Ideas: A History from Fire to Freud

Portuguese secrecy over the New World – Jesuit–Hindu relations – China’s ‘Society of Renewal’ – Chinamania – Muslim uninterest in the West – theories of Muslim backwardness – William Jones and the Bengal Asiatic Society – link between Sanskrit, Greek and Latin – hieroglyphics deciphered – Shakuntala in the West – Schlegel, Bopp and von Humboldt – Schelling – Schopenhauer and Buddhism – poetry as the mother tongue – Western writers influenced by the East – the Aryan myth – Goethe, Hugo, Flaubert – Wagner’s Buddhism

30. The Great Reversal of Values – Romanticism

Romanticism: the third turning-point in history – Vico’s vision – Herzen – the will – Goethe and Herder – Fichte and the self – the reversal of values – the artist as outsider – Sturm und Drang – Byron, Coleridge, Wordsworth – the romantic ‘moi’ – the second self – Turner and Delacroix – Beethoven – Schubert – the conductor – the piano – the first great virtuosi – Weber – Berlioz – Schumann – Chopin – Liszt – Mendelssohn – Verdi – Falstaff – Wagner – The Ring

31. The Rise of History, Pre-history and Deep Time

Napoleon in Egypt – the beginnings of archaeology in the West – Humboldt’s education reforms in Germany – the PhD – Hegel and the rise of history – philology – textual criticism of the Bible – Schleiermacher – David Strauss’ Life of Jesus – cuneiform deciphered – Neanderthal man identified – birth of geology – Neptunists v. Vulcanists – geology and Genesis – Palaeozoic identified – Lyell’s Principles of Geology – uniformitarianism – Vestiges of Creation – the ice age – Lamarck – Wallace – Darwin – Mendel – Descent of Man – the three-age system – Palaeolithic and Neolithic

32. New Ideas About Human Order: the Origins of Social Science and Statistics

Guillotin and the guillotine – the legacy of the French Revolution – the revolution in measurement – ‘l’art social’ – abbé Sieyès – Condorcet – Saint-Simon and the positive sciences – the industrial cities of England – child labour and disease – Comte – Herbert Spencer – Marx – Weber – Tönnies – Simmel – Durkheim – Suicide – anomie – sociological medicine – epidemiology and statistics – urbanisation and the census – Quetelet – Laplace – Legendre – Gauss – Pearson – l’homme moyen/average man – Chadwick and ‘cause of death’

33. The Uses and Abuses of Nationalism and Imperialism