The Two Enlightenments

Res Extensa #64 :: A short explainer of David Deutch's two variants

We learn about "The Enlightenment" as a singular entity, a historical age associated with rationality, scientific inquiry, humanism, and liberty. The Enlightenment and scientific revolution were defining moments that spawned an unprecedented period of progress and human flourishing. But in his book The Beginning of Infinity, David Deutsch adds useful texture for better understanding the motivations of the Enlightenment’s contributors.

He divides the movement into two broad forms: the “British” and the “Continental”, referring more to the origins of each variant rather than the home country of its proponents. Here’s Deutsch’s description, from chapter 3 of Beginning of Infinity:

“The Continental Enlightenment was impatient for the perfected state — which led to intellectual dogmatism, political violence and new forms of tyranny. The French Revolution of 1789 and the Reign of Terror that followed it are the archetypal examples. The British Enlightenment, which was evolutionary and cognizant of human fallibility, was impatient for institutions that did not stifle gradual, continuing change. It was also enthusiastic for small improvements, unbounded in the future.”

Both branches agree on core principles of rationality, progress, and freedom. Where they disagree is on how to achieve these goals. They pursue the same ends, but disagree on the means. The British model builds on the concept of fallibilism: progress happens through conjecture, empirical evidence, and falsification. The Continental relies on pure reason, and our theoretical ability to find final, objective truth. Thinkers like Kant, Rousseau, and Voltaire best fit in the Continental camp. The likes of John Locke, Edmund Burke, Karl Popper, and Adam Smith in the British.

We can summarize some of the key qualities that differentiate these two approaches to pursuing human progress:

Deutsch himself favors the British form. He’s arguably today’s exemplar torch-carrier of Karl Popper’s epistemology.

A few years back I read and wrote about Jonathan Rauch’s Kindly Inquisitors (RE 9), which was my intro to the central tenets of Popper’s philosophy. The more I’ve studied the subject, the deeper the rabbit hole goes, the more I find and rich relationships to areas outside of epistemology. So many domains have similar underlying forces — innovation, craftsmanship, architecture, biological evolution, economics, the growth of cities. Each improves through gradual change, error-correction, and indefinite refinement.

Check out the full article for more:

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As with issues of contemporary politics and philosophy, it’s important to understand not only the goals a particular philosophy seeks, but how it proposes we go about doing so.

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