| Cosmopolis:
The Hidden Agenda of Modernity, by Stephen Toulmin Prologue: Backing Into the Millennium 1. Why talk about modernity? (Because otherwise, we won’t understand the expectations we bring toward the future — especially if the “modern” era is coming to an end. Now what?) 2. Ideally, social and political thought is always framed by realistic horizons of expectations; but a people’s actual horizons will frequently be unrealistic. 3. For 200 years, people were content to believe that theirs was the modern age [they were the “culmination” of history: “the end of history”?] - characteristics: p.3 4. Today, the program of Modernity — even the very concept — no longer carries the same conviction. 5. If Modernity is coming to an end, if we are to set a sensible horizon of expectations, we need to understand what is ending. Chapter One: What is the Problem of Modernity? [“problem” in the sense of “when does it begin?” and “what is it?” — but also “What is the problem with Modernity?” What is screwy with it?] Dating the Start of Modernity * Various possible starts, depending on what you value: Gutenberg (1456); Luther (1520); End of Thirty Years War (1648); American or French Revolutions (1776 or 1789); Freud’s Interpretation of Dreams (1895) — (others either to Darwin or to Einstein). 1. Start with its critics: (post-modernity) a) architecture (Mies and Robert
Venturi; Charles Jencks): rationalized city planning (Pruitt-Igoe)
b) Peter Drucker: end of the sovereign nation-state; no longer the self-sustaining political unit of the 16th and 17th centuries c) ecology vs. science (Blake and Schiller, up to Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring): end of the products of the Industrial Revolution; but made possible by Newton’s Principia (as the culmination of the scientific revolution begun by the likes of Galileo and Descartes): early decades of the 17th century 2. How about its supporters? a) Kant: impartial, universal
moral principles can be applied to judge intentions and policies in the
political realm; democracy and political participation
b) But Kant can be traced back to Descartes: an ideal of “rationality”: commitment to new, rational methods of inquiry [question “rational”; what is “new”? What is the “method”?] c) faith that science is the proven road to human and welfare, and this faith shaped the technological agenda for half-a-dozen World Fairs; continued trust in “science and industry” d) 1630s as the most plausible starting date for Modernity: read description on middle page 9 3. In a dozen areas, the modes of life and thought in Europe from 1700 on were assumed to be more rational than those before or those found in less developed societies and cultures today; and that uniquely “rational” procedures [methods] existed for dealing with all humanity’s problems [bottom of p. 10] 4. Critique of Modernity is in some sense of critique of rationality itself 5. Most scholars agree, the modern commitment to rationality in human affairs was a product of the intellectual changes in the mid-17th century: Galileo and Descartes: (generally between the prime of Galileo and the early 1600s and the appearance of Newton’s Principia in 1687) 6. Generally accepted two statements: a) the modern age began in the
17th century
b) rested on the adoption of rational methods in all serious fields of intellectual inquiry: Galileo, Descartes, and soon after, Hobbes The Standard Account and Its Defects [read] — break in text Retreat from the Renaissance * In four fundamental ways, the 17th century philosophers set aside the long-standing preoccupations of Renaissance humanism: From
the Oral to the Written
From the Particular to the Universal From Local to the General From the Timely to the Timeless The Three Dreams of the Rationalists * The dream of (1) a rational method; (2) a unified science; and (3) an exact (common) language * The Scientific Revolution was Janus-faced: both “mathematical” and “experimental” * Faith in Pythagorean view that any theory of mathematical power and elegance will have practical application in human experience * zig-zag: the rationalist methods of Newton’s mathematics and the empiricist methods of Bacon’s naturalism 1660-1720: Newton and the New Cosmopolis 1. Restoring the dialogue among the nation-states was only a first step. The second was to build up a body of knowledge that would carry conviction with savants of different countries and religions, and support a shared world view; exploring the possibility of a universal language was a preliminary. 2. Many disagreements 3. Despite all these differences, all these theories were framed within limits set by a deeper set of conceptual assumptions. [next] 4. People were not only interested in accounting for mechanical phenomena in the physical world; how about social practice? Was it not possible to organize political ideas about Society along the same lines as scientific ideas about Nature? Could not the idea of social order, as much as that of order in nature, be modeled on the “systems” of mathematics and formal logic? 5. The idea that society is a formal “system” of agents [rational] or institutions has exerted a major influence on the modern world. Descartes and the Basic Framework Assumptions * The Cartesian division of matter from mind, causes from reasons, and nature from humanity: Distinction between rational freedom of the human world and causal necessity of the physical world: related to division of matter from mind The Principle Elements or Timbers of the Modern Framework: On the Nature Side: On the Humanity Side: FINIS |