Technoscience, Progress, Modernity 

This page is mainly a utility for students in my courses but other readers may find the links useful. I am in the process of gathering together materials relating to the themes listed above and the tensions which exist between them. The supporters of Enlightenment hoped to bridge Francis Bacon's goal of mastering nature to the improvement of humanity and its liberation as well. Whether or not such a bridge can be constructed or whether humans really can be liberated remain central questions facing developed and developing nations. "Technoscience" -- the contemporary fusion of research and development (Bacon's dream) -- is becoming a more familiar term today but what role politics or the political does or should play in the larger questions relating to the mastery of nature, progress, and human liberation need much more exploration. I do not claim that either progress or mastery exist nor do I presume that human liberation is achievable. They have only been goals for a very short time and it is not at all clear that any of them can be attained but many in the past have hoped they can or believed that it is inevitable that they will.

Dates/Events

ca. 200,000 years ago: The appearance of modern Homo Sapiens sapiens

ca. 10,000: Agriculture and sedentary life began in pockets of human societies

476: The Germanic general Odoacer deposes the last Roman Emperor; Europe begins the "Middle Ages"

1096-1204: Era of the Crusades (Europe)

1279-1368: Yuan (Mongol) Dynasty in China

1289: Beginning of the Ottoman Empire (to 1923)

1368-1644: Ming Dynasty in China

1400s

1390s-1492: Portugal and Spain sponsor expeditions around Africa; Christopher Columbus reaches the island of Hispaniola in 1492, successfully sailing west on the Atlantic Ocean

1405-1433: Zheng He's expeditions in the Indian Ocean (China)

1440s: Portuguese introduce slavery in their colonies

1500s

1501: Beginning of the Safavid Dynasty (to 1722 mainly in Iran or Persia)

1517-1648: Reformation, Counter Reformation, Religious Wars in Europe

1520s: Spanish begin importing African slaves -- the slave trade continues into the nineteenth century, resulting in at least 11 million Africans captured or sold into the slave system of the Atlantic World

1526: Beginning of the Mughal Dynasty (to 1858 mainly in what is today India, Pakistan and Bangladesh)

1531: Niccolò Machiavelli (1469-1527), Discourses on Livy (brief excerpts)

1543-1687: Scientific Revolution ( from the publication of Nicholas Copernicus’s On the Revolution of the Heavenly Spheres and Isaac Newton’s Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy)

1600s

1600s-1700s:
Establishment of the European state system (absolutism, constitutionalism)
Establishment of joint stock companies and European mercantile empires with global trade networks

1600: Beginning of the Tokugawa Shogunate (to 1867 in Japan)

1618-1648: The Thirty Years War (Europe)

1620: Francis Bacon, The New Organon (excerpts)

1641: Rene Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy (excerpts)

1640-1649: English Civil Wars

1644:
Beginning of the Qing Dynasty in China (to 1911)
Rene Descartes, Treatise on Man, here and here

1650-1800: English sugar consumption rose 2,500%

1687: Isaac Newton, Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy

1688: English Glorious Revolution

1690: John Locke (1632-1704): Two Treatises of Civil Government (compare with Domat, see 1697)

1697: Jean Domat (1625-1696): On Social Order and Absolute Monarchy, from Public Law (compare with Locke, see 1690) 

1700s

1727: Isaac Newton, The Optics (excerpts)

ca. 1760s: Factories slowly begin to develop in England (Richard Arkwright is one of the first developers) -- factory production will outpace cottage industry production by the 1820s in England and the 1850s in parts of Europe (especially the Netherlands, the German states, France, the northern Italian states)

1760s on: The Industrial Revolution begins

1765: James Watt patents an improved steam engine

1771: John Millar (1735-1801), Observations Concerning the Distinction of Ranks in Society (Scotland)

1775: Johann Friederich Blumenbach, "On the Natural Variety of Mankind" (re-published in two edited and expanded editions)

1775-1781: American War of Independence (Britain recognized independence formally in 1783; see my American Independence Documents)

1776:

American Declaration of Independence

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” Continental Congress (Thomas Jefferson), Declaration of Independence

Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (see excerpts to see both the positive and negative effects of the "division of labor")

1784: Immanuel Kant, "An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment"

“Enlightenment is man’s emergence from his self-imposed nonage [tutelage or youth]. Nonage is the inability to use one’s own understanding without another’s guidance … Dare to know. ‘Have the courage to use your own understanding,’ is therefore the motto of the Enlightenment.” – Immanuel Kant (1784)
 

1784: Immanuel Kant, "Idea for a Universal History from a Cosmopolitan Point of View"

1787: Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia (read "On Manufactures" and here although Jefferson changed some of his thinking about domestic -- i.e., cottage style -- manufacturing later); on African Americans see Query 14, "Laws"

"The political economists of Europe have established it as a principle that every state should endeavour to manufacture for itself: and this principle, like many others, we transfer to America, without calculating the difference of circumstance which should often produce a difference of result. In Europe the lands are either cultivated, or locked up against the cultivator. Manufacture must therefore be resorted to of necessity not of choice, to support the surplus of their people. But we have an immensity of land courting the industry of the husbandman. Is it best then that all our citizens should be employed in its improvement, or that one half should be called off from that to exercise manufactures and handicraft arts for the other? Those who labour in the earth are the chosen people of God, if ever he had a chosen people, whose breasts he has made his peculiar deposit for substantial and genuine virtue. It is the focus in which he keeps alive that sacred fire, which otherwise might escape from the face of the earth. Corruption of morals in the mass of cultivators is a phenomenon of which no age nor nation has furnished an example. It is the mark set on those, who not looking up to heaven, to their own soil and industry, as does the husbandman, for their subsistance, depend for it on the casualties and caprice of customers. Dependance begets subservience and venality, suffocates [291] the germ of virtue, and prepares fit tools for the designs of ambition. This, the natural progress and consequence of the arts, has sometimes perhaps been retarded by accidental circumstances: but, generally speaking, the proportion which the aggregate of the other classes of citizens bears in any state to that of its husbandmen, is the proportion of its unsound to its healthy parts, and is a good-enough barometer whereby to measure its degree of corruption. While we have land to labour then, let us never wish to see our citizens occupied at a work-bench, or twirling a distaff. Carpenters, masons, smiths, are wanting in husbandry: but, for the general operations of manufacture, let our work-shops remain in Europe. It is better to carry provisions and materials to workmen there, than bring them to the provisions and materials, and with them their manners and principles. The loss by the transportation of commodities across the Atlantic will be made up in happiness and permanence of government. The mobs of great cities add just so much to the support of pure government, as sores do to the strength of the human body. It is the manners and spirit of a people which preserve a republic in vigour. A degeneracy in these is a canker which soon eats to the heart of its laws and constitution." -- Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia

1789-1799: The French Revolution

1790: Immanuel Kant, The Critique of Judgment (excerpts)

1792: Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, available at Bartleby.com

"Those writers are particularly useful, in my opinion, who make man feel for man, independent of the station he fills, or the drapery of factitious sentiments. I then would fain convince reasonable men of the importance of some of my remarks, and prevail on them to weigh dispassionately the whole tenor of my observations.—I appeal to their understandings; and, as a fellow-creature, claim, in the name of my sex, some interest in their hearts. I entreat them to assist to emancipate their companion, to make her a help meet for them!
     Would men but generously snap our chains, and be content with rational fellowship instead of slavish obedience, they would find us more observant daughters, more affectionate sisters, more faithful wives, more reasonable mothers—in a word, better citizens. We should then love them with true affection, because we should learn to respect ourselves; and the peace of mind of a worthy man would not be interrupted by the idle vanity of his wife, nor the babes sent to nestle in a strange bosom, having never found a home in their mother's." -- Wollstonecraft, Vindication (Chapter 9)

1792-1794: The Second Revolution or radical phase in France; the Jacobins (the Girondins and the Montanards) gain control of the government and declare France to be a republic; the Jacobins begin arresting suspected counter-revolutionaries resulting in the Reign of Terror in which as many as 40,000 were executed.

1793: The French National Convention refused to admit women into government:

“Should women exercise political rights and meddle in affairs of government? To govern is to rule … by laws, the preparation of which demands extensive knowledge, unlimited attention and devotion, a strict immovability … again to govern is to direct and ceaselessly to correct the action of constituted authorities. Are women capable of these cares and of the qualities they call for? In general, we can answer, no. Very few examples would contradict this evaluation… Should women meet in political associations? … No, because they would be obliged to sacrifice the more important cares to which nature calls them. The private functions for which women are destined by their very nature … Each sex is called to the kind of occupation which is fitting for it …” – French National Convention debate, 1793

1793-1804: The Haitian Revolution

1794-1799: The French National Convention finally ends the Reign of Terror in July of 1794 and establishes a new government with a legislative branch and a three-man executive branch called the Directory; the government was unstable and often rigged elections to keep radical republicans and royalists out

1795: Marquis de Condorcet, Sketch for a Historical Picture of the Progress of the Human Mind (read the "Tenth Epoch" or excerpts)

“Our hopes for the future condition of the human species can be reduced to three important points: the destruction of inequality among nations; the progress of equality within each people; and the real betterment of humankind. Will all nations necessarily approach one day the state of civilization? … Are there regions of the globe where the inhabitants have been condemned by their environment never to enjoy liberty, never to exercise their reason? … We will find that past experience, observation of the progress made so far by the sciences and by civilization … yield the strongest grounds for believing that nature has set no limit to our hopes.” – Condorcet, Sketch [1795]

1798: Benjamin Rush, “Of the Mode of Education Proper in a Republic” (United States)

“I am not so sanguine as to suppose, that it is possible for man to acquire so much perfection from science, religion, liberty, and good government, as to cease to be mortal; but I am fully persuaded, that from the combined action of causes, which operate at once upon the reason, the moral faculty, the passions, the senses, the brain ... and the heart, it is possible to produce such a change in his moral character, as shall raise him to a resemblance of angels; nay, more, to the likeness of God himself.” – Benjamin Rush

1799-1815: The reign of Napoleon Bonaparte (France and the Empire)

1800s

1812-1815: Tensions with both France and England result in the U. S. War of 1812 with England; England occupies New York and Washington, D. C. (burning down part of the White House) until a settlement was reached in 1814 although news did not reach the U. S. until 1815

1814-1815: The Congress of Vienna; the return of Napoleon, the Hundred Days, the Battle of Waterloo and Napoleon’s exile to St. Helena off the coast of W. Africa

1825: World population reached 1 billion people (see 1927)

1829: George Stephenson's locomotive, the Rocket, debuts speeds as high as 48 kilometers (28 miles) per hour

1830: Steamboat traffic was up to 400 boats on the United States Mississippi River from 31 in 1815

1835: Andrew Ure, from The Philosophy of the Manufacturers

"The principle of the factory system then is, to substitute mechanical science for hand skill, and the partition of a process into its essential constituents, for the division or graduation of labour among artisans. On the handicraft plan, labour more or less skilled was usually the most expensive element of production.... but on the automatic plan, skilled labour gets progressively superseded, and will, eventually, be replaced by mere overlookers of machines.
     By the infirmity of human nature it happens, that the more skilful the workman, the more self-willed and intractable he is apt to become, and, of course, the less fit a component of a mechanical system, in which, by occasional irregularities, he may do great damage to the whole. The grand object therefore of the modern manufacturer is, through the union of capital and science, to reduce the task of his work-people to the exercise of vigilance and dexterity, - faculties, when concentred to one process, speedily brought to perfection in the young. In the infancy of mechanical engineering, a machine-factory displayed the division of labour in manifold gradations - the file, the drill, the lathe, having each its different workmen in the order of skill: but the dextrous hands of the filer and driller are now superseded by the planing, the key groove cutting, and the drilling-machines; and those of the iron and brass turners, by the self-acting slide-lathe...." Andrew Ure

1838-1839: The "Trail of Tears" -- The majority of the remaining Native Americans were forced to remove themselves from lands east of the Mississippi River

1848:
Revolutions break out in most major European states with the exceptions of England and Russia
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Manifesto of the Communist Party (excerpts) or in full at marxists.org and other sites

1850: 14,500 miles of railroad in Europe; 9,100 miles of rail in the United States (see 1880)

1850-1864: The Taiping Rebellion in China (est. 20-30 million deaths)

1856: Bessemer converter developed, steel production dramatically increases

1856-1869: Construction of the Suez Canal (deaths = 250,000 mainly due to cholera)

1861: Emancipation of the Russian serfs

1861-1865: The United States' Civil War (deaths = 620,000, 2% of the population; wounded = 418,206)

1862: Homestead Act (U. S.) encouraged would-be settlers to farm in the Great Plains (they will depopulate beginning in the 1930s); U. S. also passed the Morrill Act which established agricultural research stations and supported engineering education

1867: The Meiji "restoration" in Japan; beginning of Japanese industrialization

1869: Completion of the transcontinental railroad (U. S.)

1870: Agricultural labor = more than 50% of the population (U. S.)

1875-1900: The "Scramble for Africa" -- European division and occupation of the African continent (except for Liberia and Ethiopia)

1880: Both Europe and the United States had over 100,000 miles of railroad each (deaths = examples include the U. S. Central Pacific Railroad led to the deaths of at least 1,000 Chinese workers and the Semmering railway in Austria led to the deaths of 750 workers largely due to Cholera)

1881-1888: French phase of construction of the Panama Canal (see 1904; deaths = at least 20,000 mainly due to malaria and yellow fever)

1898: Battle of Omdurman (in the Sudan) at which the British defeated Sudanese warriors (nearly 20,000 Sudanese died in a matter of hours)

1899-1902: The South Africa or Boer War

1900s

1904-1914: American phase and completion of the Panama Canal (deaths greatly reduced due to the introduction of quinine to prevent malaria)

1910: U. S. agricultural population down to just over 30% of the population (see 1980s)

1913: Henry Ford introduces the automated assembly line to the manufacture of automobiles

1914-1918: World War I (deaths = roughly 10 million)

1920: 300,000 tractors were in use in the world (250,000 of them in the U. S., see 1990)

1927: World population reached 2 billion (see 1960)

1928-1960: World agricultural acreage grew from 1 to 1.4 billion acres; including lands absorbed from animal use = a 53% increase in arable lands

1929-1939: The Great Depression (local dates differ)

1930: Plant Patent Act allows for exclusive rights over hybrid plant varieties in the U. S.

1935-1955: Corn yields doubled; beginning of the “Green Revolution” around the world

1939-1945: World War II (war between China and Japan began in 1937; deaths = approximately 45 million)

1947: Japanese agricultural laborers = 52.4% of the population (see 1985)

1950-1981: Agricultural population declined by 50% in Columbia, Mexico and nearly so in Brazil and over 65% in the Dominican Republic, Venezuela, and Jamaica; similar trends followed in Tunisia, Morocco, and Algeria
 

1950-Today: World nitrogen use increased from just short of 5 million tons annually to about 80 million tons (more than all natural sources combined) mainly in fertilizers and pesticides

1960: World population reached 3 billion people (see 1990)

1990:

Sources: I have mainly drawn my factual information from Kloppenberg’s First the Seed, Richard Manning’s book Against the Grain: How Agriculture has Hijacked Civilization (New York: North Point Press, 2004), J. R. McNeill’s Something New Under the Sun: An Environmental History of the World (New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 2000), and Eric Hobsbawm’s The Age of Extremes: A History of the World, 1914-1991 (1994)