Poetry Influenced by the Scientific Revolution 73
irrational. For Plato, it was the world apprehended by the senses that was
unreal and irrational, whereas the world of ideas was the ultimate reality,
where truth and understanding were possible. Aristotle, on the other
hand, divided the universe into the heavens and the Earth. The heavens
were unchanging and rational whereas the Earth was constantly
changing, unexplainable and irrational. This dichotomy also found its
way into Christian theology. It has in fact remained a feature of Western
thought, which persists in contemporary thinking. The only change in
this mode of thinking has been a shift of more and more material from
the unreal irrational compartment to the real rational one as our
understanding of nature increases.
Today in our technocratic society, it is the questions that we are able
to address with our science and technology that is the ultimate reality and
hence is given first priority. The more complicated problems involving
human emotions, the existence of which many technocrats try to deny,
are often ignored or treated in an extremely superficial manner.
During our discussion of the roots of scientific thinking we suggested
that the legal codes employed by the Greeks in organizing their political
life, influenced their concept of natural law. With Newton’s discovery of
his laws of motion, a reversal of this connection took place in which the
concept of natural law influenced philosopher’s concept of political law.
People began to think of government differently. They were looking for a
legal system in harmony with the natural laws of human behaviour, a
position that was epitomized by the works of Jean Jacques Rousseau.
Others such as Locke and Hume in England, the Enlightenment
philosophers in France and Jefferson and Paine in the United States
began to question existing political institutions. They applied scientific
principles in their quest for new answers and new models of political
organization. The political consequences of this intellectual ferment were
far-reaching and culminated in the American and French revolutions.
The American constitution with its systems of checks and balances is
a reflection of the mechanistic models political thinkers were employing
as a result of Newton’s influence. The scientific method was also applied
to economic questions and lead in the example of Adam Smith to his
formulation of his economic theory in terms of the law of supply and
demand.
The blessings of the Newtonian revolution in physics were mixed.
There is no doubt that there was a sudden and dramatic increase in man’s
understanding of his universe. The progress in the scientific fields was