Science and Technology in History

This is a study of the changing relationships between science, technology and economic development from the 18th century to the present time. Such an embracing subject demands that the text swings between social history and economic history, between cultures and markets, between Europe and Asia and between information (embodying ideas) and artefacts (including machines). In performing this exercise a very large and complex body of secondary literature is drawn upon, ranging from material on popular science in Hanoverian England to modernization strategies in post-Maoist China. Important historical themes, such as those of industrial revolution, technology transfer or the institutional setting of knowledge diffusion are broached in chapters whose major topics may vary between 18th-century Europe or late 19th-century Japan.