Machines as the measure of men : science, technology, and ideologies of Western dominance
Adas explores the ways in which European perceptions of their scientific and technological superiority shaped their interactions with people overseas. Beginning with the early decades of overseas expansion in the 16th century, he traces the impact of scientific and technological advances on European attitudes towards Asians and Africans and on their policies for dealing with colonized societies. Adas examines British and French thinking in the 19th century, when scientific and technological measures of human worth shaped their notion of racial supremacy and "civilizing mission" ideology, and why after World War I they rejected this guage of human worth, and looked for alternative measures. ISBN 0-8014-2303-1: $29.95
History
xii, 430 pages : illustrations ; 25 cm.
9780801423031, 9780801497605, 0801423031, 0801497604
19351939
Part I: Before the Industrial Revolution
First encounters: impressions of material culture in an age of exploration
The ascendancy of science: shifting views of non-Western peoples in the era of the Enlightenment
Part II: The age of industrialization
Global hegemony and the rise of technology as the main measure of human achievement
Attributes of the dominant: scientific and technological foundations of the civilizing mission
The limits of diffusion: science and technology in the debate over the African and Asian capacity for acculturation
Part III: The twentieth century
The Great War and the assault on scientific and technological measures of human worth
Epilogue: Modernization theory and the revival of the technological standard
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