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Transformations of thought

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Transformations of Thought 1859 - 1914
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Transformations of Thought 1859 - 1914

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Charles Darwin❖1859, published On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of the Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life.❖Darwin did not use the term “evolution.”❖Set out to demonstrate that species of animals were not special creations of God, but evolved from common ancestors through long process of gradual change.

❖New species had come into existence and many ceased to exist in a continual process.❖This view placed human beings more among apes than angels.❖Challenged traditional Christian conception of God’s special creation of all living beings.

Charles Darwin

❖Idea of evolution connected with changing views of the age of the Earth.❖People generally thought the Earth was young.❖Darwin insisted that species developed very slowly, through evolutionary process, by adapting to their environment.

Charles Darwin

❖Species that could adapt survived, and those with physical or mental characteristics that could not adapt passed out of existence.❖Darwin spoke of “favoured” races, those that were more suited to their environment.

Charles Darwin

❖Selection process was “natural,” which implied that it was not controlled by a deity.❖Darwin thought of life as a constant “struggle for existence.”❖Through natural selection some survived and others did not.

Charles Darwin

❖Term “survival of the fittest,” was adopted by Darwin from his contemporary Herbert Spencer.❖Darwin’s vision of progress differed from that of the Enlightenment.❖By progress, Darwin meant that “higher” species emerged from “lower” ones through a struggle within the environment.

Charles Darwin

❖Human beings were now at the highest level of the evolutionary ladder;❖His ideas were used by those who wished to argue that struggle among people and nations was essential for progress.❖Used to justify imperialism.

Charles Darwin

❖Some of Darwin’s contemporaries were horrified by the process he described as he noted in the 2nd edition of On the Origin of Species:“It is interesting to contemplate an entangled bank clothed with many plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about, and with worms crawling through the damp earth, and to reflect that these elaborately constructed forms, so different from each other, and dependent on each other in so complex a manner, have all been produced by laws acting around us.

Charles Darwin

“These laws, taken in the largest sense, [are] Growth with Reproduction; Inheritance which is almost implied by reproduction; Variability from the indirect and direct action of the external conditions of life, and from use and disuse; a Ratio of Increase so high as to lead to a Struggle for Life, and as a consequence to Natural Selection, entailing Divergence of Character and the Extinction of less-improved forms. Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely the production of the higher animals, directly follows.

Charles Darwin

“There is grandeur in the view of life…having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.”

Charles Darwin

❖He concluded in another work, The Descent of Man (1871):“We must…acknowledge, as it seems to me, that man with all his noble qualities, with sympathy which feels for the most debased, with benevolence which extends not only to other men but to the humblest living creature, with his god-like intellect which has penetrated into the movements and constitutions of the solar system-with all these exalted powers-Man still bears in his bodily frame the indelible stamp of his lowly origin.”

Charles Darwin

❖Thomas Malthus wrote Essay on Population in 1798.❖He asserted that nature was not benign and that progress was not inevitable.❖Increase in population would always outrun people’s limited resources.

Social Darwinism

Social Darwinism❖Food supply increased arithmetically (1, 2, 3, 4…), while population increased geometrically (1, 2, 4, 8…).❖The consequence of this “law” of population growth was that suffering would increase despite social improvements.

Religious Thought❖Religious beliefs and institutions were still very strong in the mid-nineteenth century.❖New type of biblical study raised disturbing issues.❖Study of ancient languages grew more sophisticated with development of philology, analysis of texts and languages.

❖Texts could be more clearly understood in original context.❖Some scholars concluded that the Bible was written by several people at different times.❖Challenged the belief that the Bible was revealed truth.

Religious Thought

❖If Darwin was right, life was a process of constant change and not an act of special creation; species emerged and were destroyed in random fashion, God did not seem to care.❖Darwin’s universe was always in flux.❖If one accepted Darwin’s vision, questions like What should the goals of life be?

Religious Thought

❖How should people behave? What was their relationship to God? What of the idea of the soul?❖Many regarded biblical criticism as heresy and Darwin as inspired by the devil.❖“Warfare between science and theology,” was not universal.❖Some felt that evolution could be part of God’s plan.

Religious Thought

❖Thomas Henry Huxley (1825-1895) created the term “agnostic” which maintained that ultimate truths about nature and God were not knowable; therefore one should not waste time arguing about these things.

Religious Thought

Psychology❖Modern psychology developed by Austrian doctor Sigmund Freud (1856-1939).❖Investigated the workings of the individual mind.❖Began in medicine, but realized some of his patients’ symptoms were not the result of physical ailments.

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❖In order to treat this symptoms he developed method of psychoanalysis, by which mental history of each patient was carefully analyzed.❖Freud rejected the view that people are basically rational creatures.❖Developed complex theory of behaviour.

Psychology

❖Freud first made a distinction between the conscious and unconscious.❖Theorized that there were at least two levels of mind in operation, with the unconscious often playing a primary role, as in the case of hysterical patients.❖Stressed the importance of childhood experiences in influencing actions of mature persons.

Psychology

❖Recognized the significance of dreams and published The Interpretation of Dreams (1900).❖Thought that dreams are the way people act out events and desires that cannot be fulfilled in society.❖Freud claimed that people had certain instincts, such as sexual desires and aggressions, which have to be repressed in civilized world.

Psychology

❖These instincts, sometimes referred to as the “libido,” were included in part of a person’s personality, which Freud called the “id,” one’s basic desires.❖The id is held in check by the “super-ego,” which is the conscience acquire by people living in society.❖The face one presents to the world is the “ego” – personality or self, which is constantly caught between the desires of the id and the repression of the superego.

Psychology

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❖When tensions between the id and superego become unbearable, an individual may cease to be able to function effectively.❖Challenged Enlightenment view that people were guided by reason.❖Saw behaviour as complex, not to be explained simply in terms of economic gain or social satisfaction.

Psychology

Physical Universe❖Albert Einstein (1879-1955).❖“Special theory of relativity” (1905).❖Claimed that the observer was extremely important in describing the movement of bodies in space.❖Used trains as an example: an observer who is standing in a meadow sees a train from a very different position from that of an observer who is looking at it while travelling on another train.

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❖The observer in the meadow and the observer on the other train will measure the speed differently.❖Einstein defined space relativity, not absolutely.❖There can be no accuracy in describing where a planet is in space without stating where the observer who is doing the measuring is standing.❖Mars looks different to a person on Earth than it would to a person on the moon.

Physical Universe

❖Space is “relative,” meaning that it can only be defined as the relation between things in an otherwise empty universe.❖Also redefined time, speaking of it as an order of events related to the observer.❖The reason we can talk to one another about time is that we agree on a similar reference system: the year 1905 means something to us because we have defined what a “year” is and “1905” is one thousand and nine hundred and five “years” after something else happened.

Physical Universe

❖Time is not objective, but subjective.❖Our clock is related to our position in space in relation to the sun and the rotation of the Earth around its axis.❖A “year,” the amount of time taken by the Earth to rotate around the sun, would be different for someone on another heavenly body with a different rotation.

Physical Universe

Karl Marx❖Most popular work was the Manifesto of the Communist Party, written in collaboration with Friedrich Engels.❖Declared that modern history could be understood in terms of “the class struggle.”❖Social change could take place only by revolution, which the oppressed class overthrew the oppressors.

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❖Marx argued that the most important factors that conditioned a person’s ideas and beliefs were social environment and individual’s relationship to the economy.❖French Revolution was not the end product of the ideology of the Enlightenment.❖Rather, occurred in 1789 because social and economic conditions were ripe for revolution.

Karl Marx

❖He believed that through the study of history one could discover laws of social change.❖Identified four types of societies that had appeared in the West – primitive, ancient, feudal, and capitalist.❖Societies were distinguished by the way they produced goods.

Karl Marx

❖Each became transformed as economic conditions changed.❖Feudal society became bourgeois (middle class) when industrial production became more important than agriculture.❖Owners of industry – the bourgeoisie – replaced the owners of land – the aristocracy – as the dominant class.

Karl Marx

❖The “exploitation” of the proletariat (industrial labourer who owned no capital or property) replaced that of the serfs.❖Marx believed that economic change occurs with the development of technology.❖Social change is produced by class conflict between those who control the means of production and those who do not.

Karl Marx

❖The French Revolution was the “bourgeois” revolution, because it resulted in the victory of the middle class over the aristocracy.❖Marx predicted that after the proletariat overthrew their masters a transition period would ensue.❖This would be followed by communism, no exploitation because means of production would be owned by society.

Karl Marx

❖Communist society with only one class – the workers – there would be no conflict because there would be no individual owners of the means of production.❖Predicted that England and Germany would lead in the development of world socialism – political and economic system in which means of production and distribution are owned, managed, or controlled by central democratically elected authority.

Karl Marx

❖Communist society with only one class – the workers – there would be no conflict because there would be no individual owners of the means of production.❖Predicted that England and Germany would lead in the development of world socialism – political and economic system in which means of production and distribution are owned, managed, or controlled by central democratically elected authority.

Karl Marx


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