The Uses of the Future in Early Modern Europe ed. by Andrea Brady, Emily Butterworth (review)

REVIEWS 293 intended for a general audience. Celticists, historians of identity politics, and advanced students of economic history should take special notice of this book, which certainly contributes admirably to our understanding of ethnic dynamics in Britain in the high Middle Ages. J. MICHAEL COLVIN, History, University of Southern California The Uses of the Future in Early Modern Europe, ed. Andrea Brady and Emily Butterworth (New York: Routledge 2010) xx + 242 pp. Peter Burke opens The Uses of the Future in Early Modern Europe with a defense of the central concept of this collection of essays: that early modern men and women used the future in complex and meaningful ways. In doing so, Burke addresses the suggestion of twentieth-century historians Lucian Hölscher and Reinhart Koselleck that prior to the late eighteenth century, men and women lacked a broad understanding of the future. Hölscher dated the discovery of the future to the period of 1770–1830. This view predictably associates a Christian eschatological conception of the Final Days with a decreased interest in the long-term notions of the future. Hölscher and Koselleck argued that burgeoning secular conceptions of the future in the late eighteenth century introduced a new, optimistic belief that the world was open-ended and “constructible .” However, Burke presents ample evidence of similarly optimistic early modern conceptions of the future, drawn from demography, politics, and commerce . Burke allows for a noticeable change around 1770, but he calls this a “widening” of the understanding of the future that developed out of processes already underway in the early modern period, rather than Koselleck and Hölcher ’s “discovery” of the future. The collection of essays in this volume bears out Burke’s suggestion that conceptions of the future were abundant and complex before 1770. The various aims of these essays fit generally, but not snuggly, into the following categories : early modern conceptions of a better future by means of maximizing present knowledge or opportunities; exploration of early modern social or religious trends that shaped the course of their immediate future; and early modern techniques of imagining, discussing, or warning about the future. In his “Astrology, Ritual and Revolution in the Works of Tommaso Campanella (1568–1639)” Peter J. Forshaw shows how Campanella’s visions of astrology presented an optimistic program of future utilitarian projects, such as the long-term breeding program for future generations of ideal inhabitants in his work, City of the Sun (187). Likewise, Rob Iliffe’s “‘Meteorologies and Extravagant Speculations’: the Future Legends of Early Modern English Natural Philosophy” explores the foundations of early modern optimism for a better tomorrow generated by Francis Bacon’s reformed natural philosophy articulated in his Novum Organum and De Augmentis. Bacon’s biblical conception of humanity as fallen and prone to error led him to insist upon a supervised and systematic program of observation and experimentation leading to the discovery of natural laws. As a result, Bacon, and those he influenced, conceived of a future world with utilitarian possibilities ushered in by advances in knowledge and technology, such as an ending hunger through agricultural technologies and longer life spans through medical breakthroughs (216). In fact, Iliffe’s essay is largely concerned with technological goals that were perceived as overly opti- REVIEWS 294 mistic, such as future trips to the moon or John Wilken’s obsession with developing a flying machine (220). These fanciful projects were dismissed as foolish by contemporaries and potentially harmful to the reputations of those seeking to reform natural philosophy. A. P. Langman strikes a similar note as Iliffe in his “The Future Now: Change, Time and Natural Divination in the Thought of Francis Bacon,” in which Bacon acknowledges the “changeability” of the future through human agency employing technological advances based on patient observation, experiment, and inductive investigation into the secrets of nature (154). Langman first traces a series of comments made by Bacon that seem to indicate a break from his early acceptance of Calvinistic determinism of history . In doing so, Langman posits Bacon’s belief in change, and by extension, human agency, directed discovery of the world’s natural laws through deliberate and reasoned inquiry, rather than by chance occurrences, as he...