The Romantic Conception of Life: Science and Philosophy in the Age of Goethe (Science and Its Conceptual Foundations series) - Softcover

Richards, Robert J.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0226712117 ISBN 13: 9780226712116

Publisher: The University of Chicago Press, 2004

Synopsis

"All art should become science and all science art; poetry and philosophy should be made one." Friedrich Schlegel's words perfectly capture the project of the German Romantics, who believed that the aesthetic approaches of art and literature could reveal patterns and meaning in nature that couldn't be uncovered through rationalistic philosophy and science alone. In this wide-ranging work, Robert J. Richards shows how the Romantic conception of the world influenced (and was influenced by) both the lives of the people who held it and the development of nineteenth-century science.

Integrating Romantic literature, science, and philosophy with an intimate knowledge of the individuals involved—from Goethe and the brothers Schlegel to Humboldt and Friedrich and Caroline Schelling—Richards demonstrates how their tempestuous lives shaped their ideas as profoundly as their intellectual and cultural heritage. He focuses especially on how Romantic concepts of the self, as well as aesthetic and moral considerations—all tempered by personal relationships—altered scientific representations of nature. Although historians have long considered Romanticism at best a minor tributary to scientific thought, Richards moves it to the center of the main currents of nineteenth-century biology, culminating in the conception of nature that underlies Darwin's evolutionary theory.

Uniting the personal and poetic aspects of philosophy and science in a way that the German Romantics themselves would have honored, The Romantic Conception of Life alters how we look at Romanticism and nineteenth-century biology.

About this title

About the Author

Robert J. Richards is a professor of history, philosophy, and psychology and director of the Fishbein Center for the History of Science at the University of Chicago. He is the author of Darwin and the Emergence of Evolutionary Theories of Mind and Behavior and The Meaning of Evolution: The Morphological Construction and Ideological Reconstruction of Darwin's Theory, both published by the University of Chicago Press.

Review

"A very important book which will be a milestone in the study of Romanticism and nineteenth-century biology. Extremely well written and very readable, The Romantic Conception of Life covers figures central to the development of modern biology who have hardly been treated at all in English. It will be useful to philosophers, historians of science, and Germanists alike." - Frederick Beiser, Syracuse University

Edition details

• Publisher: The University of Chicago Press
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 0226712117
• ISBN 13: 9780226712116
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 606