Nineteen Eighty-Four: Science Between Utopia and Dystopia

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xv

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2. Introduction

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 1-1

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   2. Science and Utopia: On the Social Ordering of the Future

      • Helga Nowotny

      Pages 3-18

3. Science and Utopia in History

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 19-19

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   2. Science and Utopia: The History of a Dilemma

      • J. C. Davis

      Pages 21-48

   3. Elias Artista — A Precursor of the Messiah in Natural Science

      • Herbert Breger

      Pages 49-72

   4. The Explosion of the Circle: Science and Negative Utopia

      • Michael Winter

      Pages 73-90

4. Socialism, Science and Utopia

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 91-91

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   2. From Utopia to Science? The Development of Socialist Theory Between Utopia and Science

      • Kurt Bayertz

      Pages 93-110

   3. Bogdanov’s Red Star: An Early Bolshevik Science Utopia

      • Loren Graham

      Pages 111-124

5. Utopias in Practice

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 125-125

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   2. Automata — A Masculine Utopia

      • Christine Woesler de Panafieu

      Pages 127-145

   3. Making Dreams Come True

      • Aant Elzinga, Andrew Jamison

      Pages 147-172

   4. Eugenic Utopias — Blueprints for the Rationalization of Human Evolution

      • Peter Weingart

      Pages 173-187

   5. Artificial Intelligence and Industrial Robots: An Automatic end for Utopian Thought?

      • James Fleck

      Pages 189-231

6. Utopian Modes

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 233-233

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   2. Meddling With ‘Politicks‘ — Some Conjectures About the Relationship Between Science and Utopia

      • Ingo Grabner, Wolfgang Reiter

      Pages 235-259

   3. Science and Power for What?

      • Evelyn Fox Keller

      Pages 261-272

   4. Science and Utopia in Late 20th Century Pluralist Democracy

      • Yaron Ezrahi

      Pages 273-290

7. Epilogue

   1. Vespers

      • W. H. Auden

      Pages 291-293

Just fifty years ago Julian Huxley, the biologist grandson of Thomas Henry Huxley, published a book which easily could be seen to represent the prevail­ ing outlook among young scientists of the day: If I were a Dictator (1934). The outlook is optimistic, the tone playfully rational, the intent clear - allow science a free hand and through rational planning it could bring order out of the surrounding social chaos. He complained, however: At the moment, science is for most part either an intellectual luxury or the paid servant of capitalist industry or the nationalist state. When it and its results cannot be fitted into the existing framework, it and they are ignored; and furthermore the structure of scientific research is grossly lopsided, with over-emphasis on some kinds of science and partial or entire neglect of others. (pp. 83-84) All this the scientist dictator would set right. A new era of scientific human­ ism would provide alternative visions to the traditional religions with their Gods and the civic religions such as Nazism and fascism. Science in Huxley's version carries in it the twin impulses of the utopian imagination - Power and Order. Of course, it was exactly this vision of science which led that other grand­ son of Thomas Henry Huxley, the writer Aldous Huxley, to portray scientific discovery as potentially subversive and scientific practice as ultimately en­ slaving.

• Evolution
• Messiah
• artificial intelligence
• dystopia
• socialism
• utopia

• Dept. of the History of Science, Harvard University, Cambridge, USA

  Everett Mendelsohn

• European Centre for Social Welfare Training and Research, Austria

  Helga Nowotny

• University of Vienna, Austria

  Helga Nowotny

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