
Organizing Enlightenment
Information Overload and the Invention of the Modern Research University
Chad Wellmon(Author)
Johns Hopkins University Press
Published on 15. June 2015
Book
Hardback
368 pages
978-1-4214-1615-1 (ISBN)
Description
Since its inception, the research university has been the central institution of knowledge in the West. Today its intellectual authority is being challenged on many fronts, above all by radical technological change. Organizing Enlightenment tells the story of how the university emerged in the early nineteenth century at a similarly fraught moment of cultural anxiety about revolutionary technologies and their disruptive effects on established institutions of knowledge. Drawing on the histories of science, the university, and print, as well as media theory and philosophy, Chad Wellmon explains how the research university and the ethic of disciplinarity it created emerged as the final and most lasting technology of the Enlightenment. Organizing Enlightenment reveals higher education's story as one not only of the production of knowledge but also of the formation of a particular type of person: the disciplinary self. In order to survive, the university would have to institutionalize a new order of knowledge, one that was self-organizing, internally coherent, and embodied in the very character of the modern, critical scholar.
Reviews / Votes
An important story, told by Wellmon... His exposition is deeply grounded in intellectual, rather than social, history. Choice Organizing Enlightenment is an intriguing book for readers with significant prior knowledge of educational and German history...this reviewer found the material on lexica and encyclopedias a fascinating new perspective. History of Education QuarterlyMore details
Language
English
Place of publication
Baltimore, MD
United States
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Dimensions
Height: 235 mm
Width: 156 mm
Thickness: 28 mm
Weight
658 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-4214-1615-1 (9781421416151)
DOI
10.1353/book.39050
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions

Chad Wellmon
Organizing Enlightenment
Information Overload and the Invention of the Modern Research University
Book
08/2016
Johns Hopkins University Press
€42.90
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Chad Wellmon
Organizing Enlightenment
Information Overload and the Invention of the Modern Research University
E-Book
06/2015
Johns Hopkins University Press
€26.49
Available for download
Person
Chad Wellmon is an associate professor of German studies at the University of Virginia and a faculty fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture. He is the author of Becoming Human: Romantic Anthropology and the Embodiment of Freedom.
Content
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. Science as Culture
2. The Fractured Empire of Erudition
3. Encyclopedia from Book to Practice
4. From Bibliography to Ethics
5. Kant's Critical Technology
6. The Enlightenment University and Too Many Books
7. The University in the Age of Print
8. Berlin, Humboldt, and the Research University
9. The Disciplinary Self and the Virtues of the Philologist
Afterword
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Introduction
1. Science as Culture
2. The Fractured Empire of Erudition
3. Encyclopedia from Book to Practice
4. From Bibliography to Ethics
5. Kant's Critical Technology
6. The Enlightenment University and Too Many Books
7. The University in the Age of Print
8. Berlin, Humboldt, and the Research University
9. The Disciplinary Self and the Virtues of the Philologist
Afterword
Notes
Bibliography
Index