English Goethean scholar Jeremy Adler’s 1990 “Goethe’s Use of Chemical Theory in his Elective Affinities” is found in the collaborative book Romanticism and the Sciences. [3]
In science, romanticism is the a view that rejects rationalism in favor of feelings, individual experience, and passion; in some forms, it supported a variant of spiritualism that was a challenge to traditional religion. [1]
Overview The ‘romantic movement’, supposedly, referred to a totality of experience movement alternative to the rationalist Newtonian mechanics and Cartesian reductionism.
In 1781, Immanuel Kant, in his Critique of Pure Reason, outlined a view wherein the primacy of mind and will is given predominance; this was said to initiate or seed the romantic movement. [2]
In c.1810s, Friedrich Schlegel (1772-1829), according to Jennifer Hecht (2003), was one who firmed up the idea of "romanticism", called out its members, and promoted it. [1]
References 1. Hecht, Jennifer M. (2003). Doubt: A History: The Great Doubters and Their Legacy of Innovation from Socrates and Jesus to Thomas (pg. 374). HarperOne. 2. Hsieh, Ching-Yao, and Ye, Meng-Hua. (1991). Economics, Philosophy, and Physics(§Romanticism and Philosophy, pgs. 42-). M.E. Sharpe. 3. Adler, Jeremy. (1990). "Goethe's use of chemical theory in his Elective Affinities", in: Romanticism and the Sciences (editors: by Andrew Cunningham and Nicholas Jardine) (§18, pgs. 263-79). Cambridge University Press.
