Science in the 19th Century

19^th century achievements in science & technology

• Steel;

• Electricity;

• Internal combustion engine;

• Telegraph and telephone;

• Railroads;

Developments of the middle class, gender division, and middle class values

• Optimism and growth of individualism.

• Samuel Smiles and Self Help.

• Middle class values: discipline, control, punctuality, and respectability.
• Division of gender roles in middle-class families.
• Different approaches to raising children.

Science and the development of the social sciences

• Psychology:

Wilhelm Wundt (1832-1920) and a physiological approach to the mind.

• Sociology:

Auguste Comte (1798-1857): approach social problems with statistical data; scientific positivism.

• History:

Leopold von Ranke (1795-1886): rejecting history based on tradition; emphasis on documentary evidence.

Intellectual factors that destabilized 19^th century European society

• Darwinism and the biological description of human nature.
• Freudian theory that pinned human action on primordial drives.
• Einstein’s theory of the physical world that challenged the Newtonian world order.

Implication of Darwinism

Darwinism was a scientific revolution equivalent to Copernicus -- it changed the frame of of reference. Now, there was no need for a God to explain life. The idea that man was a special animal, as opposed to just a very evolved one was hard to support. Darwin's view also implied the human being's moral nature and religion had developed naturalistically. There was a basic change in the way people saw Nature:

• Newtonian Harmony - Nature as a series of mechanical Laws.
• Darwinian Evolution - Nature is "red in tooth and claw" -- nature as a bloody struggle for survival

Darwinism and pessimism of man

Do people lack all free will - are their actions predetermined by their genetic make-up, or their psychological background, or do people have a real opportunity to make an impact on the world, and to be responsible for their actions?

Science and its challenge to Enlightenment view of progress

The development of science itself posed problems for humanistic views of the world.

This is perhaps the most important issue in the development of modern thought.

Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

By 1870 - Newtonian Physics still holds, along with the notion that science describes the real world. This changes by 1914, by which time most physicists are aware that all they have are models of how nature works.

Special theory of relativity (1905)

This theory deals with the issues that cannot be dealt with by Newtonian physics, e.g. when things moving at a high speed close to light, their movements do not accord with Newtonian rules. Some characteristics of it include:

The maximum velocity attainable in the universe is that of light; that mass and energy are equivalent and interchangeable properties (this is spectacularly confirmed by nuclear fission, on which the atomic bomb is based); that objects appear to contract in the direction of motion; that the rate of a moving clock seems to decrease as its velocity increases.

General theory of relativity

Einstein expanded the special theory of relativity into a general theory (completed c.1916) that applies to systems in nonuniform (accelerated) motion as well as to systems in uniform motion. The general theory is principally concerned with the large-scale effects of gravitation and therefore is an essential ingredient in theories of the universe as a whole.

Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) and psychoanalysis

Psychoanalysis - was the name Freud gave to his new "science" and is "single most important idea whereby 20th C. people identify themselves."

• Id (instinct), Ego (self) Superego (superimposition on the self, e.g. social/moral rules internalized by the self)
• The idea of the Unconscious.
• Sex at heart of the personality: Civilization depends on the sublimation of sexual energy.

Significance of psychoanalysis

Freud ends up profoundly compromising the idea that human beings had freewill and rationality. The problem with this was that ideas like "democracy" really rely on the belief that voters will take rational decisions -- not vote for a candidate because he/she reminds them of their mother.

Impact of the new sciences of late 19^th century

The older science of the enlightenment had suggested a knowable and harmonious universe, in which clear-thinking human beings could make rational decisions to reach a better future. The new science suggested that we do not know the universe, that what we know suggests a bloody struggle, and that human beings take part in that struggle because their minds are clouded by unconscious motivations.