Repairing the Tower of Babel: Notes on the genesis of James Fergusson's 'Historical Inquiry into the True Principles of Beauty, More Especially with Reference to Architecture' (Volumes I and II).

摘要

"Repairing the Tower of Babel" addresses three major themes. The thesis begins with the question of how James Fergusson (1808-1886) felt he could describe both Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Auguste Comte as influential in the development of his own theory of beauty in art. Following from this initial question, the thesis examines in detail the attempts at the reconciliation of Romanticism and Positivism at the beginning of the nineteenth century, especially in the works of William Whewell, Auguste Comte, and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. In light of these attempts, the work looks at the influence of the developing sciences of geology, chemistry, and biology and the various methodologies associated with these organic sciences that were to overturn the Newtonian methods of science which had been followed throughout the eighteenth century. Finally, the thesis provides an overview of the development of aesthetic theory from John Locke to Immanual Kant in an attempt to outline the development of the fundamental dichotomies in aesthetics and theory of mind that the nineteenth century felt it must resolve.