Darwin, Ford and the masses: Modern History of Knowledge

This course will study different fields of knowledge and their relations, such as science, technology and politics. The different shapes and forms of knowledge will be studied as well. Social Darwinism, Fordistic knowledge institutions and fascist mass ideology are only some of the contradictory historical forms of knowledge that we will meet in this course. In other words: we will try to understand the development of knowledge as well as the concept of knowledge historically as a result of intellectual endeavours as well as impregnated by social economic, political and cultural forces.

The students should learn to know some important aspects of the development of knowledge in western societies, they should learn to know different dimensions of the term history of knowledge and learn to ask relevant research questions in this field.