Science, Democracy, and the American University
From the Civil War to the Cold War

A reinterpretation of the secularization of American culture, focusing on the political views of natural and social scientists from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Andrew Jewett (Author)

9781107686311, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 1 May 2014

416 pages
23.4 x 15.6 x 2.4 cm, 0.64 kg

'… very well-written, extremely well-documented, and ambitious … Jewett has provided a comprehensive history of competing interpretations of the meaning and uses of the term science. His work is a highly significant contribution to an understanding of a central component of American intellectual thought. As such, it is essential reading for advanced students and scholars in a number of disciplines.' Mark Oromaner, American Studies

This book reinterprets the rise of the natural and social sciences as sources of political authority in modern America. Andrew Jewett demonstrates the remarkable persistence of a belief that the scientific enterprise carried with it a set of ethical values capable of grounding a democratic culture - a political function widely assigned to religion. The book traces the shifting formulations of this belief from the creation of the research universities in the Civil War era to the early Cold War years. It examines hundreds of leading scholars who viewed science not merely as a source of technical knowledge, but also as a resource for fostering cultural change. This vision generated surprisingly nuanced portraits of science in the years before the military-industrial complex and has much to teach us today about the relationship between science and democracy.

Introduction: relating science and democracy
Part I. The Scientific Spirit: 1. Founding hopes
2. Internal divisions
3. Science and philosophy
Part II. The Scientific Attitude: 4. Scientific citizenship
5. The biology of culture
6. The problem of cultural change
7. Making scientific citizens
Part III. Science and Politics: 8. Science and its contexts
9. The problem of values
10. Two cultures
11. Accommodation
Conclusion: science and democracy in a new century.

Subject Areas: History of science [PDX], History of ideas [JFCX], History of the Americas [HBJK]