Authority, Liberty, and Automatic Machinery in Early Modern Europe Paperback / softback
by Otto Mayr
Part of the Johns Hopkins Studies in the History of Technology series
Paperback / softback
Description
Perhaps never in history has society been so fascinated with a single machine as when, in early modern Europe, the clock evolved into a major cultural image, widely used in literature, science, and especially Cartesian philosophy.
Yet in England, there was greater interest in a different class of technology-the feedback device, such as the safety valve on a steam engine, that could control itself internally;self-regulating systems were hallmarks not only of practical technology but also of the abstract theories of Newton and Adam Smith. Otto Mayr, the director of Germany's leading technological museum, explores the relationship between machinery, technological thought, and culture.
Contrasting England and the Continent, particularly in the eighteenth century, he uncovers a stikring pattern of technological metaphors applied to political systems-and lays the foundations of a new intellectual history of technology
Information
-
Out of stock
- Format:Paperback / softback
- Pages:288 pages
- Publisher:Johns Hopkins University Press
- Publication Date:26/09/1989
- Category:
- ISBN:9780801839399
Information
-
Out of stock
- Format:Paperback / softback
- Pages:288 pages
- Publisher:Johns Hopkins University Press
- Publication Date:26/09/1989
- Category:
- ISBN:9780801839399
