Sample Material of Our IAS Mains GS Online Coaching Programme
Subject: General Studies (Paper 3 - Technology, Economic Development, Bio diversity, Environment, Security and Disaster Management)
Topic: Science And Technology-developments
SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY-DEVELOPMENTS AND APPLICATIONS AND EFFECTS IN EVERYDAY LIFE
SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY IN THE MODERN WORLD
It may not be an exaggeration to say that the Industrial Revolution in England gave a tremendous fillip to the growth of science and technology. The textile industry which needed large-scale bleaching and dyeing methods gave stimulus to practical chemistry and machine- technology. The transport of materials and finished products by sea necessitated navigational innovations, and it was not long before the sextant and chronometer were invented. So during the next few centuries, a chain of scientific discoveries and technological innovations continued to take place in the world. The people who marvelled at these things thought of establishing academies of science, and the industrialists who got immense benefits out of this felt the need for founding industrial research laboratories.
TERMS OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY DEFINED
By ‘science,’ we mean a “cumulative body of systematised knowledge gained by observation, experimentation, and reasoning”. The word ‘technology’ is de fined as “the fundamental application of scientific knowledge to the practical arts, resulting in improved industrial and commercial products of greater value to the people”. These two things became hand-maids of modern civilization. They marched hand in hand and rendered great services to the growth of human civilization. Scientific discoveries and inventions changed the very approach to life. There was the scientific temper pervading or developing in the Western societies. We call this as the intellectual revolution. Every aspect of nature came to be thoroughly studied and formed a separate subject-matter. Let us examine the achievements of each subject of natural sciences.
GEOLOGY
The credit for laying the foundation for the subject of geology goes to Nicolaus Steno, a Dane, who found curious fossils of marine life on the mountains. Abraham Werner (1750-1817) was a German scientist who contributed much to the study of crystallography and different forms of rocks. Giovanni Arduino (1713-95), an Italian scholar, worked on the geological chronology and correctly estimated the successive ages of the earth’s crust. His work was followed by an Englishman, James Hutton, in 1795. Louis Agassiz contributed much to marine life and the glacial geology by publishing his works on fresh water Fishes, research relating to fossil fishes, and study relating to glaciers during the 1840s. William Nichol (1810-70), a professor in Edinburgh rendered valuable contribution to the development of petrography, the microscopic study of rocks and fossils. His research methods later came to be applied by Henry Sorby for his study of crystals (1858). Charles Lyell (1797-1875) studied at Oxford and published his Principles of Geology. He was the first to “conceive the idea of classifying the tertiary formations of the Cenozoic Age into four divisions, Eocene, Oligocene, Micocence and Pliocene”. All these terms are in common use by the geologists. Thus, the development of Geo logy as a scientific subject for study extended its scope and widened the horizon of human knowledge of the earth we live in.