The first proper global account of the place of technology in twentieth century history, this brilliant, thought-provoking book will radically revise our understanding of the relationship between technology and society. Whereas standard histories of technology give tired old accounts of the usual inventions - planes, bombs - "The Shock of the Old" is based on a different idea. Its thrust is that for the full picture of the history of technology we need to know not about what a few people invented, but about what everyday people used - and when they actually used things, if it was a long time after invention. It, therefore, reassesses the significance of, for example, the Pill and IT, and shows the continued importance of technology, such as corrugated iron and sewing machines. In taking this approach, "The Shock of the Old" challenges the idea that we live in an era of ever increasing change and so dismisses naivetes about 'the information age'. Interweaving political, economic and cultural history, it will show what it means to think critically about technology and its importance.

The place of science and technology in the British economy and society is widely seen as critical to our understanding of the British 'decline'. There is a long tradition of characterising post-1870 Britain by its lack of enthusiasm for science and by the low social status of the practitioners of technology. David Edgerton examines these assumptions, analysing the arguments for them and pointing out the different intellectual traditions from which they arise. Drawing on a wealth of statistical data, he argues that British innovation and technical training were much stronger than is generally believed, and that from 1870 to 1970 Britain's innovative record was comparable to that of Germany. This book is a comprehensive study of the history of British science and technology in relation to economic performance. It will be of interest to scientists and engineers as well as economic historians, and will be invaluable to students approaching the subject for the first time.

In Ways of Knowing, John V. Pickstone provides a new and accessible framework for understanding science, technology, and medicine (STM) in the West from the Renaissance to the present. Pickstone's approach has four key features. First, he synthesizes the long-term histories and philosophies of disciplines that are normally studied separately. Second, he dissects STM into specific ways of knowing—natural history, analysis, and experimentalism—with separate but interlinked elements. Third, he explores these ways of knowing as forms of work related to our various technologies for making, mending, and destroying. And finally, he relates scientific and technical knowledges to popular understandings and to politics.
Covering an incredibly wide range of subjects, from minerals and machines to patients and pharmaceuticals, and from experimental physics to genetic engineering, Pickstone's Ways of Knowing challenges the reader to reexamine traditional conceptualizations of the history, philosophy, and social studies of science, technology, and medicine.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
A note to the reader
1. Ways of knowing: an introduction
An outline of the method
Missions for this book
An outline of the story
2. World-readings: the meanings of nature and of science
Variety in modern Western medicine
Meanings and readings
Renaissance cosmologies
Disenchantment?
Natural theology and natural diseases
Revolution, respectability and evolution
Science, progress and the State
Modernist human-natures
Nature and culture
3. Natural history
'Historia' and representation
New worlds, new properties and new creators
Natures for pedigree people
Natural empires
Popular natural history
Displays of technology, new and old
'Natural history' now
4. Analysis and the rationalisation of production
Rationalisation and identities
Production and analytical sciences
5. The elements of bodies, earth and society
Medical analysis: corpse and patient
Analysing plants and animals
Sciences of the earth
Analysing the social
Reflections on the institutions of analysis
6. Experimentalism and invention
Meanings of experiment
Experimental histories
Experimentation and the age of analysis
Synthesis in chemistry
Experimentation in biomedical sciences
Experimentation in physical sciences
On clouds, dust and control
Experimentalism and hierarchies of knowledge
Experiment and invention
7. Industries, universities and the technoscientific complexes
Analysis and established technologies
Electrical analysis and synthesis
Electrotechnics and industrial laboratories
Dyestuffs and pharmaceuticals
Remedies for/from microbes
Science and industry in and after the First World War
Technosciences in and after the Second World War
Coda
8. Technoscience and public understandings: the British case c.2000
'No one understands us'
Science back in business
The study of 'public understanding of science'
The politics of technoscience
Understanding public science
Analysis and the bounds of 'science'
Publics and natural histories
Public understandings and world-readings
Science, values and history
Bibliography
Index
和《佛陀的美麗新世界》一起，装在梁文道先生的口袋里，作为日常读物。

Industrial Enlightenment explores the transition through which England passed between 1760 and 1820 on the way to becoming the world's first industrialised nation. In drawing attention to the important role played by scientific knowledge, it focuses on a dimension of this transition which is often overlooked by historians. The book argues that in certain favoured regions, England underwent a process whereby useful knowledge was fused with technological 'know how' to produce the condition described here as Industrial Enlightenment. At the forefront of the process were the natural philosophers who entered into a close and productive relationship with technologists and entrepreneurs. Much of the evidence for this study is drawn from the extraordinary archival record of the activities of Matthew Boulton (1728-1809) and his Soho Manufactory. The book will appeal to those keen to explore the dynamics of change in eighteenth-century England, and to those with a broad interest in the cultural history of science and technology.

A bold and all-embracing exploration of the nature and progress of knowledge from one of today's great thinkers.
Throughout history, mankind has struggled to understand life's mysteries, from the mundane to the seemingly miraculous. In this important new book, David Deutsch, an award-winning pioneer in the field of quantum computation, argues that "explanations" have a fundamental place in the universe. They have unlimited scope and power to cause change, and the quest to improve them is the basic regulating principle not only of science but of all successful human endeavor. This stream of ever improving explanations has infinite reach, according to Deutsch: we are subject only to the laws of physics, and they impose no upper boundary to what we can eventually understand, control, and achieve.
In his previous book, "The Fabric of Reality," Deutsch describe the four deepest strands of existing knowledge-the theories of evolution, quantum physics, knowledge, and computation-arguing jointly they reveal a unified fabric of reality. In this new book, he applies that worldview to a wide range of issues and unsolved problems, from creativity and free will to the origin and future of the human species. Filled with startling new conclusions about human choice, optimism, scientific explanation, and the evolution of culture, "The Beginning of Infinity" is a groundbreaking book that will become a classic of its kind.

Who would solve one of the most perplexing scientific problems of all time? This dramatic picture-book biography brings to life - with illustrations that glow with wit and inspiration - the fascinating story of the quest to measure longitude. While the scientific establishment of the eighteenth century was certain that the answer lay in mapping the heavens, John Harrison, an obscure, uneducated clockmaker, dared to imagine a different solution: a seafaring clock. How Harrison held fast to his vision and dedicated his life to the creation of a small jewel of a timepiece that would change the world is a compelling story - as well as a memorable piece of history, science, and biography. A Junior Library Guild Selection

American Science and Modern China is an essay in comparative history, originally published in 1980. It focuses on the transmission of scientific ideas and organizations from the United States to China, a topic interesting primarily for what it reveals about the social history of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century American science. The main themes concern how scientific traditions and institutions that were developed in one setting served as models for the creation of new ones elsewhere, what modifications were induced by this change of environment, and what these modifications imply about the interdependence of scientific knowledge and social life. The book deals with a number of individuals and organizations involved in the development of modern science in China. Dr Buck examines their views of science's place among the forces for change in China, describes their efforts to build institutional bases for science, and sets their plans and programs in broad social and intellectual contexts.

《浴缸里的惊叹》是一本趣题集，里面的题目全部来自于作者顾森十余年来的精心收集，包括几何、组合、行程、数字、概率、逻辑、博弈、策略等诸多类别，其中既有小学奥数当中的经典题目，又有世界级的著名难题，但它们无一例外都是作者心目中的“好题”：题目本身简单而不容易，答案出人意料却又在情理之中，解法优雅精巧令人拍案叫绝。作者还有意设置了语言和情境两个类别的问题，希望让完全没有数学背景的读者也能体会到解题的乐趣。

Einstein's theory of general relativity opens the door to other universes, and weird universes at that: universes that allow time travel, universes where you can see the back of your head, universes that spin and bounce or multiply without limit. The Book of Universes gives us a stunning tour of these potential universes, introducing us along the way to the brilliant physicists and mathematicians who first revealed their startling possibilities. John D. Barrow explains the latest discoveries and ideas that physics and astronomy have to offer about our own universe, showing how these findings lead to the concept of the "multiverse" the Universe of all possible universes. New ideas force us to confront the possibility that our visible universe is a tiny region, governed by its own laws, within a Multiverse containing all the strange universes that could be an idea that is among the most exciting and revolutionary in all of modern science.

Greene takes the reader to the leading edge of thinking in some of the most exciting areas of theoretical physics. And, importantly, he does not try to blind the reader with whiz-bang declarations or to mislead by giving only one perspective on topics that are highly controversial. Greene explains, in plain English, why scientists are considering some pretty far-out sounding possibilities (other universes!), how these ideas might be tested, and why other scientists are fully opposed to such investigations. Greene makes his perspective clear (that some, not all, of these ideas can fall within the heart of science but that only experimental evidence can really make the case) while giving the reader ample room to come to his or her own conclusions.

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716) possessed one of history's great minds. The German philosopher, mathematician, and logician invented (independently of Sir Isaac Newton) calculus. His metaphysics bequeathed a set of problems and approaches that drove the course of Western philosophy, from Kant's eighteenth century until the present day. For over fifty years, the study of Leibniz has been a consistent passion for distinguished philosopher Nicholas Rescher. "On Leibniz" offers eleven of his essays, written with signature clarity, exploring the aspects of Leibniz's work and life that still resonate in the discipline of philosophy. Rescher's essays are snapshots of Leibniz, lucidly drawn case studies that explain the fundamentals of his ontology: the theory of possible worlds, the world's contingency, space-time frameworks, and intermonadic relationships. Several illuminating pieces reveal Leibniz as a substantial contributor to theories of knowledge. Discussions of his epistemology and methodology, its relationship to John Maynard Keynes and Talmudic scholarship, broaden the traditional view of Leibniz as a uniquely metaphysical thinker. Rescher also explores, in four absorbing biographical essays, Leibniz's scholarly development and professional career in historical context. As a andquot; philosopher courtierandquot; to the Hanoverian court, Leibniz was associated with the leading intellectuals and politicians of his era, including Spinoza, Huygens, Newton, Queen Sophie Charlotte, and Czar Peter the Great. A concluding essay holds up Leibniz's mode of philosophy as a role model for today's scholars. Rescher argues that many current problems can be effectivelyaddressed with principles of process philosophy along lines inspired by Leibniz's monadology. "On Leibniz" is essential reading for students of Leibniz and Rescher alike.