Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

Just as not all literature of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries can be properly designated Romantic literature, so too not all science in the Romantic period is congruent with Romantic science. In “The Rise of Modern Science and the Genesis of Romanticism” (1982) , Hans Eichner argued that Romanticism was “a desperate rearguard action against the spirit and the implications of modern science” ( Eichner 1982 : 8). Although Eichner perceived an irreconcilable opposition between Romanticism and science, scientists of the age were directed by the very precepts endorsed by Romantic poets and artists, in Britain no less than on the Continent. Just as literature and art underwent a shift from mimetic form to subjective expression, philosophy from materialism to idealism, politics from monarchical authority to democratic individualism, religion from ecclesiastic dogma to intuitive faith, the sciences witnessed a shift from matter-based physics to energy-based physics. Many scientists conducted experiments on themselves, testing their own response to physical and chemical stimuli. Scientists found allies among the poets and philosophers in challenging traditionally held beliefs. To be sure, interest in the interconnections between science and literature have evolved considerably since Eichner's seminal essay. Because historians of the sciences have re-examined the “scientific ... log in or subscribe to read full text