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The Return of the Dinosaurs: About Scientific Imagination and its Affects

2003; De Gruyter; Volume: 38; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1515/arca.38.2.243

1613-0642

Walter Moser,

Evolution and Science Education

Is it coincidence that in 1778 Buffon published his Les Époques de la Nature, Friedrich Schiller started writing his Die Räuber and Johann Heinrich Füssli started working on his drawing titled Der Künstler, verzweifelnd vor der Grösse der antiken Trümmer (The despairing artist, viewing the giant debris of antiquity)? What do these three very different works have in common? In a more or less nostalgic mood, they all evoke the energy and great size of a time past. For Buffon, the natural historian, it is gigantism of animal species, for Füssli the monumentalism of ancient works of art and for Schiller's Karl von Moor, the great feats of ancient heroes.