Enlightenment attitudes never penetrated very deep into the general population,
I beg to differ: enlightenment ideas disseminated widely in the XIXth century middle class as well as working class. A lot of more or less clandestine "societies" fed a lively debate about the future society. It led to the creation of both trade unions and co-operatives and, eventually of the socialist movement.
It stayed quite lively (with ups and downs) throughout most of the XXth century until the end of the 70s. The Reagan-Thatcher neo-liberal counter-revolution promoting selfishness and individualism clearly targeted it ("there is no such thing as society") and heavily damaged it. However, it still exists in many places. "Dieu se rit des hommes qui se plaignent des conséquences alors qu'ils en chérissent les causes" Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet
My understanding is that the Enlightenment is a label for a set of ideas which center on applying rational thinking to all aspects of the world. In this viewpoint, the modern world is as irreconcilably wedded to the Enlightenment as can be, and talking of the end seems nonsensical, no? -- $E(X_t|F_s) = X_s,\quad t > s$
One of the most disastrous unintended consequences of the Bill of Rights springs from the 1st Amendments bar on the establishment of religion. In European countries which have or have had established religions religious belief has withered much more thoroughly than in the USA. Perhaps we should establish a state sponsored Church of the Living God in the USA and let all of the fundamentalists duke it out for control. Then they would be so busy fighting about religion that they would have no time for politics! As the Dutch said while fighting the Spanish: "It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."
The effect of state sponsored religion on the non-religious is probably similar to what has happened in Europe. But the combination of state support and benefits, together with a high birthrate, is resulting in a gradual takeover of the country by the fundamentalists (which, like all unsustainable trends, can't go on for ever, but it's anybody's guess at what point it will stop). Do you really want to take the risk that the U.S would be more like Europe?
There is a variety of reasons - most of them very good - that pulling an Atatürk on a modern, reasonably democratic society would be A Bad Idea.
- Jake If you only spend 20 minutes of the rest of your life on economics, go spend them here.
Many of the 18th Century Enlightened philosophers were ministers to their respective kings, and the Enlightenment has been an elite project.
Nowadays, when the elite subscribes to Market Fundamentalism and the political class shows time an again an appalling ignorance of the scientific/technical underpinnings of the way our modern world is organised, it is just conceivable that "the modern world" might unravel through wrong-headed management. A vivid image of what should exist acts as a surrogate for reality. Pursuit of the image then prevents pursuit of the reality -- John K. Galbraith
Once the Market Fundamentalists co-opted those words they started to mean their opposites, and lost their potency.
This has actually been a semiotic war. There are plenty of examples of semiotic war from the end of the dark ages onwards, with people writing each other letters and arguing to define reality.
But the Market Fundamentalists have run one of the fastest and most successful semantic campaigns in history, completely debasing and perverting concepts which otherwise showed real promise and squeezing out competing narratives with terrifying effectiveness.
So they were certainly not “ministers to their respective kings”, of which Koselleck writes that they were, on the contrary, to “agree with the king against their own agony”.
I could go on, but you already see my point: whenever the elites act for their own benefit, they still prefer to surround themselves with experts, as a rule. This is not the case when they make decisions for others, and there is a lot more mismanagement there. We like to gripe about all our governments' failures in the Middle East, on health issues, retirement funds, etc., yet do those failures truly affect the elites as much as the rest of society? I don't think so.
The difference is not that great from the 18th century either. Kings' ministers didn't rule *for* the common people then, nor do they now. Social progress did occur, but it was paid for in blood. And today ministers have MBAs and PhDs, which admittedly didn't exist in the 18th century... -- $E(X_t|F_s) = X_s,\quad t > s$
Louis XIV reactive absolutist reign owes much to la fronde upheaval that would have granted new powers to the parliament and the judiciary. The defeat of la fronde "exiled" progressive thought to the parlors (the salons) and the province. The fables of La Fontaine are political treatise, just as the careful extraordinary works of the Bordeaux landholder Montaigne.
It is fitting that Louis XIV left the state in shambles. His reign simply postponed an inevitable revolution.
I do find that qualifying any major intellectual movement as elite is reductive and somewhat a tautology. There are simple requirements for philosophical speculation in periods of repressive zeitgeist- education, free time, a minimum guarantee of livelihood, a tolerated or clandestine network for the diffusion of works, a knack for dissimulation. It is rare that a serf or peasant could fill the bill. In the rare occasions someone rose from the lower classes, usually through the Church, he or she became "elite."
The Enlightenment sought to apply the scientific method that had been so successful in Physics to all branches of knowledge. In the late 18th century saw the great Naturalists began the transformation from Natural History to Biology and Geology. But in the humanities you had people like Humboldt (also a naturalist) who also laid the groundwork for Anthropology. And the thing is, the success of cultural anthropology in the 20th century has been to realise to what extent culture influences the way we reason about and perceive the world (i.e., the rational and empirical basis of the Enlightenment approach are culturally determined). In this way, the scientific study of human culture shows that the Enlightenment is itself a culture and not universal. This is the truth at the core of the Postmodern reaction to the Enlightenment.
Now that people wedded to the Enlightenment values are beginning to realise what's going on, we might have a positive resolution that goes beyond both the Enlightenment and Postmodernism. Thesis, Antithesis, Synthesis? That would be a Hegelian happy ending... A vivid image of what should exist acts as a surrogate for reality. Pursuit of the image then prevents pursuit of the reality -- John K. Galbraith
Secondly, I don't see how the fact that a significant population is for all intents and purposes uneducated on these values can matter. In the 18th century (or 19th century for that matter), universal education was nonexistent, yet those are commonly associated with the Enlightenment. Surely, today's near universal levels of education in rich societies compares very favorably?
While education is far more substantial in "fixing" ideals and values, cultural signposts serve to ground that knowledge as a shared experience. Without public recognition of values, they become a private experience. A sort of deregulation or outsourcing toward sporadic and local selfish charities.
One of the central tenets of the Enlightenment is its universality (since it is based on reason and empiricism, it is independent of culture). It can be argued (and has been on this site) that the Enlightenment ended up undermining itself by showing this tenet to be false.
It is easy to conflate the "Enlightenment" with "Modernity," which was one of its children. Another Enlightenment value was that social status should be based on merit, not birth. It is also easy to forget that "western liberal democracy" was not the only political offspring of the Enlightenment.
The other notable political offspring was the Soviet State. They embraced the same universal values as the others. It can be argued that they were much more effective in identifying and nurturing talent wherever it was found than were most "western democracies."
Universality proved very useful to the governance of a multi-ethnic, multi-cultural society. They had no use for nationalism or racism with so many nationalities and ethnicities. Religion was suppressed in the name of rationality. I am, of course, referring to the official dogma, not actual practice. Apples to apples, as it were.
Since 1989 we have seen a general retreat from universal values and a rise of nationalisms. This has become the context to the rise of market fundamentalism. But these universal values were never too well rooted anywhere, and were repeatedly overwhelmed by nationalism and racism in the 19th and 20th centuries.
As the Dutch said while fighting the Spanish: "It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."
The other notable political offspring was the Soviet State. They embraced the same universal values as the others.
By contrast, historical sciences require interpretation, because alternative histories cannot ever be observed. It's obvious that interpretation has a degree of arbitrariness, which the postmodernists have rightly pointed out.
Yet in Physics, postmodernism has no place. The primary authority is the experimental result, and the interpretation is merely a convenient summary which can always be replaced or ignored. It is a second tool for answering questions, which complements the experiment, which can always be performed.
Does your Hegelian dialectic count as universal if it applies only to a subset of human knowledge? ;-) -- $E(X_t|F_s) = X_s,\quad t > s$
The primary authority is the experimental result, and the interpretation is merely a convenient summary which can always be replaced or ignored.
But, in addition, the history of physics is as much the history of the theories as it is the history of the experiments. Or, in fact, more about theory than about experiment, with key experiments punctuating the transitions between successive theories. Don't get me wrong, I still agree with Sokal when he said
I confess that I'm an unabashed Old Leftist who never quite understood how deconstruction was supposed to help the working class. And I'm a stodgy old scientist who believes, naively, that there exists an external world, that there exist objective truths about that world, and that my job is to discover some of them. (If science were merely a negotiation of social conventions about what is agreed to be ``true'', why would I bother devoting a large fraction of my all-too-short life to it? I don't aspire to be the Emily Post of quantum field theory.)
It is physics that represents a small subset of human knowledge. In fact, the more physics we know the less we need to know as the theories become more and more generally applicable. But for the last 30 years theoretical physics has become largely divorced from experiment. Instead of moving en masse to mesoscopic physics, theoretical high-energy physicists have marched onwards in pursuit of unification and quantum gravity with no experimental hints, with know (disastrous) results. The extent to which research in theoretical physics is directed by the likelihood of coming up with a publishable paper to put in one's CV for the next job placement 3 years down the line is positively postmodern.
Finally, "my" Hegelian dialectic is not about "Knowledge" but about structural narratives/frames/myths of a society. A vivid image of what should exist acts as a surrogate for reality. Pursuit of the image then prevents pursuit of the reality -- John K. Galbraith
Experiments need a theory to even describe what is going on, or if their result is surprising, why it is surprising.
Why publish actual data otherwise? It would be sufficient to publish the theories, and just claim that they work.
However, you're entirely right that the choice of which experiments are significant (and therefore are the ones that should be carried out and published) depends on the theories of the day. So the succession of experiments is guided by the history of the theories. Is that what you mean?
It is physics that represents a small subset of human knowledge. In fact, the more physics we know the less we need to know as the theories become more and more generally applicable. But for the last 30 years theoretical physics has become largely divorced from experiment.
The extent to which research in theoretical physics is directed by the likelihood of coming up with a publishable paper to put in one's CV for the next job placement 3 years down the line is positively postmodern.
Finally, "my" Hegelian dialectic is not about "Knowledge" but about structural narratives/frames/myths of a society.
good papers (though not all) will be cited, while the trash gets forgotten
When you do a literature search properly you quickly encounter the reality of the plagiarizing of reference lists. Papers are not quoted because they are good, but because they are quoted by other papers. Then again, you're right, just because they are listed in the references doesn't mean they have been read by the authors so, yes, the trash is forgotten.
for the last 30 years theoretical physics has become largely divorced from experiment. Now I think you're exaggerating too :)
it's far from clear that we're close to a GUT. And if we were, so what? We still wouldn't be able to calculate a lot of systems for fundamental mathematical reasons
The results speak for themselves, whatever they are.
At the risk of repeating myself, this diary is not about the experimental sciences, it's about the dominant narratives of society.
But, seriously, most modern experiments make no sense without a theory. A vivid image of what should exist acts as a surrogate for reality. Pursuit of the image then prevents pursuit of the reality -- John K. Galbraith
(key word missing...) A vivid image of what should exist acts as a surrogate for reality. Pursuit of the image then prevents pursuit of the reality -- John K. Galbraith
Information theoretically, the meaning is in the prior and the likelihood. The amount of surprise is, too, since entropy is an explicit function of the model, and for a given datapoint it can take any value as soon as you vary the model.
Is knowledge more than a collection of facts? Yes, but I would say it's a construct built on facts. If we lose the theories and the models, we can rebuild them, or substantially equivalent ones, from the facts. If we lose the facts, we can't just simulate new ones and call them real. -- $E(X_t|F_s) = X_s,\quad t > s$
Within physics you have astrophysics or cosmology which are also historical.
And, to a certain extent, stationarity and ergodicity are model-dependent features.
It's not that "postmodern" "textual analysis" doesn't apply to physics, it is that when studying physics one has to take into account the repeatability.
So "repeatability" is a special quality that applies to a subset of human knowledge.
No, it is limited by the extent of repeatability. A vivid image of what should exist acts as a surrogate for reality. Pursuit of the image then prevents pursuit of the reality -- John K. Galbraith
In the USA I would guess, and it is a guess, that no more than two to three times the number of college educated people had any significant exposure to enlightenment thought. Prior to WW II and the GI Bill that was a rather small portion of the population. And by no means did all of those so exposed become exponents of enlightenment values, particularly among the parsons and ministers. And many of the educated were so involved in furthering their own interests that any concern about enlightenment values took a decidedly second place in their concerns. Think lawyers, factory owners, plantation owners, judges, etc. As the Dutch said while fighting the Spanish: "It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."
Secondly, I don't see how the fact that a significant population is for all intents and purposes uneducated on these values can matter. In the 18th century (or 19th century for that matter), universal education was nonexistent, yet those are commonly associated with the Enlightenment. Surely, today's near universal levels of education in rich societies compares very favorably? -- $E(X_t|F_s) = X_s,\quad t > s$
1) World view: The Enlightenment was primarily a change in world view which came to see and explain the world in naturalistic terms rather than in religious terms. It incorporated the humanistic emphasis of the renaissance, "man is the measure of all things." with a newly found confidence in the ability of the human mind to understand the workings of the natural world.
The development of science from Copernicus to Newton provided the foundation for this shift. Voltaire, among others, assimilated an understanding of Newton and an appreciation of his impact while cooling his heels in England in the early part of the 18th century. Locke provided a rationale for governmental authority separate from Divine Right, which had been the prevailing view. This was a practical necessity in England after the beheading of Charles I.
The Enlightenment Project, so called, came to include replacing all arguments from authority and all explanations involving Divine Intervention with naturalistic ones. This was Adam Smith's great contribution. He developed a comprehensive account of moral and economic organization and behavior that was independent of any Divine Supervision. These were set forth most notably in The Theory of the Moral Sentiments and The Wealth of Nations Smith did for the social sciences what Newton had done for physics.
In all spheres of knowledge men sought to determine the Laws of Nature. The nature of God changed from that of a theistic divinity to which one prayed directly to a deistic divinity who, if he really existed, had created, or was embodied in, the Laws of Nature. This was known as The Clockwork Universe. God created it, wound it up and let it go. He retired from the world.
It came to be assumed, among the educated, that The Laws of Nature could be studied and apprehended by man. This was a profound change from a world view in which God was the immediate author of all things and man was assumed to be incapable of understanding his inscrutable ways. But this process was hesitant and proceeded over a long period of time.
2) Reason and History. The worship of reason during the French Revolution became infamous. Most of the Philosophers sensed the inadequacy of reason alone as a guide to man in society. In their heart of hearts they might have believed that there was no God, but Hume, Diderot and others refused to publish some of their best works during their lifetimes: Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion in Hume's case and Le neveu de Rameau in Diderot's case.
Reason showed them the absurdities of religion and led them to doubt the existence of God, but they had little confidence that they had an adequate replacement. They could see that an omnipotent, omniscent and omnibenificent deity was an absurdity, given the state of the world, but they had no satisfactory replacement. It was as though God had absconded during the night, leaving mankind in the lurch. Hume said of his work: "It is true, but men cannot live by it."
Hume turned from philosophy to the study of history, economics and politics. They came to study useful arts and sciences and to compile these into Diderot's Encyclopédie and in England the Encyclopedia Britanica. Experience had to supplement abstract reason. As Priestly said: "Without history the advantages of our rational nature must have been rated very low." Gibbon, Hume, Voltaire, Montesquieu and Herder all produced histories. These histories were written to teach by example. They sought to see through history the universal nature of man.
Per Becker, what they really did was to create a new religion. "The essential articles of the religion of the Enlightenment may be stated thus: (1) man is not natively depraved; (2) the end of life is life itself, the good life on earth instead of the beatific life after death; (3) man is capable, guided solely by the light of reason and experience, of perfecting the good life on earth; and (4) the first and essential condition of the good life on earth is the freeing of men's minds from the bonds of ignorance and superstition and their bodies from the arbitrary oppression of the constituted social authorities.
3) The uses of posterity: The philosophers saw the future as a better world they were building and they looked to posterity for justification for their actions. They sought to reclaim the world from the misery into which they saw Christianity as having sent it. "For the love of God they substituted the love of humanity; for the vicarious atonement the perfectibility of man through his own efforts; and for the hope of immortality in another world the hope of living in the memory of future generations."
This is but a poor Cliff Notes of Becker's work and already too long. The great virtue of Becker is his brevity, 168 pages. The Heavenly City was written in 1932 and there are newer works available, notably by Peter Gay. But I believe Becker remains the best introduction to the subject. As the Dutch said while fighting the Spanish: "It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."
Yet upon reading your comment, I do not feel as if the current world is leaving Reason behind, which was my impression from some of the comments in this diary.
Technologically and scientifically, the world is essentially the same, only with less philosophy and more practical application.
The importance of education remains both high and widely recognized to be high. Throughout the world everybody, especially the poor, sees education as key to success.
There are comparatively few societies left around the world in which social status is rigidly based on blood or caste, as opposed to merely wealth.
It's true that religion remains a formidable motive force in the world, as it always has been. However, the number of nonbelievers remains significant and shows no sign of actually vanishing. This is a net "win" for Enlightenment given how it started.
It's easy to lose sight of the big picture though, from the bleatings of the media, which likes to scare us with terrorism, war with enemy empires, and assorted religious issues of the day. So I'm still unconvinced that we have entered a post-Enlightenment world.
(*) somewhat off-topic, but you might find this interesting if you don't know it already: Newton's contribution was, in various ways, a dead end for physics. Without taking anything away from his achievements, his ideas about forces are in most cases unworkable, and must be replaced by ideas about fields and least energy, which were actually proposed as alternatives by thinkers on the continent. -- $E(X_t|F_s) = X_s,\quad t > s$
There is or was a tag line: "Our knowledge has exceeded our wisdom." Gains in technical knowledge, unless classified, are described in technical journals and or patent applications and thereby become relatively permanent in nature. Many can see and apply the advances. With the social sciences and the humanities is is very different.
There have been advances in the social sciences, but they have not been adopted on the basis of their usefulness to society at large, but rather on the basis of their utility to those occupying the seats of power. Worse, they often are no more accessible to the average citizen than are the findings of the hard sciences.
One of the great weaknesses of Enlightenment thought which persisted into the Enlightenment's child, Modernity, is the over valuation of the importance and power of reason. This is not to diminish the importance of reason, but to put it into perspective against the scope of the problem facing those of us who are awake.
Reason has so little scope in the effective decisions of so many people that the consequences are, or should be, frightening. Consider Germany in 1932 or Russia in 1918. There were people who understood what was happening and tried to do what they could to bring about a good outcome. They were like leaves in a hurricane. So often, especially in times of crisis, society at large is more like a vast ocean of unreason. I am reminded of the prayer from the Anglican Book of Common Prayer: "Lord, thy ocean is so vast and my boat is so small!" Our reason is like a boat upon the ocean, but one that was not designed for ocean going voyages. As the Dutch said while fighting the Spanish: "It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."
