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Introduction

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 November 2010

Leo Corry  and
Tal Golan
Leo Corry
Affiliation:
Tel Aviv University and University of California, San Diego
Tal Golan
Affiliation:
Tel Aviv University and University of California, San Diego
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Extract

The history of Israeli science and technology offers a unique case study of a young and small nation that has developed an unprecedented love affair with science and technology. Unlike other nineteenth-century ideologies, Zionism was never considered to be founded on science. Nevertheless, from the very start, the Zionist movement perceived the sciences, pure and applied, as central to its program of creating a new Jewish society in the Land of Israel (Funkenstein [1985] 2003). Modern science was to provide twice for the Jews: a relief from their suffocating religion and the tools needed to recover their ancient land from its ruins. Israel would remain the people of the book, but it would be the Book of Nature, not of God, that would set it free. Sharing the universal knowledge and values of science with mankind, the Jews would finally become both normal and self-determined. Thus, already in the nineteenth century, long before the State of Israel was founded, Zionist visionaries had dreamt of it as a modern version of Francis Bacon's utopian Kingdom of Bensalem, where science and technology would provide health, wealth, and power (Elboim-Dror 1993; Herzl 1902).

Type
Introduction
Information
Science in Context , Volume 23 , Special Issue 4: Science in an Israeli Context: Case Studies , December 2010 , pp. 393 - 399
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2010

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