A history of educational modernity between science and politics

Abstract

The course of this historical-educational reflection aims to grasp the formative effects of the so-called ‘new science’ and, subsequently, of political utopia between the Eighteenth and Nineteenth centuries. This is, among other things, an experiment of history in history, in the sense that the most significant sources of critical reference date back to the Seventies of the last century, a decade of deep significance for the consolidation in Italy of progressive democratic culture (Cambi 2003). In this perspective, we are particularly interested in the situations where science-based education and political education meet. For example, the case of the representatives of the Enlightenment, the Society of Observers of Man in France, as well as various scholars of Positivism (Tisato 1973); but there were famous utopians, as Saint-Simon (Pancera 1994) or Owen (1813), to express the dual interest as a sign of innovation and civil progress in European culture.