Klein Ursula. Technoscience in History: Prussia, 1750-1850

The MIT Press, 2020. — 595 p. — ISBN13: 9780262539296The systematic organization of research and expertise promoting technological innovation is characteristic of modern industrial societies. “Knowledge is power,” a slogan of the early modern British statesman and philosopher Francis Bacon, is currently on the tip of everyone’s tongue. But when exactly did Western societies begin to produce and accumulate technologically relevant intellectual capital? How did this happen? And what ingredients went into the making of this kind of knowledge? There have never been recipes for creativity and novelty, but nuclear power, space flight, superconductive materials, the Internet, intelligent robots, genetically transformed crops, microinvasive surgery, and laser medicine would not exist without the technological sciences and the exact natural sciences. When and how did these types of science come into existence? And what is the relationship between the natural and the technological sciences?