Rather than treating the Great Awakening and the Enlightenment
as defining opposites in 18th century American culture, this study
argues that the imperatives of the great revival actually shaped
the pursuit of enlightened science. Reid-Maroney traces the
interwoven histories of the two movements by reconstructing the
intellectual world of the Philadelphia circle. Prophets of the
Enlightenment had long tried to resolve pressing questions about
the limitations of human reason and the sources of our knowledge
about the created order of things. The leaders of the Awakening
addressed those questions with a new urgency and, in the process,
determined the character of the Enlightenment emerging in
Philadelphia's celebrated culture of science.
Tracing the influence of evangelical sensibility and the
development of a Calvinist parallel to the philosophical skepticism
of enlightened Scots, Reid-Maroney finds that the Philadelphians'
love of science rested on a radical critique of human reason, even
while it acknowledged that reason was the dignifying and
distinguishing property of human nature. Benjamin Rush alluded to
an enlightenment wrought by grace in his image of the Kingdom of
Christ and the Empire of Reason. In the post-Revolutionary period,
the redemptive Enlightenment of the Philadelphia circle reached its
greatest cultural power as a vision for scientific progress in the
new republic.
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