COMPLEXITY

Andrea Wulf on Magnificent Rebels: The First Romantics and The Invention of The Self

Mar 24, 2023

01:06:49

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Quick takeaways

The thinkers in Jena celebrated the unity between self and nature, emphasizing the role of imagination in understanding and experiencing the world.

Romanticism embraced the idea that artistic expression is incomplete and open to interpretation, mirroring the complexity of the world.

The Jena group grappled with the balance between individual freedom and societal obligations, reflecting the ongoing tension in contemporary debates around personal liberties.

Deep dives

The Power of Sim Philosophy and Combining Disciplines

In this podcast episode, the focus is on a group of thinkers who came together in Jena, Germany, at the end of the 18th century. Their ideas centered around the concept of the self and its connection to nature. They believed that the self and nature were one, and that art and beauty were essential in understanding and experiencing the world. The group celebrated the idea of imagination and the poeticization of science. They worked together, lived together, and explored the boundaries of different disciplines, creating something new and radical. Although their collaboration eventually led to conflicts and the group disbanded, their ideas had a lasting impact on the arts and sciences, influencing later generations of thinkers and artists.

Introduction

4min

Alexander Von Humboldt: A Biography

3min

The Importance of Imagination and Art in Science

6min

The Importance of Imagination

1min

The Importance of Individuality in German Philosophy

5min

The Influence of Prisoners on the Revolution

2min

The Power of the French Revolution

3min

The Life and Times of a Young Writer

4min

The Limits of the Modern Self

2min

10.

The Tension Between Free Will and Self-Determination

5min

11.

The Relationship Between Utility and Beauty

2min

12.

The Muse's Obsession With Death

3min

13.

Schiller's Magical Idealism

4min

14.

The Paradox of Moral Thinking and Aesthetic Thinking

2min

15.

The Hegelian Dialectic and Thesis Antithesis Synthesis

5min

16.

The Unwieldiness of Romantic Poetry

6min

17.

The Soap Opera

3min

18.

The Limits of Human Performance

2min

19.

The Importance of Imagination in Climate Change

2min

20.

The Problem With Art Science Relationships

3min

For centuries, Medieval life in Europe meant a world determined and prescribed by church and royalty. The social sphere was very much a pyramid, and everybody had to answer to and fit within the schemes of those on top. And then, on wings of reason, Modern selves emerged to scrutinize these systems and at great cost swap them for others that more evenly distribute power and authority. Cosmic forces preordained one’s role within a transcendental order…but then, across quick decades of upheaval, philosophy and politics started celebrating self-determination and free will. Art and science blossomed as they wove together. Nothing was ever the same.

Welcome to COMPLEXITY, the official podcast of the Santa Fe Institute. I’m your host, Michael Garfield, and every other week we’ll bring you with us for far-ranging conversations with our worldwide network of rigorous researchers developing new frameworks to explain the deepest mysteries of the universe.

This week we engage with returning guest, New York Times best-selling author of seven books and SFI Miller Scholar Andrea Wulf, about her latest lovingly-detailed long work, Magnificent Rebels: The First Romantics and The Invention of The Self. In this episode we explore the conditions for an 18th century revolution in philosophy, science, literature, and lifestyle springing from Jena, Germany. Over just a few years, an extraordinary confluence of history-making figures such as Goethe, Schelling, Schlegel, Hegel, and Novalis helped rewrite what was possible for human thought and action. Admist a landscape of political revolt, this braid of brilliant friends and enemies and lovers altered what it means to be a self and how the modern self relates to everything it isn’t, inspiring later British and American Romantic movements. Arguing for art and the imagination in the work of science and infusing art with reason, Jena’s rebels of the mind lived bold, iconoclastic lives that seem 200 years ahead in retrospect. We stand to learn a great deal from a careful look at Jena and the first Romantics…maybe even how to replicate their great successes and avoid their self-implosion in the face of social turbulence.

If you value our research and communication efforts, Please subscribe to Complexity Podcast wherever you prefer to listen, rate and review us at Apple Podcasts, and/or consider making a donation at santafe.edu/podcastgive. You can find numerous other ways to engage with us at santafe.edu/engage — in particular, you may wish to celebrate ten years of free online courses at Complexity Explorer with SFI Professor Cris Moore’s Computation in Complex Systems, starting March 28th. Learn more in the show notes…and thank you for listening!

Podcast theme music by Mitch Mignano.

Related Reading & Listening:

Episode 60 - Andrea Wulf on The Invention of Nature, Part 1: Humboldt's Naturegemälde

Episode 61 - Andrea Wulf on The Invention of Nature, Part 2: Humboldt's Dangerous Idea

The Invention of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt’s New World
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Magnificent Rebels: The First Romantics and The Invention of The Self
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Episode 37 - The Art & Science of Resilience in the Wake of Trauma with Laurence Gonzales

“Nature” (1844)
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