History of science and technology
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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The history of science and technology (HST) is a field of history which examines how humanity's understanding of the natural world (science) and ability to manipulate it (technology) have changed over the millennia. This academic discipline also studies the cultural, economic, and political impacts of scientific innovation.
Histories of science were originally written by practicing and retired scientists, starting primarily with William Whewell, as a way to communicate the virtues of science to the public. In the early 1930s, after a famous paper given by the Soviet historian Boris Hessen,was focused into looking at the ways in which scientific practices were allied with the needs and motivations of their context. After World War II, extensive resources were put into teaching and researching the discipline, with the hopes that it would help the public better understand both science and technology as they came to play an exceedingly prominent role in the world. In the 1960s, especially in the wake of the work done by Thomas Kuhn, the discipline began to serve a very different function, and began to be used as a way to critically examine the scientific enterprise. At the present time it is often closely aligned with the field of Science studies.
Modern mathematical science and physical engineering as it is understood today took form during the scientific revolution, though much of the mathematics and science was built on the work of the Greeks, Egyptians, Mesopotamians, Chinese, Indians and Muslims. See the main articles History of science and History of technology for these respective topics.
Prominent historians of the field
- Wiebe Bijker
- Peter J. Bowler
- Janet Browne
- Stephen G. Brush
- James Burke
- Edwin Arthur Burtt (1892–1989)
- Johann Beckmann (1739–1811)
- Jim Bennett
- Herbert Butterfield (1900–1979)
- Martin Campbell-Kelly
- Georges Canguilhem (1904–1995)
- Allan Chapman
- I. Bernard Cohen (1914–2003)
- A. C. Crombie (1915–1996)
- E. J. Dijksterhuis (1892–1965)
- Pierre Duhem (1861–1916)
- A. Hunter Dupree (1921–2019)
- George Dyson
- Jacques Ellul (1912–1994)
- Eugene S. Ferguson (1916–2004)
- Peter Galison
- Sigfried Giedion
- Charles Coulston Gillispie
- Robert Gunther (1869–1940)
- Paul Forman
- Donna Haraway
- Peter Harrison
- Ahmad Y Hassan
- John L. Heilbron
- Boris Hessen
- Reijer Hooykaas
- David A. Hounshell
- Thomas P. Hughes
- Evelyn Fox Keller
- Daniel Kevles
- Alexandre Koyré (1892–1964)
- Melvin Kranzberg
- Thomas Kuhn
- Deepak Kumar
- Gilbert LaFreniere
- Bruno Latour
- David C. Lindberg
- G. E. R. Lloyd
- Jane Maienschein
- Anneliese Maier
- Leo Marx
- Lewis Mumford (1895–1990)
- John E. Murdoch (1927-2010)
- Otto Neugebauer (1899–1990)
- William R. Newman
- David Noble
- Ronald Numbers
- David E. Nye
- Abraham Pais (1918–2000)
- Trevor Pinch
- Theodore Porter
- Lawrence M. Principe
- Raúl Rojas
- Michael Ruse
- A. I. Sabra
- Jan Sapp
- George Sarton (1884–1956)
- Simon Schaffer
- Howard Segal (1948–2020)
- Steven Shapin
- Wolfgang Schivelbusch
- Charles Singer (1876–1960)
- Merritt Roe Smith
- Stephen Snobelen
- M. Norton Wise
- Frances A. Yates (1899–1981)
See also
- History of science
- History of technology
- Ancient Egyptian technology
- History of science and technology in China
- History of science and technology in Japan
- History of science and technology in France
- History of science and technology in the Indian subcontinent
- Mesopotamian science
- Productivity improving technologies (historical)
- Science and technology in Argentina
- Science and technology in Canada
- Science and technology in Iran
- Science and technology in the United States
- Science in the medieval Islamic world
- Science tourism
- Technological and industrial history of the United States
- Timeline of science and engineering in the Islamic world