Reviews for Pursuing Power and Light: Technology and Physics from James Watt to Albert Einstein

The average rating for Pursuing Power and Light: Technology and Physics from James Watt to Albert Einstein based on 2 reviews is 5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2020-12-28 00:00:00 BARRY COURTNEY This is a short book but it was life changing for me. I say this because though I've worked in the humanities and social sciences for years now I've always tried to read about science, physics, etc. but most works take a purely institutional approach, or simply biographical (basically lab discussions or conferences), both of which make it very difficult to understand the context that made science make sense. In this work, the context is technology, and one might say, the capital that made it possible (not a focus of the book, but especially clear with Edison as well as Watt). The focus on the dialectical (my words) relationship between science and technology is a breath of fresh air. Michael Faraday especially shines forth as a working class, mostly self taught figure who didn't know any math and yet made great contributions to science. The focus on technology makes this book "materialist" in a sense, as it relates the relationship that handicraft, manual labor had with the scientific theories of the day and vice versa. Technology then makes this work far more social in its history, as it grounds science and theory in the everyday practices that existed before science and, at times, their social context (the relationship of Carnot to Napoleon is a great example). Concretely, this work guides you with excellent (the best possible, considering the difficulty) prose, with the first few chapters hard to put down. The book slows down significantly around Maxwell, magnetism, and electricity, likely because they are the author's specialty (he knows "too much" about the nuances) but also because science and technology were changing so fast it's hard to keep track of the many terms used by competing theories. This section could use an update, nevertheless. I still hope this book could have a second volume, because not many can explain 19th century science, and 20th century gets even trickier. I also have to thank this book for introducing me to the great history of science series by Johns Hopkins, which include a few works that also help you understand the development of modern biology and chemistry. I highly recommend this book as a short, rich introduction to the European figures and the events around them that made 20th century science possible. While of course this book is lacking a connection to broader societal changes, I can't demand more from an introductory book that has already rekindled my love for the history of science.

Review # 2 was written on 2019-03-05 00:00:00 Cee Meei The book puts forward the argument that technological advances have been more important for scientific progress than the other way around. The evidence presented is pretty compelling. Very informative and thorough overall, while being easy to read'no easy task.