Skip to main content

In what way is freedom expressed in a Humanist society?

I do not think that any Western society has ever been completely Humanist.


Humanism, as you likely know, is a school of thought that emerged during the Renaissance in the fifteenth century. It rejected the absolute authority of the Catholic Church, discouraged superstition, and instead, supported the notion that most of civilization's problems could be solved through rationalism. Additionally, Humanists did not see human beings as innately sinful. They elevated humanity -- the beauty of the human mind and human forms, which were depicted and celebrated in the arts and letters of that period.


Renaissance painters and sculptors -- most notably, Michelangelo and Leonardo Da Vinci -- espoused Humanist ideas. They surpassed the flat simplicity of painting from the Middle Ages by studying human anatomy and physiology. Their interest in the body allowed for the creation of more realistic forms and movements. Da Vinci went further, using sfumato in his paintings, a technique that experimented with the illusion of light by allowing tones and colors to blend into one another, which also produced softer forms and the illusion of distance.


Da Vinci's interest in the sciences also led to plans for inventions, including an early version of the helicopter and a more efficient clock. 


Humanists expressed their freedom by being interested in the world around them and exploring its potential -- in every discipline of learning. The Catholic Church disapproved of much of this. While it had sanctioned art works -- as those still depicted Biblical figures, though in Classical forms -- they resisted experiments with science, especially ideas that challenged the geocentric belief.


Humanists were secular. Secularism has, and continues to be, at odds with religion.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Is there a word/phrase for "unperformant"?

As a software engineer, I need to sometimes describe a piece of code as something that lacks performance or was not written with performance in mind. Example: This kind of coding style leads to unmaintainable and unperformant code. Based on my Google searches, this isn't a real word. What is the correct way to describe this? EDIT My usage of "performance" here is in regard to speed and efficiency. For example, the better the performance of code the faster the application runs. My question and example target the negative definition, which is in reference to preventing inefficient coding practices. Answer This kind of coding style leads to unmaintainable and unperformant code. In my opinion, reads more easily as: This coding style leads to unmaintainable and poorly performing code. The key to well-written documentation and reports lies in ease of understanding. Adding poorly understood words such as performant decreases that ease. In addressing the use of such a poorly ...
Post a Comment
Read more

A man has a garden measuring 84 meters by 56 meters. He divides it into the minimum number of square plots. What is the length of the square plots?

We wish to divide this man's garden into the minimum number of square plots possible. A square has all four sides with the same length.Our garden is a rectangle, so the answer is clearly not 1 square plot. If we choose the wrong length for our squares, we may end up with missing holes or we may not be able to fit our squares inside the garden. So we have 84 meters in one direction and 56 meters in the other direction. When we start dividing the garden in square plots, we are "filling" those lengths in their respective directions. At each direction, there must be an integer number of squares (otherwise, we get holes or we leave the garden), so that all the square plots fill up the garden nicely. Thus, our job here is to find the greatest common divisor of 84 and 56. For this, we prime factor both of them: `56 = 2*2*2*7` `84 = 2*2*3*7` We can see that the prime factors and multiplicities in common are `2*2*7 = 28` . This is the desired length of the square plots. If you wi...
Post a Comment
Read more