19th century it became commonplace to view modernity as an unending progres

encounters nature as raw materials

The public sphere appears to be opening slowly to encompass technical issues that were formerly viewed as the exclusive preserve of experts

technology so intimately that our activities have begun to shape its development.

communities mobilize to make their wishes known

Critical Theory

Substantivism

Instrumentalism

Determinism

The unity of philosophy arises from its function of remedying man's three basic defects: ignorance, vice, and physical weakness. Speculation provides truth; ethics aids virtue; technology sup-ports our bodily needs; recently logic or semantics (including grammar) has been added to philosophy to giveit clarity and elegance of expression.Of these, mechanica is the least in dignity; yet it is integral to philosophy not, as regards its practice but because of the wisdom inherent in it

But at that time the concept of "religion" was broadening and spreading from the monastic to the lay life, particularly through channels provided by the newly vitalized groups of regular canons. It was spiritually essential to transfer dignity explicitly from monastic labor to labor in the world outside the cloister.

De diversis artibus

thelevel of civilization for a time sank so disastrously

Martha was intent on how to feed the Lord. This is the day to prepare a feast for the Lor

actio and intentio

he superiority of the contemplative over the active.

Christianity, by destroying classical animism, brought about a basic change in the attitude toward natural objects and opened the way for their rational and unabashed use for human ends

ncluding manual work

cyclical as it is in most religion

“Empirical knowledge did not have to be sought deliberately, but arose naturally from the pursuit of technical trades; the waiting was only for theoretical reflection, which, however, was helped by the fact that there is no single department of physics which calls more urgently for mathematical treatment and lends itself more naturally to itthan mechanics.

ond among those engaged in the arts and crafts

Italian merchants acquired computational methods from their North African counterparts

The Middle AgesThe scientific and technological heritage of the Egyptian, Greek, Roman, and Mesopotamian civilizations of antiquity was in part preserved and continued by the Byzantine and Arabic scholars. Arabichere includes Arab and other scholars of the Near and Middle East, Northern Africa, and Moslem Spain, where Arabic was the scientific language. From its beginnings, Islam encouraged the study of the sky and the earth to find proofs of one's faith (Arnaldez and Massignon, 1963, p. 385). “Arabian schools were organized on the pattern of the Greek, publishing commentaries, encyclopaedias, dictionaries and scientific manuals. The scholars versed in more than one science if not in all, . . . were the rule rather than the exception” (p. 386). The best known of these encyclopedic minds were the Persian physician and philosopher Avicenna (980–1037 A.D.) and al-Biruni (973–1048 A.D., probably born in Uzbekistan). The Moslem scholars elaborated algebra and passed on Hindu-Arabic numerals from India (p. 407). Like the Romans, the Arabs absorbed the technological knowledge of the peoples they conquered and disseminated this knowledge over their empires, innovating, but not generating a technological revolution of their own.In Europe proper, the period from the end of classical times following the collapse of Rome to beginning of the eleventh century is commonly referred to as the Early Middle Ages or the Dark Ages. The term Dark Agessuggests a darkening relative to Greek and Roman antiquity and in many ways is misleading. The so-called barbaric invaders had already achieved an iron-age culture and had access to the technology of the Roman Empire. The principal regression relative to Greece and Rome was the collapse of an elaborate city-state culture. With the collapse of Greece and Rome, literacy in Europe outside of Byzantium retreated significantly.The principal developments in technology during the early Middle Ages, between the collapse of Rome and the eleventh century, appear to have been the introduction of the heavy iron plow in northern and western Europe; the horse harness, which allowed the replacement of oxen by horses for plowing; and triennial crop rotation and fertilization with marl. These innovations caused a rapid increase in population and an agricultural surplus that permitted the growth of towns (Hilton and Sawyer, 1963; White, 1962; Anderson, 1974, pp. 182–83).White put a technological determinist explanation for the specific direction of the development of feudalism in Europe forth in his influential Medieval Technology and Social Change(1962). White asserts that the introduction of the foot-stirrup in the Frankish kingdom of the eighth century immediately changed the nature of warfare. A mounted knight could deliver a strong blow with a lance, and cavalry replaced foot soldiers as the main fighting force. Since “mounted warriors could only be maintained in large numbers by landed endowment, . . . [the] estates of the Church were . . . seized and handed over to an enlarged body of followers on condition that they serve him on horseback. . . . Protofeudal and seignorial elements had, of course, saturated the very fluid Celtic, Germanic, late Roman, and Merovingian societies; but the need for cavalry . . . precipitated and crystallized these anticipations to form medieval feudalism” (pp. 4–5).Hilton and Sawyer (1963) criticize White's technological determinism as being methodologically at fault, the conclusions based on it not standing up to the historical evidence. They show that the stirrup was not a new arrival in Europe, but reached Europe well before the eighth century and that a complete change in Frankish weapons did not take place at that time—despite the stirrup, mounted shock troops did not become the rule in the eighth century.Cultural, economic, and environmental factors all interact with technology to affect the rate of historical change

echnological determinism

warfare.

introduction of the heavy iron plow in northern and western Europe; the horse harness, which allowed the replacement of oxen by horses for plowing; and triennial crop rotation and fertilization

generating a technological revolution of their own.

Islam encouraged the study of the sky and the eart

scholars versed in more than one science if not in all

“right way”

philosophy of technology begins with the Greeks

e humans are not the masters of nature but work with its potentials to bring a meaningful world to fruition.

thing exists in an ideal realm prior to the thing itself

Some men are by nature free, and others slaves, and that for these latter slavery is both expedient and right

The country's topography and agriculture required a vast network of waterworks for flood protection and irrigation, especially for wet rice cultivation, anda far-flung canal system whereby the tax grain could be brought to granary centers and to the capital.

“There is nothing in Chinese history resembling the conception of a mayor or burgomaster, alderman, councillors, masters and journeymen of guilds, or any of those civic individuals who played such a large part in the development of city institutionsin the west”

stratification through control over the productive resources

Sedentary settlements

The close cooperation of women and men in the hunt and the division of labor between them are reinforced in their hunting songs, which are always sung in round form, utilizing a technique that recreates the cooperative patterns required by the hunt. The other major types of song, the foraging song and the death song, also reinforce the appropriate patterns for the corresponding activity. Except for the lullaby, none of the songs can be produced by a single singer. The ritualistic character of the singing suggests that this art form is viewed as a necessary component of the hunt itself.

acquisitive

evotes a section to the history of science but scatters books on technological historythroughmany departments, including sociology, cultural studies, women's studies, history, media, anthropology, transportation, and do-it-yourself

hierarchy of knowledge that stretched in an ascending scale from the crafts to the sciences, moving from the physical to the intellectual. T

small story.

human nature" but inseparable from it.

Birds construct nests.

humans

n