Quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns

[1] In contrast to the medieval scholastic emphasis on Christian theology and unchanging monarchy, Renaissance humanists launched a movement to recover, interpret, and assimilate the language, literature, learning and values of ancient Greece and Rome.

[2] The 15th century rediscovery and interest in ancient texts was facilitated by the introduction of the printing press around 1440, which allowed classical concepts to spread quickly and spurred revolutions in intellectual, social, and scientific pursuits.

[6] This cultural rebirth of classical ideals and the following changes in scientific and artistic perspective provoked reactions from those who perceived it as a danger to the stability of Christian civilization and wished to reassert the social and political values of medieval modernity.

[citation needed] The quarrel between the Classics and the Moderns opposed two distinct currents: The Ancients (Anciens), led by Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux, felt that literary creation has its roots in the fair appreciation of the heritage of antiquity.

[17] In 1674, Jean Desmarets de Saint-Sorlin made a public call on his friend Perrault to "defend France" against "that heretical troop who prefers ancient works to our own."

One side was attached to the classic ideals of Greece and Rome and rejected a theory of art that turned literature into propaganda for the ruling powers, while the other contested the very idea of intellectual or aesthetic values above the authority of the King and the Church.

René Descartes (1596–1650) and Francis Bacon (1561–1626) set the tone of a return to nature in that they wanted to restart the entire project of science and humanities by determining laws based on an examination of reality rather than relying on authority and tradition.

This calling of the natural philosophers (later to be named scientists) of a return to classical research methods based on observation, experience and rational theorization would allow for a great shift in European scientific thought.

Thus, Boileau, Racine, and François Bernier brilliantly defended, in an Arrêt Burlesque (a work of literary satire), the rebirth (in French: Renaissance) of philosophy and science, and ridiculed all those who feared changes in the status quo of modernity.

[34] Isaac Newton took the side of the Ancients, against Robert Hooke, when he wrote that his work relied heavily upon the work of his predecessors, famously stating: Hooke, a partisan of the Moderns, claimed that microscopy had reached perfection in modern times and that it was impossible to do better, to which Newton replied predicting that the future would bring new instruments capable of magnifying four thousand times more powerfully, eventually making even the atom visible.

Maria Popova has commented that "Newton's humility sprang from an early and formative understanding of how knowledge builds upon itself, incrementally improving upon existing ideas until the cumulative adds up to the revolutionary.

He articulated his discussion most notably in his satire A Tale of a Tub, composed between 1694 and 1697, and published in 1704 with the famous prolegomenon The Battle of the Books, long after the initial salvoes were over in France.

In 19th century England, highlighting the distinction between Hellenism ("Athens"/reason or "sweetness and light") and Hebraism ("Jerusalem"/faith), Matthew Arnold defended the Ancients (most notably Plato and Aristotle) against the dominant progressive intellectual trends of his times.

[38] Countering the thrust of much of 20th century intellectual history and literary criticism, Leo Strauss has contended that the debate between Ancients and Moderns (or the defenders of either camp) is ill-understood when reduced to questions of progress or regress.