Intellectual Movement In The 1890's Flashcards
What was science like?
Around the late 1800’s the way people saw the change in the science started an impressive yet unique idea starting with Darwin’s physiological views of life.19th century society and culture
With industrial growth, by about 1850, Western and central European countries were developing a middle class of industrialists and professionals. There was confidence in human progress and the human ability to do virtually anything. This confidence was characterized by the belief that man was reasonable and able to make choices with free will. It also emphasized toleration of others and respect for science and reason.
19th 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 19th 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 19th 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.
What was realism?
Realism emerged in the art world in the 19th century in Europe. Artists moved away from the Age of Reason of the 18th century to a new need for creating art with historical and realistic accuracy. According to Honour and Fleming, the moderate painters of France were known as the juste milieu, or the happy medium. They painted in a style that “demanded detail – local color in a literary as well as in an artistic sense – and detail rendered with illusionistic veracity; the button-hole of a cloak, the pommel of a dagger.”
Some works of art in the Realist period echo the styles of earlier centuries, including Classical, Renaissance, Baroque, and Romantic principles. Some Realists felt they were breaking with academic principles of art. Gustave Courbet (1819-1877) was a French painter who embodied the historic nature of Realism. He moved on from the self-articulated “trappings of Romanticism.” His first prominent work, A Burial at Ornans, was completed in 1850-1851. This painting arranges a community of people around a countryside burial site, complete with a Catholic priest, altar boys, and a deacon carrying a crucifix. The crowd is arranged in vivid detail around the central burial site. The human expressions are somber in keeping with the event.
As another leading Realist, Edouard Manet (1832-1883), shows a very different style in painting that would soon give way to Impressionism. Manet painted humans in natural settings like Luncheon on the Grass (1863). In this composition, a pale, naked woman lounges beneath the trees in the company of two well-dressed gentlemen. In the background, another woman clad in a white nightgown bends over the grass in deep thought. An oil on canvas, Luncheon on the Grass shows the influences of great painters like Raphael, but the artistic style is still groundbreaking.
In the United States, Realists also continued the true depiction of subjects. With Madame X (1884), John Sargent (1856-1926) presents a beautifully-endowed woman with creamy skin. She turns to the left away from the audience. Dressed in a black formal gown, her delicate hand rests on a short table. This painting shows how the depiction of human forms differed from, but also echoed, the 17th century works of painters like Rembrandt and Peter Paul Rubens.
When you consider works of art from the Realist period in the nineteenth century, you are not yet prepared for Monet’s sudden breakthrough called Impressionism. One might argue that Edouard Manet’s works suggest the new style, but avant-garde artists such as the Impressionists would naturally continue with tradition, including Manet’s theme of bourgeois relaxing in the park.
What is Impressionism ?
Impressionism is one of the most important art movements of the 19th century. It started when some artists from Paris, European impressionists, began a public display of their art. The name of the movement was coined after the famous impressionism painter Claude Monet work «Impression: Sunrise».There were another painter impressionist Pierre-Auguste Renoir who along with Monet started to paint in a new style later known as Impressionism. In addition to Claude Monet and Pierre-Auguste Renoir the European impressionist list includes such names as Camille Pissarro, Alfred Sisley, and Edgar Degas. These names are associated with the finest impressionist paintings.
Impressionism painter painting have characteristic features: light colors, open composition, visible brushstrokes. Impressionism painter style is short and thick strokes, the subject can be very common (landscapes, outdoor scenes).
Impressionism painter works outdoors and for a short period of time till the light changes to capture the effects of changing light. If the painting is unfinished they come back again the next day at the same time. Painter impressionist utilizes raw and unmixed paints and such techniques as uneven colors, shadows, and varying light. To create a variety of textures broken brush strokes are used with the help of which painting looks very natural and appealing. Impressionism painter avoid to use black colours as a result impressionist paintings look bright and radiant.
At the end of the 1800s, Impressionism was replaced by Post Impressionism. The most famous representatives of this movement were Vincent van Gogh, Paul Gauguin, and other painters. In comparison with Impressionism, Post Impressionism favoured more unnatural, brighter colours.
Throughout many centuries art and painting have transformed greatly, however the influence of European impressionist movement is really great. He result of such influence is a number of painters worldwide using the techniques introduced by the impressionism painters of the 19th century.
Today fine art painter works can be viewed at various museums. Contemporary artists display their artwork at art galleries as a rule. In addition to local galleries, there are online art galleries opened by artists and gallery owners. Such type of galleries makes fine art painter works more available, the works are displayed for both viewing and sale. Ukrainian artists also offer their works in such a way. Browsing through this site you will find the works by Valeriy Klinkov, contemporary Ukrainian painter.
What was post impressionism?
Survey of major movements from Neoclassicism through Romanticism, Realism, and Impressionism to Post-Impressionism. Attention is given to iconographical and formal analysis as well as to the social conditions in which artists lived and worked.
What is the new views on religion
During the nineteenth century, characterized as ‘the century of science’, the relationship between faith and science reached high levels of tension. It is well known that the development of some scientific theories challenged the traditional mindset based on Christian teachings. It was a time in which the autonomy of the spheres of knowledge of theology and science (or philosophy) were still not very well defined. Some thinkers, spurred on by the prestige science had attained, saw knowledge as only obtainable through experimental observation and not by the authority of religious revelation. For others, the emancipation of scientific methods from theological oversight represented the dangers of the emancipation of the results, or in other words the secularization of the world. God and nature were seen to have been simultaneously separate and inextricably linked and the study of one without the other meant condemning oneself to not understanding anything and committing the mistake of believing that nature could exist without God.
One can see how this apparently troubled ‘relationship’ between science and religion has given rise to various phenomena. To mention two: on one hand, the consolidation of the scientific method and the unstoppable advance of the secularization of society implied a change in the traditional religious mentality, which lead to the need to review the concepts acquired by that very knowledge structure. Certain scientific theories, such as evolution (originating in the eighteenth century), the atomic theory of matter and the theory of the conservation of energy, called into question the foundations of traditional thinking and contributed to a new world view. The story of creation found in the Bible, the sacred book of the Christians, had been accepted for centuries, while Aristotelian thought allowed for certain common ground between philosophy and the Bible. The story of creation transmitted, among others scientific principles, the unchanging nature of species and a vitalist, teleological view of organic nature. The overall result was rational, perfectly suited to meeting the need for an agreement between faith and reason characterized by Thomism. Since the seventeenth century the prevailing Aristotelian system of ecclesiastical teaching had begun to unravel, calling into question both the approach and the methods of both theology and philosophy. The development of disciplines such as geology and palaeontology, for example, rolled back the age of the Earth to a time previously undreamt of and cast doubt on the unchanging nature of species. The theories of Charles Darwin (1809-1882), who achieved fame with the publication of On the Origin of Species (1859), gave the impression that God was no longer the Lord of a creation that evolves according to natural selection that has nothing to do with Providence, as was traditionally taught. Calling into question the reality of Adam and Eve seemed to ruin the foundation of the story of salvation: the existence of evil on Earth and the coming of the Saviour, the Redeemer, became incomprehensible. Here we focus, however, on some examples taken from the history of the Catholic Church and its relationship with science.
A Church under siege
Here, we find another aspect of this relationship: the numerous interpretations that were made of the new discoveries and the ‘advance’ of science. For certain freethinking sectors, linked to the concerns of republicans, radicals and middle-class liberals who sought to undermine the politico-religious establishment dominant in their respective countries, the new science was a weapon to attack the foundations of institutionalized religion and thereby, religion itself. They depicted the relationship between religion and science as a troubled one and in order to do so they sought examples in history (with Galileo’s trial being the classic instance).
In this sense, the natural system outlined by Darwin provided ammunition for this ‘scientific’ anticlericalism, to the point of becoming an icon for those seeking to employ science as a tool against the scriptures, although Darwin distanced himself from some of his disciples’ more dogmatic views. The ‘cult’ of science adopted various guises in the second half of the nineteenth century, with positivism and scientific naturalism (British and German) and figures such as Huxley, Tyndall, Büchner and Haeckel. The German zoologist Ernst Haeckel (1834-1919) a noted figure in monistic philosophy, saw matter and energy as attributes of one universal, infinite substance, and emphasised the unity of organic and inorganic nature. Unlike Darwin, who was a creationist (which is to say he believed in a creative power at the beginning of time), some of his followers were in favour of spontaneous creation, a long-established theory that saw complex animal and vegetable life-forms as spontaneously arising from inert matter, thereby allowing them to reject the ‘miracle’ of Creation. This theory was temporarily confirmed by the finding of Eozoon canadense in 1858, a Cambrian fossil that later proved to be inorganic.
THE CONSOLIDATION OF THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD AND THE UNSTOPPABLE ADVANCE OF THE SECULARIZATION OF SOCIETY IMPLIED A CHANGE IN THE TRADITIONAL RELIGIOUS MENTALITY
The reigning pope at the time, Pius IX, failed to get the strategy of reconciliation with science off to a good start. Surrounded by Italian troops who threatened to invade the Papal States, and pressed by the winds of change blowing across Europe and within Catholicism itself, in his sadly famous encyclical Quanta Cura and its accompanying document the Syllabus, the Pope was to condemn the ‘modern errors’ and in particular, attempts to reconcile religion with ‘progress, liberalism and modern civilization’.
The Catholic response
The Catholic response was far from unique and centralized in the Vatican, aside from some general guidelines on science-faith reconciliation and the restoration of Thomism in university faculties and schools. It became necessary not to miss out on the ‘scientific bandwagon’ in order to oppose, with solid arguments from the field of science, attacks on the scriptures, thus presenting Catholicism as the greatest ally of the progress of modern science. The Jesuits’ successful scientific tradition, with their astronomical and meteorological observatories scattered throughout their schools around the world, seemed to confirm this. In addition, the agnosticism traditionally associated with modern science could be overcome in the name of that same scientific methodology: apologists for science had to come out in support of the revealed truths. Shortly before Rome’s anti-liberal shift in 1848, Pope Pius IX himself restored an old scientific academy named Accademia Pontificia dei Nuovi Lincei, which aimed to promote scientific research and advise the Pope’s government on scientific matters. The main figure of the time was the Italian Jesuit Angelo Secchi (1818-1878). Protected by Pius IX, the physicist, astronomer and meteorologist Secchi was director of the Roman College observatory for 28 years (1850-1878). He was a pioneer of astronomical spectroscopy and one of the world’s first scientists to establish that the Sun was a star, and he drew one of the first maps of Mars. With the capital occupied by Piedmontese troops in 1870, the new Italian state took control of the university observatory of the Roman College. Secchi received tempting offers from the government, but nothing could alter his loyalty to the Pope, and the new authorities did not dare to expel him from his laboratory, where he continued his research until his death at the age of 60. The Vatican went without an observatory until Leo XIII opened one in 1891. It remained in Rome until 1935, when Pius XI decided to transfer it to Castelgandolfo.
ATTACKS MADE BY SCIENCE ON THEOLOGICAL THINKING STIMULATED THE CHURCH, BOTH AS AN INSTITUTION AND AS A COLLECTION OF MEMBERS TO UPDATE THEMSELVES ON SCIENTIFIC MATTERS
Nonetheless, the Church’s response was characterized by its diversity and adaptation to different national realities, always in accordance with common standards of the time. Some of the key initiatives emerged from francophone countries, and were carried out by the local hierarchy, grassroots clergy, laypeople and professors of Catholic faculties: in short, we are talking about the establishment of a network of Catholic universities (the first, Louvain, dates from 1834) and the creation of the Société Scientifique de Bruxelles (1875). The latter brought together Catholic scientists from around the world and organised conferences for Catholic scientists, which were held on six occasions between 1888 and 1900. The conferences were a successful attempt to create a Catholic intellectual space free from the interference of mainstream scholars. In these conferences the tensions which existed within Catholicism became clear when it came to allowing for scientific autonomy on issues affecting theology and, ultimately, the reconciliation of science with religious teachings. There were obviously episodes of conflict with the ecclesiastical authorities and the most intransigent sectors who were fearful of attempts by the secular and ecclesiastical grassroots to create a different form of teaching. Thus, in 1888 the conference rejected a motion calling on it to oppose the theory of evolution, seeing it as going against the Bible. Many Catholics already distinguished between evolution being employed for anti-religious ends and its application as an important concept as part of science.
By way of conclusion
In short, far from being a hindrance, the attacks made by science on theological thinking stimulated the Church, both as an institution and as a collection of members to update themselves on scientific matters. Catholic scientists came to spearhead the renewal of theological thought in many parts of the world. Gradually, exegetical studies began to expand in faculties of theology. The Bible ceased to be considered as a scientific manual or see the book of Genesis as a work of history, prehistory, geology or biology. Christians began to appreciate and accept that the sacred scriptures simply declared that the world had been created by God and came to express themselves in the cosmological terms that were in use at that time. Furthermore, at the start of the twentieth century, this view coincided with the abandonment of positivist dogmatism and the recognition of the enigmatic nature of reality and, consequently, the possibility of interpretations which are not only scientific. Christians and scientists are able to recognize the limits of their knowledge and their methods, and to respect each other.
