HiST

 My grandparents gave me a subscription to Scientific American when I was twelve or thirteen, and I ' ve kept it ever since. I save the issues and I have a bookshelf full of them. SA has now come out with its 175th anniversary issue, which reviews the history of the magazine, and of science and technology during the past 175 years. (The title of this post, HiST, is the common name for the Smithsonian museum of the history of science and technology.)I would break down HiST as four intertwining strands: scientific knowledge, technological capability,  the socio-cultural context, and the economic context. Science, and particularly technology, also drive changes in those contexts, they are mutually determined. I would locate politics at the intersection of the socio-cultural and economic, but you could also conceive of it as a fifth strand. Prior to the 20th Century, science and technology were not particularly closely related. Technology was mostly empirical, created by practical people who solved problems by imagination and trial and error. The Wright Brothers built their airplane before there was any scientific theory of aerodynamic lift, and in fact while scientists were saying that flight by heavier-than-air craft was impossible. Even though Benjamin Franklin proved that lightning is equivalent to static electricity, the only technology that came out of that was the lightning rod. However, that situation has radically changed. It required the theory of el...
Source: Stayin' Alive - Category: American Health Source Type: blogs