Saturday, February 25, 2017

Rise of the New Romantics

It is not at first obvious, this newly re-surging undercurrent of disdain for scientists, inventors and tools of modernity such as computers, social media networks and biotechnology.

For historians however, the emergence of a counter culture reaction to science and enlightenment is no surprise. Ours is not the first time that a social movement (i.e the Luddite movement) emerged to reject rational thought and instead adopt a mystic worship of things more "natural".

Back in the mid-1800's, an emergence of a similar shift to "Romanticism" is seen in the anti-inventor bent of the Supreme Court patent case of Le Roy v. Tatham (SCt. 1852). The nature adoring majority in that case saw the inventor's claim to the essence of the leaden pipe as reaching in to greedily grasp a "natural" fundamental of Mother Nature herself. They saw in Mother Nature, certain "principles", "fundamentals", "natural elements of power" and motives that they believed should be free for all and not the exclusive domain of another Frankensteinian tinkerer in the Alchemical arts.

Still under construction ... re other Law of Nature cases

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