Page 171 - Encyclopedia Of World History Vol III

990 berkshire encyclopedia of world history

textbooks.The age also saw a meteoric rise in the publi- ments in world history in the twentieth century.What is
cation of scientific periodicals, reviews, and abstracts of notable is not just the vast growth of knowledge of nat-
important work, and there is ample evidence that these ural phenomena but also the appearance of many new
periodicals were read by contemporary engineers and social and technical means for its dissemination: The
inventors. The paradigmatic document of the Industrial technical handbooks and dictionaries of the late eigh-
Enlightenment was no-doubt the Grande Encyclopédie, teenth century grew enormously. Historians estimate
which was filled with technological information on such that in 1800 only about one hundred scientific journals
mundane subjects as glass-blowing and masonry, accom- were published—this has grown into a gigantic mass of
panied by highly detailed and informative diagrams.The about twenty thousand scientific journals, not including
need for “search engines” was felt acutely, and increas- journals in engineering and other applied sciences. Huge
ingly ingenious engines were developed. compilations of detailed and highly specialized infor-
Information was also distributed through informal net- mation, including catalogs and databases too gigantic for
works and personal contacts, to a degree we can only any individual even to comprehend, have been put
guess at, since most of those contacts have left few rec- together with the help of powerful computers.
ords. One such organization about which a lot is known Access to this information is relatively cheap and
is the Lunar Society, a private club in Birmingham, Ala- sophisticated means exist to select the wheat from the
bama, in which some of the best scientists of the age dis- chaff. What made this possible is a combination of
cussed useful knowledge with leading entrepreneurs and changes in the organization of knowledge and the soci-
engineers. Hundreds of learned societies were estab- ology of science, coupled with radical changes in the
lished in Europe in the eighteenth century, and while not access technology. Scientists have become a self-policing
all could boast the quality of the minds that attended the community,which through complex processes of persua-
Lunar Society or the inappropriately named Manchester sion and proof establish consensuses,always challenging
Literary and Philosophical Society, they all reflected a and at times replacing them.Markets for information have
profound change in the attitudes toward, and organiza- become increasingly efficient and widespread, with con-
tion of, useful knowledge in the West. sultants of all kinds becoming an integral part of the
Moreover, in this age markets for expertise and tech- “knowledge society.” In this kind of world,access to what
nological knowledge also emerge. Much of the work of is known by others is essential. But this world also raises
the great engineers of the time, from John Smeaton and many issues of verifiability, reliability, and authority.
James Watt, consisted of what we would now call con- Among the many changes in access technology, the
sulting.The exact impact of these changes on economic Internet, which consists of increasingly sophisticated
progress is still a matter of some dispute, but its coinci- libraries, more specialized textbooks, summaries of scien-
dence with the economic takeoff in the West in the nine- tific papers, and popularizations of scholarly textbooks,
teenth century can hardly be happenstance. is the crashing climax of two centuries of improving
access technology. Early computerized databases evolved
The Explosion of Access into the search engines of today, in which mammoth
Technologies amounts of knowledge can be accessed by anyone, essen-
In the past two centuries, the role of useful knowledge in tially at zero cost, through such databases such as Med-
society that the Enlightenment pioneered has exploded, line and Econlit.
to the point where science can be said to have replaced
Joel Mokyr
religion in many areas as the central intellectual force
determining social development. Modern science and the See also Computer; Dictionaries and Encyclopedias;
technological progress it spawned became dynamic ele- Libraries; Mass Media; Writing Systems and Materials