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Organicism and the Future of Scientific Utopia

  • Chapter
Approaches to Organic Form

Part of the book series: Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science ((BSPS,volume 105))

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Abstract

Historians of science generally agree that a shift took place in the mid-eighteenth century from Newtonian mechanism to an animistic, organic view of nature. This shift, attributed over fifty years ago by Ernst Cassirer to the influence of Leibniz, has more recently been studied in detail in the fields of biology, medicine, physics, chemistry and earth sciences.1 Another development, that has been traced independently to the same period, was a change in the nature of utopian thought from static, encapsulated “speaking pictures” to visions of an endlessly dynamic human future.2 These two intellectual trends a few decades before the French Revolution seem to me to have been not only simultaneous but inextricably linked, although their relationship has never been explicitly explored. This is perhaps due to a lack of communication between disciplines. Utopian literature has fallen into disrepute lately, and historians of eighteenth century science rarely stray far enough from the properly scientific treatises they study to investigate such unscientific phenomena as “voyages imaginaires.” Nor have most scholars of Enlightenment utopias, trained generally in literature, sociology or philosophy, ventured to analyze the scientific content of their specimens.

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Notes

  1. Ernst Cassirer, The Philosophy of the Enlightenment (Boston: Beacon Press, 1955), 26–36. For an excellent survey of the historiograpy of science in the eighteenth century

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  81. Ibid., 278.

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  82. Ibid., I: 97.

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Authors
  1. Nina Gelbart
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  1. University of California, Los Angeles, USA

    Frederick Burwick

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© 1987 D. Reidel Publishing Company

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Gelbart, N. (1987). Organicism and the Future of Scientific Utopia. In: Burwick, F. (eds) Approaches to Organic Form. Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, vol 105. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-3917-2_2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-3917-2_2

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