Plzeň, Czech Republic

Theory and History of Science and Technology

Teorie a dějiny vědy a techniky

Table of contents

Theory and History of Science and Technology at ZČU

Language: Czech Studies in Czech
University website: www.zcu.cz
Years of study: 3

Definitions and quotes

History
History (from Greek ἱστορία, historia, meaning "inquiry, knowledge acquired by investigation") is the study of the past as it is described in written documents. Events occurring before written record are considered prehistory. It is an umbrella term that relates to past events as well as the memory, discovery, collection, organization, presentation, and interpretation of information about these events. Scholars who write about history are called historians.
Science
Science (from Latin scientia, meaning "knowledge") is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe.
Technology
Technology ("science of craft", from Greek τέχνη, techne, "art, skill, cunning of hand"; and -λογία, -logia) is first robustly defined by Jacob Bigelow in 1829 as: "...principles, processes, and nomenclatures of the more conspicuous arts, particularly those which involve applications of science, and which may be considered useful, by promoting the benefit of society, together with the emolument [compensation ] of those who pursue them" .
Theory
A theory is a contemplative and rational type of abstract or generalizing thinking, or the results of such thinking. Depending on the context, the results might, for example, include generalized explanations of how nature works. The word has its roots in ancient Greek, but in modern use it has taken on several related meanings.
Technology
We cannot idealize technology. Technology is only and always the reflection of our own imagination, and its uses must be conditioned by our own values. Technology can help cure diseases, but we can prevent a lot of diseases by old-fashioned changes in behavior.
President Bill Clinton Remarks at Knoxville Auditorium Coliseum, Knoxville, Tennessee (10 Oct 1996) while seeking re-election. American Presidency Project web page.
History
The end of history is, alas, also the end of the dustbins of history. There are no longer any dustbins for disposing of old ideologies, old regimes, old values. Where are we going to throw Marxism, which actually invented the dustbins of history? (Yet there is some justice here since the very people who invented them have fallen in.) Conclusion: if there are no more dustbins of history, this is because History itself has become a dustbin. It has become its own dustbin, just as the planet itself is becoming its own dustbin.
Jean Baudrillard, The Illusion of the End (1992), "The Event Strike", p. 26.
History
Happy the people whose annals are tiresome.
Thomas Carlyle, The French Revolution, A History (1837), Part I, Book II, Chapter I.
Giant penguins bigger than most humans roamed the Earth millions of years ago. Analysis of 37-million-year-old penguin fossils by a team of researchers from the La Plata Museum in Argentina shows that the so-called ‘colossus penguin’ stood at staggering 2 metres from toe to beak tip.
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