Not to be confused with Rationality, which simply refers to the process of being reasonable.

Rationalism is a philosophy in which a high regard is given to reason (specifically logic) and to empirical observation.

From the strict philosophical standpoint, rationalism is the view that all or most truth is deductive and a priori, deriving logically from a set of axioms gained by intuition or inherent knowledge (and not from studying the world around us empirically).[1] However, the term is not very often used so strictly, so this form of rationalism is generally known in English-speaking philosophy as continental rationalism or Cartesian rationalism, as its original proponents, such as Ren Descartes, were largely situated in continental Europe.[2]

The term is more commonly used to refer to a synthesis of continental rationalism with its former rival philosophy, empiricism. This looser rationalism holds that empirical observation is more useful than intuition for gaining one's starting axioms, but one can use deductive reasoning from these axioms just as well. The best embodiment of this way of gaining knowledge is the scientific method; hence, rationalists tend to give high regard to science, designating it as the primary or sole proper source of truth.

RationalWiki is devoted to this sort of rational analysis of empirical evidence to form conclusions; most RationalWiki editors are very skeptical of other ways of knowing.

The idea of being "rational" is distinct and broader than the philosophy of rationalism. To be "rational" is synonymous with a "sane" or "functional" way of thinking. If one is "rational," then in common parlance this means that one can think clearly and is capable of intelligently assessing new ideas when presented.

The opposite term, "irrational," is used to signify someone who cannot or will not think clearly. If a thought or action is irrational, it signifies something that is not just incorrect, but perverse, insane, or beneath consideration.

Rationalism was first formulated in classical times by philosophers such as Socrates and Plato. Many of the Socratic dialogues would use a conversational process to work out logical inconsistencies in ideas that were held by contemporaries to be "common sense," such as the definition of "the good." In this historical sense Rationalism was distinct and separate from Empiricism (see below), as these early Rationalists didn't deem it necessary to use observation - in the modern use, Rationalists who would combine both the logical reasoning of Rationalism with the observational checks of Empiricism.

But at the time, virtually everyone even the great philosophers believed that various things were known by people inherently. Aside from a few schools of thought which suggested that nothing could ever be known as true (pyrrhonism), few thought to discard a priori beliefs and start from scratch with only that which was known to be true. Thus, at this point historical Rationalism closely resembled the way philosophers still define the philosophy.

The 16th century philosopher Descartes, however, attempted to create a whole philosophy through pure reason in his Discourse on Method and its succeeding works: he began with the only thing of which he thought he could be certain, that there was an "I" that was thinking - often rendered in the Latin of cogito ergo sum ("I think, therefore I am."). His process ushered in a new era in rationalism, concurrent with the greater Enlightenment. At that time the philosophy began to resemble modern empiricism more than its own ancient ancestor, especially during the era of Romanticism when Enlightenment ideas were challenged and sensory perception was given more of a hearing.

Loose use in the time since has led to the fuzzy state of the term today, particularly when combined with the similar but much broader notion of being rational.

Rationalism in psychology is identified with the philosophical tradition of the same name and refers to the school of thought that sees certain elements of cognition as innate. For this reason, it is sometimes used synonymously with the terms "innatism" or "nativism" though the synonymy is not particularly deep as "innatism" or "nativism" sees them as innate in the thicker sense of that one at least can be born with them preset exactly in a certain, perhaps permanent, way (whether this ever actually happens is beside the point) and Rationalism sees them as innate in the thinner sense that one is simply born with them waiting to be set more exactly as one is psychologically prepares to understand what they are about and perhaps never completely fixable once set for the first time. During the 20th century, Noam Chomsky became associated with rationalism due to his positing the concept of an innate "language acquisition device."[3]

Rationalism, or "economic rationalism," is also a term of art in economics. It is generally used today in Australia to refer to the local brand of neoliberal economic and political policy, though it was also used by scholars such as Max Weber in reference to the Protestant work ethic.[4]

Rationalism is also used as a self-descriptor by followers of Eliezer Yudkowsky, and the community that has grown up around him (in particular the website LessWrong).[5] Scott Alexander argues that, in this context, it refers less to a particular set of beliefs (an ideology), but more to the social community those beliefs support, a "tribe".[5]

Another straightforward conception of rationality is that an individual acts rationally if they act in the way that, on reflection, they believe best suits achievement of their aims. This conception, naturally, gives rise to the common conception when on reflection it is believed that the aim of truth can best be achieved through factual analysis and the scientific method.

This approach, however, is problematic, as it denies the existence of any sort of objective logic independent of human perception. Many, on reflection, believe that astrology, Scientology, homeopathy and other ridiculous nonsense best suits achievement of their aims. If these people are to be held to be irrational, a new criterion must be put in the place of on reflection. Usually the criterion is modified such that the rational person must reasonably believe they have a methodology to achieve their aims, leaving question of what it means to reasonably believe that a methodology will achieve certain aims.[6]

Alvin Plantinga's concept of rationalism neatly distinguishes reason from "raving madness" by conceiving of reason as "not raving mad".[7] Of course Plantinga has to give us a good idea of what is not "raving mad", which he does with his concept of "proper function". Just as a clock, functioning properly, is a reliable indicator of the time, human senses, functioning properly, are reliable indicators of the world. Acting in accordance with the proper function of our faculties is rational.

The problem of what constitutes function, and proper function at that, is more than a question of what our faculties do (a fast clock tells the incorrect time, but this is not its function). Both function and proper function have an element of what things should be doing. As should is a difficult concept to introduce in a mechanistic description of how things happen to be, Plantinga sources the "should", the "purpose" of our faculties in a concept of God.

Critical rationalism ( Karl Popper) differentiates from the above conceptions of rationality by rejecting any positive content in reason. Reason, critical rationalism holds, does not provide 'reasons': it does not give positive recommendations about what beliefs should be held. Reason operates negatively, restricting the beliefs that can be held. It does this through criticism, subjecting pre-adopted beliefs to tests in an effort to refute them.

The dispute between rationalism and empiricism concerns the extent to which we are dependent upon sense experience in our effort to gain knowledge. Rationalists claim that there are significant ways in which our concepts and knowledge are gained independently of sense experience. Empiricists claim that sense experience is the ultimate source of all our concepts and knowledge.

Rationalists generally develop their view in two ways. First, they argue that there are cases where the content of our concepts or knowledge outstrips the information that sense experience can provide. Second, they construct accounts of how reason in some form or other provides that additional information about the world. Empiricists present complementary lines of thought. First, they develop accounts of how experience provides the information that rationalists cite, insofar as we have it in the first place. (Empiricists will at times opt for skepticism as an alternative to rationalism: if experience cannot provide the concepts or knowledge the rationalists cite, then we don't have them.) Second, empiricists attack the rationalists' accounts of how reason is a source of concepts or knowledge.

A serious problem for the Innate Knowledge thesis remains, however. We know a proposition only if it is true, we believe it and our belief is warranted. Rationalists who assert the existence of innate knowledge are not just claiming that, as a matter of human evolution, God's design or some other factor, at a particular point in our development, certain sorts of experiences trigger our belief in particular propositions in a way that does not involve our learning them from the experiences. Their claim is even bolder: In at least some of these cases, our empirically triggered, but not empirically warranted, belief is nonetheless warranted and so known. How can these beliefs be warranted if they do not gain their warrant from the experiences that cause us to have them or from intuition and deduction?

Some rationalists think that a reliabilist account of warrant provides the answer. According to Reliabilism, beliefs are warranted if they are formed by a process that generally produces true beliefs rather than false ones. The true beliefs that constitute our innate knowledge are warranted, then, because they are formed as the result of a reliable belief-forming process. Carruthers maintains that Innate beliefs will count as known provided that the process through which they come to be innate is a reliable one (provided, that is, that the process tends to generate beliefs that are true) (1992, p. 77). He argues that natural selection results in the formation of some beliefs and is a truth-reliable process.

An appeal to Reliabilism, or a similar causal theory of warrant, may well be the best way for rationalists to develop the Innate Knowledge thesis. They have a difficult row to hoe, however. First, such accounts of warrant are themselves quite controversial. Second, rationalists must give an account of innate knowledge that maintains and explains the distinction between innate knowledge and a posteriori knowledge, and it is not clear that they will be able to do so within such an account of warrant. Suppose for the sake of argument that we have innate knowledge of some proposition, P. What makes our knowledge that P innate? To sharpen the question, what difference between our knowledge that P and a clear case of a posteriori knowledge, say our knowledge that something is red based on our current visual experience of a red table, makes the former innate and the latter not innate? In each case, we have a true, warranted belief. In each case, presumably, our belief gains its warrant from the fact that it meets a particular causal condition, e.g., it is produced by a reliable process. In each case, the causal process is one in which an experience causes us to believe the proposition at hand (that P; that something is red), for, as defenders of innate knowledge admit, our belief that P is triggered by an experience, as is our belief that something is red. The insight behind the Innate Knowledge thesis seems to be that the difference between our innate and a posteriori knowledge lies in the relation between our experience and our belief in each case. The experience that causes our belief that P does not contain the information that P, while our visual experience of a red table does contain the information that something is red. Yet, exactly what is the nature of this containment relation between our experiences, on the one hand, and what we believe, on the other, that is missing in the one case but present in the other? The nature of the experience-belief relation seems quite similar in each. The causal relation between the experience that triggers our belief that P and our belief that P is contingent, as is the fact that the belief-forming process is reliable. The same is true of our experience of a red table and our belief that something is red. The causal relation between the experience and our belief is again contingent. We might have been so constructed that the experience we describe as being appeared to redly caused us to believe, not that something is red, but that something is hot. The process that takes us from the experience to our belief is also only contingently reliable. Moreover, if our experience of a red table contains the information that something is red, then that fact, not the existence of a reliable belief-forming process between the two, should be the reason why the experience warrants our belief. By appealing to Reliablism, or some other causal theory of warrant, rationalists may obtain a way to explain how innate knowledge can be warranted. They still need to show how their explanation supports an account of the difference between innate knowledge and a posteriori knowledge.

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Rationalism - RationalWiki

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(Latin, ratio reason, the faculty of the mind which forms the ground of calculation, i.e. discursive reason. See APOLOGETICS; ATHEISM; BIBLE; DEISM; EMPIRICISM; ETHICS; BIBLICAL EXEGESIS; FAITH; MATERIALISM; MIRACLE; REVELATION).

The term is used: (1) in an exact sense, to designate a particular moment in the development of Protestant thought in Germany; (2) in a broader, and more usual, sense to cover the view (in relation to which many schools may be classed as rationalistic) that the human reason, or understanding, is the sole source and final test of all truth. It has further: (3) occasionally been applied to the method of treating revealed truth theologically, by casting it into a reasoned form, and employing philosophical Categories in its elaboration. These three uses of the term will be discussed in the present article.

The German school of theological Rationalism formed a part of the more general movement of the eighteenth-century "Enlightenment". It may be said to owe its immediate origin to the philosophical system of Christian Wolff (1679-1754), which was a modification, with Aristotelean features, of that of Leibniz, especially characterized by its spiritualism, determinism, and dogmatism. This philosophy and its method exerted a profound influence upon contemporaneous German religious thought, providing it with a rationalistic point of view in theology and exegesis. German philosophy in the eighteenth century was, as a whole, tributary to Leibniz, whose "Thodice" was written principally against the Rationalism of Bayle: it was marked by an infiltration of English Deism and French Materialism, to which the Rationalism at present considered had great affinity, and towards which it progressively developed: and it was vulgarized by its union with popular literature. Wolff himself was expelled from his chair at the University of Halle on account of the Rationalistic nature of his teaching, principally owing to the action of Lange (1670-1774; cf. "Causa Dei et religionis naturalis adversus atheismum", and "Modesta Disputatio", Halle, 1723). Retiring to Marburg, he taught there until 1740, when he was recalled to Halle by Frederick II. Wolff's attempt to demonstrate natural religion rationally was in no sense an attack upon revelation. As a "supranaturalist" he admitted truths above reason, and he attempted to support by reason the supernatural truths contained in Holy Scripture. But his attempt, while it incensed the pietistic school and was readily welcomed by the more liberal and moderate among the orthodox Lutherans, in reality turned out to be strongly in favour of the Naturalism that he wished to condemn. Natural religion, he asserted, is demonstrable; revealed religion is to be found in the Bible alone. But in his method of proof of the authority of Scripture recourse was had to reason, and thus the human mind became, logically, the ultimate arbiter in the case of both. Supranaturalism in theology, which it was Wolff's intention to uphold, proved incompatible with such a philosophical position, and Rationalism took its place. This, however, is to be distinguished from pure Naturalism, to which it led, but with which it never became theoretically identified. Revelation was not denied by the Rationalists; though, as a matter of fact, if not of theory, it was quietly suppressed by the claim, with its ever-increasing application, that reason is the competent judge of all truth. Naturalists, on the other hand, denied the fact of revelation. As with Deism and Materialism, the German Rationalism invaded the department of Biblical exegesis. Here a destructive criticism, very similar to that of the Deists, was levelled against the miracles recorded in, and the authenticity of the Holy Scripture. Nevertheless, the distinction between Rationalism and Naturalism still obtained. The great Biblical critic Semler (1725-91), who is one of the principal representatives of the school, was a strong opponent of the latter; in company with Teller (1734-1804) and others he endeavoured to show that the records of the Bible have no more than a local and temporary character, thus attempting to safeguard the deeper revelation, while sacrificing to the critics its superficial vehicle. He makes the distinction between theology and religion (by which he signifies ethics).

The distinction made between natural and revealed religion necessitated a closer definition of the latter. For Supernaturalists and Rationalists alike religion was held to be "a way of knowing and worshipping the Deity", but consisting chiefly, for the Rationalists, in the observance of God's law. This identification of religion with morals, which at the time was utilitarian in character (see UTILITARIANISM), led to further developments in the conceptions of the nature of religion, the meaning of revelation, and the value of the Bible as a collection of inspired writings. The earlier orthodox Protestant view of religion as a body of truths published and taught by God to man in revelation was in process of disintegration. In Semler's distinction between religion (ethics) on the one hand and theology on the other, with Herder's similar separation of religion from theological opinions and religious usages, the cause of the Christian religion, as they conceived it, seemed to be put beyond the reach of the shock of criticism, which, by destroying the foundations upon which it claimed to rest, had gone so far to discredit the older form of Lutheranism. Kant's (1724-1804) criticism of the reason, however, formed a turning-point in the development of Rationalism. For a full understanding of his attitude, the reader must be acquainted with the nature of his pietistic upbringing and later scientific and philosophical formation in the Leibniz-Wolff school of thought (see PHILOSOPHY OF KANT). As far as concerns the point that occupies us at present, Kant was a Rationalist. For him religion was coextensive, with natural, though not utilitarian, morals. When he met with the criticisms of Hume and undertook his famous "Kritik", his preoccupation was to safeguard his religious opinions, his rigorous morality, from the danger of criticism. This he did, not by means of the old Rationalism, but by throwing discredit upon metaphysics. The accepted proofs of the existence of God, immortality, and liberty were thus, in his opinion, overthrown, and the well-known set of postulates of the "categoric imperative" put forward in their place. This, obviously, was the end of Rationalism in its earlier form, in which the fundamental truths of religion were set out as demonstrable by reason. But, despite the shifting of the burden of religion from the pure to the practical reason, Kant himself never seems to have reached the view --; to which all his work pointed --; that religion is not mere ethics, "conceiving moral laws as divine commands", no matter how far removed from Utilitarianism --; not an affair of the mind, but of the heart and will; and that revelation does not reach man by way of an exterior promulgation, but consists in a personal adaptation towards God. This conception was reached gradually with the advance of the theory that man possesses a religious sense, or faculty, distinct from the rational (Fries, 1773-1843; Jacobi, 1743-1819; Herder, 1744-1803; all opposed to the Intellectualism of Kant), and ultimately found expression with Schleiermacher (1768-1834), for whom religion is to be found neither in knowledge nor in action, but in a peculiar attitude of mind which consists in the consciousness of absolute dependence upon God. Here the older distinction between natural and revealed religion disappears. All that can be called religion the consciousness of dependence is at the same time revelational, and all religion is of the same character. There is no special revelation in the older Protestant (the Catholic) sense, but merely this attitude of dependence brought into being in the individual by the teaching of various great personalities who, from time to time, have manifested an extraordinary sense of the religious. Schleiermacher was a contemporary of Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel, whose philosophical speculations had influence, with his own, in ultimately subverting Rationalism as here dealt with. The movement may be said to have ended with him in the opinion of Teller "the greatest theologian that the Protestant Church has had since the period of the Reformation". The majority of modern Protestant theologians accept his views, not, however, to the exclusion of knowledge as a basis of religion.

Parallel with the development of the philosophical and theological views as to the nature of religion and the worth of revelation, which provided it with its critical principles, took place an exegetical evolution. The first phase consisted in replacing the orthodox Protestant doctrine (i.e. that the Sacred Scriptures are the Word of God) by a distinction between the Word of God contained in the Bible and the Bible itself (Tllner, Herder), though the Rationalists still held that the purer source of revelation lies rather in the written than in the traditional word. This distinction led inevitably to the destruction, of the rigid view of inspiration, and prepared the ground for the second phase. The principle of accommodation was now employed to explain the difficulties raised by the Scripture records of miraculous events and demoniacal manifestations (Senf, Vogel), and arbitrary methods of exegesis were also used to the same end (Paulus, Eichhorn). In the third phase Rationalists had reached the point of allowing the possibility of mistakes having been made by Christ and the Apostles, at any rate with regard to non-essential parts of religion. All the devices of exegesis were employed vainly; and, in the end, Rationalists found themselves forced to admit that the authors of the New Testament must have written from a point of view different from that which a modern theologian would adopt (Henke, Wegseheider). This principle, which is sufficiently elastic to admit of usage by nearly every variety of opinion, was admitted by several of the Supernaturalists (Reinhard, Storr), and is very generally accepted by modern Protestant divines, in the rejection of verbal inspiration. Herder is very clear on the distinction the truly inspired must be discerned from that which is not; and de Wette lays down as the canon of interpretation "the religious perception of the divine operation, or of the Holy Spirit, in the sacred writers as regards their belief and inspiration, but not respecting their faculty of forming ideas. . ." In an extreme form it may be seen employed in such works as Strauss's "Leben Jesu", where the hypothesis of the mythical nature of miracles is developed to a greater extent than by Schleiermacher or de Wette.

Rationalism, in the broader, popular meaning of the term, is used to designate any mode of thought in which human reason holds the place of supreme criterion of truth; in this sense, it is especially applied to such modes of thought as contrasted with faith. Thus Atheism, Materialism, Naturalism, Pantheism, Scepticism, etc., fall under the head of rationalistic systems. As such, the rationalistic tendency has always existed in philosophy, and has generally shown itself powerful in all the critical schools. As has been noted in the preceding paragraph, German Rationalism had strong affinities with English Deism and French Materialism, two historic forms in which the tendency has manifested itself. But with the vulgarization of the ideas contained in the various systems that composed these movements, Rationalism has degenerated. It has become connected in the popular mind with the shallow and misleading philosophy frequently put forward in the name of science, so that a double confusion has arisen, in which;

This Rationalism is now rather a spirit, or attitude, ready to seize upon any arguments, from any source and of any or no value, to urge against the doctrines and practices of faith. Beside this crude and popular form it has taken, for which the publication of cheap reprints and a vigorous propaganda are mainly responsible, there runs the deeper and more thoughtful current of critical-philosophical Rationalism, which either rejects religion and revelation altogether or treats them in much the same manner as did the Germans. Its various manifestations have little in common in method or content, save the general appeal to reason as supreme. No better description of the position can be given than the statements of the objects of the Rationalist Press Association. Among these are: "To stimulate the habits of reflection and inquiry and the free exercise of individual intellect . . . and generally to assert the supremacy of reason as the natural and necessary means to all such knowledge and wisdom as man can achieve". A perusal of the publications of the same will show in what sense this representative body interprets the above statement. It may be said finally, that Rationalism is the direct and logical outcome of the principles of Protestantism; and that the intermediary form, in which assent is given to revealed truth as possessing the imprimatur of reason, is only a phase in the evolution of ideas towards general disbelief. Official condemnations of the various forms of Rationalism, absolute and mitigated, are to be found in the Syllabus of Pius IX.

The term Rationalism is perhaps not usually applied to the theological method of the Catholic Church. All forms of theological statement, however, and pre-eminently the dialectical form of Catholic theology, are rationalistic in the truest sense. Indeed, the claim of such Rationalism as is dealt with above is directly met by the counter claim of the Church: that it is at best but a mutilated and unreasonable Rationalism, not worthy of the name, while that of the Church is rationally complete, and integrated, moreover, with super-rational truth. In this sense Catholic theology presupposes the certain truths of natural reason as the preambula fidei, philosophy (the ancilla theologi) is employed in the defence of revealed truth (see APOLOGETICS), and the content of Divine revelation is treated and systematized in the categories of natural thought. This systematization is carried out both in dogmatic and moral theology. It is a process contemporaneous with the first attempt at a scientific statement of religious truth, comes to perfection of method in the works of such writers as St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Alphonsus, and is consistently employed and developed in the Schools.

HAGENBACH, Kirchengesch. des 18. Jahrhunderts in Vorlesungen ber Wesen u. Gesch. der Reformation in Deutschland etc., V-VI (Leipzig, 1834-43); IDEM (tr. BUCH), Compendium of the History of Doctrines (Edinburgh, 1846); HASE, Kirchengesch. (Leipzig, 1886); HENKE, Rationalismus u. Traditionalismus im 19. Jahrh. (Halle, 1864); HURST, History of Rationalism (New York, 1882); LERMINIER, De l'influence de la philosophie du XVIIIe sicle (Paris, 1833); SAINTES, Hist. critique du rationalisme en Allemagne (Paris, 1841); SCHLEIERMACHER, Der christl. Glaube nach der Grundstzen der evangelischen Kirche (Berlin, 1821-22): SEMLER, Von freier Untersuchung des Kanons (Halle, 1771-75); IDEM, Institutio ad doctrinam christianam liberaliter discendam (Halle, 1774); IDEM, Versuch einer freier theologischen Lehrart (Halle, 1777); STADLIN, Gesch. des Rationalismus u. Supranaturalismus (Gttingen, 1826); THOLUCK, Vorgesch. des Rationalismus (Halle, 1853-62); BENN, History of Rationalism in the Nineteenth Century (London, 1906).

APA citation. Aveling, F. (1911). Rationalism. In The Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company. http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/12652a.htm

MLA citation. Aveling, Francis. "Rationalism." The Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 12. New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1911. <http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/12652a.htm>.

Transcription. This article was transcribed for New Advent by Douglas J. Potter. Dedicated to the Sacred Heart of Jesus Christ.

Ecclesiastical approbation. Nihil Obstat. June 1, 1911. Remy Lafort, S.T.D., Censor. Imprimatur. +John Cardinal Farley, Archbishop of New York.

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CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA: Rationalism

PUBLISHED: 09:00 12 July 2020

Emma Luck

The modern architecture concert hall Auditorio de Tenerife in Santa Cruz. Picture: Getty Images

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For many, Tenerife is synonymous with beachside package holidays. But, as EMMA LUCK explains, thats only half the islands story.

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So vast is the tourism industry that has sprung up on Tenerife that it can at least from afar obscure a quite different side to the island.

But as this domineering sector has grown and utterly transformed the largest of the Canary Islands, so have efforts been made to safeguard its distinctive historical and cultural identity. The solution has been to effectively split the island in two.

This has seen the southern end establish itself as one of Europes most popular destinations, where visitors primarily from the north of the continent flock year-round to enjoy the warm climate and home-from-home facilities. This tourist boom has, of course, generated phenomenal revenues but the south has paid a high price by losing an element of its own Spanish identity to cater to its visitors, with more generic activities such as water sports, boat trips and theme parks.

The north, meanwhile, has been quietly getting on with a cultural evolution of a more Canarian nature. It has managed to establish a more successful symbiosis and its own cultural relevance hasnt been surrendered to the might of tourism.

There is no epic distance between the lower and upper portions of Tenerife. Only 47 miles separate the jam-packed beaches and giant hotels of Playa de las Americas and the capital Santa Cruz but there is minimal crossover, and the one feels a world away from the other.

It was not always thus. Before tourism came to dominate, the island was a much more homogenous entity, united by a very specific culture which stretched back through the centuries.

It was the fair-haired Guanches and their legendary mencey (kings) who first really stamped their mark on Tenerife. They arrived on the archipelago during the first millennium BC and are descended from the Berber tribes of North Africa.

The Guanches ruled over the Atlantic and established trade routes with the Romans. Their religion was polytheistic although the cult of the dead was also prominent; their practices included the mummification of the deceased, excellent examples of which can be found in the islands museums.

Their long rule finally ended in 1496 when, after four years of conflict, the Guanche kings and their warriors were finally overwhelmed by the Spanish. Tenerife had been the last of the Canary Islands to be conquered and had taken the longest to submit to the Castilian troops.

Conquest meant a new era for the island. San Cristbal de la Laguna, widely held to be the islands most beautiful city, was established at this time and became the capital. Declared a World Heritage site in 1999, the northern city has the pick of the historic sites, including the 16th century Royal Sanctuary Church and the 1904 Cathedral of San Cristbal de La Laguna. The city is also home to the University of La Laguna, the establishment of which made it the archipelagos first university city.

It yielded to Santa Cruz, also in the north of the island, in the 1700s due to a declining economy and population, and the port city eventually became the capital of Tenerife and the Canary Islands, a status which it now shares with Las Palmas, on Gran Canaria.

During these centuries, the island was well placed to capitalise on the bountiful trade routes that crisscrossed the surrounding ocean. Its strategic position also made it a tempting target for Spains enemies. Lord Nelson lost an arm during an unsuccessful attempt to take Tenerife during the Battle of Santa Cruz de Tenerife in 1797. And the great man was not alone in failing to wrest the island from its inhabitants. A task force led by Sir Walter Raleigh had come up short a century earlier.

This independent spirit and arms length rule from Spain which lay several days sailing away may have been a factor in the burgeoning cultural scene for which Tenerife became known. Many of the islands earliest creatives benefitted from a greater level of freedom than their counterparts in mainland Spain who were caught more directly in the gaze of the all-powerful Catholic monarchy.

As the more developed part of the island closer to Spain and those vital trade routes, and an altogether more hospitable location than the drier, more arid south, the undefended coast of which was vulnerable to pirates the northern area became its cultural epicentre.

The first centre for painting was in La Laguna, with the earliest protagonists setting up their easels there in the 16th century. As the movement developed, other schools opened in La Orotava, Puerto de la Cruz and Santa Cruz, which became a key hub not only for the exchange not only of goods but of ideas and culture, thanks to its port.

Valentin Sanz, born in Santa Cruz in 1849, was the earliest known landscape painter in the Canary Islands. Yet his career shows that while a remote and isolated island location can foster artistic talent, that same remoteness and isolation can also be a limiting factor. Like many Tinerfenos, Sanz had to leave the region to drive his career forward. He studied in Seville and Madrid, and worked as a professor in the San Alejandro Academy of Fine Arts in Cuba. His work tackles the issue of light and colour with great character, closing in on impressionism. Some of his work is displayed at the Municipal Museum of Fine Arts of Santa Cruz, including El Paisaje de La Laguna (The Landscape of La Laguna).

The close of the 19th century saw Realism and Impressionism cohabiting with strains of Romanticism that could still be seen in the works of some artists on the island. The first recorded impressionist painter on the island was Juan Rodriguez Botas (1880-1917).

He progressed from the early work done by Sanz and adopted the style that was then sweeping France. Santa Cruz-born Francisco Bonnn Guern (1874-1963), on the other hand, was a master of watercolours to such an extent that he created his own school of landscape painting and founded the influential Association of Canary Watercolour Painters, many of whose members followed his technique and won awards.

As for the most famous of the islands artists, that title sits well upon the shoulders of Oscar Dominguez (1906-1957). Considered one of Spains greatest surrealist painters after Mir, Dal and Picasso, Dominguez left a large and highly personal collection of work which is displayed throughout the island. Although he ended up in Paris, his work is heavily influenced by his Tinerfeno heritage and is peppered with Canarian references such as mountains and the native dragon tree.

Alongside its distinct artistic heritage, Tenerife also developed its own literary culture. This emerged from an oral storytelling tradition in the mid-15th century, which evolved over time towards different genres such as epic poetry, Baroque aesthetics, Neoclassical prose and Romanticism. In this evolution, it was slightly behind the curve of European artistic trends, due primarily to the sheer distance it lay from the rest of the continent.

Despite this, Tenerifes rich literary seam has produced several notable authors. Antonio de Viana was born in La Laguna in 1578 and his epic poem Antiguedades de las Islas Afortunadas (Antiques of the Fortunate Islands) was an ode to the Guanches and tells of the conquest of Tenerife by Spain. It offers a wealth of historical information about this pivotal period.

Later, in the 18th century, the enlightenment saw a vibrant cultural movement spring up on the island which lasted into the 20th century and beyond.

Many of its members were united by the fact that they found themselves in conflict with the Catholic church or central government over their beliefs:

Writer Jose Viera y Clavijo (1731-1813) established himself at the heart of this creative movement where he was able to reconcile his faith and personal beliefs with the reality as described by science. Also a priest, his rationalism led him to clash with the church. His work covers all literary genres but he spent two decades working on his masterpiece Noticias (News), a wide-ranging history of the Canary Islands which described the origin, character and customs of its ancient inhabitants and their conquest by the Europeans.

Neoclassical writer, poet and native of Puerto de la Cruz, Tomas de Iriarte (1750-1791), was one of the first dramatists to bring the Neoclassical style to a wider audience. Universally celebrated as the author of Fabulas literarias (Literary fables) his later years were dogged by controversy and in 1786 he was reported to the Inquisition for his sympathies with the French philosophers.

Considered the father of Catalan theatre, Santa Cruz-born playwright ngel Guimer (1845-1924) was nominated a staggering 23 times for the Nobel Prize in Literature but never won due to political pressure from Spains central government. After moving back to his fathers birthplace in Catalonia, he wrote a number of plays including Tierra baja (Lowlands) and Mar y cielo (Sea and Sky) which were translated into other languages and performed abroad. He proved to be instrumental in the revival of Catalan as a literary language in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. His birthplace paid tribute by naming the main theatre of Santa Cruz de Tenerife, the oldest on the Canary Islands, after him.

By the age of 14, La Laguna-born novelist, dramatist and poet Mercedes Pinto had made a name for herself, becoming known as the Canarian Poetess. Her most famous work, the semi-autobigraphical l (This Strange Passion), was adapted for the big screen by the film-maker Luis Buuel. Her pursuit of a feminist agenda led to conflict with the Catholic church and she was forced to live most of her life outside Spain.

These themes of art and literature clashing with conservatism are not unique to Tenerife, or to Spain, of course. And the island has not managed to escape the most destructive forces of reaction. The Canary Islands fell to the nationalists in 1936 and a mass execution of Francos opponents in Tenerife followed, an atrocity that led many Tinerfeos to relocate to Latin America.

Francos dictatorship had a suppressive effect on Tenerifes cultural life, but did not snuff it out. The years of his rule also saw significant advances in the islands tourism industry.

Its attraction to overseas visitors was nothing new. Back in the late 1800s, tourism had been centred on northern Tenerife, with well-heeled Europeans heading there to escape their freezing winters.

With very little seasonal variation, the year-round mild climate and clear air were promoted as offering a variety of health benefits. It quickly became the main source of revenue with Puerto de la Cruz the first city to develop as a leisure destination as the earliest visitors arrived by steamer into the port at Santa Cruz.

During her visit in 1927 when she fled to the island two months after her infamous 11-day disappearance, Agatha Christie, was inspired to finish her novels The Mystery of the Blue Train and The Mysterious Mr Quinn.

As travel was revolutionised in the second half of the 20th century, however, the focus moved dramatically from the north to the south of the island.

The northern end has a noticeably higher rainfall because of its proximity to Mount Teide, Tenerifes own volcano. The hotter, drier south was therefore more attractive for the new generation of jet-setting tourists who were able to arrive at, and move around, the island more easily than in the past. Whats more, the area was far less developed than the north, so offered greater opportunities for the construction of mega resorts such as Playa de Las Americas and Los Cristianos.

George Harrison, Ringo Starr and Paul McCartney helped put the island on the tourism map when they went on holiday in Tenerife after releasing their first album in 1963. They blended happily into the crowds of foreign visitors and were able to enjoy their last holiday undisturbed by bodyguards, fans and the press.

As the number of visitors grew, the often fog-bound Los Rodeos (Tenerife North) airport was under great strain. In 1977, 583 people were killed when two Boeing 747 jets collided on a foggy runway, in the deadliest accident in aviation history.

The following year, Reina Sofia airport (Tenerife South) opened. It now handles around 90% of visitors to the island, dwarfing its northern counterpart, and has cemented the separation of Tenerifes north and south and utterly transformed its tourism economy.

The sector may have threatened, at times since, to overwhelm the islands cultural character, but it has never succeeded. Indeed, in recent years, the distinct artistic identity of the northern end of the island has been further strengthened by a wave of architectural innovation that is apparent in many major art and music venues.

The dramatic white building on Santa Cruzs waterfront is unmissable. Its roof soars 58 metres over the main auditorium and then curves downwards, narrowing to a point like a crashing Atlantic wave. This is the Tenerife Concert Hall, a focal point for the norths lively arts programme. It is home to the Tenerife Symphony Orchestra and has welcomed guest soloists of the calibre of Plcido Domingo to cement its reputation as a national and international benchmark orchestra. The renowned pera de Tenerife is also based there.

Tucked alongside the Barranco de Santos ravine in Santa Cruz stands the Tenerife Arts Centre (TEA -Tenerife Espacio de las Artes). It works effectively as a catalyst, connecting the daily life of Santa Cruz with the islands art and culture. It houses a permanent exhibition of the works of Tenerifes own scar Domnguez and has exhibited pieces by Andy Warhol and Henry Moore.

The buildings diagonal elements and sloping floors showcase a contemporary space designed by the Canaries-born Virgilio Gutirrez Herreros and Swiss architects Herzog & de Meuron who were responsible for Londons Tate Modern.

Today, the island seems to have made peace with its informal divide. It reaps the financial benefits from its southern resorts while maintaining its identity and historical narrative via its cultural stronghold in the north. Could this offer a blueprint for tourism elsewhere and avoid cultural heritage being lost forever to a fast tourist buck...?

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Tenerife: A tale of two islands - The New European