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The Romantic Conception of Life: Science and Philosophy in the Age of Goethe
"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.
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.
606 pages, Paperback
First published December 1, 2002
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
June 22, 2016
Simply one of the best history of science books I've read in years. A pleasantly thorough treatment on the influence of German Romanticism on science, including a concluding section on its influence on Darwin via Humboldt. One of the most interesting parts was a sympathetic assessment of Goethe as a scientist and why he is rarely remembered as one. A fantastic book that, despite its size, I'm tempted to immediately reread it.
October 25, 2010
This is a wonderful account of both the Fruehromantiker, as well as of the history of biology. Richards presents the intellectual story of the struggles over the concept of life in the natural philosophers of the late eighteenth and warly nineteenth centuries as a vivid and exciting tale of the lives of the thinkers who took part in the discussions. It includes the best philosophical accounts of Goethe's philosophy of biology out there. The epilogue, which shows the influence of romantic thought on Darwin is marvelous, and would make the entire book worth reading by itself.
October 6, 2024
Richards, a science historian, wanted to prove the romantic roots of the XIX's century biological thought, particularly the romantic inclination in Goethe's biology. In order to place Goethe's biological thought, Richards divided his study in three parts.
The first one was an historiographical survey of the Jena early romantic movement, in the form of the ideas that developed within that circle, but mostly of the protagonists themselves, their lives and the way they engaged with each other, love affairs, a femme fatale, premature deaths, animosity and all (the Kant-Herder "dispute" keeps getting better and better).
The second chapter dealt with the proper scientific theories of Goethe's time. Blumenbach's Bildungstrieb, the concept of Lebenskraft and, overall the "nature of the force we called life" —or Naturphilosophie.
In the last chapter, Goethe's life and thought came to light through an examination of three key subjects: nature, art and women. We follow along the German poet's Italian journey, his friendship with Schiller, his relationship with the early romantics, and the influence of Kant, Spinoza and Schelling's philosophy over his own scientific development, particularly over the genesis of his morphology theory, an antecedent, according to Richards, of evolutionary theory. The epilogue, furthermore, tries to account for Darwin's own romantic roots.
The main objective was to study and to dispell any misconceptions about what (on earth) is meant by "romantic biology", not in any way, for what it matters, mystical and unscientific in nature. In Goethe's case and,
paraphrasing Richards, his misfortune as a scientist was that he was, for his own sake, too good of a poet.
The first one was an historiographical survey of the Jena early romantic movement, in the form of the ideas that developed within that circle, but mostly of the protagonists themselves, their lives and the way they engaged with each other, love affairs, a femme fatale, premature deaths, animosity and all (the Kant-Herder "dispute" keeps getting better and better).
The second chapter dealt with the proper scientific theories of Goethe's time. Blumenbach's Bildungstrieb, the concept of Lebenskraft and, overall the "nature of the force we called life" —or Naturphilosophie.
In the last chapter, Goethe's life and thought came to light through an examination of three key subjects: nature, art and women. We follow along the German poet's Italian journey, his friendship with Schiller, his relationship with the early romantics, and the influence of Kant, Spinoza and Schelling's philosophy over his own scientific development, particularly over the genesis of his morphology theory, an antecedent, according to Richards, of evolutionary theory. The epilogue, furthermore, tries to account for Darwin's own romantic roots.
The main objective was to study and to dispell any misconceptions about what (on earth) is meant by "romantic biology", not in any way, for what it matters, mystical and unscientific in nature. In Goethe's case and,
paraphrasing Richards, his misfortune as a scientist was that he was, for his own sake, too good of a poet.
March 27, 2020
This is a richly textured book that shows, in admirable detail, the ways in which a relatively small and tightly knit group of thinkers in Germany in the 1790s had transformed the conception of life from a mechanistic model prevalent during the enlightenment into a biological one.
The lynchpin here, perhaps not surprisingly, is Kant and most specifically the ways in which Fichte and Schelling, Novalis, the Schlegel brothers, Schiller, and even Goethe came to interpret him. Simply put, the Kantian dualism between the realm of experience that contains all that is knowable and a realm that impinges upon it but that we cannot know (the vexed "thing in itself") is transformed, in stages, into a dynamic conception of nature that is fecund and creative.
Richards excels at explaining the philosophical complexities involved in this movement, but what sets him apart is the way he weaves its social aspects--the loves, quarrels, jealousies, and inspirational moments into his argument. He certainly enables his material to come to life, but more than this, he achieves, I believe, a greater fealty to the spirit of the movement itself by showing how the ideas and ideals of the romantics and German Idealists were deeply lived and ultimately inextricable from their personal lives and the social upheaval occurring around them.
The result, when viewed as the backdrop for Darwin's views of life in the Origin of Species and the Descent of Man is to elevate both by recasting Darwin's achievement and a significant portion of his intellectual background in a fresh light that is unencumbered by decades of opinions that shrink amid greater scrutiny.
The lynchpin here, perhaps not surprisingly, is Kant and most specifically the ways in which Fichte and Schelling, Novalis, the Schlegel brothers, Schiller, and even Goethe came to interpret him. Simply put, the Kantian dualism between the realm of experience that contains all that is knowable and a realm that impinges upon it but that we cannot know (the vexed "thing in itself") is transformed, in stages, into a dynamic conception of nature that is fecund and creative.
Richards excels at explaining the philosophical complexities involved in this movement, but what sets him apart is the way he weaves its social aspects--the loves, quarrels, jealousies, and inspirational moments into his argument. He certainly enables his material to come to life, but more than this, he achieves, I believe, a greater fealty to the spirit of the movement itself by showing how the ideas and ideals of the romantics and German Idealists were deeply lived and ultimately inextricable from their personal lives and the social upheaval occurring around them.
The result, when viewed as the backdrop for Darwin's views of life in the Origin of Species and the Descent of Man is to elevate both by recasting Darwin's achievement and a significant portion of his intellectual background in a fresh light that is unencumbered by decades of opinions that shrink amid greater scrutiny.
July 13, 2011
While this book is a tour de force of scholarship, it was too long by half for my purposes. Richards who has written about Darwin wants to make the point that Darwin was influenced by "romantic biology." This is clearly described in the final chapter of the book. Richards also wants to rehabilitate the science of Goethe and to show that his ideas had origin in turbulent intellectual environment of early eighteenth century Germany. To do this he relates a great deal about the lives and loves of many interesting characters. I enjoyed these stories, but keeping them connected with the central thread of the book was difficult for me. In the introduction Richards suggests that it is not necessary to read the book straight through, but to skip around. I found this approach ultimately very helpful in terms of getting a grasp on the vast narrative that he presents.
May 2, 2011
Wonderful as an academic exploration of the subject, and thus entirely too dense for a casual read. It's very good, but I had reached topic saturation by the time I got around to it. Anyone with an interest in Goethe, Romantic science, and/or the saucy goings-on of figures in Romantic science will probably get quite a bit out of this.
February 7, 2017
If you are extremely interested in the thinkers of German Romanticism or in the early stages of the development of biological study then this would be a great book. If you are not interested in those topics then certain chapters are still very interesting but the overall book is a lot to take on.
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January 16, 2021KB says of this: “This is a better book dealing with the legacy of romantic science, Goethe, Humboldt, Schelling. This deals with ideas of Living Forces, their views on gender, reproduction, life etc”.
February 1, 2017
This book is dense. Thank you.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews