Romanticism in science

Romanticism during the Age of Reection (c. 1800

40) was an intellectual movement that originated in
Western Europe as a counter-movement to the late-18thcentury Enlightenment. Romanticism incorporated many
elds of study in the arts and humanities, but it also greatly
inuenced 19th-century science.[1]

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]

Romanticism advanced a number of themes: it promoted

anti-reductionism (the whole was more valuable than the
parts alone) and epistemological optimism (man was connected to nature), and encouraged creativity, experience,
and genius.[3] It also emphasized the scientists role in 2 Principles of Romanticism
scientic discovery, holding that acquiring knowledge
of nature meant understanding man as well; therefore,
Romanticism had four basic principles: the original
these scientists placed a high importance on respect for
unity of man and nature in a Golden Age; the subsequent
[4]
nature.
separation of man from nature and the fragmentation of
Romanticism declined beginning around 1840 as a new human faculties; the interpretability of the history of the
movement, positivism, took hold of intellectuals and universe in human, spiritual terms; and the possibility of
lasted until about 1880. As with the intellectuals who salvation through the contemplation of nature.[7]
earlier had become disenchanted with the Enlightenment
The above-mentioned Golden Age is a reference from
and had sought a new approach to science, people now
Greek mythology and legend to the Ages of Man. Rolost interest in Romanticism and sought to study science
mantic thinkers sought to reunite man with nature and
using a stricter process.
therefore his natural state.[8]

To Romantics, science must not bring about any split

between nature and man. Romantics believed in the intrinsic ability of mankind to understand nature and its
phenomena, much like the Enlightened philosophes, but
they preferred not to dissect information as some insatiable thirst for knowledge and did not advocate what
they viewed as the manipulation of nature. They saw
the Enlightenment as the cold-hearted attempt to extort
knowledge from nature that placed man above nature
rather than as a harmonious part of it; conversely, they
wanted to improvise on nature as a great instrument.[9]
The philosophy of nature was devoted to the observation
of facts and careful experimentation, which was much
more of a hands-o approach to understanding science
than the Enlightenment view, as it was considered too
controlling.[10]

Romantic Science vs. Enlightenment Science

As the Enlightenment had a rm hold in France during

the last decades of the 18th century, so the Romantic
view on science was a movement that ourished in Great
Britain and especially Germany in the rst half of the
19th century.[5] Both sought to increase individual and
cultural self-understanding by recognizing the limits in
human knowledge through the study of nature and the intellectual capacities of man. The Romantic movement,
however, resulted as an increasing dislike by many intellectuals for the tenets promoted by the Enlightenment;
it was felt by some that Enlightened thinkers emphasis
on rational thought through deductive reasoning and the Natural science, according to the Romantics, involved re1

4 NATURPHILOSOPHIE

jecting mechanical metaphors in favor of organic ones; in

other words, they chose to view the world as composed
of living beings with sentiments, rather than objects that
merely function. Sir Humphry Davy, a prominent Romantic thinker, said that understanding nature required
an attitude of admiration, love and worship, [...] a personal response.[11] He believed that knowledge was only
attainable by those who truly appreciated and respected
nature. Self-understanding was an important aspect of
Romanticism. It had less to do with proving that man
was capable of understanding nature (through his budding intellect) and therefore controlling it, and more to
do with the emotional appeal of connecting himself with
nature and understanding it through a harmonious coexistence.[12]

4.1 Biology

In Friedrich Schelling's Naturphilosophie, he explained

his thesis regarding the necessity of reuniting man with
nature; it was this German work that rst dened the Romantic conception of science and vision of natural philosophy. He called nature a history of the path to freedom
and encouraged a reunion of mans spirit with nature.[16]

4.4 Natural history

The new science of biology was rst termed biologie

by Jean-Baptiste Lamarck in 1801, and was an independent scientic discipline born at the end of a long process of erosion of 'mechanical philosophy,' consisting in a
spreading awareness that the phenomena of living nature
cannot be understood in the light of the laws of physics
but require an ad hoc explanation.[17] The mechanical
philosophy of the 17th century sought to explain life as
a system of parts that operate or interact like those of a
machine. Lamarck stated that the life sciences must detach from the physical sciences and strove to create a eld
of research that was dierent from the concepts, laws,
and principles of physics. In rejecting mechanism without entirely abandoning the research of material phenomena that does occur in nature, he was able to point out that
3 Important works in Romantic living beings have specic characteristics which cannot
be reduced to those possessed by physical bodies and
science
that living nature was un ensemble d'objets mtaphisiques
(an assemblage of metaphysical objects).[18] He did not
When categorizing the many disciplines of science that 'discover' biology; he drew previous works together and
developed during this period, Romantics believed that ex- organized them into a new science.[19]
planations of various phenomena should be based upon
vera causa, which meant that already known causes would
produce similar eects elsewhere.[13] It was also in this 4.2 Goethe
way that Romanticism was very anti-reductionist: they
did not believe that inorganic sciences were at the top of Johann Goethe's experiments with optics were the direct
the hierarchy but at the bottom, with life sciences next result of his application of Romantic ideals of observaand psychology placed even higher.[14] This hierarchy re- tion and disregard for Newtons own work with optics.
ected Romantic ideals of science because the whole or- He believed that color was not an outward physical pheganism takes more precedence over inorganic matter, and nomenon but internal to the human; Newton concluded
the intricacies of the human mind take even more prece- that white light was a mixture of the other colors, but
dence since the human intellect was sacred and necessary Goethe believed he had disproved this claim by his observational experiments. He thus placed emphasis on the
to understanding nature around it and reuniting with it.
human ability to see the color, the human ability to gain
Various disciplines on the study of nature that were knowledge through ashes of insight, and not a mathecultivated by Romanticism included:
Schellings matical equation that could analytically describe it.[20]
Naturphilosophie; cosmology and cosmogony; developmental history of the earth and its creatures; the
new science of biology; investigations of mental states, 4.3 Humboldt
conscious and unconscious, normal and abnormal;
experimental disciplines to uncover the hidden forces Alexander von Humboldt was a staunch advocate of emof nature electricity, magnetism, galvanism and other pirical data collection and the necessity of the natural
life-forces; physiognomy, phrenology, meteorology, scientist in using experience and quantication to undermineralogy, philosophical anatomy, among others.[15] stand nature. He sought to nd the unity of nature, and his
books Aspects of Nature and Kosmos lauded the aesthetic
qualities of the natural world by describing natural science in religious tones.[21] He believed science and beauty
4 Naturphilosophie
could complement one another. (See Humboldtian Science.)
Main article: Naturphilosophie

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

naturalist Charles Darwin. Bartrams Travels through

North and South Carolina, Georgia, East and West Florida
(1791) described the ora, fauna, and landscapes of the
American South with a cadence and energy that lent itself to mimicry and became a source of inspiration to
such Romantic poets of the era as William Wordsworth,
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and William Blake. Darwins
work, including On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection (1859), marked an end to the Romantic era,
when using nature as a source of creative inspiration was
commonplace, and led to the rise of realism and the use
of analogy in the arts.[22]

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]

Alexander (2006) argues that the nature of mathematics

changed in the 19th century from an intuitive, hierarchical, and narrative practice used to solve real-world problems to a theoretical one in which logic, rigor, and internal consistency rather than application were key. Unexpected new elds emerged, such as non-Euclidean geometry and statistics, as well as group theory, set theory and symbolic logic. As the discipline changed, so
did the nature of the men involved, and the image of
the tragic Romantic genius often found in art, literature,
and music may also be applied to such mathematicians
as variste Galois (181132), Niels Henrik Abel (1802
29), and Jnos Bolyai (180260). The greatest of the Ro- 4.8.1 Organic chemistry
mantic mathematicians was Carl Friedrich Gauss (1777
1855), who made major contributions in many branches
The development of organic chemistry in the 19th cenof mathematics.[23]
tury necessitated the acceptance by chemists of ideas deriving from Naturphilosophie, modifying the Enlightenment concepts of organic composition put forward by
4.6 Physics: Electromagnetism
Lavoisier. Of central importance was the work on the
Christensen (2005) shows that the work of Hans Christian constitution and synthesis of organic substances by con[30]
rsted (17771851) was based in Romanticism. rsteds temporary chemists.
discovery of electromagnetism in 1820 was directed
against the mathematically based Newtonian physics of
the Enlightenment; rsted considered technology and
practical applications of science to be unconnected with 4.8.2 Popular image of science
true scientic research. Strongly inuenced by Kant's
critique of corpuscular theory and by his friendship and
Another Romantic thinker, who was not a scientist but a
collaboration with Johann Wilhelm Ritter (17761809),
writer, was Mary Shelley. Her famous book Frankenstein
rsted subscribed to a Romantic natural philosophy that
also conveyed important aspects of Romanticism in scirejected the idea of the universal extension of mechanience as she included elements of anti-reductionism and
cal principles understandable through mathematics. For
manipulation of nature, both key themes that concerned
him the aim of natural philosophy was to detach itself
Romantics, as well as the scientic elds of chemistry,
from utility and become an autonomous enterprise, and
anatomy, and natural philosophy.[31] She stressed the
he shared the Romantic belief that man himself and his
role and responsibility of society regarding science, and
interaction with nature was at the focal point of natural
through the moral of her story supported the Romantic
philosophy.[24]
stance that science could easily go wrong unless man took
more care to appreciate nature rather than control it.[32]

4.7

Astronomy

John Keats' portrayal of cold philosophy in the poem

Lamia,[33] inuenced Edgar Allan Poe's 1829 sonnet To
Astronomer William Herschel (17381822) and his sis- Science, and Richard Dawkins' 1998 book, Unweaving
ter Caroline Herschel (17501848), were intensely ded- the Rainbow.

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

[1] Cunningham, A., and Jardine, N., ed. Romanticism and

the Sciences, p. xxi.

[23] Bossi and Poggi, ed. Romanticism in Science

[2] Bossi, M., and Poggi, S., ed. Romanticism in Science: Science in Europe, 17901840, p. xii.

[24] Dan Ch. Christensen, The rsted-Ritter Partnership and

the Birth of Romantic Natural Philosophy, Annals of Science 1995 52(2): 153185

[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.

[31] Shelley, M. Frankenstein, p.2627.

[11] Cunningham, A., and Jardine, N., ed. Romanticism and

the Sciences, p.15.

[32] Cunningham, A., and Jardine, N., ed. Romanticism and

the Sciences, p.20.

[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.

[33] Cunningham, A., and Jardine, N., ed. Romanticism and

the Sciences, p.3.

[13] Cunningham, A., and Jardine, N., ed. Romanticism and

the Sciences, p.15.

8 References

[14] Cunningham, A., and Jardine, N., ed. Romanticism and

the Sciences, p.19.
[15] Cunningham, A., and Jardine, N., ed. Romanticism and
the Sciences, p.6.

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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