Topic 1. Introduction. The role of science and technology in the history of mankind

For people of our time, it is obvious that science and technology play a major, decisive role in modern society. However, this was not always the case. The ancient Greeks, with all their love for philosophy, looked at the craft of mechanics as if they were commoners, not worthy of a true scientist. The later world religions initially rejected science altogether. One of the fathers of the Christian church, Tertullian, argued that after the gospel there is no need for any other knowledge. Muslims reasoned in the same way. When the Arabs seized Alexandria, they burned the famous Library of Alexandria - Caliph Omar declared that if there is a Quran, then there is no need for other books. This dogma prevailed until the beginning of the New Age. In the XVII century, in the era of the revival of knowledge, the Inquisition pursued Galileo and burned Giordano Bruno at the stake. Inventors of new mechanisms were also persecuted; for example, in 1579 a mechanic was executed in Danzig, who created a ribbon weaving machine. The reason for the massacre was the fear of the municipality that this invention would cause unemployment among the weavers. Understanding the role of science came only in the Age of Enlightenment, when Jean-Baptiste Colbert, the famous minister of Louis XIV, created the first Academy. From that moment science began to receive organizational and financial support from the state.

The first achievement of the science was the discovery of the laws of mechanics - including the law of the world wide. These achievements have delighted the community; Voltaire wrote a book about Newton and dedicated the poem to the “heroic physicists”, the “new argonauts” of science. The philosophers of the XVIII century - E. B. Condillac, A. V. Turgot, J. A. Condorcet - sang the cult of Reason and created a “theory of progress”; until that time, no one knew what “progress” was. At the beginning of the 19th century, the “theory of progress” gave rise to positivism — the philosophy of science; this philosophy asserted that all phenomena and processes obey laws similar to the laws of mechanics, that these laws are about to be discovered, that the progress of science will solve all the problems of humanity. Indeed, the industrial revolution dramatically changed the lives of people, a new industrial society replaced the traditional pattern of rural life; amazing discoveries and inventions followed one after another, and the world was rapidly changing before the eyes of one generation. Following the “industrial society”, a “post-industrial” society was born, and then a “technotronic” society - and now it is difficult to even imagine where technological progress will lead humanity and what awaits us in the foreseeable future.

Thus, the history of mankind is divided into two unequal periods, the first period is the society before the industrial revolution, the “traditional society”. The second period is the period after the industrial revolution, the “industrial society”. In the "industrial society" the role of science and technology is more obvious than in the traditional, but in reality the development of traditional society is ultimately also determined by the development of technology.

The role of technology in the history of mankind is studied within the framework of a group of sociological theories, which are collectively called diffusionism. The most popular in diffusionism is the so-called "theory of cultural circles." The founder of this theory is the German historian and ethnographer Fritz Gröbner, who in 1911 systematized the elements of his scientific approach in the book Method in Ethnology. F. Grebner believed that similar phenomena in the culture of various peoples are explained by the origin of these phenomena from one center. Followers of Grebner believe that the most important elements of human culture appear only once and only in one place as a result of great, fundamental discoveries. In a general sense, fundamental discoveries are discoveries that allow expanding the ecological niche of an ethnos. These could be discoveries in the field of food production, for example, the domestication of plants, which makes it possible to increase the population density by tens and hundreds of times. This may be a new weapon that allows you to push the boundaries of habitat at the expense of neighbors. The effect of these discoveries is that they give a pioneer people a decisive advantage over other nations. Using these advantages, the people chosen by God begin to spread out of their habitat, seize and develop new territories. The former inhabitants of these territories are either exterminated, or driven out by aliens, or obey them and adopt their culture. The peoples in front of the offensive front, in turn, strive to adopt the weapons of the newcomers — diffusion of the fundamental elements of culture occurs, they spread to all sides, outlining the cultural circle, the area of ​​distribution of one or another fundamental discovery.

The theory of cultural circles in our time is a working tool for ethnographers and archaeologists; it allows you to reconstruct the realities of the past and find the origins of cultural relationships. For historians, it represents a method of philosophical understanding of events, a method that allows you to select the essence of what is happening. For example, for a long time mysterious causes of mass migrations of Aryan peoples in the XVIII-XVI centuries BC remained mysterious. er - At this time, the Aryans occupied part of India and Iran, broke through to the Middle East, and, according to some researchers, reached China. Only relatively recently, thanks to the discoveries of Russian archaeologists, it became clear that the invention of the battle chariot was the root cause of this tremendous wave of invasions - more precisely, the creation of horse carriages and the development of tactical tactics for the use of chariots. The war chariot was a fundamental discovery of the Aryans, and their migration from the Great Steppe was the spread of the cultural circle, archaeologically recorded as a burial area with horses and chariots. Another example of a fundamental discovery is the development of iron metallurgy. As you know, the methods of cold forging iron were mastered by the mountaineers of Asia Minor in the XIV century BC. er - however, this discovery for a long time had no effect on the life of ancient oriental societies. Only in the middle of the VIII century, the Assyrian king Tiglatpalasar III created the tactics of using iron for military purposes - he created the “royal regiment” armed with iron swords. It was a fundamental discovery, followed by a wave of Assyrian conquests and the creation of a great Assyrian power - a new cultural circle, the components of which were not only iron swords and the regular army, but all Assyrian traditions, including the autocratic power of the kings. Assyrian power died at the end of VII century BC. er as a result of the invasion of the Medes and the Scythians. The Scythians were the first people who learned to shoot at a gallop from a bow and who gave equestrian tactics to the Medes and Persians. The appearance of cavalry was a new fundamental discovery that caused a wave of conquests, which resulted in the birth of the World Persian Power. The Persians were replaced by the Macedonians, who created the Macedonian phalanx - a new weapon, against which the Persian cavalry was powerless. Phalanx personally demonstrated that such a fundamental discovery - until then, little-known small people suddenly broke into the arena of history, conquering half of Asia. The conquests of Alexander of Macedon gave rise to the cultural circle, which is called the Hellenistic civilization - on the edges of their sarissas the Macedonians spread Greek culture throughout the Middle East. At the beginning of the II century BC. the Macedonian phalanx was defeated by the Roman legions - the Romans created a maneuverable tactic of field battles; it was a new fundamental discovery that made Rome the master of the Mediterranean. The victories of the legions eventually gave rise to a new cultural circle - the world that was called Raman Pomana.

Thus, the cultural-historical school presents history as a dynamic picture of the spread of cultural circles generated by fundamental discoveries taking place in different countries. Essentially we are talking about the technological interpretation of the historical process, that historical events are determined by nothing more than the development of technology and technology - and in particular military technology.

• War is a great cause for the state, wrote the great Chinese philosopher and commander Sun Tzu. - War is the root of life and death, it is the way of existence and death. It needs to be understood.