In Anathem, there was a global catastrophe of an unspecified nature caused (or at least blamed on) science. Physicists, mathematicians, etc. are segregated from broader society (and high technology) to prevent future reoccurrences of this because their disciplines are viewed as being too dangerous to allow in the "saecular"(sic) world.
A mountain retreat for "useless" science is a nice idea, but Anathem's "Maths" were something else entirely. They were actually quite dystopian.
The catastrophe (of the main storyline universe) was unequivocally caused by science. If I recall correctly, it was implicitly three orders of magnitude worse than the technological super-weapons of our own World War 2.
Metaphorically, the scientists were then treated like the plutonium pits of nuclear weapons--well isolated, so that they could not form a critical mass and start a runaway chain reaction, and arms-controlled, so that none of them could be exploited by politics.
When the world needed a lot of brainpower, fast, the scientists were taken out of their safe storage and connected to each other using the separate monastic order of technicians, to intentionally cause a runaway chain reaction. Basically, the whole world was already pretty much boned, so the political leaders might as well set off their doomsday device--which was nothing more than to allow the smartest people on their planet to collaborate in real-time. That was the same thing that had previously (nearly) destroyed their civilization.
"Just because we checked our guns at the door doesn't mean our brains will change from hand grenades."
I don't know if they were necessarily dystopian. In the book, the Maths survive throughout global wars and other saecular catastrophes. So sometimes they'd come out of the gate and everyone would be cavemen, other times, 1980s style civilizations with televisions and cars. Seems like a pretty rosy situation to me.
A mountain retreat for "useless" science is a nice idea, but Anathem's "Maths" were something else entirely. They were actually quite dystopian.