Open AccessLa montée du sentiment anti-mathématique au début du XIXe siècle
Author(s) -
Agnieszka Kocik
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
romanica cracoviensia
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.1
H-Index - 1
eISSN - 2084-3917
pISSN - 1732-8705
DOI - 10.4467/20843917rc.20.006.12552
Subject(s) - sensibility , genius , ideology , prejudice (legal term) , philosophy , epistemology , sociology , humanities , psychology , history , literature , art history , art , politics , social psychology , political science , law
The growth of anti-mathematics sentiment at the beginning of the 19th century At the threshold of the nineteenth century, the collapse of the salons, the new gestalten of education, a new role of literature and the occurrence of the pre-romantic sensibility resulted in a remarkable increase of the yawning gap between the scientific communities and literary men. A prejudice against mathematics gave a new lease of life to the reintroduced belief that pursuing mathematics corrupts hearts and cools human imagination. The aim of the present paper is to restore the epistemic and ideological background that allows one to understand the terms of the debate and to identify opposing ideas. With this end in view, the paper focuses on the cultural and philosophical opinions of François-René de Chateaubriand whose The Genius of Christianity (1802) extremely polarizes the attitudes of supporters and opponents towards mathematical thinking and abilities.