Lecture 17: Irrational Ideas and the Long Fuse to War

During the fin de siecle period before World War I, an intellectual revolution took place that may have had something to do with the causation of that war. Isaac Newton's optimistic worldview was de-throned, and a far darker Darwinian vision of inherently irrational impulses gained ascendance. Nietzsche, Freud and Einstein were among the luminaries that defined the age and the popular understanding as well as misunderstanding of what they discovered left a bitter after-taste that may have had something indefinable to do with a world of nation-states careening out of control. This brief vodcast touches on the era.

Vodcast of an Age of Irrationalism, 1880-1914