Lesson #1: HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENTS OF SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY, AND SOCIETY

Science •deals with learning new facts (discoveries)

•solving problems (scientific methods)

•deals with creating or inventing things that fulfill our needs and desires or

Technology perform certain things

•application of understanding of natural laws to the solution of practical
problems

SCIENCE to •New knowledge which serves as a direct source of ideas for new
technological possibilities
•Source of tools and techniques for more effiecient engineering design and
TECHNOLOGY knowledge base for evaluation of feasibility of designs

TECHNOLOGY •Providing a fertile source of novel scientific questions and thereby also helping
to justify the collection of resources needed to address these questions in an
efficient and timely manner, extending the agenda of science

to SCIENCE •Source of otherwise unavailable intrumention and techniques needed to

address novel and more difficult scientific questions more efficiently.

STS (Science, Technology, and Society) may have the same degree of relevance that the “historical turn” had
in the past
Social Turn Affects philosophy of science as well as philosophy of technology
 STS

ANCIENT TIMES MIDDLE AGE MODERN AGE

1. STONE AGE ➔ Use of currency replaced ➔ 20th century

• PALEOLITHIC (2.5 m.y.a – 10,000
BC)
➔ Lived in caves/simple huts
or tepees
➔ Hunters and gatherers
➔ Basic stone, bone tools,
crude stone, axes (hunting
birds and wild animals)
➔ Preys are woolly
mammoths, deer, bison
using controlled fire
➔ Fishes, berries, fruits, and
nuts
• MESOLITHIC (10,000 BC – 8,000
BC)
➔ Small stone tools – polished
and crafted with points and
attached to antlers, bone or
wood (spears or arrows)
• NEOLITHIC (8,000 BC – 3,000 BC)
➔ Switched to agriculture and
food production
➔ Domesticated animals
➔ Cultivated cereal grains
➔ Polished hand axes, adzes
for ploughing, tilling the
land
➔ Started to settle in plains
by barter
➔ Decline of science in
Europe
➔ First to believe people
suffered from wars, piracy,
famine, and epidemics
➔ Chinese philosophy
developed theories (matter
and living beings)
➔ Revival of Western science
(started last centuries of
the first millennium)
➔ Technological revolution
➔ Improvements in
communication and
transportation
➔ Greatest changes in technology
and science
➔ Scientists, inventors, and engineers
built great inventions of the 19th
century
➔ Modern technology – for a citizen
in 1900, primary activities are
communication, transportation,
and agricultural
➔ 2000 – American citizen was part
of interconnected global
community
➔ Developments in science and
technology were important in
social and cultural changes
➔ Great Depression
➔ World Wars
➔ Cold War
➔ Civil Rights and Women’s Rights
➔ Universities and Industry

2. BRONZE AGE (3,000 BC- 1,300 BC)

➔ Metalworking advances
➔ Bronze, copper, tin alloy were discovered
➔ Used for weapons and tools for animal
domestication
➔ Harder metal replaced its stone
predecessors
➔ Helped spark innovations (ox-drawn plow,
and wheel)
➔ Advances in architecture and art
➔ Potter’s wheel, textiles, clothing (mostly
wool items – skirts, kilts, tunics, cloaks)
➔ Organized government, law, and warfare
➔ Beginning of religion
➔ Ancient Egyptians who built pyramids

3. IRON AGE (1,300 BC- 900 BC)

➔ Discovery of heat and forge
➔ Metal is more precious than gold
➔ Wrought iron (will be replaced by steel
with the advent of smelting iron) Science and Technology in “Antiquity” (600 – 529 BC)
➔ Mass production of steel tools, and ➔ Rise of Greek civilization
weapons ➔ Institutions (Academy, Lyceum, Museum)
➔ Further advances in architecture ➔ First to believed humans could understand
➔ Four-room homes (some with stables) universe using reason alone rather than
➔ Joining more rudimentary mythology/ religion (philosophers)
➔ Royal palaces ➔ War between religion and science (dark ages)
➔ Temples
➔ Religios sculptures