1.

Record Nr.

UNISA996580168403316

Autore

Nelson William Max <1976->

Titolo

The time of enlightenment : constructing the future in France, 1750 to year one / / William Max Nelson

Pubbl/distr/stampa

University of Toronto Press, 2020

Toronto, Ontario : , : University of Toronto Press, , [2021]

©2021

ISBN

1-4875-4140-6

1-4875-3677-1

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (240 p.)

Classificazione

CF 1250

Disciplina

194

Soggetti

Forecasting - History - France - Social aspects - 18th century

Enlightenment - Influence - France

Enlightenment - France

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Includes index.

Nota di contenuto

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- 1 Making Time Different: Historical Change and the Laws of Nature -- 2 Living the Future: Ideas of Progress and Uncanny Temporality -- 3 “The Explosion of Light”: The Economic Order and the Scientific Revelation of the Future -- 4 Generating Time: Buffon and the Biological Instruments of Futurity -- 5 The Time of Regeneration: Renewal, Rupture, and Beginning Anew in the French Revolution -- Conclusion: Colonizing the Future -- Notes -- Index

Sommario/riassunto

A new idea of the future emerged in eighteenth-century France. With the development of modern biological, economic, and social engineering, the future transformed from being predetermined and beyond significant human intervention into something that could be dramatically affected through actions in the present. The Time of Enlightenment argues that specific mechanisms for constructing the future first arose through the development of practices and instruments aimed at countering degeneration. In their attempts to regenerate a healthy natural state, Enlightenment philosophes created the means to exceed previously recognized limits and build a future



that was not merely a recuperation of the past, but fundamentally different from it. A theoretically inflected work combining intellectual history and the history of science, this book will appeal to anyone interested in European history and the history of science, as well as the history of France, the Enlightenment, and the French Revolution.