Technology and society

Technology and Society
Introduction
The relationship between technology and society is pivotal in the development of the modern era: so much of the world has been shaped by advancements in technology over the past 500 years that today’s society resembles little of what the world was like prior to when the printing press or gunpowder were invented. This paper will look at two inventions—the printing press, invented by Johannes Gutenberg in 1440, and the air pump, invented by Otto von Guericke in 1650—and show how these two inventions impacted the social, political and intellectual order of the day as well as how they interacted with other historical changes. Specifically, it will look at the role of the printing press in the spread of the Protestant Reformation and the role of the air pump in the expansion of technological and mechanical knowledge, which helped pave the way for flight.
The Printing Press
Prior to the printing press, society was at the mercy of the copyists. Manuscripts were hand-copied, hand-written, and if one wanted to “borrow” a text, that person had to copy it out by hand. Clerks and clerics were synonymous, as one of the roles of being a cleric in the Church was to faithfully guard its treasures of religious texts, philosophical texts and theological texts. Ideas were not easily spread around Europe as a result. One could not simply print off a bunch of tracts and pass them around. That all changed with the printing press. Suddenly it was easy to print off information and pass it around, circulate new ideas, and stir up change. That is exactly what happened in the Reformation: the printing press was a pivotal tool in ending the thousand year reign of Christendom. The old order linking the church and the state together through the promotion of one faith was overturned during the Reformation, which benefited mightily from the flow of information made possible via the printing press.
The Hundred Years War (1337-1453) had set the stage for this upheaval, as it was a war between the English and the French that had ramifications throughout Europe. It destabilized both France and England and fostered corruption among the clergy. Joan of Arc was burned to death by her own churchmen who objected to her defense of France against the English (they were sympathetic to the English cause and despised Joan for her boldness in reviving France’s fortunes when it seemed on the brink of defeat). Joan’s martyrdom added fuel to the fire that was the boiling cauldron of unrest throughout the church. Reformers sprang up in England, France, Germany and Switzerland—and they all used the printing press to undermine the Church’s teaching authority. In other words, the printing press helped to foment revolution that ultimately undid the old world order and ushered in the new.
The Air Pump
The air pump was quite different in terms of its impact on society. Rather than help create a revolution, it helped to advance the scientific age and move the modern era more towards a better understanding of how to think about air, air pressure, vacuums and flight. The principles inherent in the air pump created the groundwork for the steam engine and the locomotives that would soon dominate the West and transform the way people thought about travel, commerce, shipping, moving, living, and settling down. The railroad would be such an immense role player in the Industrial Revolution of the 19th century that all of modern life would be impacted—and, like the printing press’s role in the Reformation, the simple little air pump invention was at the heart of the transformation.
The air pump showed that a vacuum could be created, which led to the discovery of the electron and the entire field of electrical engineering thus bloomed thanks to the discovery of Guericke. Light bulbs, atomic energy, metal production—all of it came about thanks in large part to the invention of the air pump. All of modern life which depends so much upon electrical mechanics would not be possible were it not for the air pump and its first small step into understanding the nature of the physical world so full of so many latent mysteries waiting to be solved.
Invention and Society
Gutenberg refined the original wood press with a metal press, which allowed for moveable type. He could thus more easily swap out letters or words and print pamphlets and tracts even more quickly. Gutenberg’s press helped one of the leader Reformers, Martin Luther, to flood Germany with half a million copies of his pamphlets on how the Roman Church was corrupt and how the Catholic Mass was an abomination. These pamphlets helped to create a civil war in Germany between Catholics and Protestants and they and others like them helped support the Thirty Years War, which ended not with the restoration of the Church’s power but rather with the Peace of Westphalia, which was a purely political peace—one that did not in any way rely upon the oversight or even recognition of the Roman pontiff (Holsti, 1991).
Luther printed off his pamphlet To the Christian Nobility of the German Nation, which he used to undermine support for the authority of the Pope in Germany. Charles V urged the Pope to call a council (he would eventually call the Council of Trent to address the Protestant errors) and meanwhile had to deal with keeping his kingdom together as various members of the nobility were swayed to take up Luther’s cause and begin looting land from the Church. One of Luther’s most notorious tracts was On the Babylonian Captivity of the Church, in which he likened the Catholic Church in Rome to the whore of Babylon.
The printing press was not used solely to promote Protestantism, but the Protestants found it to be a helpful tool. The Gutenberg Bible, for example, was not a Protestant Bible (like the King James Version) but rather a printed publication of the Latin Vulgate translated centuries prior by St. Jerome. However, the Reformers were especially adamant that people have the Bible in their own tongue—not in the Latin—so bibles began appearing that were written in English, French, German and so on.
The printing press brought together the technology of paper, oil based ink, moveable type, screw-type press (wine or olive) and used it to propel the information age forward, just as today the information age has been propelled further even more thanks to semi-conductors and other components. The printing press (punch and mold system) allowed for mass production just as today’s Internet allows for mass dissemination of news. This tool was perfect for Luther who wanted to attack the Church and introduce a new system of socio-political and religious thought in Germany. Others were equally impressed. Calvin in France soon took up the mantle of Protestantism, and Henry VIII, who originally condemned Luther and identified him as a heretic, ended up becoming condemned himself when he denied the authority of the Pope over the Church and declared himself head of the English church. Thanks to the flying printing presses, the information and disinformation campaigns fueled the whirlwind of ideological fires that pushed Europe out of the Old World, through the pits of war and persecution, and into the brave new world of technology and scientific progress all around today.
Nothing helped to advance that technological advancement like the air pump, which was a doorway into the next evolution of scientific understanding of nature. Germany, which was where the Protestant Reformation got underway with such force, was another source of inspiration for change. Guericke’s air pump came from that land that has introduced so much technological innovation to the world over the past century. The air pump was the major contributor—the catalyst—that sparked the new push towards electrical engineering.
One work that has been instrumental in debating the intellectual, social and political impact of the ideas contained in the air pump is “Leviathan and the Air-pump” by Shapiro and Shaffer (1985). That work referred to the Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes, an Enlightenment philosopher and Boyle’s air pump which was a derivative of the air pump by Guericke. The book essentially puts the two methods of intellectual discourse side by side one another and examines the reasons and methods of experimentation. Hobbes devoted himself to natural philosophy yet his views have been rejected somewhat over the centuries because they projected the Enlightenment worldview onto nature instead of simply looking at nature and attempting to understand it objectively without any philosophical bias. The air pump discovery on the other hand serves as the illustration of man examining nature objectively and coming to understanding what is happening in a vacuum and thereby advancing scientific progress.
Boyle’s “A Continuation of Experiments Physico-Mechanical” was published in 1669 and discussed how the researcher had made new discoveries about the relationship of the pressure of gas and its volume. Boyle helped to lay the foundation for more examination of the vacuum, which would not really come for another two centuries. His publication however also showed the need for more evaluation. He discussed at length the difficulty of creating air pumps that were consistent in effect and he used scientific examination to see why each pump was different, what parts were affecting what other aspects of the instrument, how it worked (or did not work) under water and why there were so many inconsistencies among his various models, based on scales, measures, bladders, gauges, and other various parts of the pump that were changed out (Shapiro & Schaffer, 1985). All in all, Boyle’s work demonstrated that ideas about nature needed to be exhaustively studied rather than speculated upon by philosophers who were projecting their own beliefs onto nature. That perspective helped to create a new environment in which intense scrutiny of the laws of nature would inevitably lead to the Industrial Revolution.
Conclusion
In conclusion, the relationship between technology and society can be seen starting with the invention of the printing press by Gutenberg—a machine that helped the Protestant Reformation totally transform the religious, social and political order of Europe in the 16th century. The printing press made it easier than ever before for new ideas to be spread: it was like the first iteration of the information highway. That invention was followed by the air pump, which showed how vacuums can be created, which led to the discovery of the electron, the steam engine and so on. Guericke’s and then Boyle’s air pumps showed that nature needed to be studied to be understood—not pontificated about without experimentation.
References
Holsti, K. (1991). Peace and Conflict: Armed Conflicts and International Order 1648-
1989. NY: Cambridge University Press.
Shapiro, S. & Schaffer, S. (1985). Leviathan and the Air-pump. New Jersey: Princeton
University Press.