Reviews for Law, Politics, and Birth Control - C. Thomas Dienes - Hardcover

The average rating for Law, Politics, and Birth Control - C. Thomas Dienes - Hardcover based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2016-11-11 00:00:00 Kameron Duncan The main thesis of this book is to show how technology and science developed largely independently of each other throughout almost all of history. Science and Technology in World Literally is quite literally an undergraduate course book. In view of the complexity of the subject matter, I found this to be a boon rather then hindrance. The authors do an amazing job summarizing complex material. SciTechinWorHis (my abbreviation for the lengthy title) begins with a survey of the "pristine" civiliastions of earth: the middle east, india, china, south america, central america.. and... uh that's it. These are alll the original civilisations who started raising crops. The authors point out at that all of these civilisations were empires that built large hydraulic projects to help raise more food. Most of them also built large monuments (the pyramids in egypt). In these "prisitine" civilisations, the central government used "scientists" for calendar purposes. "Technology" was made these civilisation's possible in the first place- farming improvements and the maniuplation of water to supply large urban populations. In these pristine civilisations science was sponosored by the emperor to achieve practical ends. Technology enabled these civilisations in the first place. And so, technology precedes science. Indeed, technology is one of the things that makes us "human" whereas "science" only comes into play AFTER civilisation and "history" begin. In that way, the authors make the point- right at the beginning- that technology is quite central to being human, whereas science requires some form of organization. After running through Egypt, Mesopatamia, India, China, The Aztecs and the Inca, he moves into the "greek miracle" and we are off to the races. After the multi cultural preamble, the book gets locked on europe and chapter by chapter we move through greece, to rome, to the middle ages, to the scientific revolution. Two hundred pages and nine chapters in, this book settles into chapters consisting of mini bios: Copernicus, Galileo, Newton. Then with the advent of the industrial revolution, they march through the "modern" period. Throughout the writing is crisp, and as a non-science type, I found this book quite useful as a survey and introduction to the subject.

Review # 2 was written on 2014-12-11 00:00:00 Malcolm Haggerty Technology