The Baroque Cultural Context

Where did the ideas discussed in the previous chapter come from and what motivated them? The search for perfect philosophical languages, an Ars combinatoria, etc. which would serve as a universal and infallible means of communication and obtaining knowledge did not spring up ex nihilo in the seventeenth century. The political and religious situation of the period was almost certainly a potent psychological factor in stimulating it. Thinkers like Wilkins, Dalgarno, or Leibniz still embodied the medieval heritage of rationalism. They were completely untouched both by the modern awareness of the historical mutability of human thought or by the postmodern sense of relativism which it eventually entailed. They felt that human reason properly directed ought to be able to settle any disputed question whether in it was in religion, philosophy, or politics, and to which there was only one correct answer. Everywhere, however, in the mid-seventeenth century there was intellectual strife, especially in religion. Men and women could die horribly (by fire) over esoteric points of religious dogma such as predestination or the nature of the Eucharist. Europe had just ended the Thirty Years War, the most destructive conflict (even in comparison with the Napoleonic wars) until the World Wars of the twentieth century, and Britain its bloody Civil War. Yet there were sincere intellectuals arguing every side of these conflicts…