Science, Politics, and Religion

Humboldtian Thinking and the Transformations of Civil Society in Germany, 1830-1870

Datos Bibliográficos

ID3924728
AutoresAndreas W Daum (0000-0003-3124-7439, Harvard University Press, autor de correspondencia)
Año2002
Volumen17
Páginas107-140
Fecha de publicación2002-01-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessNo
TipoARTICLE
RevistaOsiris (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0369-7827 • E-ISSN: 1933-8287
EditorialUniversity of Chicago Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1086/649361
OpenAlexW2077379298
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas12

Between 1830 and 1870 the infrastructure of civil society in Germany expanded significantly. In spite of the failure of the 1848 revolution, the culture of the Bürgertum, the middle classes, began to flourish through associations, educational efforts, and diverse media and institutions of public life. The study of natural history and the new natural sciences became an integral part of this seminal process. This essay examines the development of civil society through the interplay of science, religion, and politics, which is paradigmatically embodied in the biography of Emil Adolf Rossmässler. As a science teacher, free-religious activist, and democratic politician, Rossmässler became one of Germany's preeminent advocates of science as a civil practice, though one who acted outside university science and the mainstream of academia. Rossmässler and many of his peers understood the study of nature as a democratic exercise and sought to integrate the natural sciences into the German concept of education (Bildung). Instead of associating themselves with the philosophical materialism of the time, however, they drew heavily on the thinking of Alexander von Humboldt and prolonged a reconciliatory understanding of nature into the public sphere. A look at their efforts reveals the richness and diversity of a civil culture of nature studies outside the realm of state-supported science and university research

Civil society · Democracy · Environmental ethics · Epistemology · Mainstream · Materialism · Political science · Politics · Public sphere · Social science · Sociology · Spanish Civil War · Alexander von Humboldt Studies · History of Science and Natural History · Law · Philosophy