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Scientific research and instrumentation are crucial for military action today but they have not always been so. This collection investigates 500 years of the relationship between warfare, research, and instruments – both physical and intellectual – to understand this interaction. With U.S., English and French examples, contributors provide examples from army and naval history to show how governments and individuals made warfare scientific, developing instruments, stations, and organizations that furthered the cause. Some developments directly aided war efforts; others were parts of ‘normal science’ in peacetime; and others were relatively ineffective in directly bringing about military change. These developmental histories shed light on the origins of modern scientific warfare.
Contributors: Steven A. Walton; William A. Lynch; Jamel Ostwald; Seymour H. Mauskopf ; James R. Fleming; Gerard P. Scharfenberger; William M. McBride; David Alan Grier; Sebastien Soubiran; Kenton Kroker; Deborah J. Warner; Peter Galison.
Contributors: Steven A. Walton; William A. Lynch; Jamel Ostwald; Seymour H. Mauskopf ; James R. Fleming; Gerard P. Scharfenberger; William M. McBride; David Alan Grier; Sebastien Soubiran; Kenton Kroker; Deborah J. Warner; Peter Galison.
Price: $250.00
Pages: 416
Publisher: Brill
Imprint: Brill
Series: History of Warfare
Publication Date:
30 March 2005
ISBN: 9789004142817
Format: Hardcover
"This is a major accomplishment. Never before has a scholarly volume presented the interactions of science, technology, and warfare as a continuum from the Renaissance through the cold war era—not, at least, since John U. Nef ’s War and Human Progress (1952). Since then, historians and scientists have studiously ignored (and sometimes passionately denied) that a mutually constructive relationship has flourished between science and warfare ever since the sixteenth century. Steven A. Walton’s volume suggests how much historians of science and technology have now transcended such ideological bias."
Brett D. Steele, Technology and Culture, 2006
Brett D. Steele, Technology and Culture, 2006
Steven A. Walton, Ph.D. (1999), Toronto, teaches Science, Technology, and Society at Penn State University. Working on the intersection of military technology and scientific understanding, he currently is working on renaissance gunnery, nineteenth-century American ordnance manufacture, and post-Civil War torpedo research.