Enlightenment Vs. Romanticism;
or,
The Head Vs. The Heart

We are all familiar with the proverbial battle between and the heart, logic and emotion, science and art.  Well, this struggle also epitomized the differences between the Enlightenment (or Neoclassical) Era and the Romantic Period.  Now, I don't mean romantic period like the summer fling you might have had last year when you stayed out until ten o'clock ('those summer nights...") but rather capital "R" Romantic, designating the philosophy and time period, instead of an adjective you hope will apply to whomever you are crushing on. 

Some of the differences between the schools are fairly obvious and can be related to variances in viewpoints today, as well.  Following on the heels of the Renaissance, the rebirth of Western civilization after the Dark Ages, the Enlightenment valued science, logic, and reason as a means of conquering nature and progressing toward the more industrialized world we know today.  Even the arts were concerned with intellectual, metaphysical subjects, rather than an outpouring of emotion.  Architecture, engineering, and landscape design were heavily focused on symmetry, sharp angles, and neat patterns.  In short, the Enlightenment wanted to overlay a grid on nature.

The Romantic movement, on the other hand, emerged as a sort of counter-culture to the ideals of the Enlightenment.  In many ways, the Romantics were similar to the Beat generation of the 1950s and the hippies of the 1960s.  Some the main concerns of the Romantics were the increasing pace of life, pollution, working conditions, and disconnect from nature resulting from the Industrial Revolution.  And they expressed their discontent with the Enlightenment ideology primarily through poetry (although the pinnacle of Romantic literature is, arguably, a novel: Mary Shelley's Frankenstein).  The Romantics were also big on the individual experience, as opposed to the collective, experiencing awe in nature, and (not surprisingly) emotion.  Rather than a neat and tidy English garden, they preferred ruins and less-manicured "wild" nature in their back yards, reflecting their resistance to the notion of "taming" or controlling the natural world.

Source: The Language of Literature: British Literature. McDougal Littell, 2008.

Here are a few videos delineating some of these differences in a little more detail:

Fermat's Last Theorem 

Iterated Algorithms & Fractals

​Chaos Theory & The Second Law of Thermodynamics 
Chaos Theory:
Rather than involving the more traditional “predictable” sciences of gravity, electricity, or even chemical reactions. The chaos theory involves systems of apparently random and unpredictable behaviors. It states that this “chaos” does actually follow certain certain loops and patterns but even with no randomness in the process, unpredictable results still occur. The result that emerges is based on infinitely many mini mathematical solutions, each one affecting the next to create the “chaos.” These unpredictable results demonstrates that systems do lean toward disorder (or entropy). This theory was created in the late 20th century when it became possible with computing power to reverse the millions of loops and patterns.
N. Truong-Son. “How Does Entropy Relate To The Chaos Theory,” Socratic.org, Published 6 March 2016, socratic.org/questions/how-does-entropy-relate-to-chaos-theory. Accessed 13 Nov. 2018.
The Second Law of Thermodynamics: 
The idea for the Second Law of Thermodynamics came from Rudolf Clausius and William Thomson when they stated in 1850 that “heat does not spontaneously transfer in from a colder body to a hotter one.” The second law of Thermodynamics states that the entropy, or disorder, of a system is always increasing and when heat energy is transferred or converted, the effects are irreversible. Here is an example: think of a glass of ice water inside of a room at room temperature. Eventually, that glass of water will be the same temperature of the room and vice versa. According to the second law, this occurs because as the different molecules vibrate at different rates (which causes the varying temperatures) they bump into each other, transferring their kinetic energy, until all molecules are at the same frequency.
Lucas, Jim. “What is the Second Law of Thermodynamics?,” livescience.com, Published 22 May 2015, https://www.livescience.com/50941-second-law-thermodynamics.html. Accessed 13 November 2018.

​

Arcadia 

Arcadia is a kind of Utopia in which there is an ethereal harmony with nature and pastoralism. The term comes from Arcadia Greece and rightfully so because it is a beautiful, mountainous city in southern Greece. Arcadia is said to be the a paradise for creatures of Greek mythology, such as Pan, god of the wild, with his dryads and nymphs.
Arcadia was a popular artistic subject during the Renaissance and it still is now. Many artists and writers were inspired from the idea including the famous painter, Nicolas Poussin (1594- 1665), and the poet, Jacopo Sannaro (1456-1500).
https://www.greekmythology.com/Myths/Places/Arcadia/arcadia.html
http://www.artandpopularculture.com/Arcadia_%28utopia%29
https://www.greecetravel.com/peloponessos/arkadia.htm

The Picturesque in Landscape Architecture 
The Picturesque style of landscaping developed in the 18th century from other British designs and was intended to contrast the Neoclassicism of the time. It fit in with the growing popularity of Romanticism by incorporating many natural aesthetic qualities and was famous for its asymmetrical structures and interesting textures. The Picturesque style is intended to be “picture perfect”, portraying an idea of the beauty of nature. The style never became a true theory, but it was influential in the development of landscaping methods in Europe and America. Because of its focus on drawing attention to the connection between buildings and nature, the style was very expensive. It was commonly used to decorate public parks or gardens, and was intended to remind its viewers of the importance of nature.

Newton 

​​Euclid 

​Euclid has long been referred to as the father of geometry. He was born in Alexandria, Egypt sometime around 365 B.C. and died 65 years later. During his life he developed many mathematical theories, his most famous being in geometry. He developed a number of the “Elements of Mathematics”, including geometric systems, infinite values, Porisms, factorization, and more that eventually built Euclidean Geometry. How we envision shapes, space, and time was all affected by Euclid. Even two thousand years later, Euclid’s theories act as the base of modern geometry. He pulled these ideas together as his own and wrote them in his textbooks.

However, he definitely developed the discipline in this regard, making it a concrete, organized study that people could learn from by following his written work. Pythagoras, Aristotle, Eudoxus, and Thales had influenced him greatly. In addition to ‘Elements’, there are at least five work that have survived. They are: ‘Data’, ‘On Divisions of Figures’, ‘Catoptrics’, ‘Phaenomena’ and ‘Optics’. There are more works that has written but they have been lost.

Euclid’s goal was to not solve mathematics such as the amount of tiles you would need to cover a roof. However, his focus was discover truths that would work in all situations. The only tools he would allow himself to use were a straightedge and a compass.
Here are five of Euclid’s surviving works:
Elements:

• Geometry in two dimensions
• Number theory
• Geometry in three dimensions

The Data:

• A work on geometrical problems

Catoptrics:

• Examines the mathematical theory of  mirrors
• Images formed by plane and spherical concave mirrors

On Divisions of Figures:

• Concerns the division of geometrical figures into two or more equal parts o r into various ratios

Phaenomena:

• A treatise on Spherical Astronomy

Taisbak, Christian Marinus, and Bartel Leendert van der Waerden. “Euclid.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 14 Mar. 2018, www.britannica.com/biography/Euclid-Greek-mathematician.

Doc, The. “Home.” Famous Scientists, 24 June 2018, www.famousscientists.org/euclid/.

Thefamouspeople.com, Editors. “Who Is Euclid? Everything You Need to Know.” Childhood, Life Achievements & Timeline, 21 July 2017, www.thefamouspeople.com/profiles/euclid-436.php.

YourDictionary. “Who Is Euclid and What Did He Do?” Biography, 12 July 2013, biography.yourdictionary.com/articles/who-is-euclid-and-what-did-he-do.html.

Lord Byron 

A Poet of Romance
George Gordon Noel Byron, or Lord Byron as he is more commonly known, was a flamboyant leader and poet of the Romantic movement. He was born on January 22nd in 1778 with a clubbed right foot. His mother raised him in Aberdeen after Byron’s father had up and left them, but Catherine Byron was emotionally unstable and had fierce emotions. She was as likely to mock him for his clubbed foot as she was to seek out doctors and inquire into its correction.
He had a Presbyterian nurse during his infancy and childhood, and from her, he grew a lifelong love of the Bible. He had a particular fascination with the Calvinist doctrines of predestined salvation and innate evil. From these interests and an early submersion in schooling, he grew a love for the arts, reading, literature, and history, which he claimed at one point to have inspired much of his writing.
In some of his writing, he speaks about romantic and passionate attachments. The first of these attachments appear to have been with chiefly younger boys, which shows that he had bisexual tendencies, even though he drifted mostly towards romantic relationships with women as they seemed to more thoroughly satisfy his emotional needs.
In the summer of 1803 he fell deeply in love with his cousin and even went so far as to give up a term of his education to be with her. This infatuation showed up in several of his poems, such as “The Dream” and “Hills of Ainsley.”
The following summer, he fell in love with his half-sister, Augusta, who was five years older than him. The farther he drifted from his mother, the closer he got to Augusta.
From October 1805 until 1808 he attended Trinity College and graduated with an M.A. He considered this time “the most romantic period of [his] life,” and experienced a deep attraction towards John Edleston, who was a choirboy at Trinity College and two years younger than Byron.
In the November of 1806, he distributed a book around Southwell containing some of his first poetry called Fugitive Pieces. However, the book was rejected by his literary advisor, Reverend John Thomas Becher, under the ideology that it contained too much intense eroticism.
Lord Byron’s life was one of much freedom, both sexually and characteristically, and by the time he was 21, he had contracted many various STDs. His first daughter, Augusta, was born to him by his wife Anne Isabella Milbanke, whom he married in 1815. It appears that Augusta was named after his love for his half-sister.
Shortly after his daughter was born, his wife left him taking Augusta with her and he never saw either of them again. Not long after they left him Byron decided to leave England and he never returned.
He led the Greeks in a battle to get their separation from the Ottoman Empire, and died at the ripe young age of 36 after being ill for a few months. He had become a hero in Greece, but his death was mourned in England, so the Greeks sent his body back to England.

 Tom Stoppard