A Companion to the Philosophy of Technology

The West: Politics, Economy and Technology

There is a commonly held simplistic view of the modern history of the West (Western Europe) that the triad of democratic politics, free-market capitalism and science-driven high technology went inextricably hand in hand. This is not the place to examine this thesis in depth. Suffice it to make the following brief observations: modern science may be said to have begun in seventeenth-century Europe, but it took two centuries at least before the fundamental discoveries of physics and chemistry induced what today we call high tech. Before that, far from science leading and invention following, inventions were autonomous of science; and, in one spectacular instance, it was the invention of the steam engine which led to the fundamental science of thermodynamics. Industrialization took off in Europe, on the whole, without the benefits of modern basic science and its application to industry. The first industrial revolution – water-wind-wood complex – rested on what may be called craft-based technology and inventions which found their way to Europe, in many instances, from China, via the Middle East. The second industrial revolution – steam-coal-iron complex – was similarly based. Science-led/-induced high tech did not make an appearance till the 1840s.³

The history of capitalism is as complex as that of technology. In brief, finance capitalism began as early as the Italian city states during the Renaissance which had nothing to do with the rise ...