History and Philosophy of Technology

• 26 hrs lectures

The information transferred should provide the students with the knowledge of the amazing drama hidden behind an apparently cold and non-personal phenomenon of technology. The purpose is to establish links to the specific engineering subjects and to other branches of the culture.

The target of the course is to instigate in the listener the awareness of glorious and many thousand years long history of the technology, and to give him/her the knowledge of relationships with the entity of human culture and the resulting ethical responsibility of any individual to whom technology should become a vocation.

Man means to such human activity which knows the history. Knowledge of history and knowledge of the development of technology are becoming an important part of the technology qualification.

No prerequisite knowledge is called for.

• Lilley: Stroje a lidé v dějinách. Praha, 1973
• Jílek: Zrození velkých vynálezů. Praha, 1988
• Marshall: Po stopách lidského pokroku. Praha, 1932
• Bernal: Věda v dějinách. Praha, 1960
• Numford: Technika a civilizace. Praha, 1947
• Nový: Dějiny techniky v Československu do 18. století. Praha, 1974

• Since the earliest industry to megalithic constructions.
• The antiquity and the Hellenistic science and technology
• Medieval age - technology in the shade of cathedrals
• Renaissance engineers - new image of the world
• Long way to the steam engine
• The industrial revolution in England
• The meeting point between science and technology
• The combustion engine, turbine and new potentials
• Electrical energy from Thalet to Coulomb
• Galvani and the others
• The electromotoric principle comes into the world
• The history of data transmission until the spark telegraphy
• Inventors activities and the related ethical issues of today

Presence at the lectures with passing the test and furnishing a written work (approximately 2 pages of text, 500 - 1000 words).