The Materialist Turn

Borrowing a verse from Schiller, Max WeberWeber, Max famously described modernity as having involved a ‘disenchantment of the world.’ Secularisation proceeded apace while magic receded. The scale, scope, and rationalities of science, law, and policymaking all expanded, with a transformational cumulative impact on the intellectual environment. It was a slow process loosely beginning in the Enlightenment, and it would be absurd to locate it solely in the nineteenth century or in the Realist period itself. Scholars even argue whether it was quite unidirectional and to what extent it suffered a modern backlash. The middle decades of the nineteenth century nevertheless saw this transformation visibly accelerate. Both secularisation and the rise of science underwent a dramatic spurt. The Realist period arguably was a turning point.