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OverviewA 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 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. Full Product DetailsAuthor: William Max NelsonPublisher: University of Toronto Press Imprint: University of Toronto Press Dimensions: Width: 15.50cm , Height: 2.50cm , Length: 22.90cm Weight: 0.480kg ISBN: 9781487507701ISBN 10: 1487507704 Pages: 240 Publication Date: 04 January 2021 Audience: College/higher education , Professional and scholarly , Tertiary & Higher Education , Professional & Vocational Format: Hardback Publisher's Status: Active Availability: Temporarily unavailable  The supplier advises that this item is temporarily unavailable. It will be ordered for you and placed on backorder. Once it does come back in stock, we will ship it out to you. Table of ContentsAcknowledgments 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 IndexReviews“Scholars interested in the growing literature on the history of time, progress, and the future will find this book valuable reading. It is a careful but clear work on intellectual history, one with particular relevance for understanding the significance of the French Revolution.” -- Meghan K. Roberts, Bowdoin College * <em>H-France Review</em> * “In this insightful, richly researched, and theoretically astute work, William Max Nelson views the Enlightenment not as era, movement, or project, but as ‘attempts to develop new ways of being in the world that could come to grips with the erosion of traditional notions of God and legitimating narratives of political authority and social hierarchy.’ … This book is a valuable and thought-provoking contribution to that process.” -- Daniel Brewer, University of Minnesota * <em>French Studies</em> * “This wide-ranging book makes a valuable contribution to a still fragmentary field of historical time studies.” -- Sanja Perovic, King’s College London * <em>American Historical Review</em> * Drawing on up-to-date scholarship, William Max Nelson engages in interesting ways with the historiography of the Enlightenment and the history of science in the eighteenth century. This study delves deeply into the concept of progress by focusing on references to a constructible future and possibilities, within limits, to change the world for the better. - Denise Davidson, Department of History, Georgia State University This book is bound to appeal to historians of the Enlightenment and the French Revolution, as well as historians of science and those interested in the history of ideas. With William Max Nelson's elegant phrasing and impressive skill at explicating even complex ideas, any reader would admire the erudition of the study and the panache with which its ideas are expressed. - Thomas Stammers, Department of History, Durham University This is an important book that engages with a rapidly expanding body of work that explores what might be called the history of time. Theoretically sophisticated and exhibiting an impressive command of the literature on the French enlightenment, The Time of Enlightenment offers an important and original historical perspective for those interested in the problem of imagining the future. - Kevin Lambert, Department of Liberal Studies, California State University, Fullerton “Scholars interested in the growing literature on the history of time, progress, and the future will find this book valuable reading. It is a careful but clear work on intellectual history, one with particular relevance for understanding the significance of the French Revolution.” -- Meghan K. Roberts, Bowdoin College * <em>H-France Review</em> * “In this insightful, richly researched, and theoretically astute work, William Max Nelson views the Enlightenment not as era, movement, or project, but as ‘attempts to develop new ways of being in the world that could come to grips with the erosion of traditional notions of God and legitimating narratives of political authority and social hierarchy.’ … This book is a valuable and thought-provoking contribution to that process.” -- Daniel Brewer, University of Minnesota * <em>French Studies</em> * Author InformationWilliam Max Nelson is an associate professor of History at the University of Toronto and a co-editor of The French Revolution in Global Perspective. Tab Content 6Author Website:Countries AvailableAll regions |
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