Download or read book Science at the Bar written by Sheila Jasanoff and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2009-07-01 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Issues spawned by the headlong pace of developments in science and technology fill the courts. How should we deal with frozen embryos and leaky implants, dangerous chemicals, DNA fingerprints, and genetically engineered animals? The realm of the law, to which beleaguered people look for answers, is sometimes at a loss—constrained by its own assumptions and practices, Sheila Jasanoff suggests. This book exposes American law’s long-standing involvement in constructing, propagating, and perpetuating a variety of myths about science and technology. Science at the Bar is the first book to examine in detail how two powerful American institutions—both seekers after truth—interact with each other. Looking at cases involving product liability, medical malpractice, toxic torts, genetic engineering, and life and death, Jasanoff argues that the courts do not simply depend on scientific findings for guidance—they actually influence the production of science and technology at many different levels. Research is conducted and interpreted to answer legal questions. Experts are selected to be credible on the witness stand. Products are redesigned to reduce the risk of lawsuits. At the same time the courts emerge here as democratizing agents in disputes over the control and deployment of new technologies, advancing and sustaining a public dialogue about the limits of expertise. Jasanoff shows how positivistic views of science and the law often prevent courts from realizing their full potential as centers for a progressive critique of science and technology. With its lucid analysis of both scientific and legal modes of reasoning, and its recommendations for scholars and policymakers, this book will be an indispensable resource for anyone who hopes to understand the changing configurations of science, technology, and the law in our litigious society.

Download or read book Technology in America written by Carroll Pursell and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 1990-04-12 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a collection of essays focusing on the spread and elaboration of American technology, and on the men and women who shaped it. Beginning with technology of America's Wooden Age, the authors discuss Jefferson's perception of the role of technology in a democratic society; the American System of Manufactures of Eli Whitney and others; Thomas P. Jones and the institutionalization of industrialization in educational reforms; McCormick and the spread of industrialization to agriculture; and James Eads and the rise of transportation networks. ISBN 0-262-66049-0 (pbk.): $9.95.

Download or read book Science and Technology in Nineteenth Century America written by Todd Timmons and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2005-09-30 with total page 222 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The 19th Century was a period of tremendous change in the daily lives of the average Americans. Never before had such change occurred so rapidly or and had affected such a broad range of people. And these changes were primarily a result of tremendous advances in science and technology. Many of the technologies that play such an central role in our daily life today were first invented during this great period of innovation—everything from the railroad to the telephone. These inventions were instrumental in the social and cultural developments of the time. The Civil War, Westward Expansion, the expansion and fall of slave culture, the rise of the working and middle classes and changes in gender roles—none of these would have occurred as they did had it not been for the science and technology of the time. Science and Technology in Nineteenth-Century America chronicles this relationship between science and technology and the revolutions in the lives of everyday Americans. The volume includes a discussion of: Transportation—from the railroad and steamship to the first automobiles appearing near the end of the century. Communication—including the telegraph, the telephone, and the photograph Industrialization— how the growing factory system impacted the lives of working men and women Agriculture—how mechanical devices such as the McCormick reaper and applications of science forever altered how farming was done in the United States Exploration and navigations—the science and technology of the age was crucial to the expansion of the country that took place in the century, and The book includes a timeline and a bibliography for those interested in pursuing further research, and over two dozen fascinating photos that illustrate the daily lives of Americans in the 19th Century Part of the Daily Life through History series, this title joins Science and Technology in Colonial America in a new branch of the series-titles specifically looking at how science innovations impacted daily life.

Download or read book America by Design written by David F. Noble and published by Knopf. This book was released on 2013-01-23 with total page 574 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hailed a “significant contribution” by The New York Times, David Noble’s book America by Design describes the factors that have shaped the history of scientific technology in the United States. Since the beginning, technology and industry have been undeniably intertwined, and Noble demonstrates how corporate capitalism has not only become the driving force behind the development of technology in this country but also how scientific research—particularly within universities—has been dominated by the corporations who fund it, who go so far as to influence the education of the engineers that will one day create the technology to be used for capitalist gain. Noble reveals that technology, often thought to be an independent science, has always been a means to an end for the men pulling the strings of Corporate America—and it was these men that laid down the plans for the design of the modern nation today.

Download or read book Rising Above the Gathering Storm written by Institute of Medicine and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2007-03-08 with total page 590 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a world where advanced knowledge is widespread and low-cost labor is readily available, U.S. advantages in the marketplace and in science and technology have begun to erode. A comprehensive and coordinated federal effort is urgently needed to bolster U.S. competitiveness and pre-eminence in these areas. This congressionally requested report by a pre-eminent committee makes four recommendations along with 20 implementation actions that federal policy-makers should take to create high-quality jobs and focus new science and technology efforts on meeting the nation's needs, especially in the area of clean, affordable energy: 1) Increase America's talent pool by vastly improving K-12 mathematics and science education; 2) Sustain and strengthen the nation's commitment to long-term basic research; 3) Develop, recruit, and retain top students, scientists, and engineers from both the U.S. and abroad; and 4) Ensure that the United States is the premier place in the world for innovation. Some actions will involve changing existing laws, while others will require financial support that would come from reallocating existing budgets or increasing them. Rising Above the Gathering Storm will be of great interest to federal and state government agencies, educators and schools, public decision makers, research sponsors, regulatory analysts, and scholars.

Download or read book American Technological Sublime written by David E. Nye and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 1996-02-28 with total page 388 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: American Technological Sublime continues the exploration of the social construction of technology that David Nye began in his award-winning book Electrifying America. Here Nye examines the continuing appeal of the "technological sublime" (a term coined by Perry Miller) as a key to the nation's history, using as examples the natural sites, architectural forms, and technological achievements that ordinary people have valued intensely. Technology has long played a central role in the formation of Americans' sense of selfhood. From the first canal systems through the moon landing, Americans have, for better or worse, derived unity from the common feeling of awe inspired by large-scale applications of technological prowess. American Technological Sublime continues the exploration of the social construction of technology that David Nye began in his award-winning book Electrifying America. Here Nye examines the continuing appeal of the "technological sublime" (a term coined by Perry Miller) as a key to the nation's history, using as examples the natural sites, architectural forms, and technological achievements that ordinary people have valued intensely. American Technological Sublime is a study of the politics of perception in industrial society. Arranged chronologically, it suggests that the sublime itself has a history - that sublime experiences are emotional configurations that emerge from new social and technological conditions, and that each new configuration to some extent undermines and displaces the older versions. After giving a short history of the sublime as an aesthetic category, Nye describes the reemergence and democratization of the concept in the early nineteenth century as an expression of the American sense of specialness. What has filled the American public with wonder, awe, even terror? David Nye selects the Grand Canyon, Niagara Falls, the eruption of Mt. St. Helens, the Erie Canal, the first transcontinental railroad, Eads Bridge, Brooklyn Bridge, the major international expositions, the Hudson-Fulton Celebration of 1909, the Empire State Building, and Boulder Dam. He then looks at the atom bomb tests and the Apollo mission as examples of the increasing ambivalence of the technological sublime in the postwar world. The festivities surrounding the rededication of the Statue of Liberty in 1986 become a touchstone reflecting the transformation of the American experience of the sublime over two centuries. Nye concludes with a vision of the modern-day "consumer sublime" as manifested in the fantasy world of Las Vegas.

Download or read book Science for the People written by Sigrid Schmalzer and published by . This book was released on 2018 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For the first time, this book compiles original documents from Science for the People, the most important radical science movement in U.S. history. Between 1969 and 1989, Science for the People mobilized American scientists, teachers, and students to practice a socially and economically just science, rather than one that served militarism and corporate profits. Through research, writing, protest, and organizing, members sought to demystify scientific knowledge and embolden "the people" to take science and technology into their own hands. The movement's numerous publications were crucial to the formation of science and technology studies, challenging mainstream understandings of science as "neutral" and instead showing it as inherently political. Its members, some at prominent universities, became models for politically engaged science and scholarship by using their knowledge to challenge, rather than uphold, the social, political, and economic status quo. Highlighting Science for the People's activism and intellectual interventions in a range of areas -- including militarism, race, gender, medicine, agriculture, energy, and global affairs -- this volume offers vital contributions to today's debates on science, justice, democracy, sustainability, and political power.

Download or read book Expanding Underrepresented Minority Participation written by Institute of Medicine and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2011-07-29 with total page 229 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In order for the United States to maintain the global leadership and competitiveness in science and technology that are critical to achieving national goals, we must invest in research, encourage innovation, and grow a strong and talented science and technology workforce. Expanding Underrepresented Minority Participation explores the role of diversity in the science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) workforce and its value in keeping America innovative and competitive. According to the book, the U.S. labor market is projected to grow faster in science and engineering than in any other sector in the coming years, making minority participation in STEM education at all levels a national priority. Expanding Underrepresented Minority Participation analyzes the rate of change and the challenges the nation currently faces in developing a strong and diverse workforce. Although minorities are the fastest growing segment of the population, they are underrepresented in the fields of science and engineering. Historically, there has been a strong connection between increasing educational attainment in the United States and the growth in and global leadership of the economy. Expanding Underrepresented Minority Participation suggests that the federal government, industry, and post-secondary institutions work collaboratively with K-12 schools and school systems to increase minority access to and demand for post-secondary STEM education and technical training. The book also identifies best practices and offers a comprehensive road map for increasing involvement of underrepresented minorities and improving the quality of their education. It offers recommendations that focus on academic and social support, institutional roles, teacher preparation, affordability and program development.

Download or read book History of Science in United States written by Marc Rothenberg and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2012-10-12 with total page 637 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This Encyclopedia examines all aspects of the history of science in the United States, with a special emphasis placed on the historiography of science in America. It can be used by students, general readers, scientists, or anyone interested in the facts relating to the development of science in the United States. Special emphasis is placed in the history of medicine and technology and on the relationship between science and technology and science and medicine.

Download or read book Technology and the African American Experience written by Bruce Sinclair and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2004 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The intersection of race and technology: blackcreativity and the economic and social functions of the myth ofdisengenuity.

Download or read book Science and Technology in World History written by James Edward McClellan and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2006 with total page 504 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Publisher description

Download or read book Competing with the Soviets written by Audra J. Wolfe and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2013-01-01 with total page 177 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A synthetic account of how science became a central weapon in the ideological Cold War. Honorable Mention for the Forum for the History of Science in America Book Prize of the Forum for the History of Science in America For most of the second half of the twentieth century, the United States and its allies competed with a hostile Soviet Union in almost every way imaginable except open military engagement. The Cold War placed two opposite conceptions of the good society before the uncommitted world and history itself, and science figured prominently in the picture. Competing with the Soviets offers a short, accessible introduction to the special role that science and technology played in maintaining state power during the Cold War, from the atomic bomb to the Human Genome Project. The high-tech machinery of nuclear physics and the space race are at the center of this story, but Audra J. Wolfe also examines the surrogate battlefield of scientific achievement in such diverse fields as urban planning, biology, and economics; explains how defense-driven federal investments created vast laboratories and research programs; and shows how unfamiliar worries about national security and corrosive questions of loyalty crept into the supposedly objective scholarly enterprise. Based on the assumption that scientists are participants in the culture in which they live, Competing with the Soviets looks beyond the debate about whether military influence distorted science in the Cold War. Scientists’ choices and opportunities have always been shaped by the ideological assumptions, political mandates, and social mores of their times. The idea that American science ever operated in a free zone outside of politics is, Wolfe argues, itself a legacy of the ideological Cold War that held up American science, and scientists, as beacons of freedom in contrast to their peers in the Soviet Union. Arranged chronologically and thematically, the book highlights how ideas about the appropriate relationships among science, scientists, and the state changed over time.

Download or read book Technology in America written by Alan I. Marcus and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2018-04-05 with total page 424 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Now in a thoroughly updated new edition, this successful textbook surveys the history of technology in America from the 1600s to the 21st century. Alan I Marcus and Howard P. Segal explore the effect society, culture, politics and economics have had upon technological advances, and place the evolution of American technology within the broader context of the development of systems such as transportation and communications. This unique book connects phenomena such as colonial printing presses with the American Revolution; early photographs with the creation of an allegedly unique American character; and high-tech advances in biotechnology with a growing desire for individual autonomy. This is an ideal resource for undergraduate and postgraduate students of the history of technology, the history of science, and American history.

Download or read book Itineraries of Expertise written by Andra B. Chastain and published by University of Pittsburgh Press. This book was released on 2020-03-10 with total page 345 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Itineraries of Expertise contends that experts and expertise played fundamental roles in the Latin American Cold War. While traditional Cold War histories of the region have examined diplomatic, intelligence, and military operations and more recent studies have probed the cultural dimensions of the conflict, the experts who constitute the focus of this volume escaped these categories. Although they often portrayed themselves as removed from politics, their work contributed to the key geopolitical agendas of the day. The paths traveled by the experts in this volume not only traversed Latin America and connected Latin America to the Global North, they also stretch traditional chronologies of the Latin American Cold War to show how local experts in the early twentieth century laid the foundation for post–World War II development projects, and how Cold War knowledge of science, technology, and the environment continues to impact our world today. These essays unite environmental history and the history of science and technology to argue for the importance of expertise in the Latin American Cold War.

Download or read book America as Second Creation written by David E. Nye and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2004-09-17 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An exploration of the dialogue that emerged after 1776 between different visions of what it meant to use new technologies to transform the land. After 1776, the former American colonies began to reimagine themselves as a unified, self-created community. Technologies had an important role in the resulting national narratives, and a few technologies assumed particular prominence. Among these were the axe, the mill, the canal, the railroad, and the irrigation dam. In this book David Nye explores the stories that clustered around these technologies. In doing so, he rediscovers an American story of origins, with America conceived as a second creation built in harmony with God's first creation. While mainstream Americans constructed technological foundation stories to explain their place in the New World, however, marginalized groups told other stories of destruction and loss. Native Americans protested the loss of their forests, fishermen resisted the construction of dams, and early environmentalists feared the exhaustionof resources. A water mill could be viewed as the kernel of a new community or as a new way to exploit labor. If passengers comprehended railways as part of a larger narrative about American expansion and progress, many farmers attacked railroad land grants. To explore these contradictions, Nye devotes alternating chapters to narratives of second creation and to narratives of those who rejected it.Nye draws on popular literature, speeches, advertisements, paintings, and many other media to create a history of American foundation stories. He shows how these stories were revised periodically, as social and economic conditions changed, without ever erasing the earlier stories entirely. The image of the isolated frontier family carving a homestead out of the wilderness with an axe persists to this day, alongside later images and narratives. In the book's conclusion, Nye considers the relation between these earlier stories and such later American developments as the conservation movement, narratives of environmental recovery, and the idealization of wilderness.

Download or read book Science and Technology in Colonial America written by William E. Burns and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2005-09-30 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Science and technology are central to history of the United States, and this is true of the Colonial period as well. Although considered by Europeans as a backwater, the people living in the American colonies had advanced notions of agriculture, surveying, architecture, and other technologies. In areas of natural philosophy—what we call science—such figures as Benjamin Franklin were admired and respected in the scientific capitals of Europe. This book covers all aspects of how science and technology impacted the everyday life of Americans of all classes and cultures. Science and Technology in Everyday Life in Colonial America covers a wide range of topics that will interest students of American history and the history of science and technology: * Domestic technology—how colonial women devised new strategies for day-to-day survival * Agricultural—how Native Americans and African slaves influenced the development of a American system of agriculture * War—how the frequent battles during the colonial period changed how industry made consumer goods This volume includes myriad examples of the impact science and technology had on the lives of individual who lived in the New World.

Download or read book Maximizing U S Interests in Science and Technology Relations with Japan written by National Research Council and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 1997-08-23 with total page 148 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: