From: Steve Davies (steve365@btinternet.com)
Date: Mon Oct 14 2002 - 11:33:46 MDT
So true! The nineteenth century gets a lot of deserved credit (unprecedented
rise in living standards, abolition of slavery etc) but all that came as the
working out of social innovations from the 1715-1815 period. I think the
crucial thing about that period was a whole series of conceptual and
institutional breakthroughs (e.g. the very idea of "technology" - see what
Peter Drucker has to say about this.). Not to mention great cultural
achievements as well. Why did this happen though? I still think the
improvement in the weather had something to do with it, but IMHO the
critical thing was the crisis of religious belief that took place at the end
of the 17th century, one aspect of that being the revolutionary idea of ture
religious toleration.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Lee Corbin" <lcorbin@tsoft.com>
To: <extropians@extropy.org>
Sent: Sunday, October 13, 2002 8:01 AM
Subject: The Glorious Eighteenth Century
> Was not the 18th century the most wonderful and
> astounding in the history of humankind? For the
> first time, the argument between Ancients and
> Moderns could definitely be established in favor
> of the latter. For the first time, barbarism,
> ignorance, cruelty, and repression were themselves
> repressed. Even Jenner's 1796 initial inoculation
> against small pox sneaked in, while earlier Lady
> Mary Wortly Montagu and the Turks were already
> on target: http://www.keratin.com/am/am002.shtml
>
> The previous century really ended in 1715, just as
> the 18th century itself really ended in 1815, and
> the 19th in 1914. Because in 1715 one sun was
> replaced by another. The outgoing sun, Sun King
> Louis XIV, Le Etat c'est Moi, absolute ruler of
> 25 million of the most advanced citizens of Earth's
> richest country, died that year, and our good old
> global-warmer itself, our real sun, came back from
> its Maunder Minimum.
>
> Imagine George Washington giving one of his humble
> self-conscious speeches and try to find anything
> in the previous century to match it. Consider the
> sophistication of the French and English writers of
> the late century, nothing earlier in the world can
> compare to their erudition and expertise. Diderot
> wrote an encyclopedia, and Johnson a dictionary.
> The 1600s had been mostly still ignorance and super-
> stition, but the eighteenth century---it was the age
> of Euler and Catharine the Great, Frederick the
> Great, and lots and lots of other greats on so
> many continents and in so many countries.
>
> It was *itself*, the wonderful and irreplaceably
> marvelous 18th century. Put on some Haydn!
>
> Lee
>
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