A01=Rosalind Williams
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Age Group_Uncategorized
antarctica
Author_Rosalind Williams
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Category1=Non-Fiction
Category=DSBF
Category=DSK
COP=United States
Delivery_Delivery within 10-20 working days
destruction
domination
ecology
empire
environment
environmentalism
eq_bestseller
eq_biography-true-stories
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
escape
extinction
fantasy
francis bacon
invasion of the sea
jules verne
knowledge
Language_English
literature
modernity
nature
nautilus
new atlantis
news from nowhere
nonfiction
ocean
PA=Available
power
Price_€20 to €50
progress
PS=Active
realism
robert louis stevenson
romance
science
softlaunch
subjugation
submarine
technology
twenty thousand leagues
utopia
water
william morris
Product details
- ISBN 9780226899558
- Weight: 737g
- Dimensions: 16 x 23mm
- Publication Date: 30 Sep 2013
- Publisher: The University of Chicago Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
- Language: English
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In the early 1600s, in a haunting tale titled New Atlantis, Sir Francis Bacon imagined the discovery of an uncharted island, home to the descendants of the lost realm of Atlantis, who had organized themselves to seek "the knowledge of Causes, and secret motions of things; and the enlarging of the bounds of Human Empire, to the effecting of all things possible." Bacon's make-believe island was not an empire in the usual sense, marked by territorial control; instead, it was the center of a vast general expansion of human knowledge and power. Rosalind Williams uses Bacon's island as a jumping-off point to explore the overarching historical event of our time: the rise and triumph of human empire. Confronting an intensely humanized world was a singular event of consciousness, which Williams explores through the lives and works of three writers of the late nineteenth century: Jules Verne, William Morris, and Robert Louis Stevenson. As the century drew to a close, these writers were unhappy with the direction in which their world seemed to be headed and worried that organized humanity would use knowledge and power for unworthy ends.
In response, Williams shows, each engaged in a lifelong quest to make a home in the midst of human empire, to transcend it, and most of all to understand it. They accomplished this first by taking to the water: in life and in art, this shift offered them release from the condition of human domination. At the same time, each writer experimented with romance and fantasy and how these traditions allowed them to express their growing awareness of the need for a new relationship between humans and Earth. As environmental consciousness rises in our time, along with evidence that our seeming control over nature is pathological and unpredictable, Williams' history is one that speaks very much to the present.
Rosalind Williams is the Bern Dibner Professor of the History of Science and Technology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She is past president of the Society for the History of Technology and the author of several books, most recently, Retooling: A Historian Confronts Technological Change.
