Technology in World Civilization: A Thousand-Year History - Softcover

Pacey, Arnold

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0262660725 ISBN 13: 9780262660723

Publisher: The MIT Press, 1991

Synopsis

Most general histories of technology are Eurocentrist, focusing on a main line of Western technology that stretches from the Greeks is through the computer. In this very different book, Arnold Pacey takes a global view, placing the development of technology squarely in a "world civilization." He portrays the process as a complex dialectic by which inventions borrowed from one culture are adopted to suit another.

About this title

About the Author:

Arnold Pacey is an Associate Lecturer at the Open University, Britain. He is the author of The Culture of Technology (MIT Press, 1983), Technology and World Civilization (MIT Press, 1991), and The Maze of Ingenuity, second edition (MIT Press, 1992).

From Publishers Weekly:

Pacey, a physicist turned historian, traces the myriad crucial ways by which Western technology benefited from a continuous dialogue wth Chinese, Indian and Islamic civiizations. These cultures' innovations in hydraulic engineering, the smelting of iron, the invention of guns and gunpowder, in shipbuilding, printing and the weaving of textiles all strongly influenced Western technological development. In A.D. 1100 China was the most technologically advanced region in the world. What eventually gave the West a decisive edge, notes Pacey, was the development of disciplined factory production and the organization of knowledge according to general scientific principles. The author argues that Western science today often arrogantly ignores the constraints of local conditions in the Third World, which causes great harm: e.g., preventing African herdsmen from burning grasslands, a means of controlling the sleeping sickness-carrying tsetse flies that breed there. The book is packed with information, and readers interested in technology will want to add it to their bookshelves.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: The MIT Press
• Publication date: 1991
• ISBN 10: 0262660725
• ISBN 13: 9780262660723
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 250