Science, Culture, and Modern State FormationThis highly original, groundbreaking study explores the profound relationship between science and government to present a new understanding of modern state formation. Beginning with the experimental science of Robert Boyle in seventeenth-century England, Patrick Carroll develops the concept of engine science to capture the centrality of engineering practices and technologies in the emerging mechanical philosophy. He traces the introduction of engine science into colonial Ireland, showing how that country subsequently became a laboratory for experiments in statecraft. Carroll’s wide-ranging study, spanning institutions, political philosophy, and policy implementation, demonstrates that a number of new technological developments—from cartography, statistics, and natural history to geology, public health, and sanitary engineering—reveal how modern science came to engineer land, people, and the built environment into a material political state in an unprecedented way, creating the "modern" state. Shedding new light on sociology, the history of science and technology, and on the history of British colonial projects in Ireland from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries, his study has implications for understanding postcolonial occupations and nation-building ventures today and on contemporary dilemmas such as the role of science and government in environmental sustainability. |
Contents
| 11 | |
Understanding Engine Science Robert Boyle and the New Experimentalism | 28 |
Engineering Culture and the Civilizing Mission William Petty and the New Science in Ireland | 52 |
Engineering the Data State Scopes Meters and Graphs | 81 |
Biopopulation The Science of Policing Natural and Political Bodies | 113 |
Engineering Ireland The Material Designs of Modern Statecraft | 143 |
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agriculture Anon argued bodies bogs Boyle's building built environment Cambridge cartography Census of Ireland civil commissioners construction context contrivance crucial discourse disease Dublin Quarterly Journal economic eighteenth century engine science engineering culture England English Essay experiments Famine Fever formation forms Foucault graphing Hobbes hospitals houses Ibid improvement inquiry instance institutions instruments John Journal of Medical knowledge land London Majesty's Stationery Office maps material culture mathematical measures mechanical mechanical philosophy medical police ment meters modern moral nation natural and political natural philosophy nineteenth century Ordnance Survey Ordnance Survey Ireland Petty Papers Petty's Political Anatomy political arithmetic political medicine poor law population practice public health relation Report Richard Griffith roads Robert Boyle Royal Dublin Society Samuel Hartlib science and government scientific scope seventeenth century Sir William Petty social state-idea statecraft Statistical Statistical Survey technologies Thomas tion triangulation University Press Vict William Petty