Human Beings and Their Control Over Nature in the Twentieth Century Throughout the history of western civilization, the human race has had a continuing relationship with nature and the environment. Progress has improved the way in which human beings use natural resources and the ways in which they work together to improve the quality of life. Developments in science and technology of the twentieth-century have greatly improved the way that humans interact. As the technological advancements of the twentieth-century progressed from the discovery of vaccinations to computer age technology, humans have learned to take a considerable amount of control over their lives and the environment as compared to the past, in which humans had very little control over nature. These progressions have had positive and negative effects on society. Positively, medical research has been able to allow the human race to lengthen life span and improve the work of genetics. Science has connected the globe through computer technology. The negative aspects of progression have some far-reaching consequences, such as new forms of imperialism, the atomic bomb, and destruction of the environment. During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, poor living conditions and disease plagued western civilization. Europeans had little control over their environment. The Old Regime way of life caused a fear of change and new ways of thinking were usually condemned. The economy of subsistence reflected the general outlook of society. Little or no growth took place. The mindset during this time period was, in fact, ìbetter safe than sorryî. Improvements, however, were made during the Industrial Revolution and throughout the twentieth centur... ... middle of paper ... .... 9. Rogers 524. 10. Rogers 524. 11. Rogers 528. 12. Rogers 385. 13. Rogers 535. 14. Rogers 382. 15. Donald Kagan, et al, The Western Heritage Brief Edition Volume II: Since 1648 (Upper Saddle River NJ: Prentice Hall, Inc., 1996) 697. 16. Kagan 747. 17. Kagan 747. Bibliography - Riehl, Nikolaus and Frederick Seitz. Stalin's Captive: Nikolaus Riehl and the Soviet Race for the Bomb. The United States of America: American Chemical Society and the Chemical Heritage Foundation, 1996. This book largely details the experiences of the scientist, Nikolaus Riehl, who spent 10 years as a captive of the Soviet Union. He worked on the production of pure uranium for the Soviet nuclear bomb program. This relates to the topic of Human Beings and Their Control Over Nature with respect to the production of nuclear weapons.
Despite all of the security used by the officials in charge of the “Manhattan Project,” soviet spies managed to leak information to the Soviet Union that allowed them to create a nuclear bomb of their own. Klaus Fuchs, an important scientist to the “Manhattan Project,” managed to move throughout the project and provide crucial information to the Soviets. David Greenglass also provi...
In today’s society, to be even considered as cool, one must learn how to become modern and contemporary. By the day, the elderly pursue the quality of being young again. One disastrous method of doing so is through technology, which leads to arguments and frustration. In the 1800s, the use of modernization played an important role in the possession of power. The first country to start the race to modernization was Great Britain. This period of time was called the industrial revolution. Not only did the industrial revolution bring vital advancements to Great Britain, but also fatal diseases. Therefore, the industrial revolution positively and negatively affected Great Britain and its people.
The economy of many nations was grounded on the putting-out system and the cottage-industry, prior the arrival of the Industrial Revolution. Nevertheless following the 17th century, the innovation of the steam engine revolutionized the energy possibility of man. Europe’s cities experienced an upsurge of growth due to this machine. In addition, laissez-fare capitalism was introduced and started to be implemented by numerous governments. As a response of this technical progression and economic revolution, particular altercations occurred fundamentally, and played a negative effect on the criteria of life for the urban and rural working classes. The negative effects caused by these fundamental changes on both working classes played out economically, socially, as well as on the workplace conditions.
John McNeill, in his informative book, Something New Under the Sun, he discusses how the twentieth century brought the world into a steady decline. Although the world has improved technology-wise, it has also had a decline that overshadows the improvement we have seen. McNeil goes on to prove that it is humans, with our new technology are the reason behind this fateful decline. The world’s population has positively and negatively affected the twentieth century world by bringing “ecological changes” that will forever change the world(4).
This book is a great source for the study of humans and nature during the period of the Industrial Revolution. In this book the social impact of the Industrial Revolution is approached through an analysis of the labour force in 1851 and then leads into an assessment of family life and living standards during this controversial period.
Throughout history, human beings have struggled to achieve control over nature. Now, in the twentieth century, with all of the scientific advances in computers and medicine, humans have come closer than ever to reaching this ultimate goal. However, along with the benefits of these new and rapidly increasing scientific advancements come moral, ethical and social issues that need to be given consideration. The Computer Revolution has not only vastly improved communication and produced amazing amounts of information, but has raised questions of human rights, privacy and social implications. While medical research has achieved medical benefits not even conceivable in the past, it has also raised major ethical and moral issues. Humans must consider all of these things when making decisions or judgments about human control over nature.
Industrial Revolution, which took place over much of the nineteenth century, had many advantages. It provided people with tools for a better life; people were no longer dependent on the land for all of their goods. The Industrial Revolution made it possible for people to control nature more than they ever had before. However, now people were dependent on the new machines of the Industrial Age (1). The Revolution brought with it radical changes in the textile and engine worlds; it was a time of reason and innovations. Although it was a time of progress, there were drawbacks to the headway made in the Industrial Revolution. Granted, it provided solutions to the problems of a world without industry. However, it also created problems with its mechanized inventions that provided new ways of killing. Ironically, there was much public faith in these innovations; however, these were the same inventions that killed so many and contributed to a massive loss of faith. These new inventions made their debut in the first world war (2) ).
to blame technology or religion, the step we need to take now is to figure
Throughout history many things in general have been improved upon. Four major improvement areas are: warfare, medicine, education of society, and technology. All of these improvements have brought with them positive effects. Warfare has allowed oppressed people to rule themselves; medicine has saved countless lives with vaccines and treatment programs; education of societies has allowed people to make their dreams come true; and, advancements in technology have made the previous three possible. With these positive effects also come negative effects, which are seen on a grand scale. Advancement in warfare has caused numerous deaths, medicine has advanced to the point where ethical questions arise because of cloning and stem cell research, the education of society in addition with the advancement in technology have allowed these negative advancements to be achieved.
Throughout human history the fundamental driving force behind any change culturally or technologically is the human goal. The innate human ability for abstract thought has made us able to project a plan for our own future. Originally our foresight directly pertained to our own survival, making our way to the next meal, and perpetually intertwined with our interaction with and relationship to our own environment. The living environments that we experience include the places where we live, those that we visit, and anything else that constitutes what we may see or do. Therefore our relationship to the environment which we experience is very location-dependant in terms of resources and environmental factors. For example, nomadic people who live in the desert lead drastically different lives to those who live in the rainforest or those who live in cities. In this way many different human cultures developed all over earth, and have had varying effects on the development of culture and technology. I believe that these different cultures provided different goals for each society that motivated technological innovations at different time and for different reasons. As we all, no doubt, see everyday the advent of technology has greatly affected our living environment. Twenty years ago hardly anyone had heard of the internet, and now it’s a worldwide information superhighway. People have made their lives revolve solely around the internet; fortunes have been won and lost on the computer industry. But there are countless other examples of how technology has molded and changed cultures, and so I also believe that technology and culture have a symbiotic relationship; they feed off of and grow from one another similar to what we have dubbed a feedback loop in our class discussions.
Before eighteenth century we were plunged in the depths of ignorance and unawareness of scientific knowledge. Without having an adequate scientific knowledge, our ancestors had buried their common senses deep under the mask of ignorant personalities but it was the scientific revolution in nineteenth century that unsheathed it and now we can see that the whole world is globalized due to this scientific revolution. Science has affected human life and culture in many ways and requires numerous books to discuss its impacts on us. So in this essay my goal is only to describe the impacts on health and behavior in comparison with the past and present.
The environment can be something as vast as global weather patterns or as simple as the desert regions. With the advent of many technologies, the delicate balance of the environment has been upset (Elliot, 1961, p. 392). Strip mining, slash and burn farming, damming of rivers, and the extinction of many species of plants and animals have all lead to the permanent changing of the environment. Some say the change is for good, and others say for the change is for worse, but what is good about the ozone hole, rising global temperatures, and over irrigation causing the spread of arid conditions in once fertile locations (Eitzen, 2000, p. 79).
Progression is a natural occurrence in human life as well as society. Natural curiosity, coupled with a desire for self improvement, has propelled mankind into the age of science and technology. As society progresses, so, too, does human life continue to advance and improve. Medical advances have allowed humans to overcome disease and illness, and ultimately prolog human life. For example, the success of stem cell research has granted doctors the resources to replace damaged cells and begin to repair severe injuries. The amount of scientific progress making its way into society is astounding. However, eventually the question emerges, how far should these advancements be allowed to continue? And at what point do humans bypass medical need to such advances and begin to strip themselves of their humanity? The question of how far humans should allow science to penetrate the natural makeup of humans is delicate, and not one that will result in an unanimous opinion. Yet, before humans can address this subject, they must question whether or not they have the right to alter nature to any extent.
The evolution of technology has changed society in both positive and negative ways. People all over the world use and benefit from modern technology. Technology has simplified the access to many tools people need in education, medicine, communication, transportation, etc. However, using it too often has its drawbacks as well. In most cases, the time of finishing projects is cut by more than half with the help of technology. Many people do not realize that technology has its negative affects society as well, and its rapid advances has changed life for worse in a number of different ways.
The Scientific Revolution, perhaps one of the most significant examples of human beingsí relationship with the natural world, changed the way seventeenth and eighteenth century society operated. The power of human knowledge has enabled intellectual, economical, and social advances seen in the modern world. The Scientific Revolution which included the development of scientific attitudes and skepticism of old views on nature and humanity was a slow process that spanned over a two century period. During the Scientific Revolution, scientific knowledge enabled humans to control nature in order to improve society. With leaders such as Nicolaus Copernicus, Galileo Galilei, Francis Bacon, Isaac Newton, and Rene Descartes, the Scientific Revolution proves to be a crucial piece to the puzzle of understanding the effects of humansí interactions with the natural world.