74 The Poetry of Physics and The Physics of Poetry
quite obvious. The application of scientific methodology to the
humanities particularly philosophy and politics, was, on the whole quite
positive. There were excesses, however, in which scientific methods
were applied to humanistic problems in an uncritical manner. This is
perhaps best illustrated by the extreme materialistic doctrine of certain
members of the French philosophy movement such as La Mettrie and his
disciple Cabanis. La Mettrie was a complete and total materialist who
believed that every human property, characteristic and activity could be
completely accounted for in a purely physical and mechanical manner.
He wrote:
Man is a machine so compounded that it is at first impossible
to form a clear idea of it, and consequently to define it. That is
why all the investigations, which the great philosophers have
conducted a priori, that is to say by trying to lift themselves
somehow on the wings of their intellect, have proved vain.
Thus, it is only a posterior or by seeking to unravel the soul, as
it were, via the organs of the body, that one can, I do not say
lay bare human nature itself in a demonstrative fashion, but
attain to the highest degree of probability possible on this
topic.Cabanis, who was a physician like La Mettrie, proposed that the brain
secretes thought as the liver secretes bile. These very first behaviourists
denied the existence of the human spirit in the same way the advocates of
strong artificial intelligence do today. It was, in part, against this type of
uncritical abuse of scientific thinking that the reaction known as the
Romantic Movement took place.
The Romantic Movement was a reaction against the Enlightenment in
general. The romantics believed that reason divorced from feelings and
emotion, which in general characterizes scientific thinking, led to
disastrous results such as the Industrial Revolution, which had given rise
to grave social problems. Still another cause for criticism of science was
the social disorder that grew out of the French Revolution; a revolution
spawned by the rationalistic philosophy that in turn was inspired by the
scientific revolution, which preceded it by one hundred years.
Although the Romantic Movement occurred wherever science was
studied, it was in Germany where the movement really flourished.
Goethe perhaps the leading proponent of romanticism, summarized the