Science, Strategy and War The Strategic Theory of ... - Boekje Pienter

The ideal of Newtonian science excited the military thinkers of the enlightenmentand gave rise to an ever-present yearning to infuse the study of war with the maximummathematical precision and certainty possible. Indeed, the military thinkers of theEnlightenment maintained that the art of war was also susceptible to the systematicformulation, based on rules and principles of universal validity, which had been revealed inthe campaigns of the great military leaders of history 129 . Hence it was Jomini who won fameby updating the theoretical outlook of the Enlightenment to produce a strikingschematization of Napoleon’s aggressive rationale of operations.By the turn of the century, however, a new sweeping intellectual movement, largelyhostile to the ideas of the Enlightenment, was emerging throughout Europe. The Romanticsstressed the complexity and diversity of human reality, which could not be reduced toabstract formulas and which was dominated by emotions, creativity, and the historicconditions of each period. It was in this framework that a new outlook on the nature ofmilitary theory was formed in the works of writers such as Clausewitz, breaching the hithertoabsolute hegemony of the military school of the Enlightenment 130 . Clausewitz did notabandon the Newtonian approach to studying war. Clausewitz was a “Social Newtonian” inhis methodology in the sense that to Newton ‘phenomena are the data of experience’ 131 . AndClausewitz deliberately inserted Newtonian, mechanistic, metaphors in his work such as theconcepts of friction and center of gravity. Yet he recognized that the social world differsfrom the natural world. Science for Clausewitz is a sociology of science that treats socialphenomena. A science that analyses social facts and social processes is a science of humanactivities, not a science of the elements of nature or solar activities 132 . Behavior in war doesnot evolve according to a mathematical construction. Hence Clausewitz’ emphasis on theinteractive nature of war, the influence of the dialectic of wills, the importance of experience,fear, emotion, intuition, etc.The ideas of both Jomini and Clausewitz could only take root and flourish wherethey found the climate of ideas favorable 133 . Romanticism found its zenith in Germanliterature, philosophy form the late 1810s to the 1830s, exerting a profound and lastinginfluence even on the intellectual opponents of the movement. By the 1840s, however, thetide of Romanticism was ebbing throughout Europe, and it was the descendants of theEnlightenment who dominated the mid-century. Favored by a remarkable scientific andtechnological advance, which spread the culture of science, positivism, in its broadest sense,became the prevalent état d'esprit. The progressive application of the scientific methods ofobservation and induction to the more complex sciences of man and society would elevatethese disciplines too from their state of infancy. This climate of ideas was favorable to thetheoretical legacy of the military school of the Enlightenment 134 .Science then works not necessarily in a direct manner on military theory, although itmight of course, as it was in the cases of Clausewitz and Jomini. But in general ‘it was notthat soldiers in the nineteenth century were either very interested in, or knowledgeable about,129 Gat, The Origins of Military Thought (Oxford, 1989), p.25.130 Gat, The Development of Military Thought: The Nineteenth Century, (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1992), p.1.See also Gat, A History of Military Thought, From the Enlightenment to the Cold War (Oxford UniversityPress, Oxford, 2001), Book I, pp.141-151 for a short discussion of the shifting intellectual Zeitgeistwhich occurred around 1800.131 Amos Perlmutter, ‘Carl von Clausewitz, Enlightement Philosopher: A Comparative Analysis’, TheJournal of Strategic Studies, Volume 11, March 1988, number 12, p.16.132 Ibid, p.12.133 Gat (1992), p.2.134 Ibid.35