The Enlightenment, The Romantic Rebellion, The Industrial Age, The Nature Conservation Movement, The Twentieth Century a
The period of the Enlightenment was dominated by Newton’s mechanistic view of Nature. As we have seen, the poet Alexander Pope spoke of Newton’s discoveries, perhaps with a certain tinge of irony, in quasi-divine terms, as comparable to the original Creat
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period of the Enlightenment was dominated by Newton’s mechanistic view of Nature. As we have seen, the poet Alexander Pope spoke of Newton’s discoveries, perhaps with a certain tinge of irony, in quasi-divine terms, as comparable to the original Creation. But despite the general sense that Newton’s physics had convincingly explained the workings of the universe as a sort of vast machine following universal laws, some of the key thinkers of the Enlightenment put forward alternative ideas.
Diderot One of the most striking comes in Denis Diderot’s philosophical dialogue D’Alembert’s Dream. At the start of the dialogue, Diderot argues for a kind of latent sensitivity in all matter (“stone must feel”), in terms which prefigure the discoveries of modern physics. Diderot presents himself as a materialist, who rejects conventional distinctions between body and soul—a distinction which as we remember was still upheld by both Descartes and Newton. This thoroughgoing materialism could lead in two directions: either to the notion that everything is raw material, with no spiritual dimension, or to the idea put forward at the beginning of Diderot’s conversation with D’Alembert, that all matter feels and has sensitivity. These two directions clearly have hugely
© Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2017 H. Eyres, Seeing Our Planet Whole: A Cultural and Ethical View of Earth Observation, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-40603-9_4
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important implications in terms of our present study: the former leading to the idea that everything, including human beings, is what Heidegger would term “standing reserve”, awaiting transformation and exploitation, the latter returning to the Platonic idea of the earth as a living being.
Swift Another maverick Enlightenment figure is the Anglo-Irish satirist Jonathan Swift. In Gulliver’s Travels, the hero, Lemuel Gulliver, discovers and is rescued by the flying island of Laputa, a realm devoted to the pursuit of madcap scientific schemes. These include trying to extract sunbeams from cucumbers and softening marble for use in pillows. Laputa is often seen as a satire on experiments pursued by the Royal Society. Swift’s target is the kind of scientific experimentation which has lost touch with practicality. Although one might criticise Swift for failing to anticipate the extraordinary scientific breakthroughs which have “eased man’s estate”, his satire is still acute in relation to certain contemporary projects which are avidly supported or pursued in defiance of the kind of common sense which recognises limits: for instance, the much trumpeted ideas of colonising Mars, or some of the more extreme forms of geo-engineering. The particular schemes mocked by Swift may now seem merely quaint, but his psychological insight into the mindset of a certain type of scientist or mathematician remains remarkably prescient. The inhabitants of Laputa go around “under continual Disquietudes, never enjoying a Minute’s Peace of Mind; and their Disturbances proceed from Causes which ver
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