The Creation of the Modern World: The Untold Story of the British Enlightenment

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W. W. Norton & Company, 2000 - History - 727 pages
"With its representative government, religious tolerance, precocious industrialization, and pioneering individualism, eighteenth-century Britain was at the cutting edge of political, social, and intellectual innovation. Porter examines the influence of such heroic figures as Bacon, Newton, and Locke in shaping the British Enlightenment, as well as the impact of other English essayists and novelists in popularizing modern thought. He persuasively demonstrates how their writings launched the wild phenomenon of Anglomania that swept the Continent and cast the Enlightenment well beyond Europe's shores."--Résumé de l'éditeur.

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Contents

A BLIND SPOT?
1
THE BIRTH OF AN IDEOLOGY
24
CLEARING AWAY THE RUBBISH
48
PRINT CULTURE
72
RATIONALISING RELIGION
96
THE CULTURE OF SCIENCE
130
ANATOMISING HUMAN NATURE
156
THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS
184
DID THE MIND HAVE A SEX?
320
EDUCATION A PANACEA?
339
THE VULGAR
364
THE PURSUIT OF WEALTH
383
REFORM
397
PROGRESS
424
THE REVOLUTIONARY ERA MODERN PHILOSOPHY
446
LASTING LIGHT?
476

SECULARISING
205
MODERNISING
230
HAPPINESS
258
FROM GOOD SENSE TO SENSIBILITY
276
NATURE
295
NOTES
485
BIBLIOGRAPHY
616
INDEX
694
Copyright

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About the author (2000)

Roy Sydney Porter was born December 31, 1946. He grew up in a south London working class home. He attended Wilson's Grammar School, Camberwell, and won an unheard of scholarship to Cambridge. His starred double first in history at Cambridge University (1968) led to a junior research fellowship at his college, Christ's, followed by a teaching post at Churchill College, Cambridge. His Ph.D. thesis, published as The Making Of Geology (1977), became the first of more than 100 books that he wrote or edited. Porter was a Fellow and Director of Studies in History at Churchill College, Cambridge from 1972 to 1979; Dean from 1977 to 1979; Assistant Lecturer in European History at Cambridge University from 1974 to 1977, Lecturer from 1977 to 1979. He joined the Wellcome Institute fot the History of Medicine in 1979 where he was a Senior Lecturer from 1979 to 1991, a Reader from 1991 to 1993, and finally a Professor in the Social History of Medicine from 1993 to 2001. Porter was Elected a fellow of the British Academy in 1994, and he was also made an honorary fellow by both the Royal College of Physicians and the Royal College of Psychiatrists. Roy Porter died March 4, 2002, at the age of 55.

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