Paul Dukes

Minutes to Midnight (eBook, PDF)

History and the Anthropocene Era from 1763

• Format: PDF

Produktbeschreibung

The Doomsday Clock was created in 1947 by a group of atomic scientists to symbolise the perils facing humanity from nuclear weapons. In 2007 it was set at five minutes before the final bell, including for the first time the threat of climate change as well as new developments in the life sciences and nanotechnology. This book aims at an analysis of the evolution of our present predicament throughout the Anthropocene Era beginning in 1763, making special reference to the history of the period, the study of the subject and major advances in the natural sciences.

Adam Smith and Adam Ferguson set out the basis for a scientific approach to the pre-industrial stages of historical development in the Enlightenment of the late eighteenth century, when the American and French Revolutions created a vocabulary of modernity. Throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, as the industrial revolution unfolded in several stages, nationalism, imperialism and totalitarianism were among the phenomena impeding the update of the Enlightenment programme as well as the fulfilment of the aspirations of 1776 and 1789. Our present predicament demands a rigorous examination of its origins and an assertion of a scientific pandisciplinary approach involving history and other academic specialisations.

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Produktdetails

• Verlag: Anthem Press
• Seitenzahl: 166
• Erscheinungstermin: 1. Mai 2011
• Englisch
• ISBN-13: 9780857289254
• Artikelnr.: 63428530

Autorenporträt

Born in Wallington, Surrey in 1934, Paul Dukes was taught History at the local grammar school by the late Dr E. N. Williams. He was an Exhibitioner at Peterhouse, Cambridge from 1951 to 1954, graduating with a BA Honours in History. He was a Teaching Fellow at the University of Washington from 1954 to 1956, completing an MA in American History with a thesis on the colonial period. [NP] From 1957 to 1959, he was a National Serviceman in the Intelligence Corps, studying Russian at the Joint Services School for Languages at Crail. From 1959 to 1964 he taught American History for the University of Maryland Overseas while writing a thesis on eighteenth-century Russian History at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, London. In 1964 he was appointed Assistant at the University of Aberdeen, with which he is still associated, from 1999 as Emeritus Professor. He has held visiting appointments at Auckland and Cornell. He was elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1999, and is on the Editorial Board of ‘History Today’. [NP] Paul Dukes has published widely on Russian, European and world history. His works include a range of monographs as well as general histories of Russia and Europe and a series of studies on the relationship between the USA and USSR. He has a son and a daughter and three grandchildren.

Inhaltsangabe

Preface
1. Introduction: Times and Approaches
2. Enlightenment and Revolutions, 1763-1815
3. Nations and –Isms, 1815-1871
4. Natural Selection, 1871-1921
5. From Relativity to Totalitarianism, 1921-1945
6. Superpower, 1945-1968
7. Planet Earth, 1968-1991
8. Minutes to Midnight, 1991-
Notes