Secularization and scientific advancement in nineteenth-century Europe

¶ … Secularization on Scientific Theory in 19th Century Europe

Precursors in the 18th Century

At the Dawn of the 19th Century

Economics

Philosophy

Rise of Secular Nationalism

Religion in the 19th Century: Distancing itself from the Populace

Increasing Urbanization in Europe and its Effect on Secularization

Other Factors Increasing Secularization

The secularization of Europe in the 19th Century was a continuation of trends which began with the Reformation and the Renaissance, and found a flowering in the development of rationalism in the 18th century amongst philosophers and economists in the UK, France and Germany. This paper covers the increasing secularization of 19th century Europe, with a particular concentration on these three countries.

The influences on secularization in Europe during this century reach far beyond philosophy and economics, although those areas of thought were deeply influenced by secularization during that period. Technological advance, in the form of logistics (transport), productivity (agricultural and industrial) and scientific all contributed to a notion that all that could be learned about man by man was possible. This marked a significant difference from earlier centuries, where much remained a mystery and was attributed to higher powers.

The association of religion and government, tenuous at the beginning of the 19th century, broke down completely during this period. The connection between religion and politics remained in name only by the end of that century, with a figurehead Queen at the head of the Anglican Church, divorce between the French government and its (no longer official) Catholicism, and the dissolution of the close ties in Germany between the church (es) and the local principalities as Germany became a united nation.

Precursors in the 18th Century

The 18th century began with a deeply religious Europe just over wars of Reformation and Counter-Reformation, in which the Kings and Princes represented God on Earth, headed their local churches, and represented single religions as official religions in each of their nations. Louis XIV, George I-III and the princes of Germany all represented post-feudal countries that were, for the most part, rural, pious and poor.

The emergence of rationalism in the 1700s showed a flowering of economics and philosophy, and paralleled an increase in agricultural wealth throughout these countries. The increase of trade and the introduction of high-yield crops contributed to an increase in agricultural production across a broad part of the United Kingdom, and to a more limited extent in France and Germany.

The 1700's marked the flowering of science, with the discovery of the elements of combustion, the foundations of modern medicine, and the great inventions that would power the 19th century, including the steam engine and electricity. The prevailing attitude of the rationalists that the world was understandable. Diderot's underlying assumption in creating his great Encyclopedie was that all on this earth was knowable and could be catalogued (Diderot 1743). This was an assumption that would have been called ridiculous at best and heretical at worst in previous centuries.

Locke and Hobbes influenced Adam Smith in his Theory of Moral Sentiments (Smith 1759), and subsequent treatise on economics, an Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (Smith 1776). While Smith was not without religion, his Moral Sentiments formed the philosophical underpinnings for Wealth of Nations, which can be regarded as the precursor to the revolutionary changes wrought in the Industrial Revolutions of the 19th century.

At the Dawn of the 19th Century

The United States, informed by God by led by secularists, succeeded in separating from Anglican-led Great Britain in the 1780's. France had experienced a revolution which resulted in mass executions of heads of the Catholic Church during the 1790's, accompanied by a mass usurpation of their property (Tackett 2001)

At the turn of the new century, a reenergized Great Britain and France, while still at war, were undergoing the first flowering of the Industrial Revolution. Great Britain had a head start due to several advantages: a country less ravaged by war and revolution, trading partners in the Commonwealth and the newly-independent United States, and agricultural riches which grown faster than in France, partly due to the adoption of the potato and corn.

Europe was still a primarily rural, agricultural continent. By 1900, Europe had become primarily urban. This change was brought about partly by continued productivity improvements in the fields -- agricultural productivity doubled during the century (Clout 1987) and the lure of income and jobs in the industrializing cities.

Economics

The economic realities at the beginning of the 1800's resulted in philosophical and economic concern for the fate of man. Rapid population growth concerned Malthus and Say; the former felt that population growth would overtake limited food supplies, while Say feared that growing population would result in less wealth for citizens (Say 1997).

Building on the theories of Adam Smith in the 18th century, a group of 19th century enthusiasts for industrial progress forecast continued progress in the 1800's and beyond.

Philosophy

Their concerns were taken up by Marx and Engels in the 1840's, who wrote from exile in England that laborers were the true wealth creators, and that they would enjoy less and less of the fruits of their labors as capitalists took more (Marx 1867). Marx and Engels, while deeply sympathetic to the working man, believed that man was responsible for what was done to man -- God played no role in man's fate.

Reading the Declaration of Independence, one is persuaded that man is born of free will, whose rights are endowed directly by God (and not through the instrument of a King or government). Thus the 18th century "validation" of freedom was God, despite a focus on the differentiation between an official state religion and a belief in God. In the 19th century, Marx's validation for man's self-rule was the community itself.

Secularism in the University

Universities were profoundly religious until the 19th century. This was true in most of Europe (except France since the revolution) and in America. Those who graduated with a Doctorate in the UK or the U.S., for example, received a Doctorate in Divinity, regardless of their specialized subject. This held true until the late 1830's.

A competing model to that of the Church developed in Scotland in the 1700's, and found favor in Germany, the UK and America after that time. Professors were 'free agents," associated with a university but paid by the lecture by their students. Thus, a well-regarded lecturer could become wealthy, as did Adam Smith, while a poorer lecturer would not fare as well.

This reliance on one's own ability to think, to publish and to teach permeates today's university, but it was not always so. Until the early 19th century, nearly all professors were also priests or preachers. The increasing secularization severed this religious association for all but those universities which continued an overt religious character.

Religion in the 19th Century: Distancing itself from the Populace

Adam Smith was quite skeptical about organized -- i.e. state-sponsored -- religion during the 1700s. He observed that the state-sponsored priests became lazy. This was also clear to those Europeans who visited the United States, and marveled at this country's continued religious fervor. The industrialist 19th-century Europeans frequently put this to the difference between private and state-sponsored religion. In 1837, an Austrian visitor to the United States observed:

In America, every clergyman may be said to do business on his own account, and under his own firm. He alone is responsible for any deficiency in the discharge of his office, as he is alone entitled to all the credit due to his exertions. He always acts as principal, and is therefore more anxious, and will make greater efforts to obtain popularity, than one who serves for wages (Powell 1967).

This should be no surprise to those who have seen populations stick to their religions despite sanctions from the state, such as in Poland. At the time of the fall of the Berlin Wall, Polish participation in Catholic ceremonies was quite high; after independence and the establishment of an official relationship with the state, participation went down considerably (Eberts 1998). A similar phenomenon occurred in Germany and Austria as continued state sponsorship. As demonstrated by the above traveler to America, the result was that the Church grew fat and lazy, and saw a steady decline in attendance at churches throughout the 19th century.

It is ironic that one of the causes of increasing secularization of European society during the 19th century were the churches themselves. As observed above, long state sponsorship reduces the participation of the populace. Once the rulers were separated from their religious authority, the importance of religious observance therefore declined.

Increasing Urbanization in Europe and its Effect on Secularization

Urbanization went hand-in-hand with industrialization in Europe of the 19th century. The influence of the village, where everyone knew everyone else's business and the parish priest or pastor was always nearby, led to a natural tendency to stick closer to religious observance. Cities were much less focused on individual behavior; it was therefore much easier to become 'lost' in the city.

Secularization was therefore a situation which did not take place uniformly throughout Europe in this period. Those who moved to the cities and engaged in the industrialization of society became more secular, while those who remained behind in the agricultural villages retained their religious beliefs (Lilla 2006). One way to view the increasing secularization of Europe, therefore, is to look at the change in the ratio of city- versus country-dwellers. In 1800, only 7% of the population of Europe lived in a city (Schrover 2007). By the end of the 1800's, the cities far outpaced the countryside. There were three primary reasons for this:

substantial out-migration from the countryside, as agricultural productivity required fewer laborers on the land, and the cities attracted more industrial workers.

A higher birth rate in the cities than in the countryside (Schrover 2007)

Out-migration from agricultural areas to other parts of Europe, the United States and Latin America due to labor surpluses in the countryside of Germany, England and (to a lesser extent) France.

Other Factors Increasing Secularization

Continued scientific progress continued to throw religious tenets into disarray. The influence of Darwin and his theories of evolution were particularly disruptive to those who believed in the biblical interpretation of the creation of the Earth. With his Voyage of the Beagle, then on the Origin of the Species (1859), pointed to some obvious conclusions based on his work in Latin America and especially the Galapagos. The revolutionary nature of Darwin's thoughts on evolution were clear to the author. He delayed the publication of his book on evolution over 20 years after taking his voyage to South America, realizing that the ideas would run counter to commonly-held religious beliefs.

Darwin questioned not only the God-centered idea of creation (placed at 4,400 BC by Bishop Wilberforce in Great Britain), but also the fundamental ideas of how societies were born and advanced. His ideas of "survival of the fittest" went on to influence political and military leaders well beyond the 19th century, reaching to totalitarians in Italy, Japan and Germany in the 20th century.

Darwin's ideas also helped to reform ideas about secular democracy. John Dewey formed his influential views on the foundations of a democratic society in the 1880's and 1890's, calling himself an ardent Darwinist. Although Dewey himself was a religious man, his foundations for democratic society were based on the notions of man as a naturally social, curious and learning individual who, given the freedom, could exercise influence over others and help societies to advance (Asen 2003).

Conclusion

One should not make too much of secularization in Europe in the 19th century. In comparison with the United States, Europe of that century was dominated by state-sponsored religion, including state economic support for churches. Most Europeans, despite their secular inclinations, were more likely to identify with a religion, although in a way different than the average American. Thus the German and Italian concepts of the CDU (Christian Democrats) found official sponsorship of religion to be in concert with political beliefs.

Perhaps, just as Communism was exciting in its first years, then became repressive and unchanging in later decades, state-sponsored religion created the seeds of its own destruction. With the exception of France, where the Jacobin Revolution wiped out the Church-State connection in a few years, those religions in Germany and the United Kingdom died the slow death of neglect.