Ideas

by Peter Watson

  133. Einstein, Op. cit., page 191.

  134. Nike Wagner, Op. cit., page 172.

  135. Einstein, Op. cit., page 192.

  136. Di Gaetani, Op. cit., pages 219–238. See also: Erik Levine, Music in the Third Reich, London: Macmillan, 1994, page 35, for Hitler’s sponsorship of Wagner research.

  CHAPTER 31: THE RISE OF HISTORY, PRE-HISTORY AND DEEP TIME

  1. Frank McLynn, Napoleon, London: Jonathan Cape, 1997, page 171.

  2. Jacques Barzun, From Dawn to Decadence, 500 Years of Western Cultural Life, New York and London: HarperCollins, 2000, pages 442–444.

  3. Ibid., page 442.

  4. Ibid., pages 395–396.

  5. Roger Smith, Op. cit., page 372.

  6. Ibid., page 373.

  7. Ibid., page 374.

  8. Boorstin, The Seekers, Op. cit., page 210, for Bertrand Russell’s and Benjamin Franklin’s criticism of Hegel.

  9. Paul R. Sweet, Wilhelm von Humboldt: A Biography, volume 2, Columbus: Ohio University Press, 1980, pages 392ff.

  10. Roger Smith, Op. cit., page 379.

  11. This was very modern in itself, but Humboldt went further, arguing that some languages–German inevitably, and despite Napoleon’s successes–were more ‘suited’ to ‘higher’ purposes. This was the beginning of what would turn into a very dangerous idea.

  12. Roger Smith, Op. cit., page 382.

  13. Ibid., page 385.

  14. Ibid., page 387.

  15. David Friedrich Strauss, The Life of Jesus, Critically Examined, edited and with an introduction by Peter C. Hodgson, London: SCM Press, 1972, page xx.

  16. See John Hadley Brooke, Science and Religion, Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1991, page 266, for a discussion of Strauss and the difference between myth and falsehood. See also Strauss/Hodgson, Op. cit., page xlix.

  17. Vincent Cronin, Napoleon, London: Collins, 1971, page 145.

  18. C. W. Ceram, Gods, Graves and Scholars, London: Gollancz, 1971 pages 207–208.

  19. Ian Tattersall, The Fossil Trail, Op cit., page 14. H. Schaafhausen, ‘On the crania of the most ancient races of Man’. Translated, with an introduction by G. Bush, in Natural History Review, volume 1, 1861, pages 155–176.

  20. Bowler, Evolution: The History of an Idea, Op. cit., page 65.

  21. Ibid., page 65.

  22. Ibid., page 75.

  23. Ibid., page 26.

  24. Suzanne Kelly, ‘Theories of the earth in Renaissance cosmologies’, in Cecil J. Schneer (editor), Towards a History of Geology, Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1969, pages 214–225.

  25. Bowler, Op. cit., page 31.

  26. Ibid., page 37.

  27. Ibid., page 40.

  28. Ibid., page 44.

  29. Charles Gillispie, Genesis and Geology, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1949; Harper Torch-book, 1959, page 48.

  30. Ibid., pages 41–42.

  31. Nicholas Steno, The Prodromus of Nicholas Steno’s Dissertation concerning a Solid Body Enclosed by Process of Nature within a solid. Original 1669, translated into English by J. G. Winter in 1916, as part of the University of Michigan Humanistic Studies, volume 1, part 2, reprinted by Hafner Publishing Company, New York, 1968. John Woodward, ‘An Essay Toward a Natural History of the Earth and terrestrial Bodyes’, originally London 1695, reprinted New York: Arno Press, 1977.

  32. Gillispie, Op. cit., page 42. Jack Repcheck, The Man Who Found Time: James Hutton and the Discovery of the Earth’s Antiquity, London: Simon & Schuster, 2003, who says that Hutton’s prose was ‘impenetrable’ and that, at the time, people were not very interested in the antiquity of the earth.

  33. See, for example, Gillispie, Op. cit., page 46.

  34. Ibid., page 68.

  35. Ibid., page 84.

  36. Bowler, Op. cit., page 110.

  37. Gillispie, Op. cit., page 99.

  38. Bowler, Op. cit., page 116.

  39. Gillispie, Op. cit., page 101.

  40. Bowler, Op. cit., page 116.

  41. Ibid., page 119.

  42. Brooke, Op. cit., page 203, says that on one occasion Buckland ‘detained’ the British Association for the Advancement of Science until midnight, ‘expatiating’ on the ‘design’ of the great sloth.

  43. Gillispie, Op. cit., page 107.

  44. Bowler, Op. cit., page 110.

  45. Ibid., page 124 for a table.

  46. Gillispie, Op. cit., pages 111–112 and 142.

  47. Bowler, Op. cit., page 130.

  48. Ibid., page 132.

  49. Ibid., pages 134ff.

  50. Gillispie, Op. cit., page 133.

  51. Bowler, Op. cit., page 138.

  52. Gillispie, Op. cit., page 210.

  53. Ibid., page 212.

  54. Ibid., page 214.

  55. Secord, Victorian Sensation, Op. cit., page 388.

  56. Ibid., chapter 3, pages 77ff.

  57. Ibid., page 526, for the publishing histories of Vestiges and the Origin compared.

  58. Edward Lurie, Louis Agassiz: A Life in Science, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960, pages 97ff, for Agassiz’ development of the concept of the Ice Age.

  59. J. D. Macdougall, A Short History of Planet Earth, New York and London: John Wiley & Sons, 1996, page 210.

  60. But there was something else too. Among the moraines were found considerable quantities of diamonds. Diamonds are formed deep in the earth and are brought to the surface in the molten magma produced by volcanoes. Thus, here was further evidence of the continuous action of volcanoes, reinforcing the fact that the discovery of the great Ice Age(s) confirmed both the antiquity of the earth and the uniformitarian approach to geology. Ibid., pages 206–210.

  61. Peter J. Bowler, The Non-Darwinian Revolution, Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1988, page 13.

  62. Mayr, The Growth of Biological Thought, Op. cit., page 349. See also: Moynahan, Op. cit., page 651.

  63. Pietro Corsi, The Age of Lamarck: Evolutionary Theories in France 1790–1830, Berkeley and London: University of California Press, 1988, pages 121ff. Ernst Mayr, the eminent historian of biology, says that Lamarck presented his view of evolution with far more courage than Darwin was to do fifty years later. Mayr, Op. cit., page 352.

  64. Corsi, Op. cit., pages 157ff, for those who did and did not agree with Lamarck. The rise of the Great Chain of Being, which was discussed in the Introduction, also formed part of the intellectual climate of the mid-nineteenth century. It was an ancient idea, which gave it credibility to begin with, but it was not really a scientific idea and therefore did not long outlive Darwin’s innovations. See Bowler, Evolution: The History of an Idea, Op. cit., pages 59ff for nineteenth-century ideas about the Great Chain and page 61 for a diagram.

  65. These other factors included industrial capitalism–the notion that people should be free to compete in business activities, because in that way the good of the community and the selfish interests of individuals coincide.

  66. Bowler, The Non-Darwinian Revolution, Op. cit., page 36.

  67. Ibid., page 41.

  68. Barry Gale, ‘Darwin and the concept of the struggle for existence: a study in the extra-scientific origins of scientific ideas’, Isis, volume 63, 1972, pages 321–344.

  69. Bowler, The Non-Darwinian Revolution, Op. cit., page 57.

  70. Secord, Op. cit., page 431.

  71. Bowler, The Non-Darwinian Revolution, Op. cit., page 42. Martin Fichnan, ‘Ideological factors in the dissemination of Darwinism’, in Everett Mendelsohn (editor), Transformation and Tradition in the Sciences, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1984, pages 471–485.

  72. Bowler, The Non-Darwinian Revolution, Op. cit., page 43.

  73. Mayr, Op. cit., page 950. Ross A. Slotten, The Heretic in Darwin’s Court: The Life of Alfred Russel Wallace, New York: Columbia University Press, 2004.

  74. Bowler, The Non-Darwinian Revolution, Op. cit., page 152.

  75. Mayr, Op. cit., p
age 501.

  76. Bowler, The Non-Darwinian Revolution, Op. cit., page 162.

  77. Ibid., page 187.

  78. Ibid., page 67.

  79. Secord, Op. cit., page 526.

  80. Mayr, Op. cit., page 510.

  81. Even T. H. Huxley, ‘Darwin’s bulldog’, who did so much to advance the cause of evolution overall, never made much of natural selection.

  82. Bowler, Evolution: The History of an Idea, Op. cit., page 24.

  83. See: Peter Watson, A Terrible Beauty: The People and Ideas That Shaped the Modern Mind, London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2000/The Modern Mind: An Intellectual History of the Twentieth Century, New York: HarperCollins, 2001, page 371, for a summary of the evolutionary synthesis. See also: Ernst Mayr and William B. Provine (editors), The Evolutionary Synthesis, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1990/1998.

  84. Secord, Op. cit., pages 224 and 230.

  85. Mayr, Op. cit., page 654.

  86. Bowler, Evolution: The History of an Idea, Op. cit., page 271.

  87. Bowler, The Non-Darwinian Revolution, Op. cit., page 132.

  88. Ibid., page 135.

  89. Ibid.

  90. Lewis Morgan, Ancient Society, London: Macmillan, 1877.

  91. This whole debate, however, was coloured by racist thinking. For example, a new science of ‘craniometry’ emerged in which the brain sizes of different races were compared. The leading figures here were S. G. Morton in America and Paul Broca in France, who both thought they had demonstrated that the ‘lower’ races had smaller brains and that this accounted for their lower intelligence and their more primitive position on the ladder of cultural evolution.

  92. Bowler, The Non-Darwinian Revolution, Op. cit., page 144.

  93. Ibid., page 145.

  94. Ibid.

  95. See Brooke, Op. cit., page 147 for the background to Dubois’ trip to the Far East.

  96. Bowler, The Non-Darwinian Revolution, Op. cit., page 174.

  97. Ibid., page 175.

  CHAPTER 32: NEW IDEAS ABOUT HUMAN ORDER: THE ORIGINS OF SOCIAL SCIENCE AND STATISTICS

  1. D. Gerould, The Guillotine: Its Legend and Lore, New York: Blast Books, 1992, page 25.

  2. Ibid., page 33.

  3. See Barzun, From Dawn to Decadence, Op. cit., pages 519ff, for other reactions to the French Revolution.

  4. Ibid., page 428.

  5. Ken Alder, The Measure of All Things: The Seven-Year Odyssey That Transformed the World, London: Little Brown/Abacus, 2002/2004, page 96.

  6. Ibid., pages 314–325.

  7. Hawthorn, Enlightenment and Despair, Op. cit., page 67.

  8. Roger Smith, Op. cit., page 423.

  9. Hawthorn, Op. cit., page 218.

  10. Roger Smith, Op. cit., pages 423–424.

  11. Saint-Simon saw society as composed of nobles, industriels, and ‘bastardclasses’. In other words, he had a healthy dislike of the bourgeoisie. Hawthorn, Op. cit., page 68.

  12. John Marks, Science and the Making of the Modern World, London: Heinemann, 1983, page 196.

  13. Ibid., page 197.

  14. Ibid., pages 198–199.

  15. Ibid.

  16. Charlotte Roberts and Margaret Cox, Health and Disease in Britain: From Pre-history to the Present Day, Stroud, England: Sutton, 2003, pages 338–340. Roy Porter cautions that though we now equate tuberculosis with consumption, in fact the latter often included asthma, catarrh etc. Roy and Dorothy Porter, In Sickness and in Health: The British Experience, 1650–1850, London: Fourth Estate, 1988, page 146.

  17. Roger Smith, Op. cit., page 427. Boorstin, The Seekers, Op. cit., page 222.

  18. Roger Smith, Op. cit., page 201.

  19. Mary Pickering, Auguste Comte: An Intellectual Biography, Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1993, pages 192ff, for the rupture with Saint-Simon.

  20. Roger Smith, Op. cit., page 429.

  21. Ibid., page 430.

  22. Pickering, Op. cit., pages 612–613 and 615.

  23. Roger Smith, Op. cit., page 431.

  24. Comte had a high opinion of his accomplishments and towards the end of his life signed himself: ‘The founder of Universal Religion, Great Priest of Humanity.’

  25. See ‘The vogue for Spencer’, in Richard Hofstadter, Social Darwinism in American Thought, Boston: Beacon Books, 1944/1992, pages 31ff.

  26. Roger Smith, Op. cit., page 438.

  27. Ibid., page 446.

  28. L. A. Coser, Masters in Sociological Thought: Ideas in Historical and Sociological Context, New York: Harcourt Brace, 1971, page 281. Harold Perkin, The Rise of Professional Society: England Since 1880, London and New York: Routledge, 1989/1990, page 49.

  29. Roger Smith, Op. cit., page 555.

  30. Hawthorn, Op. cit., pages 147ff, for the disputes ‘smouldering’ at the Verein.

  31. Roger Smith, Op. cit., page 556.

  32. Ibid., pages 556–557.

  33. Hawthorn, Op. cit., page 157.

  34. Anthony Giddens, introduction to Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, London and New York: Routledge, 1942 (reprint 1986), page ix.

  35. Reinhard Bendix, Max Weber: An Intellectual Portrait, London: Heinemann, 1960, page 70. For Weber’s political views, see Hawthorn, Op. cit., page 154f.

  36. Roger Smith, Op. cit., pages 561–562.

  37. Giddens, Op. cit., pages ixff.

  38. Roger Smith, Op. cit., page 563.

  39. Hawthorn, Op. cit., page 186.

  40. David Frisby, Georg Simmel, London: Tavistock Publications, 1984, page 51.

  41. Roger Smith, Op. cit., page 546.

  42. Ibid. See Hawthorn, Op. cit., page 122, for the links to pragmatism (see Chapter 34 below).

  43. Roger Smith, Op. cit., page 547.

  44. Steven Lukes, Emile Durkheim: His Life and Work, London: Allen Lane The Penguin Press, 1973, pages 206ff.

  45. Ibid., page 207, for the difference between egoism, anomie and altruism.

  46. Marks, Op. cit., page 208.

  47. Roberts and Cox, Op. cit., page 537. ‘The germ theory of disease’, Alexander Hellemans and Bryan Bunch, The Timetables of Science, New York: Simon & Schuster, 1991, page 356.

  48. Roger Smith, Op. cit., page 535.

  49. Bernal, Science and History, Op. cit., volume 4, page 1140.

  50. Alder, Op. cit., page 322.

  51. Alan Desrosières, The Politics of Large Numbers: A History of Statistical Reasoning, translated by Camille Naish, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1998, page 75.

  52. Ibid., pages 73–79 and 90–91.

  53. Lisanne Radice, Beatrice and Sidney Webb, Fabian Socialists, London: Macmillan, 1984, page 55.

  54. Not everyone was in favour of the new approach. In Britain the new register of births, marriages and deaths was criticised on all sides. Counting births irritated the Church of England, which thought that not counting baptisms showed too much respect for Nonconformists; Unitarians thought it somehow disrespectful to God to count people who were going to join their maker; and many people thought the size of their family was in any case a private matter. M. T. Cullen, The Statistical Movement in Early Victorian Britain, Hassocks, Sussex: Harvester, 1975, pages 29–30.

  55. David Boyle, The Tyranny of Numbers, London: HarperCollins, 2000, pages 64–65.

  56. Ibid., page 72.

  57. Ibid., page 74.

  58. Desrosières, Op. cit., pages 232ff.

  CHAPTER 33: THE USES AND ABUSES OF NATIONALISM AND IMPERIALISM

  1. Schulze, States, Nations and Nationalism, Op. cit., page 69.

  2. Anthony Pagden, People and Empires, London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2001, page 89.

  3. Niall Ferguson, Empire: How Britain Made the Modern World, London: Allen Lane/Penguin, 2003/2004, page 63. See also: Pagden, Op. cit., page 92.

  4. Ibid., page 94.

  5. Ibid., page 97.

  6. Ibid., page 98. Ferguson, Op. cit., page 85, for the wealth of New Englanders.
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