The Academies of Prostestant Dissenters were the outstanding institutions for the teaching of new Natural Sciences in the eighteenth-century in the English society. As the Prostestant Dissenters were not allowed to enter in the English system of fundamental and university education, legally controlled by the Anglicans, there was no other alternative to them than the establishment of their Academies for Further Education in order to instruct their youth to the religious ministry, the university courses or the business life. The Academies of Warrington and Manchester were the most distinguished amongst these educational institutions, being respectively established by the Prebysterians (self-named the Rational Dissenters) and the Unitarians, the heirs of Prebysterian Rationalism although distanced of their Calvinist teological perspective.
dissenters; rationalism; England