Chapter 10. Energetic visions
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Christoffer Leber
Abstract
In the aftermath of the revolutions of 1848, anticlerical and freethought organisations had evolved a powerful opposition to the Church and generally to conservatism in Europe. Amongst these organisations, the German Monist League (founded in 1906) became one of the main representatives of secularism in Wilhelmine Germany. The League not only opposed the Christian churches, but also popularised a scientific worldview which sought to unite the material and spiritual worlds. Monist thinkers translated scientific knowledge into a popular language, transferring it to new domains of knowledge, such as ethics, politics, gender, sexuality, law and education. This chapter argues that Monist thinkers used scientific knowledge as a way to essentialise and legitimise their ethical and educational reform goals. By doing so, they transformed scientific knowledge itself.
Abstract
In the aftermath of the revolutions of 1848, anticlerical and freethought organisations had evolved a powerful opposition to the Church and generally to conservatism in Europe. Amongst these organisations, the German Monist League (founded in 1906) became one of the main representatives of secularism in Wilhelmine Germany. The League not only opposed the Christian churches, but also popularised a scientific worldview which sought to unite the material and spiritual worlds. Monist thinkers translated scientific knowledge into a popular language, transferring it to new domains of knowledge, such as ethics, politics, gender, sexuality, law and education. This chapter argues that Monist thinkers used scientific knowledge as a way to essentialise and legitimise their ethical and educational reform goals. By doing so, they transformed scientific knowledge itself.
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Acknowledgments vii
- Introduction 1
-
Section A. Constructing and disseminating knowledge in–through translation
- Chapter 1. Reading scientific translations in the first half of sixteenth-century Europe through Hernando Colón’s library 17
- Chapter 2. Jérôme Lalande, Giuseppe Toaldo and the translation of astronomical works for a wider public in the 1700s 41
- Chapter 3. Travelling knowledge in nineteenth-century science 59
- Chapter 4. Translating the Iron Curtain 81
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Section B. Linguistic strategies and visual tools in the translation of knowledge
- Chapter 5. Paratexts in sixteenth-century editions and translations of Maciej z Miechowa’s Tractatus de duabus Sarmatiis 105
- Chapter 6. The Latin translation of Philosophical Transactions (1671–1681) 123
- Chapter 7. Knowledge in series 145
- Chapter 8. Knowledge transfer in the Soviet Union from the perspective of visual culture 169
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Section C. Institutions and translation policies
- Chapter 9. The Leviathan and the woods 189
- Chapter 10. Energetic visions 209
- Chapter 11. Science writing in Hindi in colonial India 229
- Chapter 12. An (imagined) community 249
- Index 269
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Acknowledgments vii
- Introduction 1
-
Section A. Constructing and disseminating knowledge in–through translation
- Chapter 1. Reading scientific translations in the first half of sixteenth-century Europe through Hernando Colón’s library 17
- Chapter 2. Jérôme Lalande, Giuseppe Toaldo and the translation of astronomical works for a wider public in the 1700s 41
- Chapter 3. Travelling knowledge in nineteenth-century science 59
- Chapter 4. Translating the Iron Curtain 81
-
Section B. Linguistic strategies and visual tools in the translation of knowledge
- Chapter 5. Paratexts in sixteenth-century editions and translations of Maciej z Miechowa’s Tractatus de duabus Sarmatiis 105
- Chapter 6. The Latin translation of Philosophical Transactions (1671–1681) 123
- Chapter 7. Knowledge in series 145
- Chapter 8. Knowledge transfer in the Soviet Union from the perspective of visual culture 169
-
Section C. Institutions and translation policies
- Chapter 9. The Leviathan and the woods 189
- Chapter 10. Energetic visions 209
- Chapter 11. Science writing in Hindi in colonial India 229
- Chapter 12. An (imagined) community 249
- Index 269
