The Maze of Ingenuity, second edition

The Maze of Ingenuity, second edition
Author: Arnold Pacey
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 322
Release: 1992-01-23
Genre: Science
ISBN: 9780262660754

From cathedrals to star wars, Arnold Pacey looks at the interaction of technologies and society over the last thousand years and uses that survey to argue for a more humane form of future technological development. The second edition of The Maze of Ingenuity concentrates on Europe and North America and incorporates recent insights from the history and sociology of technology. A new series of chapters extends Pacey's discussion of the role of ideas and ideals in technology in the period since the industrial revolution. Contents The Cathedral Builders: European Technical Achievement between 1100 and 1280 • A Century of Invention: 1250-1350 • Mathematics and the Arts: 1450-1600 • The Practical Arts and the Scientific Revolution • Social Ideals in Technical Change: German Miners and English Puritans, 1450-1650 • The State and Technical Progress: 1660-1770 • Technology in the Industrial Revolution • Conflicting Ideals in Engineering: America and Britain, 1790-1870 • Institutionalizing Technical Ideals, 1820-1920 • Idealistic Trends in Twentieth-Century Technology

The Maze of Ingenuity

The Maze of Ingenuity
Author: Arnold Pacey
Publisher: Holmes & Meier Publishers
Total Pages: 360
Release: 1975
Genre: History
ISBN:

From cathedrals to star wars, Arnold Pacey looks at the interaction of technologies and society over the last thousand years and uses that survey to argue for a more humane form of future technological development. The second edition of The Maze of Ingenuity concentrates on Europe and North America and incorporates recent insights from the history and sociology of technology. A new series of chapters extends Pacey's discussion of the role of ideas and ideals in technology in the period since the industrial revolution. Arnold Pacey has taught the history of science and technology at the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology. Work on this new edition has been carried on in parallel with tutorial teaching for an Open University course entitled "Technology and Change." Contents: The Cathedral Builders: European Technical Achievement between 1100 and 1280. A Century of Invention: 1250-1350. Mathematics and the Arts: 1450-1600. The Practical Arts and the Scientific Revolution. Social Ideals in Technical Change: German Miners and English Puritans, 1450-1650. The State and Technical Progress: 1660-1770. Technology in the Industrial Revolution. Conflicting Ideals in Engineering: America and Britain, 1790-1870. Institutionalizing Technical Ideals, 1820-1920. Idealistic Trends in Twentieth-Century Technology.

Science and Technology in World History, Volume 2

Science and Technology in World History, Volume 2
Author: David Deming
Publisher: McFarland
Total Pages: 239
Release: 2014-01-10
Genre: History
ISBN: 0786456426

Science is a living, organic activity, the meaning and understanding of which have evolved incrementally over human history. This book, the second in a roughly chronological series, explores the evolution of science from the advents of Christianity and Islam through the Middle Ages, focusing especially on the historical relationship between science and religion. Specific topics include technological innovations during the Middle Ages; Islamic science; the Crusades; Gothic cathedrals; and the founding of Western universities. Close attention is given to such figures as Paul the Apostle, Hippolytus, Lactantius, Cyril of Alexandria, Hypatia, Cosmas Indicopleustes, and the Prophet Mohammed.

God, Humanity and the Cosmos - 2nd Edition

God, Humanity and the Cosmos - 2nd Edition
Author: Christopher Southgate
Publisher: A&C Black
Total Pages: 470
Release: 2005-12-01
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0567041441

Contributors include: Christopher Southgate John Hedley Brooke Celia Deane-Drummond Paul D. Murray Michael Robert Negus Lawrence Osborn Michael Poole Jacqui Stewart Fraser Watts David Wilkinson This fully revised and updated edition of God, Humanity and the Cosmos includes new chapters by John Hedley Brooke, Paul D. Murray and David Wilkinson. In addition to a systematic exploration of contemporary perspectives in physics, evolutionary biology and psychology as they relate to theological descriptions of the universe, humanity and consciousness, the book now provides a thorough survey of the theological, philosophical and historical issues underpinning the science-religion debate. Contributors also examine such issues as theological responses to the ecological crisis and to biotechnology; how science is treated and valued in education; and the relation of science to Islamic thought. Dr Christopher Southgate is Lecturer in Theology at the University of Exeter.'

Meaning in Technology

Meaning in Technology
Author: Arnold Pacey
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 276
Release: 2001
Genre: Science
ISBN: 9780262661201

A thoughtful meditation on the role of meaning and purpose in the development of technology.

Engineering Empires

Engineering Empires
Author: B. Marsden
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 363
Release: 2004-12-07
Genre: Science
ISBN: 0230504124

Engineers are empire-builders. Watt, Brunel, and others worked to build and expand personal and business empires of material technology and in so doing these engineers also became active agents of political and economic empire. This book provides a fascinating exploration of the cultural construction of the large-scale technologies of empire.

Infrastructural Ecologies

Infrastructural Ecologies
Author: Hillary Brown
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 322
Release: 2017-07-07
Genre: Science
ISBN: 0262036339

An integrated, holistic model for infrastructure planning and design in developing countries. Many emerging nations, particularly those least developed, lack basic critical infrastructural services—affordable energy, clean drinking water, dependable sanitation, and effective public transportation, along with reliable food systems. Many of these countries cannot afford the complex and resource-intensive systems based on Western, single-sector, industrialized models. In this book, Hillary Brown and Byron Stigge propose an alternate model for planning and designing infrastructural services in the emerging market context. This new model is holistic and integrated, resilient and sustainable, economical and equitable, creating an infrastructural ecology that is more analogous to the functioning of natural ecosystems. Brown and Stigge identify five strategic infrastructure objectives and illustrate each with examples of successful projects from across the developing world. Each chapter also highlights exemplary preindustrial systems, demonstrating the long history of resilient, sustainable infrastructure. The case studies describe the use of single solutions to solve multiple problems, creating hybridized and reciprocal systems; “soft path” models for water management, including water reuse and nutrient recovery; post carbon infrastructures for power, heat, and transportation such as rural microhydro and solar-powered rickshaws; climate adaptation systems, including a multi-purpose tunnel and a “floating city”; and the need for community-based, equitable, and culturally appropriate projects.

Power Struggles

Power Struggles
Author: Michael B. Schiffer
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 433
Release: 2008
Genre: Electric engineering
ISBN: 0262195828

Laying the foundation for Thomas Edison, the first electric generators were built in the 1830s, the earliest commercial lighting systems before 1860, and the first commercial application of generator-powered light in the early 1860s. This book examines some of these early applications of electricity.

The Renaissance Considered as a Creative Phenomenon

The Renaissance Considered as a Creative Phenomenon
Author: Subrata Dasgupta
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 426
Release: 2021-12-30
Genre: History
ISBN: 1000514900

By using the fresh investigative language of cognitive history, a symbiosis of the methods of cognitive science and historical inquiry, this book departs from almost all previous approaches to Renaissance studies. The Renaissance has attracted the attention of distinguished scholars from many different vantage points – political, social, economic, intellectual, and cultural. In this volume, Subrata Dasgupta sheds an alternative light on the Renaissance by considering it as a creative phenomenon. To be creative is to make history by producing material and/or abstract artifacts that are both new and consequential; to be creative also entails drawing on history and on the culture of the time. Most significantly, the creative process occurs in individual minds: it is a cognitive process of a very special kind. Beginning with a ‘prehistory’ set in classical Greece and medieval Islam, this book explores a variety of inventions and discoveries through the 14th–16th centuries, mainly in Italy, in humanities, painting, architecture, craft technology, anatomy, natural science, and engineering. This book will be of interest not only to Renaissance scholars but also to students interested in Renaissance history and the nature of the creative tradition.

Choices at the Heart of Technology

Choices at the Heart of Technology
Author: Ruth Conway
Publisher: A&C Black
Total Pages: 148
Release: 1999-10-01
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9781563382871

Brings under scrutiny the inadequacies of technologies that fail to take account of the "wholeness" of life and what might constitute "justice" (right relationships) within the human community with nature.