Cook, Alexander (Advisor)
Lalevee, Thomas (Author)
The early nineteenth century was a defining moment in the emergence of new, future-oriented visions of human progress. This thesis analyses this development of modern thought through a particular case study: the search for a science of society in France in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Through a contextual study of ideas and knowledge production, the chapters examine the successive models of reform and regeneration that defined this search, tracking a shift in the way these models were conceptualised. This shift involved a transition from individual to collective models of improvement, or, more discursively, from perfectibility to progress. This thesis documents this shift by tracing the origins and development of early French social science in the works of Sieyes, Condorcet and the Ideologues, before turning to the reconfiguration of this science effected by Saint-Simon and his followers in the nineteenth century. In doing so, this study provides new insights into the search for a science of society during and after the French Revolution, a revised interpretation of the history of the concept of perfectibility and a fresh perspective on the ongoing contest between science, religion and politics in this period of intense upheaval. It also advances scholarly understanding of the range of moral, philosophical and natural scientific ideas behind early French positivism and socialism. The nineteenth-century fascination, if not obsession, with progress is shown, in this thesis, to have been shaped by the works of theorists with visionary but idiosyncratic imaginations.
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Chapter
Lefèvre, Wolfgang;
(2003)
Darwin, Marx, and Warranted Progress: Materialism and Views of Development in Nineteenth-Century Germany
(/isis/citation/CBB000430211/)
Article
Gissis, Snait;
(2009)
Interactions between Social and Biological Thinking: The Case of Lamarck
(/isis/citation/CBB000932272/)
Article
Tresch, John;
(2010)
The Order of the Prophets: Series in Early French Social Science and Socialism
(/isis/citation/CBB001023530/)
Article
Hansun Hsiung;
(2021)
From Harmony to eHarmony: Charles Fourier, Social Science, and the Management of Love
(/isis/citation/CBB468717595/)
Article
Dylan Riley;
Rebecca Jean Emigh;
Patricia Ahmed;
(2021)
The Social Foundations of Positivism: The Case of Late-Nineteenth-Century Italy
(/isis/citation/CBB782716699/)
Book
Leonardo Ciacci;
(2023)
Patrick Geddes
(/isis/citation/CBB502845517/)
Book
Beck, Naomi;
(2014)
La gauche évolutionniste. Spencer et ses lecteurs en France et en Italie
(/isis/citation/CBB001510177/)
Article
Kilborne, Benjamin;
(1992)
Positivism and its vicissitudes: The role of faith in the social sciences
(/isis/citation/CBB000057656/)
Article
Brian, Eric;
(2006)
Les phénomènes sociaux que saisissait J. Bernoulli: de Condorcet à Comte
(/isis/citation/CBB001021376/)
Chapter
Ruse, Michael;
(2010)
Evolution and the Idea of Social Progress
(/isis/citation/CBB001020305/)
Book
Eric Herschthal;
(2021)
The Science of Abolition: How Slaveholders Became the Enemies of Progress
(/isis/citation/CBB289630170/)
Book
Paul Warde;
(2018)
The Invention of Sustainability: Nature and Destiny, c.1500-1870
(/isis/citation/CBB208491222/)
Book
Roberta Vittoria Grossi;
(2021)
«Contremisce Satana». Storia di un esorcismo nella Francia del XIX secolo
(/isis/citation/CBB256909263/)
Article
Florian Bettel;
(2018)
Ware Zukunft: Erzählung und Kommerzialisierung von Fortschrittsdenken im 19. Jahrhundert (Commodity Future: narrative and commercialization of progressive thinking in the 19th century)
(/isis/citation/CBB943804331/)
Book
Johannes Feichtinger;
Franz L. Fillafer;
Jan Surman;
(2018)
The Worlds of Positivism: A Global Intellectual History, 1770–1930
(/isis/citation/CBB298923215/)
Book
Blanckaert, Claude;
Porret, Michel;
Brandli, Fabrice;
(2006)
L'encyclopédie méthodique (1782--1832): des lumières au positivisme
(/isis/citation/CBB000950640/)
Chapter
Gissis, Snait B.;
(2011)
Lamarckism and the Constitution of Sociology
(/isis/citation/CBB001500088/)
Article
Vyacheslav Artyukh;
(2017)
Elements of Positivism in the Ukrainian Philosophy and Culture of the Second Half of the 19th Century
(/isis/citation/CBB070290698/)
Article
Hasselberg, Ylva;
(2013)
Who Killed the Ideologies or Were They Just Resting? Tingsten, Technocratism and Ideology in Sweden 1930--1970
(/isis/citation/CBB001201213/)
Chapter
Riccardo Cavallo;
(2019)
«Sposa affettuosa, madre sublime e donna delinquente». Socialismo giuridico e criminalità femminile
(/isis/citation/CBB246025070/)
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