Science once had an unshakable faith in its ability to bring the forces of nature - even human nature - under control. In this wide-ranging book Anson Rabinbach examines how developments in physics, biology, medicine, psychology, politics, and art employed the metaphor of the working body as a human motor. From nineteenth-century theories of thermodynamics and political economy to the twentieth-century ideals of Taylorism and Fordism, Rabinbach demonstrates how the utopian obsession with energy and fatigue shaped social thought across the ideological spectrum.
- ISBN10 0520078276
- ISBN13 9780520078277
- Publish Date 8 January 1992 (first published 3 December 1990)
- Publish Status Active
- Publish Country US
- Imprint University of California Press
- Format Paperback (US Trade)
- Pages 432
- Language English