INTELLECTUAL AND
CULTURAL TRENDS
• The Knowledge Revolution
– industrialization altered the way Americans
thought as well as the way they made a living
– the new industrial society placed new demands
on education and gave rise to new ways of
thinking about education
– Darwin’s theory of evolution influenced almost
every field of knowledge
– America emerged from the intellectual shadow
of Europe, as Americans began to make
significant contributions to the sciences as well
– Americans began to hunger for information
– Chautauqua-type movements, the growth of
public libraries, and the boom in the number,
size, and sophistication of newspapers began to
satisfy the public's newfound curiosity
– a growing and better-educated population
created a demand for printed matter
– this, combined with the integration of the
economy, increased importance of advertising
– papers such as Pulitzer’s New York World and
Hearst’s New York Journal competed fiercely
for readers
• Magazine Journalism
– by the turn of the century, more than five
thousand magazines were in publication
– prior to the 1880s, a few staid publications,
such as Harper’s and The Atlantic Monthly,
dominated the field of serious magazines
– in the 1860s and 1870s, Frank Leslie’s
magazines appealed to a broader audience
– after the mid-1880s, several new, serious
magazines adopted a hard-hitting, controversial,
and investigative style and inquired into the
social issues of their day
– in 1889, Edward Bok became editor of Ladies’
Home Journal
– he offered articles on child care and household
affairs as well as literary items
– in addition to printing colored reproductions of
art masterpieces, Bok undertook crusades for
women’s suffrage, conservation, and other
reforms
– Bok not only catered to public tastes, he created
new ones
• Colleges and Universities
– the number of colleges increased as state
universities and coeducational land-grant
colleges sprang up across the nation
– still, less than 2 percent of the college age
population attended college
– Harvard led the way in reforming curriculum
and professionalizing college teaching
– established in 1876 and modeled on German
universities, Johns Hopkins University
pioneered the modern research university and
professional graduate education in America
– beginning with Vassar College, the second half
of the nineteenth century witnessed the
establishment of numerous women's colleges
– alumni influence on campus grew, fraternities
spread, and organized sports became a part of
the college scene; colleges and universities
mirrored the complexities of modern American
society
• Scientific Advances
– Americans made enormous contributions in the
fields of pure science during the nineteenth
century
– Josiah Willard Gibbs single-handedly created
the field of physical chemistry
– Albert A. Michelson was the first man to
measure the speed of light accurately
• Revolution in the Social Sciences
– social scientists applied the theory of evolution
to every aspect of human relations
– they also attempted to use scientific
methodology in their quest for objective truths
in subjective fields
– controversies over trusts, slum conditions, and
other problems drew scholars into practical
affairs
– classical economics faced a challenge from the
institutionalist school
– similar forces were at work in the disciplines of
sociology and political science
• Progressive Education
– educators began to realize that traditional
education did not prepare their students for life
in industrial America
– settlement house workers found that slum
children needed training in handicrafts,
citizenship, and personal hygiene as much as in
reading and writing
– new theorists argued that good teaching called
for professional training, psychological
insights, enthusiasm, and imagination, not rote
memorization and corporal punishment
– John Dewey of the University of Chicago
emerged as the leading proponent of
progressive education
– Dewey held that the school should serve as “an
embryonic community,” a mirror of the larger
society
– he contended that education should center on
the child and that new information should relate
to the child’s existing knowledge
– Dewey saw schools as instruments of reform
– toward that end, he argued that education
should teach values and citizenship
• Law and History
– social evolutionists affected even the law
– in 1881, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., in The
Common Law, best summarized this new view,
averring that “the felt necessities of time” and
not mere precedent should determine the rules
by which people are governed
– also responding to new intellectual trends,
historians traced documentary evidence to
discover the evolutionary development of their
contemporary political institutions
– one product of this new approach was the
theory of the Teutonic origins of democracy,
which has since been thoroughly discredited
– however, the same general approach also
produced Frederick Jackson Turner’s “Frontier
Thesis”
– if the claims of the new historians to objectivity
were absurdly overstated, their emphasis upon
objectivity, exactitude, and scholarly standards
benefited the profession
• Realism in Literature
– the majority of America’s pre-Gilded Age
literature was romantic in mood
– however, industrialism, theories of evolution,
the new pragmatism in the sciences, and the
very complexities of modern life produced a
change in American literature
– novelists began to examine social problems
such as slums, political corruption, and the
struggle between labor and capital
• Mark Twain
– while no man pursued modern materialism with
more vigor than Samuel L. Clemens, perhaps
no man could illustrate the foibles and follies of
America’s Gilded Age with greater exactitude
than his alter ego, Mark Twain
– his keen wit, his purely American sense of
humor, and his eye for detail allowed Twain to
portray the best and the worst of his age
– his works provide a brilliant and biting insight
into the society of his day
• William Dean Howells
– initially for Howells, realism meant a realistic
portrayal of individual personalities and the
genteel, middle-class world that he knew best
– he became, however, more and more interested
in the darker side of industrialism
– he combined his concerns for literary realism
and social justice in novels such as The Rise of
Silas Lapham and A Hazard of New Fortunes
– following his passionate defense of the
Haymarket radicals in 1886, he began calling
himself a socialist
– the most influential critic of his time, Howells
was instrumental in introducing such authors as
Tolstoy, Dostoyevski, Ibsen, and Zola to
American readers
– he also sponsored young American novelists
such as Hamlin Garlin, Stephen Crane, and
Frank Norris
– some of these young authors went beyond
realism to naturalism, a philosophy that
regarded humans as animals whose fate was
determined by the environment
• Henry James
– a cosmopolitan born to wealth, Henry James
lived most of his adult life as an expatriate
– James never gained the recognition of his
countrymen during his lifetime
– his major themes concerned the clash between
American and European cultures and the
corrupt relationships found in high society
• Realism in Art
– Realism had a profound impact on American
painting as well as writing
– foremost among realist artists was Thomas
Eakins, who was greatly influenced by the
seventeenth-century European realists
– as an early innovator in motion pictures, Eakins
used film to study people and animals in motion
– Winslow Homer, a watercolorist from Boston,
used all of the realist’s techniques for accuracy
and detail to enhance his sometimes romantic
land- and seascapes
– in art, the romantic tradition retained its vitality
– the leading romantic painter of the day,
Pinkham Ryder, drew upon the sea for much of
his inspiration
– if the careers of Eakins, Homer, and Ryder
demonstrated that America was not uncongenial
to first-rate artists, two of the leading artists of
the era, James McNeill Whistler and Mary
Cassatt, were expatriates
– during this period, vast collections of American
and foreign artworks came to rest in the
mansions and museums of the United States
• The Pragmatic Approach
– it would indeed have been surprising if the
intellectual ferment of this period had not
affected traditional religious and philosophical
values
– evolution posed an immediate challenge to
traditional religious doctrine but did not
seriously undermine most Americans’ faith
– if Darwin was correct, the biblical account of
creation was false
– however, many were able to reconcile
evolutionary theory and religion
– Darwinism had a less dramatic but more
significant impact upon philosophical values
– the logic of evolution made it difficult to justify
fixed systems and eternal verities
– Charles S. Pierce, the father of pragmatism,
argued that concepts could be fairly understood
only in terms of their practical effects
– William James, the brother of the novelist and
perhaps the most influential thinker of his time,
presented pragmatism in more understandable
language
– he also contributed to the establishment of
psychology as a scientific discipline
– although pragmatism inspired reform, it had its
darker side
– while relativism gave cause for optimism, it
also denied the comfort of certainty and eternal
values
– Pragmatism also seemed to suggest that the end
justified the means