History of the development of science and technology. Development of domestic science and technology

Despite the factors hindering scientific progress, the second half of the XIX century. - this is a period of outstanding achievements in science and technology, which allowed Russian research activities to be introduced into world science. Russian science developed in close connection with European and American science. “Take any book from a foreign scientific journal and you will almost certainly come across a Russian name. Russian science has declared its equality, and sometimes even superiority,” wrote K.A. Timiryazev. Russian scientists took part in experimental and laboratory research in scientific centers in Europe and North America, made scientific reports, published articles in scientific journals.

The country has new scientific centers: Society of Lovers of Natural Science, Anthropology and Ethnography (1863), Society of Russian doctors. Russian Technical Society(1866). Physico-mathematical societies were created at all Russian universities. In the 70s. more than 20 scientific societies operated in Russia.

Petersburg became a major center of mathematical research, where a mathematical school was formed, associated with the name of an outstanding mathematician P.L. Chebyshev(1831-1894). His discoveries, which still influence the development of science, relate to the theory of approximation of functions, number theory and probability theory.

An algebraic school arose in Kyiv, headed by YES. Grave (1863- 1939).

The ingenious scientist-chemist who created the periodic system of chemical elements, was D. I. Mendeleev(1834-1907). He proved the inner strength between all kinds of chemicals. The periodic system was the foundation in the study of inorganic chemistry and advanced this science far ahead. The work of D. I. Mendeleev "Fundamentals of Chemistry" It was translated into many European languages, and in Russia it was only published eight times during its lifetime.

Scientists N.N. Zinin(1812-1888) and A.M. Butlerov(1828-1886) - founders of organic chemistry. In the middle of the XIX century. Zinin discovered the reaction of aromatic derivatives to aromatic amines. By this method, he synthesized aniline - the basis for creating the industry of synthetic dyes, explosives and pharmaceuticals. Butlerov developed the theory of chemical structure and was the founder of the largest Kazan school of Russian organic chemists.

Founder of the Russian physics school A.G. Stoletov(1839-1896) made a number of important discoveries in the field of magnetism and photoelectric phenomena, in the theory of gas discharge, which was recognized throughout the world.

From inventions and discoveries P.N. Yablochkova(1847-1894) the most famous is the so-called "Yablochkov candle" - practically the first suitable arc electric lamp without a regulator. Seven years before the invention of the American engineer Edison A.N. Lodygin(1847-1923) created an incandescent lamp using tungsten for incandescence.

World famous discoveries A.S. Popova(1859-1905). On April 25, 1895, at a meeting of the Russian Physical and Chemical Society, he announced his invention of a device for receiving and recording electromagnetic signals, and then demonstrated the operation of a “lightning detector” - a radio receiver that soon found practical application.

A.F. Mozhaisky(1825-1890) explored the possibilities of creating aircraft. In 1876, a flight demonstration of his models was a success. In the 80s. he worked on the creation of the aircraft. NOT. Zhukovsky(1848-1921) - author of research in the field of solid mechanics, astronomy, mathematics, hydrodynamics, hydraulics, and the theory of machine control. He created a single scientific discipline - experimental and theoretical aerodynamics. He built one of the first wind tunnels in Europe, determined the lift force of an aircraft wing, and developed a method for calculating it.

Works of outstanding importance K.E. Tsiolkovsky(1857-1935), one of the pioneers of astronautics. A teacher at a gymnasium in Kaluga, Tsiolkovsky was a scientist on a broad scale, he was the first to indicate the development of rocket science and astronautics, and found solutions for the design of rockets and rocket engines.

Major scientific and technical discoveries were made by a physicist P.N. Lebedev(1866-1912), who proved and measured the pressure of light.

The biological sciences have made great strides. Russian scientists have discovered a number of laws of development of organisms.

The largest discoveries were made by Russian scientists in physiology. THEM. Sechenov(1829-1905) - the founder of the natural science direction in psychology and the creator of the Russian physiological school. He initiated the scientific study of human nervous activity. I. P. Pavlov called his skill about reflexes "a stroke of genius in Russian scientific thought."

Scientific interests I.P. Pavlova(1849-1936) represented the physiology of the brain. He created the doctrine of higher nervous activity based on experience, modern ideas about the process of digestion and blood circulation. He was recognized by scientists all over the world as the greatest authority in the field of physiology, in 1904 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for his enormous contribution to world science.

I.I. Mechnikov(1845-1915) - an outstanding embryologist, microbiologist and pathologist who made a great contribution to the development of science. He is the founder (together with A.O. Kovalevsky, 1840-1901) of a new scientific discipline - comparative embryology and the doctrine of phagocytosis, which is of great importance in modern microbiology and pathology. His works in 1905 were awarded the Nobel Prize (together with P. Ehrlich).

The largest representative of Russian science was K.A. Timiryazev(1843-1920). He investigated the phenomenon of photosynthesis - the process of converting inorganic substances into organic substances in a green leaf of plants under the influence of sunlight, proving the applicability of the law of conservation of energy to the organic world.

V.V. Dokuchaev(1846-1903) - the creator of modern genetic soil science, studied the soil cover of Russia. His labor "Russian black soil", recognized in world science, contains a scientific classification of soils and a system of their natural types. Much has been done in the study of the North of Russia, the Urals and the Caucasus, the founder of the Russian geological scientific school A.P. Karpinsky(1846/47-1936) and A.A. Foreigners.

Expeditions to study Central and Central Asia and the Ussuri Territory aroused great interest in the world N.M. Przhevalsky(1839-1888), who first described the nature of these regions. He made a huge contribution to the study of the flora and fauna of these regions, for the first time he described a wild camel, a wild horse (Przewalski's horse). P.P. Semenov-Tyan-Shansky(1827-1914) - head of the Russian Geographical Society, explored the Tien Shan, initiator of a number of expeditions to Central Asia, published in co-authorship (with V. I. Lomansky) work "Russia. A complete geographical description of our fatherland.

N.N. Miklukho Maclay(1846-1888) - Russian scientist, traveler, public figure and humanist. During his travels to Southeast Asia, Australia, to the islands of Oceania, he carried out valuable geographical research, which has not lost its significance to this day. He argued that the backwardness in the development of the peoples of these regions is due to historical reasons. He opposed racism and colonialism.

The concept of "technique" in all its variety of definitions has always been based on the Greek understanding of technology as an art, skill, skill. In antiquity, technology was understood both as a person's internal ability to create creative activity, as well as the laws of this activity itself, and, finally, the mechanisms that helped a person in its productive implementation. This definition clearly shows the connection between the objects of activity and its subjects themselves. Moreover, the connection is not external, when tools are assigned only an auxiliary role, but at the level of an act of productive activity.

The next characteristic feature of technology is its SOCIAL ESSENCE. Tools of labor in the era of piece production were themselves works of art. They reflected the logic of the creator, his individual labor skills. In this case, the tool of labor was given social significance by the knowledge and skills developed by humanity used in its creation, as well as by the “participation” of the tool itself in the production of a socially significant product.

Since the transformation of science into a direct productive force, mankind has put the production of labor tools on stream, created a system of artificial organs for the activity of society. In this system, collective labor skills, collective knowledge and experience in the knowledge and use of natural forces are already objectified. The machine production of labor tools made it possible to talk about the formation of a system of technology that does not reject, on the contrary, includes a person. It includes because technology can exist and act only according to the logic of a person and thanks to his needs.

The Man-Technology system has traditionally been attributed to the productive forces of society. However, with the development of production, the two named components were supplemented by a third, no less important - nature. later - the whole environment. It happened because a person creates technology according to the laws of nature, uses natural material to produce products of labor, and, ultimately, the products of human activity themselves become elements of the environment. In our time, the latter is formed purposefully according to the logic of human needs. Thus, in the modern sense, technology can be defined as an element of a system that bears the imprint of its many laws.

Now let us turn to the consideration of technology from the point of view of its active and passive manifestations. PASSIVE EQUIPMENT includes industrial premises, structures, means of communication (roads, canals, bridges, etc.), means of information dissemination (teleradio communication, computer communication, etc.). ACTIVE TECHNOLOGY consists of tools (both manual and mental) that ensure human life (for example, prostheses), apparatus for controlling production and socio-economic processes.

In the history of technology, a number of stages can be distinguished. In modern philosophical and sociological literature, the transition from one stage to another is usually associated with the transfer of certain functions from a person to technical tools, with new ways of connecting a person and technical means. The development of technology is also facilitated by the transformation of natural processes into technological ones. In this situation, as M. Heidegger aptly noted, earlier the Rhine fed people and simultaneously acted as an object of aesthetic feeling, but today the famous river is seen only as a production facility, since navigation and electricity supply have become its main tasks.

THE SUCCESS OF MODERN TECHNOLOGY DEPENDS FIRST OF ALL ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF SCIENCE. Technical innovations are based on scientific and technical knowledge. But we should not forget that technology also poses new and new tasks for science. It is no coincidence that the level of development of modern society is determined by the achievements of science and technology.

From a functional and production point of view, the current stage of scientific and technological progress is characterized by the following features:

science is turning into the leading sphere for the development of social production,

All elements of the productive forces are qualitatively transformed - the producer, the tool and the object of labor,

production is intensified due to the use of new, more efficient types of raw materials and methods of their processing;

Reduced labor intensity due to automation and computerization, increasing the role of information, etc.

From a social point of view, modern scientific and technological development calls for people with a high level of general and specialized education, for coordinating the efforts of scientists at the international level. Today, the costs of scientific research are so great that very few people have the luxury of doing it alone. In addition, such studies often turn out to be meaningless, because their results are very quickly massively replicated and do not serve as a long-term source of superprofits for the authors. But be that as it may, automation and cybernetization free up both the time of workers and the workforce itself. A new type of production is emerging - the leisure industry.

From a socio-functional point of view, the current stage of scientific and technological progress means the creation of a new production base (new technologies), although the system of productive systems is still made up of "man-technology-environment".

These are some of the main characteristic features of the development of modern technology. And what is the specificity of the entire production and social system at the turn of the 20th-21st centuries?

For a long time, the contribution of technology to civilization was not discussed. People routinely assessed technology and scientific and technological progress as undoubted achievements of the human mind. Such a clearly pragmatic assessment of these social phenomena did not contribute to an intensive philosophical understanding of these problems, did not give rise to philosophical questions. But the artistic perception of technology and scientific and technological progress did not look so blissful. Here, apparently, the decisive role was played not by rational comprehension, but by intuition.

So what are the specific social issues raised by scientists and philosophers when they actively took up the consideration of this topic? What excited and worried them?

They found that the realization of the idea of ​​endless progress in the development of civilization ran into real difficulties of human existence associated with the depletion of resources, the impact of its by-products on the Earth's ecology, and many others. Philosophers realized that when evaluating scientific achievements, people should be guided not only by their origin (it always seems to be good), but also by their inclusion in the context of the most complex and often contradictory social processes. With this approach, the traditional understanding of science and technology as an unconditional benefit for humanity needs to be seriously adjusted.

That is why philosophical questions today affect the widest range of the existence of technology and concentrate mainly on two areas: technology and human practical activity and social problems of technology and scientific and technological progress. This range of problems includes, in particular, the study of the interdependence of the engineering and social aspects of modern technology, the demonstration of a comprehensive nature, heuristic and applied functions.

Modern production turns nature into a human workplace, natural processes become manageable, certain properties can be set in advance, and thus they turn into technological ones. Here lies a huge danger for mankind: creating a new system of "man-technology-surrounding nature", it was more guided by will than by reason. And as a consequence: the roots of ecological disasters lie in ignoring or misunderstanding the integral nature of biological systems. Reductionist methodology, where the effectiveness of complex systems is investigated on the basis of the analysis of their individual parts, does not work.

Not only nature should be presented as a dynamic system, but also a person interacting with it through technology should be included in the integrity of a higher order.

The existence of man in organic unity with the environment can be described as self-development. Man adapts to the environment, but it changes as a result of his activities, and especially rapidly in our time. Thus, the real being of a person lies in the fact that he must adapt to the fruits of his activity, that is, realize the process of self-adaptation, which is acquiring a dominant character today. Techniques and technologies for influencing the environment, as well as technologies for self-adaptation, are developing, that is, a culture of life is being formed in a man-made environment. Nature is not seen as the only source of development. The self-developing culture also becomes such a source for a person.

In modern civilization, social institutions, culture (in its institutional expression), technology and social technologies are elements of a single developing shaping, which through a person acquires the character of integrity. Therefore, it is possible to comprehend the problems of technology and scientific and technological progress only from the standpoint of the methodology of historicism and integrity.

Russian scientific thought in the first half of the 19th century. fought her way forward, overcoming numerous obstacles in the struggle. In feudal-serf-owning Russia, science was in the grip of the authorities, the tsarist treasury allotted insignificant funds for it. Only historical science in its official government interpretation enjoyed some recognition from the ruling circles. The social sciences, represented by most of their university and academic representatives, had a pronounced official noble character. But at the same time, the Decembrists, Belinsky, Herzen and other revolutionary representatives of Russian social-scientific thought came forward and waged a selfless struggle for advanced scientific views. The technical and natural sciences began to noticeably revive and grow stronger, as if reflecting the general upswing of the productive forces and the development of new phenomena in the economy.

The leading direction of philosophical thought in Russia was the materialistic direction. The great Russian thinkers A. I. Herzen and V. G. Belinsky already in the 40s, with their philosophical work, to a large extent contributed to the successful overcoming of idealistic views. Herzen and Belinsky developed an independent philosophical outlook. Herzen, in his classical philosophical works "Letters on the Study of Nature", "Amateurism in Science", was the first to give a correct interpretation of Hegel's dialectic as "the algebra of revolution". According to Lenin, “Herzen came close to dialectical materialism and stopped short of historical materialism.” Belinsky, in his philosophical articles of the 1940s, unfolded the worldview of a revolutionary democrat and materialist before Russian readers. The ideas of Herzen and Belinsky contributed greatly to the maturation of democratic and socialist elements in progressive Russian national culture.

In the first half of the century, several new scientific societies emerged: the Moscow Society of Russian History and Antiquities, the Moscow Society of Naturalists, the Mathematical Society, the Society of Lovers of Russian Literature, the Mineralogical Society in St. Petersburg, the Archaeographic Commission, the Russian Geographical Society, the Russian Archaeological Society, etc.

Great successes in the first half of the XIX century. made by outstanding Russian scientists in the field of mathematics (Lobachevsky, Ostrogradsky), physics and technology (Petrov, Jacobi, Lenz, Cherepanovs, Schilling, Anosov, Dubinins, Obukhov), astronomy (Struve), chemistry (Zinin), pedagogy (Ushinsky), medicine (Pirogov), agricultural science (Pavlov). Great were the achievements in the field of geographical sciences and the discoveries of remarkable Russian travelers (Lazarev, Bellingshausen, Lisyansky, Kruzenshtern, Nevelskoy, etc.).

The great Russian mathematician N. I. Lobachevsky (1793-1856), the creator of new geometry, is one of the greatest representatives of the mathematical science of the 19th century. He took up a problem related to the theory of parallel lines, on which mathematicians of the whole world had been working unsuccessfully for almost two thousand years. Lobachevsky gave an exhaustive solution to the problem, the remarkable feature of which was that the possibility of another geometry was discovered, completely different from the classical one, the so-called "Euclidean". Lobachevsky boldly published his ideas, which were deeply revolutionary in nature and received recognition only after his death. The works of Lobachevsky created an era in the history of geometry, which has been developing in the direction of constructing new geometric systems even up to the present. Despite the apparent abstractness of his ideas, Lobachevsky stood essentially on a materialistic point of view: he did not recognize any new ways of the emergence and construction of geometry, except for the very specific processes of movement of material bodies, their contact and dissection. Lobachevsky's ideas have found application in various questions of natural science, in particular in the last decades in the theory of relativity. Lobachevsky worked in Kazan, was elected rector of Kazan University six times and enjoyed the ardent love of student youth.

M. V. Ostrogradsky inscribed his name in the history of the mathematical thought of mankind, creating remarkable works on mathematical physics, analytical and celestial mechanics. Ostrogradsky boldly followed an independent, creative path in science, establishing the principle of least action - one of the most important laws of mechanics. In 1840, the Paris Academy announced a prize for solving the problems of the calculus of variations; meanwhile, these problems had already been solved by Ostrogradsky in a work published back in 1834.

In the first half of the XIX century. a number of remarkable Russian scientists and inventors spoke, especially in the field of electrical engineering, metallurgy, and applied chemistry. Professor of the St. Petersburg Medical and Surgical Academy V. V. Petrov (1761-1834), earlier than Western European scientists, discovered the phenomenon of thermal and light effects of electric current, which later became undeservedly known as the “voltaic arc”. Regardless of the work of Carlyle and Nicholson, Petrov discovered electrolysis in the early years of the 19th century, and for the first time in the history of science, he established the most important physical and chemical effects of galvanic current. Petrov's works laid a solid foundation for the development of electrochemistry and electrometallurgy. With every right, Petrov wrote about himself: “I hope that enlightened and impartial physicists, at least one day, will agree to give my works the justice that the importance of these recent experiments deserves.” Academicians B. S. Jacobi (1801-1874) and E. X. Lenz (1804-1865), elected to replace Petrov after the latter's death, made a significant contribution to the study of electromagnetic phenomena; Lenz discovered the law that determines the direction of the induction current. Discoveries in this area have made it possible to immeasurably expand the use of electricity for practical purposes. Jacobi designed an electric motor, installed it on a ship and, in 1839, the first in the world, together with members of the test commission, sailed on an electric ship launched on the waters of the Neva. The patriotic scientist Jacobi, petitioning the government for funds to continue his innovative experiments, took care, in his words, that Russia, the fatherland, “did not lose the glory of saying that the Neva was covered with ships with magnetic engines before the Thames or the Tiber.”

Father and son E. A. and M. E. Cherepanov, serf mechanics-engineers of the Demidovs, built in 1833-1834. the first steam railway in Russia at the Nizhny Tagil plant (Southern Urals). Talented Russian metallurgical engineers P. Ya. Anosov and P. M. Obukhov did a lot for the development of domestic metallurgy. Thorny engineer of the Zlatoust plant in the Urals, the largest metallurgist of the first half of the 19th century. Anosov was the first in the world to use a microscope to study the structure of metal and, on the basis of a colossal number of experiments that lasted about 30 years, discovered a method for obtaining the famous so-called "bulat" steel. Anosov's discoveries made this Russian scientist-engineer the founder of the doctrine of steel, the pioneer of high-quality metallurgy in Russia. Of particular, outstanding importance is the discovery in 1859 of the method of rolling steel by the remarkable Russian inventor V. Pyatov. Obukhov laid the foundation for Russian steelmaking; Russian "Obukhov steel" was not inferior to the famous German "Krupp steel". In 1860 Obukhov created the first steel cannon in Russia. The Dubinin brothers, peasants of Countess Panina, invented in the early 1920s a method for refining black oil; in 1823 they built the world's first oil refinery in Mozdok, in the North Caucasus. The Dubinins were the first founders of kerosene production. But in tsarist, feudal, pre-reform Russia, of course, there were no conditions for deepening and practical application of the inventions and discoveries of the remarkable Russian people. The inventive and technical thought of the Russian people very often did not receive either the deserved recognition or practical application in production. Tsarism and the ruling classes, infected with servility to foreigners, could not and did not want to recognize the great creative potential of the Russian people.

A significant contribution to astronomical science was made by the outstanding Russian astronomer V. Ya. Struve. His observations of the so-called "double stars", micrometric measurements of more than 3 thousand stars, the vast majority of which were discovered by himself, and the degree measurement of the Russian-Scandinavian arc of the meridian were the largest works of astronomical science. Struve's great merit was the creation in 1839 of the Pulkovo observatory near St. Petersburg, which played an important role in the development of Russian astronomy.

A significant event in the development of chemistry in Russia was the development by Solovyov, Shchegolev and Hess of the Russian chemical nomenclature. In the 40s, thanks to the efforts of the brilliant scientist N. N. Zinin (1812-1880), Russian chemistry honorably continued the work begun by Lomonosov. Russian patriot Zinin consciously sought to create a Russian school of chemistry. “It’s enough for us to walk on the slings of foreign countries,” he said, “it’s time for us to create our own science.” Zinin, despite the insistence of the great German scientist Liebig, who wanted to leave him in Germany, returned to his homeland and began his remarkable experiments in the poor laboratory of the Military Medical Academy in St. Petersburg. As a result of the experiments, he made a world-wide discovery: he found a method for obtaining aniline from benzene, and thereby laid the foundation for the synthesis of aniline dyes. Zinin's discoveries formed the basis for the entire further development of the synthetic dye industry. Zinin's student, the outstanding Russian chemist A. M. Butlerov, declared on behalf of all progressive Russian people: "The name of Zinin will always be honored by those who hold dear and close to the heart the success and greatness of science in Russia."

Among the famous naturalists of the first half of the XIX century. include the Russian biologists K. F. Rulye and I. E. Dyadkoveky, materialist philosophers, fighters against vitalism, who had a great influence on progressive students, and were famous as lecturers and scientific leaders of the youth! I. E. Dyadkovsky was close to A. I. Herzen, N. P. Ogaryov, V. G. Belinsky, M. S. Shchepkin. For atheistic views he was expelled from Moscow University in 1835.

Of great importance for domestic medicine was the activity of M. Ya. Mudrov, an outstanding clinician, a materialist in his views, who developed the doctrine of the significance of the external environment as a factor in pathological conditions.

The well-deserved glory of Russian medicine was brought by the works of the great scientist N. I. Pirogov (1810-1881), the founder of military field surgery. He stubbornly fought against the reactionary natural-philosophical idealistic concepts that dominated medicine. Experience, a scientific experiment, was put by Pirogov as the basis of his conclusions. Pirogov combined his scientific work with social activities, fighting against the reactionary professors, tsarist embezzlers and military bureaucrats. In 1856, he published the article "Questions of Life" against the old upbringing, in favor of creating from the younger generation people with a strong character and honest democratic convictions. But Pirogov did not remain at the forefront of pedagogical positions to the end. A number of his backward demands were sharply criticized by the Enlightenment democrats, especially Dobrolyubov.

The great Russian teacher, public figure and scientist K. D. Upgansky (1824-1870), despite persecution by reactionary government circles, won recognition of his ideas among progressive teachers, scientists and broad sections of the Russian intelligentsia. Ushinsky rejected the old, scholastic teaching methods characteristic of the serf era, replaced them with new methodological techniques based on a careful study of school-age children, and created new textbooks. In his famous articles and books (“On the Usefulness of Pedagogical Literature”, “On the People in Public Education”, “Man as a Subject of Education” (an extensive research work), a book for reading “Native Word”, “A Guide to Teaching in the “Native word "") Ushinsky developed new ideas in pedagogy. Ushinsky put the idea of ​​nationality and the requirement of scientific substantiation of pedagogical provisions as the basis of his pedagogical system. He considered it necessary to instill in the student love for the motherland, respect for facts, and the ability to observe reality. However, the pedagogical system of Ushinsky is imbued with the peaceful educational humanism of an idealist teacher, far from the ideas of struggle and revolution, this is its weak side.

Industrial Revolution (XVIII - XIX centuries)

Problems of the lecture

Mechanistic picture of the world. Conditions for the development of natural science. Science as the driving force of social progress. Encyclopedia. Organization of scientific research. Activities of scientific academies. Maths. Mathematical apparatus of mechanics and physics. Probability Theory. Descriptive geometry. Mathematical analysis. Physics and mechanics. Thermodynamics. Electrodynamics. Practical application of electricity. The discovery of the electron. Discovery of radioactivity. Quantum theory. Theory of relativity. Chemistry. DIMendeleev and the periodic system of elements. Discovery of new elements. Isotopes. Physical chemistry. Development of organic chemistry. Biology. Systematization of species. The doctrine of the origin of species. Natural selection. Cell theory. Pasteur and bacteriology. Foundation of scientific medicine. The birth of genetics. The study of questions of heredity. Genetics. Development of biochemistry. Physiology and psychology. Microbiology and medicine. Mechanization of the textile industry. Creation of a steam engine. The use of a steam engine in transport. Invention of the steamboat and steam locomotive. Development of railway transport. Achievements in metallurgy. The use of coal. Hot blast. Puddling. Bessmer converter. Open-hearth furnace. Thomas method of steel production. mechanical presses. Steam hammer. Rolling mills. Metal welding. Technique and technology of agriculture. mineral fertilizers. Experimental breeding stations. Mechanical cultivators, seeders and harvesters. Locomobiles. Steam Tractors. Social consequences of the industrial revolution.

18th - 19th centuries characterized by radical inventions and innovations that led to the creation of machine production. New types of energy were mastered, new types of production activities appeared, new production technologies were developed and introduced, and the convergence of science and industrial production began.

The cognitive model of the new time was based on the achievements of classical science, classical natural science (ie physics). A complex of individual scientific programs, directions and disciplines was formed, which were based on Newton's initial ideas about the discreteness of the structures of the world and the mechanical nature of the processes occurring in it. It was mechanistic picture of the world , where the world was presented as a mechanism .

For the first time scientific knowledge developed on its own basis. And, although there were erroneous provisions in it, it is characterized by a conscious exclusion of extra-scientific (primarily religious) factors when considering scientific problems. The mechanistic view has been widely extended to the understanding of biological, electrical, chemical, and even socio-economic processes. The disciplinary structure of science developed according to the scheme: mechanics - physics - chemistry - biology.

Mechanism has become synonymous with scientificity as such. The system of general and vocational education was built on this conceptual approach. Radically new techniques and technologies developed empirically and were a tool for cognition and development of a single "socio-natural" world.

First half of the 18th century characterized by some decline in science. This was due to the fact that the significance of the discoveries of Newton and his predecessors was so powerful that no one dared to continue these studies. In addition, the scientific community was not ready to perceive and comprehend the new scientific picture of the world. In science, interest has shifted to biomedical problems and private issues. At the same time, science was becoming fashionable, and the prestige of scientificity was growing.

Justification of a rational worldview ( natural light of mind) extended to both natural science and social processes. The principle of historicism, the concept of social progress gave rise to utopian ideas of domination over nature, the possibility of a strong-willed rational reorganization of society. The slogan was proclaimed "Knowledge is power" .

A kind of scientific manifesto of the Enlightenment was the "Encyclopedia, or Explanatory Dictionary of Sciences, Arts and Crafts", published in 1751 - 1765 and 1776 - 1777, in 17 volumes of text and 11 volumes of illustrations, thanks to the activities of Denis Diderot, Jean D "Alembert, Voltaire, Etienne Condillac, Claude Helvetius, Paul Holbach, Charles Montesquieu, Jean Jacques Rousseau, Georges Buffon, Jean Condorcet.The representatives of the Enlightenment were John Locke in England; Gotthold Lessing, Johann Herder, Johann Goethe, Johann Schiller, Immanuel Kant in Germany; Thomas Payne, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson in the USA; Nikolai Ivanovich Novikov and Alexander Nikolayevich Radishchev in Russia.

In the XVIII century. science remained the lot of amateurs, some of them concentrated in academies, the scientific level of which was not too high. Research was conducted mainly in the field of heat and energy, metallurgical processes, electricity, chemistry, biology, and astronomy.

19th century passed under the sign industrial revolution . As a result of inventions and innovations in the energy sector and "working machines", there was a transition to a new technological basis for production ( machine production) . However, technical and technological transformations were very poorly supported by scientific research until the end of the 19th century.

The imperial position of Great Britain radically expanded the market for its manufactured goods, primarily textiles, which greatly intensified their production. Manual labor became a brake on the growth of production. In this regard, in the second half of the XVIII century. were invented: "Jenny" - a spinning machine by James Hargreaves (1765), in which the operations of pulling and twisting the thread were mechanized; spinning water machine by Richard Arkwright (1769), spinning "mule machine" by Samuel Crompton (1779), mechanical foot loom by Edmund Cartwright (1785).

The sharp concentration of production, the development of the iron and chemical industries against the background of an acute shortage of wood intensified the growth of coal mining, which stimulated the emergence of new areas in mining and transport. This, in turn, led to the widespread use of cast iron, including as a building material.

Trade prosperity led to the enrichment of English merchants, to the emergence of excess capital, which required placement in some business. As a result of the emigration of people to America, England experienced a shortage of labor. The British tried to make up for the shortage of labor by introducing machines. Attempts to use machines in manufactories have taken place before - the first example of this kind was the silk-winding machine of the Italian mechanic Francesco Boridano, created back in the 13th century. The machine was driven by a water wheel and replaced 400 workers. This example shows that the Industrial Revolution could have happened earlier.

However, the Boridano machine remained a unique example because the introduction of technology ran into opposition from artisans who were afraid of losing their jobs. In 1579, the mechanic who created the ribbon loom was executed in Danzig. In 1598, the inventor of the knitting machine, William Lee, was forced to flee from England. In 1733 John Kay, a weaver, invented the "flying shuttle". He was persecuted by the weavers, his house was ransacked, and he was forced to flee to France. Many weavers secretly continued to use Kay's shuttle. In 1765, the weaver and carpenter Hargreaves created a mechanical spinning wheel, which he named "Jenny" after his daughter. This spinning wheel increased the productivity of the spinner by 20 times. Workers broke into Hargreaves' home and wrecked his car. Despite this resistance, after a while "Jenny" began to be used by spinners. In 1767 there was a great clash between weavers in London. In 1769, Arkwright patented a water-powered spinning machine. From that moment on, machines began to be used in manufactories, and inventors received the support of large capital owners.

The first machines were created by self-taught mechanics, they were made of wood and did not require engineering calculations. Technology has evolved independently of science. After the resistance of the opponents of the machines weakened, new machines began to appear one after another. In 1774 - 1779. Crompton designed a mule spinning machine that produced better cloth than Arkwright's. In 1785, Cartwright created a loom that increased the productivity of weavers 40 times.

The energy problem is especially acute. Until the end of the XVII - beginning of the XVIII centuries. society did not create any new engines, except for horse traction, water and wind wheels. Along with the increase in human needs, the question arose of an engine that would not depend on wind and water, but would work at the expense of a new type of energy anywhere and at any time of the year. Such an engine was a thermal (steam), on the creation of which inventors worked in different countries.

In the 90s. 17th century French physicist and inventor Denis Papin built a steam engine that was imperfect and had low efficiency. However, the merit of the inventor was the correct description of the thermodynamic cycle.

The Industrial Revolution was a complex process that took place simultaneously in various industries. In the mining industry, one of the main production problems was the pumping of water from the mines. In 1698, the Englishman Thomas Savery created a machine that used the power of steam for this purpose.

In 1705, the English inventor, blacksmith Thomas Newcomen, together with the tinker J. Cowley, created a steam-atmospheric machine for pumping water in mines, which was used for more than 90 years. Its disadvantages were low efficiency and long intervals of the piston stroke. In Newcomen's machine, the steam in the cylinder was condensed by the injection of water. A vacuum was created in it, and the piston was drawn into the cylinder under the influence of atmospheric pressure. By 1770, about 200 Newcomen machines were already working in England, but they had an uneven course, often broke down and were used only in mines. In different countries, attempts were made to improve these machines.

In 1763, the Russian heat engineer Ivan Ivanovich Polzunov developed a project for a universal continuous heat engine, but could not implement it. In 1765, according to another project, he built a steam and heat power plant for factory needs. A week before the launch, Polzunov died. The machine worked for 43 days and broke down.

In 1763, the English inventor James Watt began work on improving Newcomen's machine. At the time, Watt was a laboratory assistant at the University of Glasgow and was assigned to repair a broken model of Newcomen's machine. Understanding the shortcomings of the model, Watt created a fundamentally new machine. First, the piston in Watt's machine was driven not by atmospheric pressure, but by steam drawn in from a steam boiler; secondly, after the completion of the piston stroke, the exhaust steam was discharged into a special condenser. In 1769, Watt received a patent for the design of a "direct" action machine. In 1774 - 1784, Watt invented and received a patent for a steam engine with a double-acting cylinder, in which he used a centrifugal regulator that automatically maintained a given number of revolutions, a transmission from the cylinder rod to a balancer with a parallelogram, etc. Watt managed to attract a major English manufacturer to the business Matthew Bolton, who put his entire fortune on the line for this idea. In 1775, the production of steam engines was launched at the Bolton factory in Birmingham. However, only ten years later this production began to give tangible profits.

Experts argued that Watt's idea could not be practically implemented. With the technology that existed at that time, it was impossible to grind a mathematically correct steam cylinder. Mass production of steam engines was impossible without precision lathes. The decisive step in this direction was taken by the English mechanic Henry Maudsley, who in 1797 created a screw-cutting lathe with a mechanized support. Since that time, it became possible to manufacture parts with a tolerance of fractions of a millimeter - this was the beginning of modern mechanical engineering.

In Watt's early engines, the cylinder pressure was only slightly above atmospheric pressure. In 1804, the English engineer A. Wolfe patented a machine operating at a pressure of 3-4 atmospheres, increasing the efficiency by more than 3 times.

The advent of machines created a need for metal. Previously, cast iron was smelted on charcoal, and there are almost no forests left in England. In 1784, the English metallurgist Henry Cort invented a method for the production of iron on coal. Coal mining has become one of the main industries.

One of the first who tried to use a steam engine for the needs of transport was the French technician Nicolas Joseph Cugno. In 1769 - 1770. he built a three-wheeled wagon with a steam boiler to carry artillery shells. It has not found practical application and is kept in the Museum of Arts and Crafts in Paris.

Many mines had rail tracks along which horses pulled wagons with ore. In 1801 - 1803. English inventor Richard Trevithick created in Wales first a trackless wagon, and then the first steam locomotive for a rail track. However, Trevithick failed to get the support of entrepreneurs. Trying to draw attention to his invention, Trevithick staged an attraction using a steam locomotive, but, in the end, went bankrupt and died in poverty.

Fate was more favorable to George Stephenson, a self-taught English mechanic who received an order to build a locomotive for one of the mines near Newcastle. In 1814, Stephenson built the first practically suitable steam locomotive, the Blucher, to work at the mine, and then supervised the construction of a railway with a length of more than 50 km. Stephenson's main idea was to level the track by creating embankments and cutting cuts. Thus, a high speed of movement was achieved. In 1825, a public railway was built in Great Britain. In 1829, a competition was held in London for the best locomotive. It turned out to be the English locomotive "Rocket" by Stephenson, on which a tubular steam boiler was first used (speed - 21 km / h, train weight - 17 tons). Later, the speed of a steam locomotive with a carriage for passengers was increased to 60 km / h. In 1830, Stephenson completed the construction of the first major railway between Manchester and Liverpool. He was immediately offered to supervise the construction of a road across England from Manchester to London. Later he built railways in Belgium and Spain. In 1832, the first railway was launched in France, a little later - in Germany and the USA. Locomotives for these roads were manufactured at the Stephenson factory in England.

In 1834, in Russia, at the Nizhny Tagil plant, Efim Alekseevich and Miron Efimovich Cherepanov built the first domestic steam locomotive for transporting ore (speed - 15 km / h, train weight - 3.5 tons). The first public railway in Russia was built in 1837 (St. Petersburg - Tsarskoe Selo).

Already soon after the advent of the steam engine, attempts began to create steamboats. In 1803, Irish-American Robert Fulton built a small steam-powered boat in Paris and demonstrated it to members of the French Academy. However, neither the academicians nor Napoleon, to whom Fulton offered his invention, were interested in the ideas of the steamboat. Fulton returned to America and, with the money of his friend Livingston, built the world's first paddle steamer, the Claremont. The machine for this steamer was made at Watt's factory. In 1807, the Claremont, to the enthusiastic cries of the audience, made its first flight along the Hudson. Four years later, Fulton and Levingston were already the owners of the shipping company. After 9 years, there were 300 steamers in America, and 150 in England. In 1819, the American steamer Savannah crossed the Atlantic Ocean, and in the 1830s. The first regular transatlantic steamship line begins to operate. On this line, the largest steamer at that time, the Great Western, had a displacement of 2 thousand tons and a steam engine with a capacity of 400 liters. With. In twenty years, steamboats have become much larger. The ships sailing to India had a displacement of 27 thousand tons and two machines with a total capacity of 7.5 thousand liters. With.

The creation of the steam engine marked a radical revolution in the technology of the 19th century. This led to the possibility of free placement of steam engines in industrial enterprises, to a significant increase in power and the use of an autonomous engine in transport and in production.

The introduction of machine tools, steam engines, steam locomotives and steamships into production and public life radically changed people's lives. The emergence of factories producing huge quantities of cheap fabrics ruined the artisans who worked at home or in manufactories. In 1811, an uprising of artisans broke out in Nottingham, who broke machines in factories. They were called Luddites. The uprising was put down. Ruined artisans were forced to leave for America or go to work in factories. The labor of a worker in a factory was less skilled than that of an artisan. Manufacturers often hired women and children. For 12 - 15 hours of work paid pennies. There were many unemployed and poor, after the food riots of 1795, they began to pay benefits, which were enough for two loaves of bread a day.

The population flocked to the factories, and the factory villages soon turned into huge cities. In 1844, there were 2.5 million inhabitants in London, and the workers lived in overcrowded houses, where several families crowded into one room, often without a fireplace. Workers made up the bulk of the population of England. It was a new industrial society, unlike the society of eighteenth-century England. The main industry of England in the first half of the XIX century. was the production of cotton fabrics. New machines made it possible to receive 300 percent or more of profit per year and produce cheap fabrics that were sold all over the world. It was a colossal industrial boom, the production of fabrics increased tenfold.

New factories needed raw materials - cotton; At first, cotton was expensive due to the fact that it was cleaned by hand. In 1793, the American inventor and industrialist Eli Whitney created the cotton gin; after that, the “era of cotton” began in the southern states, huge cotton plantations were created here, on which Negro slaves worked. Thus, the rise of American slavery was directly linked to the Industrial Revolution.

By the 1840s England became the "workshop of the world", accounting for more than half of the production of metal and cotton fabrics, the bulk of the production of machines. Cheap English fabrics flooded the whole world and ruined artisans not only in England, but also in many countries of Europe and Asia. Millions of people died of starvation in India. Many large craft cities such as Dhaka and Ahmedabad died out. Incomes, on which the artisans of Europe and Asia used to exist, now went to England. Many states tried to close themselves off from English commodity intervention - in response, England proclaimed "freedom of trade." She tried in every possible way, often with the use of military force, to remove protectionist customs barriers and "open" other countries for British goods.

In the 1870s a significant turning point in the development of the world economy. It was associated with a colossal expansion of the world market. In the previous period, large-scale construction of railways led to the inclusion in world trade of vast continental regions. The advent of steamboats greatly reduced the cost of transportation by sea. American and Russian wheat poured into the markets in a huge stream. Prices for it fell one and a half - two times. These events are traditionally called the "world agrarian crisis". They led to the ruin of many landlords in Europe, but at the same time they provided the workers with cheap bread. Since that time, the industrial specialization of Europe has been outlined: many European states now lived by exchanging their manufactured goods for food. Population growth was no longer held back by the size of arable land. Disasters and crises caused by overpopulation are a thing of the past. The old laws of history were replaced by the laws of a new industrial society.

The Industrial Revolution gave Europeans new weapons - rifles and steel cannons. It has long been known that rifles with rifling in the bore give the bullet rotation, which doubles the range and 12 times the accuracy. However, it cost a lot of work to load such a gun from the muzzle, and the rate of fire was very low, no more than one shot per minute. In 1808, by order of Napoleon, the French gunsmith Poli created a breech-loading gun. A paper cartridge contained gunpowder and a seed, which was exploded by a prick of a needle striker. If Napoleon had received such guns in time, he would have been invincible. Poli's assistant, the German Dreyse, designed a needle gun, which in 1841 was adopted by the Prussian army. The Drese gun made 9 rounds per minute - 5 times more than the smoothbore guns of other armies. The firing range was 800 m - three times more than other guns.

At the same time, another revolution in military affairs took place, caused by the advent of steel cannons. Cast iron was too brittle, and cast iron cannons often ruptured when fired. Steel guns made it possible to use a much more powerful charge. In the 1850s English inventor and entrepreneur Henry Bessemer invented the Bessemer converter, and in the 60s. 19th century French engineer Émile Martin created the open-hearth furnace. Industrial production of steel and steel guns was established.

In Russia, the first steel guns were made at the Zlatoust plant under the guidance of metallurgist Pavel Matveyevich Obukhov, who developed a method for the production of high-quality cast steel. Then production was organized at the Obukhov plant in St. Petersburg.

The greatest success in the production of artillery pieces was achieved by the German industrialist Alfred Krupp, in the 60s. 19th century Krupp set up mass production of breech-loading rifled guns. Dreyse rifles and Krupp cannons ensured the victory of Prussia in the wars with Austria and France - the powerful German Empire owed its birth to this new weapon.

The invention of the loom, the steam engine, the steam locomotive, the steamboat, the rifle, and the rapid-fire cannon were all fundamental discoveries that brought about the emergence of a new society called industrial civilization. A wave of new culture came from England. It quickly swept the European states - primarily France and Germany. In Europe, there is a rapid modernization according to the English model, at the first stage it includes the borrowing of equipment - machine tools, steam engines, railways. At the second stage, political modernization begins. In 1848, a wave of revolutions swept through Europe, the banner of which was the overthrow of the monarchies and parliamentary reforms. Russia is trying to resist this modernization - the war with England and France begins, and rifles force Russia to embark on the path of reform. In the 60s. 19th century the cultural expansion of industrial civilization is replaced by military expansion - a fundamental discovery always generates a wave of conquest. The era of colonial wars begins. The whole world is divided among industrial powers. England, taking advantage of her superiority, creates a huge colonial empire with a population of 390 million people.

19th century fundamentally different from the previous century both in the nature of social processes and in the depth of the meaningful development of science and the scale of the spread of technical innovations. Gradually, a scheme emerged of the main, most active areas in scientific development: physics, chemistry, biology, and in technology: transport, communications, machine production technologies, and by the end of the century, electrical engineering.

The inventors of the machines that brought about the industrial revolution were not scientists, they were self-taught craftsmen. Some of them were illiterate; for example, Stephenson learned to read at the age of 18. During the industrial revolution, science and technology developed independently of each other. This was especially true for mathematics. At this time, vector analysis was developed. The French mathematician Augustin Cauchy created the theory of functions of a complex variable, while the Irish mathematician William Hamilton and the German mathematician, physicist and philologist Hermann Grassmann created vector algebra. In the works of French scientists Pierre Laplace, Andrien Legendre and Simeon Poisson, the theory of probability was developed. The main achievements of physics were associated with the study of electricity and magnetism.

In development physics in the 19th century three stages are considered. The first third of the century was marked by the creation of the foundation of classical physics, in which analysis, and especially partial differential equations, occupied a key position. This was a golden period in the development of French theoretical thought (mathematical electrostatics and magnetostatics - the Laplace and Poisson equation, Jean Fourier's theory - the heat equation, Augustin Fresnel's wave optics and André Ampère's electrodynamics).

In the period from 1830 to 1870, the baton passes to German and English scientists: Hermann Helmholtz, Gustav Kirchhoff, Rudolf Clausius. Classical physics gained full recognition in the middle of the century, when, after the approval of the law of conservation of energy, thanks to the English physicists William Thomson (Baron Kelvin), James Maxwell and others, thermodynamics, the kinetic theory of gases and the theory of the electromagnetic field arose.

In the last thirty years of the XIX century. approaches to the quantum-relativistic revolution were outlined. The development of the kinetic theory of matter leads to statistical mechanics and the invasion of probabilistic mathematics into physics. In classical thermodynamics, one should note the discovery of the law of conservation of energy, the mathematization of the theory of heat by the French physicist Sadi Carnot, the development of the foundations of the kinetic theory of gases and static mechanics.

In the area of electrodynamics at the turn of the XVIII - XIX centuries. Italian physicist Volta created the galvanic battery. Batteries of this kind were for a long time the only source of electric current and a necessary element of all experiments. In 1820, the Danish physicist Hans Oersted discovered that an electric current acts on a magnetic needle, then the French physicist, mathematician and chemist Ampère established that a magnetic field appears around the conductor and forces of attraction or repulsion arise between the two conductors, discovered the effect of the interaction of currents by setting the beginning of electrodynamics.

In 1831, the English physicist Michael Faraday discovered the phenomenon of electromagnetic induction. This phenomenon consists in the fact that if a closed conductor crosses magnetic lines of force during its movement, then an electric current is excited in it. After the discovery of electromagnetic induction by Faraday, a series of experiments was carried out to study the connection between electrical, magnetic and light phenomena. In 1833, the Russian physicist and electrical engineer Emily Lenz created a general theory of electromagnetic induction. In 1841, the English physicist James Joule studied the effect of heat release during the passage of an electric current. In 1869, the outstanding English scientist James Maxwell created the theory of the electromagnetic field. At the end of the 80s. German physicist Heinrich Hertz established the existence of electromagnetic waves.

The theory of electromagnetism was the first area in which scientific developments began to be directly introduced into technology. In 1832, a Russian subject, Baron Pavel Lvovich Schilling, demonstrated the first example of an electric telegraph. In the Schilling device, electric current pulses caused the arrow to deflect corresponding to a certain letter.

In 1837, the American artist and inventor Samuel Morse improved the telegraph, in which transmitted messages were marked on a paper tape using a special alphabet. However, it took six years before the American government appreciated this invention and allocated money to build the first telegraph line between Washington and Baltimore. After that, the telegraph began to develop rapidly, in 1850 a telegraph cable connected London and Paris, and in 1858 a cable was laid across the Atlantic Ocean.

Important events took place in chemistry . Previously, alchemists believed that all substances were composed of four elements - fire, air, water and earth. In 1789, the French chemist Antoine Lavoisier experimentally proved the law of conservation of matter. Then, in 1803, the English chemist and physicist John Dalton introduced the concept of "atomic weight", proposed an atomistic theory of the structure of matter; he argued that each atom has a different chemical structure and atomic weight, that chemical compounds are formed by a combination of atoms in certain numerical ratios. On the basis of the atomic-molecular theory, the theory of valency and chemical bonding has grown. In 1812 - 1813. Swedish chemist and mineralogist Jens Berzelius created the electrochemical theory of affinity and the classification of elements, compounds and minerals. In 1853, the English organic chemist Edward Frankland introduced the concept of valence, i.e. numerical expression of the properties of atoms of various elements to enter into chemical compounds with each other.

Back in 1809, the law of multiple volumes was discovered in the chemical interaction of gases. This phenomenon was explained by Dalton and Joseph Gay-Lussac as evidence that equal volumes of gas contain the same number of molecules. In 1811, the Italian chemist and physicist Amedeo Avogadro put forward the hypothesis that a certain volume of any gas contains the same number of molecules. This hypothesis was experimentally confirmed in the 1940s. French chemist Charles Gerard. The discovery of new chemical elements and the study of their compounds paved the way for the discovery of the periodic law. The creation of the theory of chemical structure (organic chemistry) by the Russian organic chemist Alexander Mikhailovich Butlerov in 1861 and the discovery by Dmitry Ivanovich Mendeleev in 1869 of the periodic law of chemical elements completed the formation of classical chemistry.

Chemical industry in the first half of the XIX century. produced mainly sulfuric acid, soda and chlorine. In 1785, the French chemist Claude Berthollet suggested bleaching fabrics with bleach. In 1842, the Russian chemist Nikolai Nikolaevich Zinin synthesized the first artificial dye, aniline. In the 50s. German chemist August Hoffmann and his student William Perkin obtained two other aniline dyes - rosaneline and mauveine. As a result of these works, it became possible to create an aniline-dye industry, which was rapidly developed in Germany. Another important branch of the chemical industry was the production of explosives. In 1845, the German chemist Christian Friedrich Schönbein invented pyroxylin, and the Italian chemist Ascanio Sobrero in 1847 synthesized nitroglycerin and nitromannite for the first time. In 1862, the Swedish inventor and industrialist Alfred Nobel set up the industrial production of nitroglycerin, and then moved on to the production of dynamite.

In the 1840s German chemist Justus Liebig substantiated the principles of the use of mineral fertilizers in agriculture. Since that time, the production of superphosphate and potassium fertilizers has begun. Germany becomes the center of the European chemical industry.

One of the achievements of experimental chemistry was the creation of photography. In the XVIII century. an attraction using a camera obscura was distributed. It was a box with a small hole into which a magnifying glass was inserted; on the opposite wall one could see the image of objects in front of the camera. In the 1820s the French artist Nicephore Niépce attempted to capture this image. Having covered a copper plate with a layer of mountain resin, he inserted it into the camera, then the plate was exposed to various chemicals to develop the image. It was all about choosing the photocarrier layer, developer and fixer. It took many years of experiments, which, after the death of Niepce, were continued by his assistant Louis Jacques Daguerre. By 1839, Daguerre managed to obtain an image on plates coated with silver iodide, after developing them with mercury vapor. Thus the daguerreotype was born. The French government appreciated this invention and assigned Daguerre a lifetime pension of 6,000 francs.

In the middle of the XIX century. in biology Special attention was drawn to the idea of ​​evolution, formulated by the English naturalist Charles Darwin. She left her mark on the worldview of people. The public especially liked two aspects of the theory: firstly, it was the first significant attack against the dogma of the church about the creation of man by God, and secondly, the idea of ​​the survival of the strongest at that time corresponded to the mood of the literary movement "Storm and Drang". However, Darwinism, due to its declarative nature, contained a number of shortcomings, which then led it to a crisis.

In general, this period is characterized by the formation of biology as a science in its classical form (naturalistic biology). Its methods were observation and description of nature, and the main task was classification. All life on the planet was reduced to certain groups and classes. One of the first to work in this direction was the German evolutionary biologist Ernst Haeckel. Such a direction as experimental biology is emerging, associated with the works of Claude Bernard, Louis Pasteur, Ivan Mikhailovich Sechenov. They paved the way for the study of life processes by precise physical and chemical methods.

Optical spectroscopy has become a fundamentally new means of cognition. The first spectroscope was created in 1859 by German scientists Gustav Kirchhoff and Robert Bunsen. Cesium, rubidium and thallium were discovered with this instrument.

By the end of the nineteenth century. Universities and newly created research laboratories, which were financed by both the state and private individuals, became the centers of scientific life. The first such laboratory was created at home by the English physicist and chemist Henry Cavendish. In memory of this, Maxwell founded the Cavendish Laboratory at the University of Cambridge in 1871.

Scientific and technological development was ensured by the mutual exchange of trainees and publications, and in the field of industrial and technical development - by holding regular international industrial exhibitions.

The role of education has increased enormously, and it has radically influenced the content structure of science. The discipline of knowledge is introduced, textbooks (reliable knowledge) appear.

The beginning of a new education was the emergence of engineering schools: the school of bridges and roads, the school of military engineers in France. The Ecole Polytechnique of Paris occupied the leading position in technical education. Teaching work was considered prestigious. Here, for the first time, lecture and educational literature on mechanics and mathematical physics was developed. Similar centers appeared in Germany - Koenigsberg and Göttingen, in England - Cambridge.

The development of technology and technology in the XIX century. was explosive both in scale and in the number of radical inventions and innovations. The most important discoveries of that time should include the following:

use of a drive belt on steam engines in production;

creation and distribution of ships with a steam engine;

creation and distribution of locomotives;

· development of new metallurgical processes;

· development and development of chemical technologies;

creation of electrical engineering (including production, transmission and various fields and applications).

As for the field of social science, the modern humanities had two founders: Francis Bacon, the founder of empiricism, and Galileo Galilei, the founder of modern theoretical and experimental physics. First set law of empirical research, described the methods of systematization and hierarchization of empirical induction. These techniques are used to varying degrees even today when working with primary material and correspond to the spread of ideas about the development of science. Galileo became the founder not only of theoretical and experimental physics, but in many respects of natural science in general.

Central to philosophy was the question of the origin of knowledge. In the formulation of the English philosopher Thomas Hobbes, it sounds like this: How can cognitive experience, being mediated, be considered to correspond to objective reality?

Two opposing trends in philosophy rationalism of Descartes and empiricism of Locke – answered this question in different ways. Descartes took mathematics as a model of science and, giving priority to reason, called the source of knowledge comprehended through intuition "innate ideas", from which numerous consequences were deduced by induction. The English philosopher John Locke was guided by the empirical sciences and opposed the innate ideas of Descartes with the metaphor of consciousness as a "blank slate" that is filled through empirical induction. Each of the positions was reflected in two types of substance (spiritual and material) by the original duality of the comprehended material.

Later, empiricism splits into two opposing branches - realistic, or materialistic, and subjective-idealistic in the person of the English philosopher George Berkeley and the Scottish philosopher and historian David Hume. Kant tried to resolve these disputes and contradictions by introducing the concept of "thing in itself". The solution he proposed shifted the problem into the world of things in themselves, i.e. in philosophy, which then rapidly developed. In the field of natural and technical disciplines, under the flag of the struggle against metaphysics, there was a return to the pre-Kantian period. Here the mechanism spread and positivism.

A common feature of positivism was the desire to solve the problems characteristic of the philosophical theory of knowledge, relying on natural scientific reason, opposed to metaphysics and close to ordinary reason.

The founder of positivism, the French philosopher Auguste Comte, believed that science is a systematic extension of simple common sense to all really accessible speculations, a simple methodical continuation of universal wisdom. Science should not raise the question of the cause of phenomena, but only of how they occur.

Science, as a form of knowledge of the world, had practically supplanted philosophy and religion by that time, becoming the only intellectual authority in society. Religion and metaphysical philosophy, under the pressure of the successes and practical results of science and technology, slowly but steadily lost their positions, retreating to the backyards of the intellectual space of society. Significant evidence of this was Comte's famous concept of three periods in the development of knowledge: religious, metaphysical and scientific, successively replacing each other.

The claims of natural science to the exclusive prerogative in the reliability of knowledge of the laws of nature and the world were confirmed in practice and did not raise objections from anyone due to the strict accuracy, impersonal objectivity of scientific theories. Religion and philosophy were forced to conform their doctrines to scientific positions, otherwise they would not be accepted by the cultural community at all. Religious faith and reason were finally divorced: rationalism supplanted religious beliefs (at least among culturally educated people). He formed the concept of man as the highest form, which marked the beginning of the development of secular humanism, as well as the concept of the material world as the only reality, creating the foundations of scientific dialectical materialism. It is in science that the worldview of people has acquired a realistic and stable basis.

Super-optimism in relation to science and technology finally takes shape in the 19th century. Even the religiously minded French writer and historian of religion Joseph Renan, in one of his early works The Future of Science, written under the influence of the ideas of the French Revolution of 1848 but first published in 1890, argued as the highest point arising from the Christian form of thinking and traditions, scientific faith. From his point of view, science itself has the power of revelation, since its task becomes the organization not only of mankind, but also of God himself, and it requires complete autonomy and unlimited freedom. Only in this case the researcher becomes his own master, not recognizing any control. It is thanks to such a science that man, and hence the spirit, gains dominance over matter.

But even then, in the 19th century, voices were heard criticizing the separation of technology and scientific and technological progress from moral norms. In Russia, it was the religious philosopher Nikolai Aleksandrovich Berdyaev. In his work "Man and Machine" he wrote that technology is the last love of man, and he (man) is ready to change his image under the influence of the object of his love. Everything that happens to the world feeds this new faith of man. It is technology that produces real miracles. Referring to Renan, Berdyaev warns that technology can have enormous power in the hands of a person or a group of people: “Soon peaceful scientists will be able to produce shocks not only of a historical, but also of a cosmic nature.” Yes, and Renan himself two decades later, realizing that the results of scientific and technological progress can serve not only good, but also evil, and their consequences cannot be foreseen even in the foreseeable future, he came to the conclusion that people's expectation of unlimited happiness with the help of scientific and technical progress is just another illusion.

Remaining generally mechanical and metaphysical, classical science, by virtue of the logic of self-development, creates within itself the prerequisites for its own modernization. In mathematics, Newton and Leibniz create the theory of infinitesimal quantities, Descartes - analytical geometry; the ideas of movement and evolution take shape in the cosmogonic hypothesis of Kant-Laplace, and so on. The prerequisites for major scientific changes, qualitative leaps, even upheavals, are gradually being created in several fields of knowledge at once.

These were complex scientific revolutions that began in the first half of the 19th century. and flowing at first within the framework of the classical and research paradigm. What they had in common was the statement about the interconnection of all sciences, their evolution and the spontaneous penetration of the ideas of dialectics into natural science.

Among the natural sciences, physics and chemistry (chemical atomistics), which study the interconversions of substances and energy, biology (including embryology and paleontology), are moving to the forefront; in geology, the theory of the evolution of the Earth is being formed (English naturalist Charles Lyell). But three great discoveries of the second third of the 19th century were of particular importance: cellular structure of animal objects (German botanist Matthias Jacob Schleiden and biologist Theodor Schwann); law of conservation and transformation of energy (English physicist James Joule and German naturalist Julius Mayer); evolutionary theory of biological species (C. Darwin).

This was followed by discoveries that showed firsthand the operation of dialectical laws in nature: animal physiology (I.M. Sechenov, 1866), the periodic system of elements (D.I. Mendeleev, 1869), the electromagnetic nature of light (J. Maxwell, 1873).

As a result, natural science has risen to a new qualitative level and has become a discipline-organized science. If in the XVIII century. it was primarily a science that collected facts and generalized them in the form of theories, but now it has become a systematizing science about the causes of phenomena and processes, their occurrence and development, i.e. dialectical-evolutionary science. In natural science, there were active processes of differentiation; fragmentation of large areas into narrower ones (for example, in physics - into thermodynamics, electromagnetism, hydrogasdynamics) or the formation of new independent disciplines, especially in biology (genetics, cytology, embryology). However, the main task of natural science is the synthesis of knowledge, the search for ways to integrate the sciences on the basis of common general principles. There is a special kind of scientific disciplines - complex, at the intersection of sciences (biochemistry, physical chemistry, etc.), carrying out interdisciplinary research.

Although dialectical ideas and principles spontaneously penetrated into natural science, on the whole it continued to remain in metaphysical positions. Only with the advent of the evolutionary theory of Charles Darwin did the situation change.

This period in the development of science, technology and society is usually called the time of classical science. It was then that the mechanical picture of the world took shape and was brought to its logical conclusion, the methodology of which spread from the sphere of physics to the fields of natural science, technical and humanitarian knowledge.

The period of New time passed for the Ural region under the sign of the formation of the metallurgical industry. Copper-smelting, iron-smelting, molotov and other plants were built on the basis of the use of hydraulic engineering. As a result, the Urals became a major mining center in Russia.

Schools (mining, verbal, arithmetic, Latin, signification, i.e. drawing and drawing, etc.) were organized in cities and at factories, where qualified personnel were trained. In the second half of the XVIII century. As a result of the school reform of Catherine II, a number of public schools were opened in the Urals. During the 19th century a system of educational institutions was formed (factory, zemstvo and Sunday schools, city, county and district schools, real and vocational schools) with a broad educational and special program. In the second half of the nineteenth century. the construction of railways contributed to the expansion of ties with other Russian regions and the creation of the infrastructure of the region.

In modern times, the Urals was known for its organizers and scientists, such as Vasily Nikitich Tatishchev, Vilim Ivanovich Gennin, Ivan Ivanovich Polzunov, Efim Alekseevich and Miron Efimovich Cherepanov, Pavel Petrovich Anosov, Pavel Matveevich Obukhov, Dmitry Narkisovich Mamin-Sibiryak, Narkis Konstantinovich Chupin and other.

The Ural region was gradually included in the scientific and technical life not only in Russia, but also in the world. Scientific societies were opened here (the Ural Society of Natural Science Lovers - UOLE), natural history museums and public libraries were created, scientific expeditions were conducted (the expedition of D.I. Mendeleev).

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Lecture 8

With the development of industry and trade in Russia, the need for scientific knowledge, technical improvements, and the study of natural resources increased.

The state of trade, industry, communications and natural resources becomes in the 60-80s of the XVIII century. the subject of study of academic expeditions.

These expeditions, in which I.I. Lepekhin, P.S. Pallas, N.Ya. Ozoretskovsky, V.F. geology, etc.

Observations accumulated as a result of many years of travel of scientists were published in special works.

In 1743, the first fishing vessel set off from Kamchatka to the shores of America, and by 1780, Russian industrialists reached the Yukon.

Russian ”G. I. Shelekhov in 1784 laid the foundation for permanent settlements of Russians in Alaska.

In the 60s, the most prominent mathematician, who returned to Russia, resumed his work at the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences, and in 1768 K.F. Wolf, one of the founders of the theory of the development of organisms, began working in it.

According to F. Engels, “K. F. Wolf made in 1759 the first attack on the theory of the constancy of species, proclaiming the doctrine of evolution.

Increased interest in national history.

The historical science of this time was enriched by the publication of sources - “Russian Pravda” (1767), “Journal, or Day Note” of Peter I (1770), etc.

The Kursk merchant I. I. Golikov, a passionate admirer of Peter I, published 30 volumes of the "Acts of Peter the Great" and "Additions" to them, N. I. Novikov published in 1773-1775. multi-volume "Ancient Russian Vivliofika", which included many historical documents.

In the same years, the publication of the five-volume "History of the Russian" by V. N. Tatishchev began, and seven volumes of "History of the Russian from ancient times" by another noble historian and publicist, M. M. Shcherbatov, were published.

In the development of scientific and technical thought, in the creation of various machines and mechanisms, I. I. Polzunov, I. P. Kulibiv, and K. D. Frolov especially stood out at that time.

The son of a soldier Ivan Ivanovich Polzunov (1728-1766) is the inventor of the steam engine. She was launched in 1766 in Altai.

Ivan Petrovich Kulibin (1735-1818) designed a single-arch bridge across the Neva. After checking Kulibin's mathematical calculations, he gave them an enthusiastic review.

Kulibin owns the invention of a semaphore telegraph and a code for it, a “navigable” vessel, a “scooter”, which was the prototype of a bicycle, a searchlight (“Kulibinsky lantern”) and a number of other complex mechanisms.

An outstanding inventor was also Kozma Dmitrievich Frolov (1726-1800), the son of a factory artisan. Frolov designed a water engine that set in motion the mechanisms of the Kolyvano-Voskresensky plant.

But the application of technical innovations in practice met with an insurmountable obstacle in the feudal system. The labor of the serf made the progress of technology unnecessary for the ruling class.

Remarkable ideas were rarely put into practice, amazing projects remained only on paper, the most important discoveries were forgotten, inventors vegetated in obscurity, suffered need, deprivation, were persecuted and bullied.

Some, albeit modest, progress has been made in the area of ​​education. The main attention was paid to closed aristocratic educational institutions that trained officers and officials. The first gymnasiums were created only in the 50s - Moscow at the university and Kazan.

For a long time they were the only comprehensive schools. It was only in the 1980s that the organization of general education, primary and secondary schools for all classes began; however, the children of peasants were not allowed to go to schools. Until the end of the XVIII century. only 316 such schools were opened with 18 thousand students.

Most of the rich nobles preferred to give their children the so-called home education, hiring foreign tutors, among whom there were many ignoramuses and rogues. Most often, the children of such nobles acquired only external gloss and knowledge of the French language.

Serving and petty nobles taught their children from ignorant "uncles". As for the peasants, only a few of them could learn to read and write from deacons and other village literates.

The nobility and the state were afraid that the spread of enlightenment among the "common people" would cause "fermentation of minds."