ABSTRACT
In the early-modernizing societies, recognition of the potentialities of societal transformation, and research and educational institutions designed to develop and perpetuate this knowledge, were essential preconditions of modem development. In a book on France or England a discussion of knowledge and education would be the first in a series of topical chapters. One could in fact go back to the reorientation of Western thought in the twelfth century to find the beginnings of a rational approach to the human environment.
