Book contents
- The Scientific Imagination in South Africa
- The Scientific Imagination in South Africa
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Map
- Figures
- Acknowledgements
- 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. 1800–70
- 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, 1902–29
- 5 The Commonwealth of Knowledge, 1930–48
- 6 The Republic of Science, 1948–90
- 7 Big Science and Indigenous Knowledge: Post-Apartheid South Africa and the African Renaissance
- Afterword
- Select Bibliography
- Index
Afterword
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 May 2021
- The Scientific Imagination in South Africa
- The Scientific Imagination in South Africa
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Map
- Figures
- Acknowledgements
- 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. 1800–70
- 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, 1902–29
- 5 The Commonwealth of Knowledge, 1930–48
- 6 The Republic of Science, 1948–90
- 7 Big Science and Indigenous Knowledge: Post-Apartheid South Africa and the African Renaissance
- Afterword
- Select Bibliography
- Index
Summary
We have aimed to write a book that speaks to multiple audiences, starting from the proposition that a synoptic view of the scientific imagination in South Africa over 300 years has much to offer specialist as well as general readerships. Firstly, for those interested primarily in South Africa, our argument is that scientific ideas and practices have irreversibly shaped society, and that they should be understood as an intrinsic element of political power, economic growth, and social change. In spheres from human and veterinary medicine to mining and agriculture, from the technologies of transport to those of water and energy, science has distinctively moulded South Africa’s modernity. It has done so directly through the exercise of techno- and bio-power – and also indirectly through theories and rhetorics of exclusion and inclusion, progress and entitlement, regeneration and degeneration.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Scientific Imagination in South Africa1700 to the Present, pp. 373 - 381Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2021