German philosopher Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten is generally credited with establishing aesthetics as a distinct discipline. His goal, if you will, was to isolate beauty in something akin to a specimen jar and then examine it with the rigor a scientist might reserve for biology or chemistry. Approaching knowledge in this manner was a boon to science, of course, as well as to some approaches to art history. But for men and women eager to form a truly modern self, the isolation of beauty would cause it to grow increasingly arcane. As philosopher Alexander Nehemas suggests, "The creation of an aesthetic domain and the elaboration of a doctrine of fine arts were meant to establish the epistemological authority of sensory perception and to secure the spiritual rights of beauty. To that end the eighteenth century placed the arts side by side with the sciences in a setting in which each was to become increasingly impervious, even incomprehensible, to the other."

—Cameron Anderson, The Faithful Artist