A Companion to the Philosophy of Technology

History of Technology

Technology has existed as long as Homo sapiens. It is not possible to do justice to all the historical forms of technology here, but it suffices to distinguish between that type which existed since the first adze made by our Stone Age ancestors and the modern varieties rooted in modern science. However, it would be a mistake to think that the latter began with the beginning of modern science itself, usually dated to the seventeenth century in Western Europe; instead, modern technology lagged behind modern science for a good two centuries and did not take off till about the 1840s. Up to then, humans relied on what may be called craft-based technology rather than science-induced/applied technology. The first industrial revolution was based on the former (the water–wind–wood complex); so was the second (the steam–coal–iron complex), as it relied on the steam engine.² However, the third industrial revolution occurred under very different circumstances, as it was induced by the theoretical discoveries of physics (such as electro-magnetism on the part of Faraday, and then others including Volta, Galvani, Oersted, Ohm, Ampère and Henry, leading to inventions like the electric cell, the storage cell, the dynamo, the motor, the electric lamp, not to mention the electric power station, the telephone, the radio telegraph) and of chemistry (such as Faraday’s isolation of benzene which made the industrial use of rubber possible, while advances in organic chemistry permitted ...