The Kingdom of Science
Subtitle: Literary Utopianism and British Education, 1612-1870
Publisher: University of Nebraska Press
Published: January 1, 2003
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 375
ISBN-13: 9780803235687
Subjects: History of specific subjects; Science: General Issues; Sociology, Social Studies; History Of Education; Utopias; Education; Education / Teaching; Educational Policy & Reform; English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh; History; Literary Criticism & Collections / General; Regional, Ethnic, Genre, Specific Subject; Educational change; Great Britain; Utopias in literature
Description: "The Kingdom of Science examines Baconian utopias as blueprints for a scientific sociology of knowledge that founded a new social and economic world in the seventeenth century. Looking backward, Paul A. Olson begins with More's Utopia and Shakespeare's The Tempest, static state utopias designed to woo us toward a moral as opposed to a scientific reform.

To these, Olson then contrasts the primary subjects of his study - Bacon's New Atlantis, the Commonwealth educational utopias, and the utopianism of Adam Smith and his Utilitarian followers. These later utopias increasingly point to an ideal world to be dominated by a science linked to technology, compelled education, and competitive capitalism. They posit as their end the conquest of nature and use as their means the routinizing of research and education.

Their visions, Olson argues, lie at the center of the educational models adopted by mainstream British and American policymakers in the last century and a half - depsite the warnings of both conservative and radical critics concerning their potential consequences for the environment and for culture."--BOOK JACKET.