Science Democracy and the American University

This book reinterprets the rise of the natural and social sciences assources of political authority in modern America. Andrew Jewettdemonstrates the remarkable persistence of a belief that the scientificenterprise carried with it a set of ethical values capable of grounding a democratic culture -- a political function widely assigned to religion. The book traces the shifting formulations of this belief from thecreation of the research universities in the Civil War era to the earlyCold War years. It examines hundreds of leading scholars who viewedscience not merely as a source of technical knowledge but also as aresource for fostering cultural change. This vision generatedsurprisingly nuanced portraits of science in the years before themilitary-industrial complex and has much to teach us today about therelationship between science and democracy.