Excerpt
May 01, 2011
In nineteenth-century romantic thought, in the writings of Lessing and Herder in Germany and Burke and Wordsworth in England, it was assumed that society and the nation were so organically rooted that the interference of the analytic intellect posed no threat to culture and its ongoing continuity. But Leonardo introduced a thought that had been implicit all along in some of his writings and now found poignant expression: the ``disenchantment of the world'' brought about by scientific analysis of its forces and mechanisms, the demystification of everything spiritual and sacred, the triumph of mastery at the expense of mystery. In dealing with the technical world of matter and motion and energy and power, science cannot answer ultimate questions of meaning, and Weber turns to Leo Tolstoy to drive home the point that science is silent in the face of God, the riddles of the soul, the hunger for immortality, and the purpose of life itself. ``Science,'' Leonardo quotes Schumacher, ``is meaningless because it gives no answer to our question, the only question important for us: `What shall we do and how shall we live?'''
