Science With Technology example essay topic

James Burke's video "Credit Where It's Due" does a great job of illustrating the social causes and effects leading up to the Industrial Revolution, but that is all it does. In fact, while watching this video, I had to frequently remind myself that this was part of a course called "History of Science", and not "History of English Society". Where's the science? Well, I now realize that there simply wasn't any, or at least not very much in 18th century England.

These people were simply too busy making money, having babies, building houses, or devising new strategies for making more money. They did not have time for science. They did however, have plenty of time for inventing all of the wonderful new technologies that would provide them with such material abundance, give the Industrial Revolution its name, and later inspire and enable a science, the likes of which had never been seen before. Yet despite the obvious importance and impact of this technology, Burke gives it very little time in his video. I believe he could have conveyed a much better understanding of the Industrial Revolution had he spent less time on man, and more time on machine. Of course, as Burke explains, social issues, rather than scientific or technological issues, were at the core of the Industrial Revolution.

The science of the previous century had only an indirect yet crucial impact on society, such as through the philosopher John Locke, who did so much to promote this new rationalism, now starting to filter down from the elite to the general literate populace. Locke's writings on personal possessions, property rights, and business-friendly government were probably necessary to fuel the socially competitive spirit that an industrial revolution required. Actual science however, as Burke points out in his book, was "stunned into virtual inactivity for nearly a century" after Isaac Newton's Principia Mathematica was published in 1687. Scientists would be quietly busy for a while catching up with Newton.

Technology, on the other hand, would quickly be developed as these initial social conditions were met, and soon acquire a life of its own. Yet, Burke has not given us a very good picture of this life. This life of loud, dangerous, moving machines and their rapidly growing technologies swallowing up the past at every step. Supposedly, the cotton / textile industry made the Industrial Revolution the great force for change that it was - textiles exchanged for slaves, who produced the cycle of wealth, etc. However, from watching this video's three brief, non-descriptive, stock scenes of textile machines in action, or seeing the single illustration of a "spinning jenny" in the book, you wouldn't know this. I would like to see the Crompton "mule", and Arkwright's water-frame spinner in action, or James Hargreaves' "spinning jenny", actually spinning.

Burke's visual coverage of the other industries is similarly lacking, with just a few brief, abstract scenes of an ironworks, men shoveling coal, and a close-up of a steam engine. I would like to see how "a certain John Thomas" improved coke, or how Abraham Darby's improved reverberatory furnace melted iron without fuel contact. How was it done before? How did Benjamin Huntsman make steel with this furnace?

How about slag being hammered out of Henry Cort's new wrought iron with the help of James Watt's new sun and planet cog wheel driven steam engine. What is slag? Where is that separate condenser? I just want to see some of this machinery which so drew 17th and 18th century England up out of the countryside. I will just have to go elsewhere for these answers. Now, I realize the problem of confusing technology with science, and that this course is not "History of Technology".

However, unlike 18th century technology, which was largely developed through trial and error, without science (Joseph Black's "hidden heat" and "fixed air" science being one exception, Josiah Wedgewood's use of scientific laboratory methods in his industrial production of pottery being a possible second), today's technology is almost always a direct result of increased understanding gained through scientific research. Today, we equate science with technology. Impressive technology inspires us to see the power of science. The video could have better conveyed this power. In conclusion, the book, the reader, and the video work fairly well together, and I would use it again. Burke's book tells a good story of the events leading up to the Industrial Revolution in England: the stifling effects of the Acts of Settlement of the mid-1600's, land reshuffling after the Cromwellian republic, mercantile expansion caused by the great Navigation Acts of 1651, textiles, slaves, sugar, tobacco, wealth, financial reform and trade in the 1690's, John Locke, the Clarendon Codes, the Dissenters, agricultural innovations and good weather, more wealth, coal, coke, iron, steam, canals, more steam. etc.

The reader, Science and Culture in the Western Tradition gives good details of this story: the relationship between science and technology, between science and industry, and how science and industry were affecting places other than England. Lastly, the video summarizes the main storyline points of the book, but misses an opportunity to show the real physical impact of machines on the people and their science.