Post by snacky on Aug 27, 2014 16:32:43 GMT
Read a remark by Oliver Heaviside (people might be familiar with him from the musical Cats - Glamour Cat seeks to ascend to the "Heaviside layer"). Apparently by the late 19th century many scientists had lost the core of their religious faith and felt comfortable enough to discuss it openly with each other. Heaviside remarks in correspondence that immortality of the soul is not in Heaven, but in the legacy your work leaves on Earth.
So much for the idea that everyone in the 19th century was propping up a knee-jerk belief in God! My post on Cantor earlier showed that "science" had become its own realm to be validated by its own laws, where they disdained interference from the "authority" of religion - whose sacred books were now starting to be treated as just another source of myth!
Anyyyyyyyyyway - this is has large ramifications for the milieu Julia is working in, and perhaps the milieu William is working in since he's so into electricity and communications technology (Heaviside was part of the "Maxwellians" - the guys who invented the laws of electromagnetisim behind radio, the telegraph, the telephone, electricity, x-rays, etc.). I would say that Julia's scientific milieu - especially since she studied in Vienna - had made God irrelevant at best, and Marx's "opium of the masses" at worst. I'm kind of curious where William would put immortality of the soul in this mix: as I wrote in another post, if he's persuaded by the scientific consensus, then his sister cloistered herself at the end of her life for nothing.
Ps. By the way, Red Emma was a notorious atheist.
www.spunk.org/texts/writers/goldman/sp001502.html
So much for the idea that everyone in the 19th century was propping up a knee-jerk belief in God! My post on Cantor earlier showed that "science" had become its own realm to be validated by its own laws, where they disdained interference from the "authority" of religion - whose sacred books were now starting to be treated as just another source of myth!
Anyyyyyyyyyway - this is has large ramifications for the milieu Julia is working in, and perhaps the milieu William is working in since he's so into electricity and communications technology (Heaviside was part of the "Maxwellians" - the guys who invented the laws of electromagnetisim behind radio, the telegraph, the telephone, electricity, x-rays, etc.). I would say that Julia's scientific milieu - especially since she studied in Vienna - had made God irrelevant at best, and Marx's "opium of the masses" at worst. I'm kind of curious where William would put immortality of the soul in this mix: as I wrote in another post, if he's persuaded by the scientific consensus, then his sister cloistered herself at the end of her life for nothing.
Ps. By the way, Red Emma was a notorious atheist.
www.spunk.org/texts/writers/goldman/sp001502.html
