Science, Jews, and Secular Culture

Studies in Mid-Twentieth-Century American Intellectual History

David A. Hollinger (Autor)

Buch | Softcover

190 Seiten

1998
Princeton University Press (Verlag)
978-0-691-00189-0 (ISBN)

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Focusing on the decades from the 1930s through the 1960s, the author discusses the scientists, social scientists, philosophers, and historians who fought the Christian biases that had kept Jews from fully participating in American intellectual life. He also explores the long-postponed acceptance of Jewish immigrants in a variety of settings.

This remarkable group of essays describes the "culture wars" that consolidated a new, secular ethos in mid-twentieth-century American academia and generated the fresh energies needed for a wide range of scientific and cultural enterprises. Focusing on the decades from the 1930s through the 1960s, David Hollinger discusses the scientists, social scientists, philosophers, and historians who fought the Christian biases that had kept Jews from fully participating in American intellectual life. Today social critics take for granted the comparatively open outlook developed by these men (and men they were, mostly), and charge that their cosmopolitanism was not sufficiently multicultural. Yet Hollinger shows that the liberal cosmopolitans of the mid-century generation defined themselves against the realities of their own time: McCarthyism, Nazi and Communist doctrines, a legacy of anti-Semitic quotas, and both Protestant and Catholic versions of the notion of a "Christian America." The victory of liberal cosmopolitans was so sweeping by the 1960s that it has become easy to forget the strength of the enemies they fought.
Most books addressing the emergence of Jewish intellectuals celebrate an illustrious cohort of literary figures based in New York City. But the pieces collected here explore the long-postponed acceptance of Jewish immigrants in a variety of settings, especially the social science and humanities faculties of major universities scattered across the country. Hollinger acknowledges the limited, rather parochial sense of "mankind" that informed some mid-century thinking, but he also inspires in the reader an appreciation for the integrationist aspirations of a society truly striving toward equality. His cast of characters includes Vannevar Bush, James B. Conant, Richard Hofstadter, Robert K. Merton, Lionel Trilling, and J. Robert Oppenheimer.

David A. Hollinger is Chancellor's Distinguished Professor of History at the University of California, Berkeley. His previous books are Postethnic America: Beyond Multiculturalism, In the American Province: Studies in the History and Historiography of Ideas, and Morris R. Cohen and the Scientific Ideal.

PrefaceCh. 1Introduction3Ch. 2Jewish Intellectuals and the De-Christianization of American Public Culture in the Twentieth Century17Ch. 3The "Tough-Minded" Justice Holmes,Jewish Intellectuals, and the Making of an American Icon42Ch. 4Two NYUs and "The Obligation of Universities to the Social Order" in the Great Depression60Ch. 5The Defense of Democracy and Robert K. Merton's Formulation of the Scientific Ethos80Ch. 6Free Enterprise and Free Inquiry: The Emergence of Laissez-Faire Communitarianism in the Ideology of Science in the United States97Ch. 7Academic Culture at the University of Michigan, 1938-1988121Ch. 8Science as a Weapon in Kulturkampfe in the United States during and after World War II155Index175

Erscheint lt. Verlag	20.12.1998
Verlagsort	New Jersey
Sprache	englisch
Maße	197 x 254 mm
Gewicht	255 g
Themenwelt	Geschichte ► Allgemeine Geschichte ► Neuzeit (bis 1918)
	Geisteswissenschaften ► Geschichte ► Regional- / Ländergeschichte
	Sozialwissenschaften ► Soziologie ► Spezielle Soziologien
ISBN-10	0-691-00189-8 / 0691001898
ISBN-13	978-0-691-00189-0 / 9780691001890
Zustand	Neuware