Compare Transcendentalism And The Industrial Revolution

The Industrial Revolution of the 19th century brought about profound changes in transportation, technology, and economics. Members of society reaped tremendous benefits from the abundance of innovations that arose during the period. The invention of new machinery paved the way for mass production, and allowed once burdensome tasks to be accomplished quickly. at record speeds. Yet certain individuals became skeptical of the consequences of such rapid development. Numerous artists, writers and philosophers, worried that induexstrialization would destroy the connection of humankind to the natural world. American poets such as Henry David Thoreau, began to praise nature as a source of healthy emotions, ideas and morality. By contrast, they condemned

This was achieved through the invention of new machinery and technology, as well as the substitution of animal and water labor with steam power. James Watts and Matthew Boulton perfected the steam engine, so that it could be run by rotary movements rather than human effort. In the steam engine, hot steam -generally supplied by a boiler- expands under pressure, and a portion of the heat energy is converted into work. The remaining steam may then be condensed at a much lower temperature and pressure. Use of the steam engine was made possible by coal, which through advancements in mining technology, could be extracted easily and

He challenged his peers to see beyond the apparent benefits of progressivism- new methods of transportation, technology, capitalist expansion, etc.- and to consider the conditions which enabled them to occur. With the invention of the train, for instance, people enjoyed the luxury to travel quicker than ever before. Yet in doing so, they were forced to become subservient to fixed train schedules and routes. Thoreau considered this to be symbolic of a controlling destiny. “We have constructed a fate, a new Atropos, that never turns aside” (90.) Just as the Greek goddess Atropos (whose name means “unswerving”) had the capacity to determine the length of human lives, the train chugs along its fixed path and makes us believe that we must