scientific approaches have blended.However, they are never completely merged, not even in Marx.Marx understood the synthetic sources of his thought better than most.In general, the "romantic" approach, after having contributed to new ideas and breakthroughs, once again drifted away from science.However, at the time of this book it cannot be ignored.

If it should not be ignored as a purely scientific facilitator, it should not be ignored for the historian of ideas and ideas.For them, even wild and false ideas are facts and have historical force.We cannot write off a movement that captured or influenced such brilliant geniuses as Goethe, Hegel, and the young Marx.We can only try to understand why the "classical" eighteenth-century Anglo-French worldview is so deeply dissatisfying.The great scientific and social achievements of this world today are undeniable, yet its narrowness and limitations have also become increasingly apparent during the period of the dual revolution.Recognizing these limitations and then seeking (often intuitively rather than analytically) terms with which to paint a more satisfactory picture of the world is not actually world-building.The vision of an interconnected, evolutionary dialectic of the universe as expressed by natural philosophers is neither evidence nor even proper formulation.But they reflect real problems, even real problems in the natural sciences; at the same time, they anticipate the revolutions and expansions in science that have built the scientific universe of our time.In their own way, they reflect the onslaught of the dual revolution, which transformed every aspect of human life.