The nature of the future

• Verfasst von: Pawley, Emily [VerfasserIn]
• Titel: The nature of the future
• Titelzusatz: agriculture, science, and capitalism in the antebellum North
• Verf.angabe: Emily Pawley
• Verlagsort: Chicago, Ill. ; London
• Verlag: The University of Chicago Press
• Jahr: 2020
• Umfang: 301 Seiten
• Illustrationen: Illustrationen
• Fussnoten: Includes bibliographical references and index
• ISBN: 978-0-226-69383-5
• DOI: doi:10.7208/chicago/9780226693972.001.0001
• Sprache: eng
• K10plus-PPN: 1677681268

Abstract

Performances. Capitalist aristocracy ; No ordinary farmers -- Experiments. Experiments all for worldly gain ; Trying machines -- Futures. Coining foliage into gold ; Divining adaptation -- Values. Truth in fruit ; The balance-sheet of nature -- Epilogue.

Abstract

"In the seemingly mundane Northern farm of early America and the people who sought to improve its productivity and efficiency, Emily Pawley finds a world rich with innovative practices and marked by a developing interrelationship between scientific knowledge, industrial methods, and capitalism. Agricultural "improvers" became increasingly scientistic, driving tremendous increases in the range and volume of agricultural output-and transforming American conceptions of expertise, success, and exploitation. Pawley's focus on soil, fertilizer, apples, mulberries, agricultural fairs, and experimental stations shows each nominally dull subject to have been an area of intellectual ferment and sharp contestation: mercantile, epistemological, and otherwise."