ABSTRACT
We have seen in the previous chapter how secular knowledge slowly broke its ties with, and subordination to, theology in the Western world. We traced especially the ascent of what came to be called “science,” a progressively well-defined approach to the study of the world of nature, to the privileged pole in the domain of secular knowledge. However, the structures of knowledge took shape over time as a relationally organized whole. As sets of intellectual disciplines housed in separate departments in institutions of knowledge production, the sciences (unbiased and lawlike) coalesced at one pole of this structure and the humanities (value-laden and chaotic) were consolidated at the opposite pole. This arrangement was not accomplished without resistance. The construction of the dominant position of science was met by fierce opposition from the other camp; furthermore, classification of just what constituted science gave rise to contentious intellectual debate and institutional challenges. From the late eighteenth century this combination of resistance was tagged, at least for a long time, as the “romantic reaction.”
