The Scientific Imagination in South Africa
1700 to the Present

An innovative three hundred year exploration of the social and political contexts of science and the scientific imagination in South Africa.

William Beinart (Author), Saul Dubow (Author)

9781108837088, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 20 May 2021

418 pages
15 x 23 x 2.5 cm, 0.75 kg

'Highly recommended.' J. O. Gump, Choice

South Africa provides a unique vantage point from which to examine the scientific imagination over the last three centuries, when its position on the African continent made it a staging post for Portuguese, Dutch, and British colonialism. In the eighteenth century, South African plants and animals caught the imagination of visiting Europeans. In the nineteenth century, science became central to imperial conquest, devastating wars, agricultural intensification and the exploitation of rich mineral resources. Scientific work both facilitated, and offered alternatives to, the imposition of segregation and apartheid in the twentieth century. William Beinart and Saul Dubow offer an innovative exploration of science and technology in this complex, divided society. Bridging a range of disciplines from astronomy to zoology, they demonstrate how scientific knowledge shaped South Africa's peculiar path to modernity. In so doing, they examine the work of remarkable individual scientists and institutions, as well as the contributions of leading politicians from Jan Smuts to Thabo Mbeki.

Introduction: The Scientific Imagination in South Africa
1. Scientific Imagination and Local Knowledge at the Cape in the Eighteenth Century
2. Scientific Governance and Colonial Institutions, c.1800–1870
3: Technological Innovation and the Scientific Imagination in Mining and Agriculture, 1870–1902
4. Science, Reconstruction, and the Imagining of the First 'New' South Africa, 1902–1929
5. The Commonwealth of Knowledge, 1930–1948
6. The Republic of Science, 1948–1990
7. Big Science and Indigenous Knowledge: Post-Apartheid South Africa and the African Renaissance
Afterword.

Subject Areas: History of science [PDX], 20th century history: c 1900 to c 2000 [HBLW], Modern history to 20th century: c 1700 to c 1900 [HBLL], African history [HBJH]