The thinker's woe at his own ignorance, despite some great deal of learning, has been a common literary predicament since the Age of Reason. While many of the mathematicians and scientists kept insisting upon the reducibility of existence to laws, educated men of other fields have not always been wholly satisfied with science's attempts to define the parameters, means, and modes of existence. Indeed, the educated men of the Romantic Age almost made light of their educations, and favored a return to the senses nearly across the board. Unsatisfied with the loss of spirit they were observing in a society becoming colder and more mechanized by the Enlightenment, they sought a return to Nature.
[...] Hence Faust feels connected to the image of the macrocosm, representing universality and the ongoing creative force of a living Nature. It is a universality he is missing--not experiencing through his learning alone. He conjures the Earth Spirit, only to have his ignorance insulted! For all his intelligence, he is not in a state here to realize that this is not the final word, rather a call to action. What Faust fails to recall is that the Earth Spirit wonders, " . [...]
[...] Faust and Nature: A Look Goethe's Faust The thinker's woe at his own ignorance, despite some great deal of learning, has been a common literary predicament since the Age of Reason. While many of the mathematicians and scientists kept insisting upon the reducibility of existence to laws, educated men of other fields have not always been wholly satisfied with science's attempts to define the parameters, means, and modes of existence. Indeed, the educated men of the Romantic Age almost made light of their educations, and favored a return to the senses nearly across the board. [...]
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