Science, Culture and Modern State Formation

1. Auflage 2006
ISBN: 978-0-520-24753-6
Verlag: University of California Press

Buch, Englisch, 290 Seiten, Cloth Over Boards, Format (B × H): 162 mm x 232 mm, Gewicht: 556 g

This highly original, groundbreaking study explores the profound relationship between science and government to present a new understanding of modern state formation. Beginning with the experimental science of Robert Boyle in seventeenth-century England, Patrick Carroll develops the concept of engine science to capture the centrality of engineering practices and technologies in the emerging mechanical philosophy. He traces the introduction of engine science into colonial Ireland, showing how that country subsequently became a laboratory for experiments in statecraft. Carroll’s wide-ranging study, spanning institutions, political philosophy, and policy implementation, demonstrates that a number of new technological developments—from cartography, statistics, and natural history to geology, public health, and sanitary engineering—reveal how modern science came to engineer land, people, and the built environment into a material political state in an unprecedented way, creating the “modern” state. Shedding new light on sociology, the history of science and technology, and on the history of British colonial projects in Ireland from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries, his study has implications for understanding postcolonial occupations and nation-building ventures today and on contemporary dilemmas such as the role of science and government in environmental sustainability.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Carroll, Patrick

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtliche Themen Wissenschafts- und Universitätsgeschichte
• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Politische Systeme Staats- und Regierungsformen, Staatslehre
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtliche Themen Kultur- und Ideengeschichte
• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Spezielle Soziologie Wissenssoziologie, Wissenschaftssoziologie, Techniksoziologie
• Interdisziplinäres Wissenschaften Wissenschaft und Gesellschaft | Kulturwissenschaften
• Technische Wissenschaften Technik Allgemein Technikgeschichte

Inhaltsverzeichnis

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments

Introduction
1. Science, Culture, and Modern State Formation: Theory and Analysis
2. Understanding Engine Science: Robert Boyle and the New Experimentalism
3. Engineering Culture and the Civilizing Mission: William Petty and the New Science in Ireland
4. Engineering the Data State: Scopes, Meters, and Graphs
5. Bio-population: The Science of Policing Natural and Political Bodies
6. Engineering Ireland: The Material Designs of Modern Statecraft
Conclusion

Notes
Bibliograpny
Index

Über Autor(innen)

Patrick Carroll is Associate Professor of Sociology and a member of the Science and Technology Studies Program at the University of California at Davis. He is author of Colonial Discipline: The Making of the Irish Convict System.