Overview

The philosophers of the Enlightenment believed that humankind could maximize happiness through the application of science and technology. By the end of the twentieth century, however, several technological disasters had caused many people to rethink the role of technology in society.

Background

The seventeenth century was a turning point in the technological development of the world. Within the intellectual establishment of the West a significant change in how truth was identified took place. There was a rejection of the Aristotelian mode of syllogistic deduction in favor of the logic of induction, which is based upon individual experience. The new natural philosophers referred to the universe as the "Book of Nature," which could be understood through experiment; the universe was created by God and operated under a series of natural laws. These laws could...