Scott L. Montgomery - The Shape of the New: Four Big Ideas and How They Made the Modern World

THE SHAPE OF THE NEW

THE SHAPE OF THE NEW

Four Big Ideas and How They Made the Modern World

S COTT L . M ONTGOMERY AND D ANIEL C HIROT

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS
Princeton & Oxford

Copyright 2015 by Princeton University Press

Published by Princeton University Press, 41 William Street, Princeton, New Jersey 08540

In the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press, 6 Oxford Street, Woodstock, Oxfordshire OX20 1TW

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Jacket photograph Rachael Wright

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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

Montgomery, Scott L.

The shape of the new : four big ideas and how they made the modern world / Scott Montgomery and Daniel Chirot.

pages cm

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-691-15064-2 (hardback : alk. paper) 1. Civilization, Modern. 2. Intellectual lifeHistory. 3. Philosophy, ModernHistory. I. Chirot, Daniel. II. Title.

CB358.M66 2015

909.4dc23 2014037906

British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available

This book has been composed in Garamond Pro

Printed on acid-free paper.

Printed in the United States of America

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

TO PETER DOUGHERTY

who has done so much to promote and enhance scholarly publishing and to whom so many of us are indebted

CONTENTS

PREFACE

It is important to understand what this book is about and what our strategy has been in writing it. Briefly put, it is about key ideas that have built the modern world. Not all of them, to be sure (space and competence being limited), but those that have been and that remain among the most central to modern understanding about the nature and working of human society and also how it might be changed. These ideas, and the history of their epochal influence, we have chosen from the domains of politics, economics, science, and religion. This may not seem particularly original or pathbreaking. Indeed, that is not our intent. Our principal themethat ideas have made the world we live in and still direct our conceptions, even our imagining, of it, for better and for illhas been stated before, though in different form. Our principal effort, then, has been to illustrate and clarify this theme by looking at particular thinkers and their systems of thought. It is absolutely clear that in various ways and at various times these thinkers and their ideas have impacted the great majority of lives from the late 1700s until today and will continue to do so for a long time to come. It is thus our second but no less important theme that these particular intellectuals very much need to be read and discussed today. We would go so far as to suggest that they are essential to any real understanding of modernity and contemporary global society.

Our strategy in this book has therefore been mainly instructional, not theoretical. We cannot claim that we have found new facts or even that we have as yet undiscovered insights about the individuals we have examined. Of course we have consulted their works, in translation if necessary, but this is not a book based mostly on primary sources. Each chapter synthesizes the pertinent scholarship about a particular thinker or group of thinkers, including their chief writings, and then uses this knowledge to reveal, analyze, and evaluate the forms of influence each has had and continues to have.

We have assumed little knowledge on the readers part in every case. Thus our discussions on figures like Adam Smith, Karl Marx, and Charles Darwin will likely appear introductory to scholars in relevant disciplines. This we view not as an occupational hazard but as a necessity. Our hope is to introduce these key people, and their immeasurable impacts, to a large and diverse audience. We also wish to argue, forcefully if needed, for the importance of studying them in any program of higher learning, not least in the humanities.

In conclusion we will argue that if we are to comprehend the complexities of the world as it has come to exist, reading the actual texts of these and other major thinkers who have shaped our world is necessary. Intellectual history and the analysis of these most important writings are an important part of the humanities because of their emphasis on the powers of thought and expression. The humanities should in their own way be no less compulsory than the social and natural sciences, and to dismiss them, as too many do today, is to diminish our capacity to know and understand the ideas that have shaped how we think and what we believe.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We would like to thank Jim Wellman, our colleague, for having carefully read and commented on some of our manuscript. Sabine Lang, Joel Migdal, and Sunila Kale, three other colleagues, gave us helpful advice. We are grateful for the suggestions made by two anonymous reviewers who read this work for Princeton University Press and to the members of the Presss editorial board who made valuable recommendations. Mashary Balghonaim, a friend, carefully went over the entire work and made good suggestions. We owe a great debt to many other friends, colleagues, former students of ours, and our own teachers. We particularly want to thank Steve Bailey of Knox College, whose courses on the history of ideas left a lasting impression on one of us.

We have both received unstinting support and advice from Reat Kasaba, the director of the Jackson School of International Studies at the University of Washington where we teach. We have been helped by the material support provided by the Herbert J. Ellison Professorship that one of us holds. The late Professor Ellison was one of our most esteemed colleagues. Our research assistant, Nicola Castle-Bauer, proved invaluable in the later stages of work. We also wish to offer our deep appreciation to the devoted staff at Princeton University Press, whose professionalism and commitment to excellence set an exemplary standard.

Finally, we would like to thank our respective families, who have patiently helped us in so many ways. This book is also for them.

THE SHAPE OF THE NEW

INTRODUCTION

Ideas as Historical Forces

On rsiste linvasion des armes; on ne rsiste pas linvasion des ides. (Invading armies can be resisted; invading ideas cannot be.)

VICTOR HUGOS ESSAY ON NAPOLEON IIIS 1851 COUP DTAT, THE HISTORY OF A CRIME

Arguably the three most powerful men of the twentieth century never lived to see it. Adam Smith, Karl Marx, and Charles Darwin could hardly have imagined the forms of wealth, revolution, and science that would emerge in their names during the decades after 1900 or the ugly dogmatism, pseudoscience, and staggering brutality. It would surprise them no less to find that their names were familiar to every well-educated person in a world of billions. Had each of them lived only a few decades longer, they might have seen inklings of this. What they could not have guessed was that their formative role in modern history would only grow with time.

Smith, Marx, and Darwin were not kings or military commanders. Nor were they political leaders or religious prophets. They were intellectuals. Their field of effort and the origin of the influence they exerted after their deaths lie in the realm of ideas. The ideas they articulated in the hands of followers, detractors, and many others provided the radioactive substance of transformation. It is impossible to talk about the rise of modern economics and the capitalist systema system that profoundly changed the nature of the world and that is now fully globalwithout referring to Adam Smith. Marx set loose ideas that sought to destroy this system, that became the inspiration for revolutions and wars that swept away entire societies, changing and also ending the lives of many millions of people. And Darwin? His thought redefined the universe of living things and their relation to human beings, while both radically weakening the explanatory power of religion and radicalizing its reactive response to modernity.