UNIT 2: the role of science and technology in shaping societies
TECHNOLOGY’S FOUR HISTORICAL TRANSITIONS
Science and Technology
- It makes difficult and complicated tasks easier
- Developments in this field are not just products of one
time thought process.
- Brought about by gradual improvements to earlier
works from different time periods.
Human Revolution (Human Origin)
- The Human Revolution is a term that refers to the
remarkable and sudden emergence of language,
consciousness and culture in our species.
STONE AGE
- Historians call the early period of human history the
Stone Age.
- The earliest part of this period was the Paleolithic Age.
PALEOLITHIC AGE
- In Greek, paleolithic means "old stone."
- The Paleolithic Age is also called the Old Stone Age.
- The Paleolithic Age began about 2.5 million years ago
and lasted until around 8000 B.C.
PALEOLITHIC AGE
SURVIVING IN THE PALEOLITHIC AGE
- Paleolithic people often moved around in search of
food.
- They were nomads or people who regularly move from
place to place to survive.
- They traveled in groups, or bands, of about 20 or 30
members.
HUNTING AND GATHERING
- Paleolithic people survived by hunting and gathering.
- Paleolithic people hunted buffalo, bison, wild goats,
reindeer, and other animals, depending on where they
lived.
- Along coastal areas, they fished.
- These early people also gathered wild nuts, berries,
fruits, wild grains, and green plants.
- Current research indicates that two-thirds of the
energy was derived from animal foods.
- The fat content of the diet was believed to be similar to
that of the present day.
MEN AND WOMEN IN THE PALEOLITHIC AGE
- Paleolithic men and women performed different tasks
within the group.
MEN
- Men, not women, hunted large animals
- Over time, Paleolithic people developed tools and
weapons to help them hunt.
- The traps and spears they made increased their
chances of killing their prey.
WOMEN
- Women stayed close to the camp, which was often
located near a stream or other body of water.
- They looked after the children and searched nearby
woods and meadows for berries, nuts, and grains.
DIFFERENT ROLES OF MEN AND WOMEN
- Everyone worked to find food, because it was the key
to the group's survival.
- Some scientists believe that an equal relationship
existed between Paleolithic men and women.
- Some evidence suggests that some men and women
may have hunted in monogamous pairs.
- This means that a man and a woman worked together
to find food for themselves and their children.
- Such groupings became the first families.
The Invention of Tools During the Paleolithic Age
- Technology tools and methods to perform tasks were
first used by Paleolithic people.
- Before this time, sticks, stones, and tree branches
served as tools.
FLINT TECHNOLOGY
- Later, people made devices from a hard stone called
flint (hard, sedimentary crystalline form of the mineral
quartz)
Ex: Hammerstone from Majuangou, China
- Paleolithic people learned that by hitting flint with
another hard stone, the flint would flake into pieces.
- These pieces had very sharp edges that could be used
for cutting.
- Flint technology was a major breakthrough for early
peoples.
- Hand axe - a large piece of flint tied to wooden pole
BETTER TOOLS
- Over time, paleolithic people made better, more
complex tools.
- Spears and bows and arrows made killing large
animals easier.
- Spears with sharp points, and fishhooks increased the
number of fish caught.
- Early humans used sharp-edged tools to cut up plants
and dig roots.
- They used scraping tools to clean animal hides, which
they used for clothing and shelter.
- By the end of the Paleolithic Age, people were making
smaller and sharper tools.
- They crafted needles from animal bones to make nets
and baskets and to sew hides together for clothing.
Changes in the Paleolithic Age
- Paleolithic humans learned to make their own shelters.
- People constructed tents and huts of animal skins,
brush, and wood.
- In very cold climates, some people made shelters from
ice and snow.
- Many lived in caves.
UNIT 2: the role of science and technology in shaping societies
The Use of Fire during the Paleolithic Age
- Archaeologists believe early humans produced fire by
friction.
- They learned that by rubbing two pieces of wood
together, the wood became heated and charred.
- They also discovered that a certain stone, iron pyrite,
gave off sparks when struck against another rock
Communication and Arts during the Paleolithic Age
- Development of spoken language.
- The spoken language of early people was constantly
growing and changing.
- Paleolithic cave paintings have been found all
around the world.
- Early artists crushed yellow, black, and red
rocks and combined them with animal fat to
make their paints.
- They used twigs and their fingertips to apply
these paints to the rock walls.
NEOLITHIC AGE
THE NEOLITHIC REVOLUTION
- First Agricultural Revolution
- The wide-scale transition from a lifestyle of hunting
and gathering to one of agriculture and settlement.
- The Neolithic was a period in the development of
human technology (10,200 BC and ending between
4500 and 2000 BC)
- These settled communities permitted humans to
observe and experiment with plants to learn how they
grew and developed.
- This new knowledge led to the domestication of plants.
NEOLITHIC SOCIETY
- During the Neolithic age, people lived in small tribes
composed of families.
- The domestication of large animals resulted in a
dramatic increase in social inequality.
• Headed by a charismatic leader of tribal
groups.
- The growth of agriculture made permanent houses
possible.
- Mud brick houses and stilt-houses settlements were
also common.
- The clothing of the Neolithic humans was made of
animal skins.
- Reliance upon the foods produced from cultivated
lands.
- Encouraged the growth of settlements.
- Production of surplus crop yields
Introduction to Agriculture
- Surpluses could be stored and traded.
- Agricultural life afforded securities.
- Sedentary farming populations grew faster than
nomadic.
TECHNOLOGY
- The polished stone tools were characteristic of
Neolithic technology.
- Neolithic people were skilled farmers.
- An array of Neolithic artifacts, including bracelets, axe
heads, chisels, and polishing tools. Neolithic stone
artifacts are, by definition, polished.
- They were also skilled manufacturers of a range of
other types of stone tools and ornaments, including
projectile points, beads, and statues.
- The polished stone axe allowed forest clearance in a
large scale.
INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION
- The Industrial Revolution (1870-1900)
- Period of time when the face of industry changed
dramatically.
- Lasting impact on the economies of the world and the
lives of the person.
- Introduction of inventions that made the life of people
easier.
TEXTILE
- The advancement of the textile industry was a key
development in the Industrial Revolution.
- The cotton increased productivity of removing seed
from cotton gin by a factor of 50.
- Large gains in productivity also occurred in spinning
and weaving of textile
- The first that employed the factory system.
- The use of machines and an "assembly-line" approach
STEAM ENGINE
- A steam engine is a heat engine that performs
mechanical work using steam as its working fluid.
- In simple terms, the steam engine uses the expansion
principle of chemistry, where heat applied to water
transforms the water to steam and then pushes a
piston (cylinder).
- This pushing force is typically transformed, by way of a
connecting rod and flywheel, into rotational force for
work.
- James Watt created the first truly reliable steam
engine in 1775.
- This invention made locomotives and many of the
textile machines possible.
UNIT 2: the role of science and technology in shaping societies
MINING
- Following the invention of the steam engine, demand
for coal increased.
- Coal mining is the process of extracting coal from the
ground.
- Coal is valued for its energy content
- Industrialization increased the demand significantly.
IRON MAKING
- The substitution of coal for charcoal greatly lowered
the fuel cost of iron production.
- The steam engine began being used to power blast air
in the mid 1750s, enabling a large increase in iron
production.
INVENTION OF MACHINE TOOLS
- The first machine tools were invented during the
industrial revolution.
- These included the screw cutting lathe, cylinder boring
machine and the milling machine.
- Machine tools made the economical manufacture of
precision metal parts possible
CHEMICALS
- The large-scale production of chemicals was an
important development during the Industrial
Revolution.
- Production sulfuric acid by the lead chamber process
invented by the Englishman John Roebuck in 1746.
- Germany took world leadership in the chemical
industry during the industrial industry.
- Aspiring chemists flocked to German universities
during the period.
CEMENT
- In 1824, Joseph Aspdin, a British bricklayer turned
builder, patented a chemical process for making
portland cement.
- This process involves sintering a mixture of clay and
limestone to about 1,400 °C (2,552 °F), then grinding it
into a fine powder which is then mixed with water,
sand and gravel to produce concrete.
AGRICULTURE
- Joseph Foljambe's Rotherham plough of 1730 was the
first commercially successful iron plough.
- The threshing machine, invented by Andrew Meikle in
1784, displaced hand threshing with a flail, a laborious
job that took about one-quarter of agricultural labor.
TIN CAN
- The humble tin can was patented by a British merchant
Peter Durand in 1810.
- It would have an incalculable impact on food
preservation and transportation right up to the present
day.
- John Hall and Bryan Dorkin would open the very first
commercial canning factory in England in 1813.
INTERNAL COMBUSTION ENGINE
- Jean Lenoir invented the internal combustion engine in
1858.
- Internal Combustion Engine is a heat engine where the
combustion of a fuel occurs with an oxidizer (usually
air) in a combustion chamber that is an integral part of
the working fluid flow circuit.
- Eventually this engine was used in mass
transportation.
ELECTRICITY
- The development of electricity as a source of power
had been done by an international collection of
scientists including Benjamin Franklin of Pennsylvania,
Alessandro Volta of the University of Pavia, Italy, and
Michael Faraday of Britain.
- It was the latter who had demonstrated the nature of
the elusive relationship between electricity and
magnetism in 1831.
- In particular, French, German, Belgian, and Swiss
engineers evolved the most satisfactory forms of
armature (the coil of wire) and produced the dynamo,
which made the large-scale generation of electricity
commercially feasible.
AUTOMOBILE
- Henry Ford was by far one of the most imperative
inventors of the Industrial Revolution.
- It enabled people to go wherever they wanted
whenever they wanted.
- The automobile modernize the transportation industry
entirely.
TELEPHONE
- Alexander Graham Bell created the telephone in 1876.
- The telephone further improved communications and
eventually led to the various communications devices
used today.
CAMERA
- Beginning in 1814, Joseph Nicéphore Niépce the first
person to ever take a photograph.
- In 1827, he successfully produced the first, long-lasting
image using a plate coated with bitumen.
- This was then washed in a solvent and placed over a
box of iodine to produce a plate with light and dark
qualities.
PHONOGRAPH
- Thomas Edison created the phonograph in 1877.
- Prior to the creation of the phonograph the only option
for entertainment was for live musicians or actors to
perform.
- This allowed people to listen to music anywhere.
UNIT 2: the role of science and technology in shaping societies

AIRPLANE
- Brothers Orville and Wilbur Wright created the first
airplane in 1903.
- ability to fly had long been a dream of the human race.
- Within a few decades, planes had changed the face of
personal and business travel and had dramatically
altered warfare.

RISE OF THE HUMAN EMPIRE (ANTHROPOCENE)

- This is the time in which human activity has been the
dominant influence on climate and the environment.
- Scientists in the Soviet Union appear to have used the
term "anthropocene" as early as the 1960s to refer to
the Quaternary, the most recent geological period.
- The term was widely popularized in 2000 by PLASTICS
atmospheric chemist Paul J. Crutzen, who regards the - Plastics, initially developed in the 1900s, have grown
influence of human behavior on Earth's atmosphere in rapidly since the 1950s, and we now produce 500
recent centuries as so significant as to constitute a new million tons a year.
geological time. - Sediments containing plastics will be a clear sign of the
Anthropocene.
ISSUES THAT HAVE IDENTIFIED THE ANTHROPOCENE
PERIOD

NUCLEAR WEAPONS
- War efforts have left their mark on geology.
- When the first nuclear weapon was detonated on 16
July 1945 in New Mexico
- It deposited radionuclides – atoms with excess nuclear
energy across a wide area.
- Since 1952, more explosive thermonuclear weapons
have been tested.

FOSSIL FUELS
- The products of burning fossil fuels mark
Anthropocene age.
- Current rates of carbon emission are thought to be
higher than at any time in the last 65 million years.
- The concentration of carbon dioxide in the
atmosphere has risen sharply since 1850.

CHANGED GEOLOGY
- Every time we destroy a patch of rainforest, this
changes the future of Earth’s geology.
- We have transformed more than 50 percent of Earth’s
land area for our own purposes.
- Deforestation, farming, drilling, mining, landfills, dam-
building and coastal reclamation are all having
widespread effects on sedimentary processes.
- Disrupting how layers of rock are laid down, which will
be detectable thousands of years in the future.

FERTILIZERS
- Our attempts to feed an increasing population will
leave clear indicators, too.
UNIT 2: the role of science and technology in shaping societies
- Levels of nitrogen and phosphorus in soils have
doubled in the last century because of our increased
use of fertilizers.
- We produce 23.5 million tons of phosphorus a year.
- Human activity had the biggest impact on the nitrogen
cycle for 2.5 billion years.

GLOBAL WARMING
- Global warming is the unusually rapid increase in
Earth’s average surface temperature over the past
century primarily due to the greenhouse gases
released as people burn fossil fuels.
- The global average surface temperature rose 0.6 to 0.9
degrees Celsius (1.1 to 1.6° F) between 1906 and 2005,
and the rate of temperature increase has nearly
doubled in the last 50 years.
- Temperatures are certain to go up further.
- Average global sea levels are higher than at any point
in the past 115,000 years and are rising rapidly, which
may also be detectable in future.

MASS EXTINCTION
- The moment of extinction is generally considered to be
the death of the last individual of the species.
- Mass extinctions sparked by massive global changes
mark the anthropocene period.
- It is expected that three-quarters of species set to be
wiped out in the coming centuries.

TECHNOLOGY IN THE DANGEROUS WORLD

- Technology is a means to an end
- Technology is a human activity
- Technology is a contrivance
- Technology is aletheia, poisesis and techne

Calculative mind versus meditative mind

- “But where the danger is, grows the saving power also”
- “Essence of technology is nothing technological”
- “Everywhere we remain unfree and chained to
technology, whether we passionately affirm or deny it”
The four causes why technological devices affect us
- Causa materialis
- Causa formalis
- Causa finalis
- Causa efficiens