Science and Technology in World History: An Introduction

Citation

McClellan, J. E., III, & Dorn, H. (2015). Science and Technology in World History: An Introduction (3rd ed.). Johns Hopkins University Press.

Chapter Summary

The third edition runs to about 480 pages of text: a thematic introduction, twenty chapters in four parts ("Origins to the End of Antiquity", Chapters 1–5; "Thinking and Doing among the World's Peoples", Chapters 6–9; "Europe and the Solar System", Chapters 10–13; and "Science, Technology, and Industrial Civilization", Chapters 14–20), a short afterword and a "Guide to Resources" that lists literature and websites for each chapter. The authors describe it as a textbook for students and the general reader. Its central thesis is that science and technology were largely separate enterprises for most of history, linked mainly where centralized states patronized useful knowledge, and that technology as "applied science" is a recent, defining feature of industrial civilization.

Introduction: The Guiding Themes

The enlarged introduction questions the common assumption that technology is applied science. It distinguishes two traditions: useful knowledge patronized by states from the earliest civilizations onwards, and the pursuit of knowledge about nature for its own sake that began with the Greeks. It sets out the book's plan and the question it will answer: how science and technology came to be merged in the modern world.

Chapters 1–2: Humankind Emerges; The Reign of the Farmer

The first chapters cover Paleolithic toolmaking and the Neolithic revolution, which the authors stress took place several times independently and without the aid of any separate "science", although Neolithic peoples observed the heavens systematically.

Chapter 3: Pharaohs and Engineers

Here the authors introduce the "hydraulic hypothesis", linking the first civilizations of Mesopotamia, Egypt, the Indus and later China and the Americas to large-scale water management and centralized states. Pyramid building, calendrical astronomy and state-supported medicine illustrate knowledge of nature turned to practical ends.

Chapters 4–5: Greeks Bearing Gifts; Alexandria and After

Classical Greece, where the state was weak, produced natural philosophy pursued for its own sake, estranged from craft technology. The Hellenistic era and its successors began to bring abstract science and state patronage together.

Chapter 6: The Enduring East

Sassanid Persia and the Islamic world are presented as scientific civilizations built on state patronage, translation, hospitals and observatories. The authors discuss and question the "marginality" thesis about the decline of Islamic science.

Chapter 7: The Middle Kingdom

Chinese science is treated as useful knowledge serving the state, and the chapter addresses the long-debated question of why the Scientific Revolution did not occur in China.

Chapter 8: Indus, Ganges, and Beyond

India under the Mauryans and later the assimilation of Islamic astronomy, together with Sri Lanka and the Khmer empire, are examined as further cases of hydraulic civilization.

Chapter 9: The New World

Mesoamerica and the Andes developed along a separate technological path, without plows, draft animals or bronze; Maya mathematics, calendars and astronomy receive particular attention.

Chapter 10: Plows, Stirrups, Guns, and Plagues

The chapter turns to medieval and early modern Europe, whose agricultural and military technologies and epidemics, named in its title, form the background to the rise of the West.

Chapters 11–13: Copernicus Incites a Revolution; The Crime and Punishment of Galileo Galilei; "God said, 'Let Newton be!'"

The Scientific Revolution is treated not as a single event but as a complex transformation. The chapters follow Copernicus's astronomy, Galileo's career at court, his campaign for Copernicanism and his trial, and Newton's synthesis, while correcting simplified readings of Galileo as a hero of experiment.

Chapter 14: Textiles, Timber, Coal, and Steam

The Industrial Revolution is shown to have arisen from craft traditions rather than from science: the steam engine came through tinkering, and its scientific theory (Carnot's) came later.

Chapters 15–16: Legacies of Revolution: From Newton to Einstein; Life Itself

A "second Scientific Revolution" around 1800 brought the mathematization of physics and new sciences of heat and energy; Chapter 16 follows the life sciences and Darwin and Wallace's theory of evolution by natural selection.

Chapters 17–18: Toolmakers Take Command; The New Aristotelians

Chapter 17 traces how industry, engineering and science found common ground from about 1900, through scientific management, mass production and consumer technologies from cars and aircraft to broadcasting and household appliances. Chapter 18 covers the overthrow of the classical world view by relativity and quantum physics.

Chapters 19–20: The Bomb, the Internet, and the Genome; Under Today's Pharaohs

These chapters show the full merger of science and technology: the Manhattan Project and the post-war paradigm of state-funded research, the Internet and DNA. The final chapter, recalling the ancient pattern of state patronage, examines science as a social institution today, from engineering and research careers to Big Science projects such as CERN.

Afterword: The Medium of History

The afterword returns to the role of technology as a fundamental medium of human history and asks whether the current modes of intensified industrial existence are sustainable.

Key Concepts

Introduction and Part I

• Useful knowledge: knowledge of nature cultivated by states for practical purposes such as calendars, engineering and medicine.
• Natural philosophy: the Greek pursuit of knowledge about nature for its own sake, separate from craft.
• Hydraulic hypothesis: the thesis that large-scale water control and centralized states arose together in the first civilizations.

Parts II–III

• Patronage: state or court support for science, the common thread linking Islamic, Chinese, Indian, American and European cases.
• Marginality thesis: the argument that Islamic science declined because religious values marginalized secular learning, which the authors question.
• Scientific Revolution: the elaboration of modern science and a heliocentric world view in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Europe.

Part IV and Afterword

• Industrial Revolution: the transformation of production by machines and fossil fuels, which arose largely from craft knowledge.
• Technology as applied science: the close integration of research and production that defines industrial civilization.
• Big Science: large-scale, state-funded research projects involving thousands of scientists and engineers.

Critical Analysis

Strengths

• A single argument across world history. The distinction between useful knowledge and natural philosophy, and the thesis that their merger is modern, organize every part of the book and give students a framework they can test.
• Genuinely comparative. Part II gives whole chapters to Islamic, Chinese, Indian and American science and technology before Europe's Scientific Revolution, with attention to such topics as Maya astronomy and Khmer water management.
• Technology taken seriously. Toolmaking, agriculture, hydraulic works, the steam engine, mass production and the Internet receive extended treatment alongside scientific theories, which suits a course on science and technology together.
• Updated apparatus. The publisher notes that the third edition enlarges the thematic introduction, extends the treatment of industrial civilization and the electrical grid, adds attention to the Internet and social media, and includes a guide to literature and vetted websites for each chapter.

Limitations

• A strong thesis. The introduction states the aim of showing that in most historical situations before the nineteenth century science and technology were separate. This is the authors' interpretation; students should read the book as an argument for it and compare accounts that stress earlier interaction between theory and practice.
• Breadth at the expense of depth. Twenty chapters cover two million years, so each civilization or revolution receives a single chapter; specialist courses will need the course's more focused books.
• Western-centred in its second half. By its structure, Parts III and IV centre on Europe and then on industrial civilization, so science and technology outside the West after about 1500 receive far less space than in Part II.

Where It Fits in the Course

McClellan and Dorn provide the broadest frame in this course and can serve as its spine. Patricia Fara's Science: A Four Thousand Year History covers a similar span but in many short, essay-like chapters with more on the social and political life of science; read one as the main survey and dip into the other for contrast. Steven Shapin's The Scientific Revolution and Shapin and Schaffer's Leviathan and the Air-Pump examine the subject of Chapters 11–13 in far more depth, the latter as a detailed study of experiment in seventeenth-century England.

David Lindberg's The Beginnings of Western Science is a fuller account of ancient and medieval natural philosophy, complementing Chapters 4–5 and 10, while Peter Bowler and Iwan Rhys Morus's Making Modern Science is a more detailed, thematic survey of modern science since the Scientific Revolution, overlapping with Parts III and IV.

How to Use This Book

No scientific or historical background is assumed; the book suits first-year students in history, the sciences or engineering and general readers.

• Read the introduction first. "The Guiding Themes" sets up the distinction between science and technology that every later chapter uses.
• Core chapters for a one-semester course: the introduction, Chapters 3–4, one or two chapters from Part II, Chapters 11–14 and 17–19.
• Use Part II comparatively. Read two of Chapters 6–9 together and ask how state patronage shaped science in each case.
• Read the afterword last, together with Chapter 20, as a starting point for discussion of science and society today.
• Use the Guide to Resources for each chapter's further reading and websites when preparing essays, and pair key chapters with primary texts from the periods the course emphasizes.