Right here’s an excerpt from Novalis, a German Romantic thinker and author of the late 18th century (translation © 2008 by Douglas Robertson, discovered here):
Mankind travels alongside manifold pathways. He who pursues and compares them will understand the emergence of sure unusual figures; figures that seem like inscribed in that huge tome composed in cipher that one in every single place and in every part beholds: on wings, eggshells, in clouds, within the snow, in crystalline and stone formations, in freezing waters, on the skins and within the bowels of mountain-ranges, of vegetation, beasts, individuals, within the stars of the heavens, in contiguous and expansive panes of pitch and glass, within the clustering of iron filings across the magnet (…) In these one could glimpse an intimation of the important thing to this wondrous textual content, its very grammar-book (…) He [our teacher] would behold the celebrities and plot their programs and positions within the sand. He would gaze into the celestial sea, by no means tiring of considering its actions, its clouds, its lights. He would gather rocks, flowers, beetles of all species, and array them in manifold sequences and mixtures. He would hold a eager eye on each males and beasts and sit on the seashore looking for shellfish. He would eavesdrop attentively on his personal ideas and feelings.
It is a lengthy and demanding learn. However it’s simple to see how its view of the world of the German Romantic motion differs from what we, as we speak, name science: wings, egg-shells, clouds, snow, stone formations, freezing waters, pores and skin and bowels of vegetation, beasts and folks: these are all only a code, a cipher, and if one is aware of the best way to see, he’ll have the ability to perceive the ‘wondrous textual content,’ its ‘grammar-book’. He’ll have the ability to learn nature, to grasp her language, as simply as one reads a guide.
One may maybe argue that this exactly is what science does. Do physics and chemistry not give us a language, the language of atoms, the grammar of molecules, with which we will describe wings, egg-shells and clouds suddenly? Does physics not give us the formulation that describe the forces that act on wings, on egg-shells and on clouds alike, and that make them transfer and behave as they do?
There appear to be essential variations.
First, discover that the issues described by no means lose their individuality. Open a chemistry guide, and you’ll not discover any wings and egg-shells and rocks in it. After the phenomena have been lowered to their element substances, science is glad to allow them to vanish. Not so the German Romantic. If he needs to grasp an egg-shell as part of the larger plan of nature, he can not permit its character as an egg-shell to be misplaced. An egg-shell, lowered to its calcium compounds, will not be an egg-shell anymore, however a spoonful of calcium compounds. The German Romantic’s level in regards to the egg-shell is that the phenomenon can’t be lowered to some facet of it. An egg-shell is simple to interrupt, skinny, gentle, a vessel for the life rising inside, and has an nearly infinite multitude of different properties that distinguish it from different issues which might be composed of calcium. The identical is true of every part else: a wing will not be solely a handful of feathers. A cloud will not be solely a group of water droplets.
However usually, the complexity of the phenomena is what retains them aside, what uniquely identifies and separates them from one another. What makes them what they’re, and prevents them from being one thing else. And right here is the place the Romantic’s perception is available in, the alchemy of romantic transmutation: the assumption that, deep inside, all phenomena are related, that there’s a unifying precept to all of creation, and that we, as people, can understand it and even perhaps perceive its ‘grammar,’ its language, the way in which it speaks to us by way of the phenomena. This precept, versus the language of chemistry or physics, doesn’t scale back the phenomena. It doesn’t negate their uniqueness. Nevertheless it sees this uniqueness as only a distinctive type of expression of the identical primary precept that governs all issues.
Language is maybe not a nasty metaphor: We are able to categorical the identical concept in numerous languages, and the outcomes will sound superficially completely different. For somebody who doesn’t communicate these languages, the utterances will appear distinct, and there will likely be no similarities between them. However he who does communicate these languages will recognise the identical content material each time, and he’ll perceive that what is alleged is similar.
This isn’t to negate the distinction between the languages. It’s not the identical as making an attempt to create a brand new formalism (like, say, predicate logic would possibly do, as a way to categorical a pure language assertion in a proper illustration that transcends linguistic variations). Chemistry and physics and the opposite sciences, the Romantic would say, attempt to take away the actual language by creating simply such a illustration of propositional content material of a sentence in a logical formalism. However the Romantic would see himself extra like a poet who speaks all languages. Who understands the content material of every sentence, in each language, hears its connotations and allusions, its wit and its intra-cultural references. Who is ready to grasp the widespread which means of all these sentences, with out decreasing their linguistic richness to a mere propositional illustration. Who’s even in a position to translate between them whereas preserving the wit and the implicated meanings which might be current within the unique sentences.
Novalis once more:
This reward, furthermore, doesn’t confine itself to exterior magnificence, or to energy, or perception, or another type of human excellence. In all walks of life, inside all ages and nation, in all climes and epochs, there have been individuals singled out by nature as her favorites, and blessed by her religious conception. Oftentimes these individuals gave the impression to be extra simple-minded and clumsy than others and all through their lives have been eclipsed by the overwhelming shadow of the multitude. It’s in truth remarkably uncommon to discover a real comprehension of nature united with nice astuteness, eloquence, and courtly manners, for it typically both attends or begets easy phrases, a simple which means, and a modest bearing. Within the workshops of craftsmen and artists; and wherever males stand in a multifold intimacy with nature; as they do in agriculture, in navigation, in cattle-breeding, in bronze-mining, and in lots of different trades – there the event of this sense most effortlessly and most frequently appears to happen.
The essential premise of this Romantic view of the world has influenced German literature up till the mid-Twentieth century, for instance within the works of Hermann Hesse. His Glass Bead Sport (discussed here) is a direct descendant of Novalis’ assortment of shells and clouds. And maybe there’s a direct line from right here to among the early Romantic attitudes in direction of quantum physics, for instance in Albert Einstein’s view that “God doesn’t play cube,” or the romanticised view of quantum physics depicted in Aldous Huxley’s “The Genius and the Goddess.” We’ll have a look at these works in a later submit.
Maybe in as we speak’s world, the place once more nature is retreating and being destroyed by the reckless advance of capitalist expertise, one thing analogous to the German Romantic motion would possibly present, not less than, solace; at greatest, a method out of the issues we face as we speak. Respect for the phenomena and the magic of the natural world is maybe simply what we want proper now as a way to survive as a species.
Novelis has by no means been extra well timed.
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