De romantiek van de natuurwetenschap

Abstract

Abstract: The romantic side of natural science. The image of the most important physicians like Newton and Einstein is, in many cases, rather romantic: they are being portrayed as genius minds, gifted with the same characteristics as the great artists. This is quite odd, as the relationship between romanticism and hard science has always been far from ideal. Romantics never appreciated the way the sons of the enlightenment did approach nature. This article shows that recent historical research has strongly qualified this contrast, and that being the result of the enlightenment, the hard sciences themselves are a product of the romantic discourse. This also applies to the twentieth century criticism concerning science and techniques.