History of technology

Category: Tech & Engineering   -   Post Date: Sat 14 Jul, 2018   -   Published By: Ahmad Lone

STS is a new and expanding subject. Like most interdisciplinary programs, it emerged from the confluence of a variety of disciplines and disciplinary subfields, all of which had developed an interest — typically, during the 1960s or 1970s — in viewing science and technology as socially embedded enterprises.[1] The key disciplinary components of STS took shape independently, beginning in the 1960s, and developed in isolation from each other well into the 1980s, although Ludwik Fleck's monograph (1935) Genesis and Development of a Scientific Fact anticipated many of STS's key themes. In the 1970s Elting E. Morison founded the STS program at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), which served as a model. By 2011 111 STS programs were counted.[2]

Key Themes:

• History of technology, that examines technology in its social and historical context. Starting in the 1960s, some historians questioned technological determinism, a doctrine that can induce public passivity to technologic and scientific 'natural' development. At the same time, some historians began to develop similarly contextual approaches to the history of medicine.