Burnham on Technologies

Compare the impact of new technologies on society during the Renaissance (printing press), the age of European expansion (15-16th century), and in the modern era since 1970.

Thesis: Since the Renaissance up until the present, technologies like the printing press, compass and computer has grown increasingly sophisticated, stimulating the growth and complexity of European society.


The Impact of Printing (pgs 318-319)

The Renaissance witnessed the invention of printing, one of the most important technological innovations of Western civilization.

This new art had a profound impact on European intellectual life and thought.

Printing was not a new development, but what was different in the 15th century was multiple printing with movable metal type, developed between 1445 and 1450.

In the second half of the 15th century, printing presses spread rapidly, establishing themselves throughout Europe.

By 1500 almost forty thousand titles had been printed, about 50% religious, then Latin and Greek classics, medieval grammars, works on philosophy and popular romances.

This encouraged the development of scholarly research and the desire to attain knowledge. Printing facilitated cooperation among scholars and helped produce definitive texts. It also stimulated the development of an ever-growing public that was able to read.

Without the printing press, the new religious ideas of the Reformation would never have spread as rapidly as they did in the 16th C.

European Expansion (pgs 370-371)

Europeans had achieved a level of technology that enabled them to make a regular series of voyages beyond Europe.

One of the most important world maps available to Europeans at the end of the 15th C. was that of Ptolemy’s in his Geography. But this dramatically underestimated the circumference of the earth and the size of the oceans.

European ship makers had been able to construct rudders and sails that made it possible for ships to be mobile enough to sail against the wind and engage in naval warfare. They could also carry a substantial amount of goods over long distances.

Compasses and astrolobes enabled sailors to navigate above and below the equator with confidence.

Knowledge of the wind patterns in the Atlantic Ocean allowed sailors to learn how to tack out into the ocean.

These technological developments allowed explorers to overcome previous obstacles, and facilitated an age of rapid expansion and growth of European countries and empires.

The New World of Science and Technology (pgs 861-863)

The postwar alliance of science and technology led to an accelerated rate of change that became a fact of life in Western society.

One product of this alliance “the computer “ may yet prove to be the most revolutionary of all the technological inventions of the 20th C.

In 1971, the invention of the microprocessor opened the road for the development of the personal computer. It can store and produce information, and other tools and machines now depend for their functioning on computers.

Some people came to question the assumption that scientific knowledge gave human beings the ability to manipulate the environment for their benefit. Some technological advances had far-reaching side effects damaging to the environment, such as chemical fertilizers.

Many physicists after WWII described the universe as a complicated web of relations between “various parts of a unified whole. These speculations implied that the old Newtonian conception of the universe as a machine was an outdated tool for understanding the nature of the universe.