Customer Reviews

The History of Science and Technology: A Browser's Guide to the Great Discoveries, Inventions, and the People Who MadeThem from the Dawn of Time to Today

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The editorial review pretty much says it all. 720 pages of data (with another 55 pages of index to make things even easier to find) makes for a very fat and heavy book. On the other hand, it takes quite a bit of space to pack in all the significant achievements in science and technology during the past 2,600,000 years.
Ten blocks of time are each introduced with an overview that summarizes the achievements during that period and places them in perspective. Following these essays, the chapters are filled with brief comments along a timeline about developments in twenty areas ranging from anthropology and astronomy to tools and transportation. It's claimed that there are more than 7,000 of these vignettes, so it's obvious that the coverage on any one is less than exhaustive. However, there are four columns to a page, so there's ample room for more than a quick mention. Beginning with the Medieval Era, the timeline condenses into an almost year by year examination. By the 18th century, each year is given substantial space.
Along with all this, there are more than 200 thumbnail biographies of noted scientists and inventors and almost 200 half or full page essays on topics of particular interest or significance such as early surgery, the history of pepper, group theory, and the development of radio.
Best of all, everything is explained with a simplicity that will please any interested lay person and an up-to-the-minute authority that will satisfy the experts. It will not give the reader any in-depth understanding of science or technology, and the bibliography is disappointingly limited. However, for pleasure browsing and interest piquing, this is a terrific value.

There are a number of encyclopedias and reference works covering the history of science and technology. The nature of most of these is to cover a topic ("Galileo," "Medieval Astronomy," etc.) in the format of an article. This particular work, however, takes a different approach: it reviews the history of science and technology chronologically, from prehistory to 2003. The author states clearly in the introduction, "the main body of the book is a chronicle of virtually everything that has happened in science and technology, including false steps and ignored precursors." Ambitious indeed.

This book divides the history of science and technology into ten sections: 1. Prehistory; 2. Antiquity; 3. Medieval Science and Technology; 4. The Renaissance and Scientific Revolution; 5. The Scientific Method; 6. The Enlightenment and Industrial Revolution; 7. The Nineteenth Century; 8. Modern Science and Technology; 9. Big Science and Post Industrial Society; and finally 10. The Information Age

While these are not conventional periods they work OK for the purposes of the book. However, the end result is to provide a century-by-century, decade-by-decade, year-by-year sampling of the different ideas and inventions as they happened. Because these developments are simply placed in order of the year they were produced, and not connected in any significant way to events that preceded them and made them possible, there is very little context to any of these discoveries and inventions. This is essentially a reference work at the high-school level.

With a book formatted in this way a good index is crucial. Fortunately, this book has a massive one. So, while you can't look up, say, "medieval astronomy," you can look up "astrolabe" and "Ptolemy" (assuming you already know that is what you should be looking for). Thus while this book offers very little in the way of context, it lives up to its subtitle as a "browser's guide." For those interested in a year-by-year approach to historical developments in science and technology, this is the book for you.

This book is a requirement for one of my college courses. There is so much information in this book about science, inventions, and discoveries. The negative; it's in date order. If you are trying to research by subject it would be difficult in this book. If you are search by time, this book is excellent. This is one of my books that I will keep after my class is completed.

This book originally retailed for $40. I ordered it for less than $10 (plus shipping!) I'm very pleased with this order as it's a great reference book that I'm sure I will use over and over again.

Large impressive book with no obvious errors noticed on perusal.

Better than expected and recommended.

I thought it was going to be a written history of science and technolgy in story form but it was a short snippits of science and technology in chronological form. I wanted background.

judge 1950