The flour is what matters, and not the mill, Georg Christoph Lichtenberg wrote in his notebook in 1799. ‘When we ask what time it is, we don’t want to know how watches are constructed.’
A telling assertion, considering Lichtenberg’s place and time. For nearly two centuries, the ‘mechanical philosophy’ had ground down tradition and metaphysics into reason and material processes. Enlightenment metaphors were mechanical: God as the divine watchmaker; or, in Leibniz’s image, the Cartesian mind and body as two clocks, synchronised but separate. As an experimental physicist, Lichtenberg practised the Enlightenment method, experiment and induction. But his frustration with matter and reason was Romantic. He was ready, in Anthony Gottlieb’s formulation, for the rest of modern philosophy, beginning with the deep-diving, muddy Germans.
As are we, after reading The Dream of Enlightenment. Gottlieb’s survey of
philosophy from the Greeks to the Renaissance, The Dream of Reason (2000), has been acclaimed as a modern classic.
Get Britain's best politics newsletters
Register to get The Spectator's insight and opinion straight to your inbox. You can then read two free articles each week.
Already a subscriber? Log in
Comments
Join the debate for just $5 for 3 months
Be part of the conversation with other Spectator readers by getting your first three months for $5.
UNLOCK ACCESS Just $5 for 3 monthsAlready a subscriber? Log in