Essay review. Romantic life and science.

Romance has for some time been a term of dubious associations. In the seventeenth century, Thomas Burnet decried those critics who would call his Theory of the Earth a ‘Philosophik Romance’; in the eighteenth century, Buffon did just that, and before too long, his theory of the Earth was the subject of the same epithet. By 1780, the early days of the era of Romanticism (so early that it was not yet being called that), Goethe, an admirer of Buffon’s theory, commented with delicate irony: perhaps Buffon really had ‘written a Romance . . . for it is only by means of the Romance that the worthy public learns of extraordinary things’. Burnet’s ‘Romance’, Buffon’s ‘roman’ and Goethe’s ‘Roman’ refer to fanciful tales of military prowess and chivalry. Soon, a group of people close to Goethe would claim this word for themselves, and since that time there has been learned debate about the meaning of Romanticism. In everyday speech, there is more agreement: to say someone has a ‘romantic’ view of the French Revolution, or the lives of indigenous peoples, or international relations, or most anything else serious, amounts to saying the view will not stand up to criticism, is not well-founded, is a fantasy. Even in some of the learned literature, Romanticism has the taint of standing in opposition to the Enlightenment, reason and science. At its weak-kneed worst, Romanticism stands for a loss of nerve, a lack of intellectual resolve and a retreat into reaction. It is against such caricatures that Robert J. Richards has taken up arms in The Romantic Conception of Life: Science and Philosophy in the Age of Goethe. Richards is by no means the first to take up the cause of science and Romanticism, but none have served it with more enthusiasm, erudition and sustained argument. Romanticism has not captivated historians of science in the way that the Scientific Revolution and Darwinian evolution have, but for some decades now, more than a few have been inspired to explore Romanticism, Naturphilosophie and other topics