“The Grand Theories”
-Key Concepts-
I. The Wonders of Steel, Electricity
and Chemistry
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The Development of Steel
The New World of Chemical
Technology
Alfred Nobel and Explosives
Dmitri Mendeleev and the
Periodic Table
Electricity: Capturing the
Imagination of the West
The Telephone and the
Internal Combustion Engine
II. Science and Technology: The
Ultimate Solutions
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Science and Technology
can solve all problems
Faith in human progress
appeared endless and
automatic
The scientific model
permeated popular
thought
We still live with these
perspectives to a degree
III. The Triumph of Science in Art
and Literature: Realism
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Realism: Literature
should depict life exactly
as it is
Favorite genre: novel
Favorite subject: the
poor
Naturalism = unalterable
natural laws are the
source for human actions
III. Realism in Art and Literature
(cont)
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Famous Realist Artists
and Writers:
--Charles Dickens, Hard
Times
--Stephen Crane, Maggie:
A Girl of the Streets
--Harriet Beecher Stowe,
Uncle Tom’s Cabin
--Gustave Flaubert,
Madame Bovary
III. Realism in Art and Literature
(cont)
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Famous Realist Artists and
Writers:
--George Eliot (Mary Ann
Evans)
--Thomas Hardy, Tess of the
D’Urbevilles
--Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
--Theodore Dreiser, Sister
Carrie
--Edgar Degas, “Women
Ironing”
George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans)
Edgar Degas’ “Women Ironing”
IV. Auguste Comte (1798-1857) and
Positivism
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Insistence on verifiable facts
in all things
Comte’s three stages of
history
Highest Science = Sociology,
the Science of Society
Fascination with evolution
and dynamic development
Note the scientific theory of
history here
Emphasis on explaining how
things change—path of
evolution
V. Charles Darwin (1809-1882)
A. His Life and Writings
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Intellectual Climate favorable
to the theory of biological
evolution
--Charles Lyell
-- “uniformitarianism”
Does not originate the idea
of evolution but provides a
wealth of data to support it
Proposed the theory of
“natural selection”
-- “Survival of the fittest”
A. His Life and Writings (cont)
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The influence of
Thomas Malthus
Idea of Natural Selection
was “in the air” rooted in
free-market economics
On the Origin of the
Species (1859)
“Social Darwinism”
--Herbert Spencer
B. His Conclusions
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Nature was the scene of
struggle
Nature is not a friend
nor a model of
mechanistic order
No evidence for God
No real morality in the
universe—adaptation
replaced virtue
B. His Conclusions (cont)
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Human Beings were no
longer “special”: the
human mind was simply
a product of evolution
New anxieties about
man’s place in the world
Darwin’s theories could
spawn tragic results
--Descent of Man
VI. Sigmund Freud (1856-1939)
A. Conflict Within the Individual
Mind
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Hysteria related to early
childhood experiences
Leads to the tendency to
repress trauma
Free association, dreams,
hypnosis all helped to
bring the repressed
trauma to the surface
“Oedipus Complex”
“Defense Mechanisms”
A. Conflict Within the Individual
Mind (cont)
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The notion of the
unconscious was “in the
air”—Freud did not
invent it
Id, Ego and Superego in
conflict with each other
Neurosis is the result of
repressing the Id
B. His Conclusions
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The centrality of sex in the human experience and at
the root of neurosis
Tragic conflict between the needs of the individual and
the needs of society
Civilized beings are sick and depressed
Threatens the whole idea that we can know ourselves
Never comfortable in a civilization of our own making
A world of despair, anxiety and uncertainty
--Civilization and Its Discontents
VII. Karl Marx (1818-1883)
A. French Utopian Socialism
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Romantics who believed in
the power of reason and the
goodness of mankind
Pushed for cooperation over
competition
Saint-Simon
Charles Fourier and his
“phalansteries”
Louis Blanc and national
workshops
Pierre Joseph Proudhon and
property as theft
--labor theory of value
B. Marx’s Life and Writings
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Early Years and Enlightened
Humanism
Identified with the exploited
and downtrodden
Modern Society had
perverted the social nature of
human beings
Factory proletarian = the
ideal type of the alienated
man whose own production
oppressed him
A. Marx’s Life and Writings (cont)
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Marx as journalist and
political activist
Marx’s marriage and family
--Jenny von Westphalen
Friendship with Friedrich
Engels
--The Conditions of the
Working Class in England
(1845)
The Communist Manifesto
(1848)
Marx and the notion of
evolution
C. “Dialectic Materialism”
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Society and the world are
ever changing
Change comes through
the clash of antagonistic
elements
Building on the
foundation of Hegel
History is linear and
inevitable
C. “Dialectic Materialism” (cont)
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Laws govern historical
change
The main forces behind
change are economic
Bourgeois = dominant
class of 19th century
History will come down
to the ultimate class war
D. Threat to the Bourgeois
Capitalist Order
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Marxist socialism became
very popular among
members of the working
class in the late 19th
century
Positivist 19th century
scientific approach
turned against itself
Destruction of the
bourgeois class was
inevitable
D. Threat to the Bourgeois
Capitalist Order (cont)
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The “democratic”
disease of mass
civilization
The problem of
spreading mediocrity and
decadence
The “herd instinct”:
inferiority rules and ruins
The ideas of Friedrich
Nietschze