This course explores how science and technoscience produced utopian or dystopian visions of the future in historical context, assessing how new developments in the physical, natural, and economic sciences since c.1880 have shaped possible “futures” in Western thought.
Learning objective
This course equips students with the skills to assess how scientific ideas diffused broader ideas of present and future societies in the West since industrialization. Students will be able to compare and contrast distinct developments in the relationship between science and society, identify key trends in thinking about the future, and explain how science informed ethical and social questions.
Content
This course offers an overview of the history of science and technoscience since 1880 by exploring the intersection of thinking about science and society in the modern utopian tradition, starting with Darwinian evolution, capitalism, and new transport and communication technologies. Different historical cases across the 20th century where scientific and technological change played a central role in defining visions of the future will be studied in detail. We will explore case studies like the impact of new technologies on visions of future war, the atom bomb, overpopulation and ecological catastrophe, transhumanism, AI, and the significance of new digital technologies for the posthuman future. Course materials will include histories of science and technology in addition to popular science texts and science fiction.
