Author: Antoine J. Bousquet Publisher: Oxford University Press ISBN: 0197655939 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 379
Book Description
Bousquet's landmark book examines the impact of key technologies and scientific ideas on the theory and practice of warfare and the handling of the perennial tension between order and chaos on the battlefield. Spanning the entire modern era, from the Scientific Revolution to the present, it offers a systematic account of modern warfare as the constitution of increasingly complex assemblages of bodies and machines whose integration rests upon a military assimilation of scientific thought. Reflecting the pervasive influence of scientific conceptual frameworks upon warfare, modern armies have been successively organised by reference to the paradigmatic technologies of the clock, engine, computer, and network. Conversely, major scientific developments and technological breakthroughs have become intertwined with the experience of war, especially since the Second World War's unprecedented mobilisation of scientific rationality and technical expertise. This increasingly tight symbiosis between science, technology, and war is at the heart of both the tremendous powers and enduring pathologies displayed by the contemporary military machine. In this new and revised edition, Bousquet extends the analysis to encompass the latest developments in the scientific way of warfare in the midst of renewed great power competition and a wave of technological innovation in artificial intelligence and robotics.
Author: M. Susan Lindee Publisher: Harvard University Press ISBN: 0674919181 Category : Science Languages : en Pages : 297
Book Description
A thought-provoking examination of the intersections of knowledge and violence, and the quandaries and costs of modern, technoscientific warfare. Science and violence converge in modern warfare. While the finest minds of the twentieth century have improved human life, they have also produced human injury. They engineered radar, developed electronic computers, and helped mass produce penicillin all in the context of military mobilization. Scientists also developed chemical weapons, atomic bombs, and psychological warfare strategies. Rational Fog explores the quandary of scientific and technological productivity in an era of perpetual war. Science is, at its foundation, an international endeavor oriented toward advancing human welfare. At the same time, it has been nationalistic and militaristic in times of crisis and conflict. As our weapons have become more powerful, scientists have struggled to reconcile these tensions, engaging in heated debates over the problems inherent in exploiting science for military purposes. M. Susan Lindee examines this interplay between science and state violence and takes stock of researchers’ efforts to respond. Many scientists who wanted to distance their work from killing have found it difficult and have succumbed to the exigencies of war. Indeed, Lindee notes that scientists who otherwise oppose violence have sometimes been swept up in the spirit of militarism when war breaks out. From the first uses of the gun to the mass production of DDT and the twenty-first-century battlefield of the mind, the science of war has achieved remarkable things at great human cost. Rational Fog reminds us that, for scientists and for us all, moral costs sometimes mount alongside technological and scientific advances.
Author: Monte D. Wright Publisher: ISBN: Category : Military art and science Languages : en Pages : 244
Book Description
The nature of warfare has always been largely determined by contemporary technology. Instances of technological change undertaken for the sake of military advantage have also been relatively common in history. The relationships between science and warfare, however, have been much more variable and ambiguous. The papers and discussions of the Symposium investigate selected aspects of the complex relationships between science and technology on the one hand, and warfare on the other, from the Renaissance to the 1960s. In the first session, Professor Hall takes up in turn the possible areas of interaction between science (exterior ballistics, engineering, explosives, mechanics, and metallurgy) and military technology (edge weapons, cannons and mortars, fortification and siege warfare, and small arms) in the 15th, 16th, and 17th centuries. The notion that science is pursued for utilitarian ends, Hall finds, is an unhistorical projection backward from our own age." He excludes navigation and medicine from consideration, because they were civil as well as military concerns. In spite of the pleading of certain early propagandists of the Empire of Man over Nature," and in spite of the elaborate sketches of military engines in Leonardo's notebooks, military technology was largely innocent of scientific method. The developments in fortification required mathematical skills, but nothing more than elementary geometry and arithmetic. Mathematicians studied the ancient problem of the trajectory of projectiles, but their efforts affected neither the design nor the use of guns. The range tables they provided were not even usable with the guns of the time. The solution of the trajectory problem would await Benjamin Robins and the 18th century. Professor Hale supports Hall's conclusion with three arguments. In the 16th and 17th centuries, armies were so organized as to preclude any productive contact with the worlds of science and technology.
Author: Michael E. O'Hanlon Publisher: Princeton University Press ISBN: 0691157995 Category : Technology & Engineering Languages : en Pages : 276
Book Description
An essential introduction to modern defense policy The U.S. military is one of the largest and most complex organizations in the world. How it spends its money, chooses tactics, and allocates its resources have enormous implications for national defense and the economy. The Science of War is the only comprehensive textbook on how to analyze and understand these and other essential problems in modern defense policy. Michael O'Hanlon provides undergraduate and graduate students with an accessible yet rigorous introduction to the subject. Drawing on a broad range of sources and his own considerable expertise as a defense analyst and teacher, he describes the analytic techniques the military uses in every crucial area of military science. O'Hanlon explains how the military budget works, how the military assesses and deploys new technology, develops strategy and fights wars, handles the logistics of stationing and moving troops and equipment around the world, and models and evaluates battlefield outcomes. His modeling techniques have been tested in Iraq and Afghanistan, including the methods he used to predict higher-than-anticipated troop fatalities in Iraq—controversial predictions that have since been vindicated. The Science of War is the definitive resource on warfare in the twenty-first century. Gives the best introduction to defense analysis available Covers defense budgeting Shows how to model and predict outcomes in war Explains military logistics, including overseas basing Examines key issues in military technology, including missile defense, space warfare, and nuclear-weapons testing Based on the author's graduate-level courses at Princeton, Columbia, and Georgetown universities
Author: Audra J. Wolfe Publisher: JHU Press ISBN: 1421409011 Category : Science Languages : en Pages : 177
Book Description
A synthetic account of how science became a central weapon in the ideological Cold War. Honorable Mention for the Forum for the History of Science in America Book Prize of the Forum for the History of Science in America For most of the second half of the twentieth century, the United States and its allies competed with a hostile Soviet Union in almost every way imaginable except open military engagement. The Cold War placed two opposite conceptions of the good society before the uncommitted world and history itself, and science figured prominently in the picture. Competing with the Soviets offers a short, accessible introduction to the special role that science and technology played in maintaining state power during the Cold War, from the atomic bomb to the Human Genome Project. The high-tech machinery of nuclear physics and the space race are at the center of this story, but Audra J. Wolfe also examines the surrogate battlefield of scientific achievement in such diverse fields as urban planning, biology, and economics; explains how defense-driven federal investments created vast laboratories and research programs; and shows how unfamiliar worries about national security and corrosive questions of loyalty crept into the supposedly objective scholarly enterprise. Based on the assumption that scientists are participants in the culture in which they live, Competing with the Soviets looks beyond the debate about whether military influence distorted science in the Cold War. Scientists’ choices and opportunities have always been shaped by the ideological assumptions, political mandates, and social mores of their times. The idea that American science ever operated in a free zone outside of politics is, Wolfe argues, itself a legacy of the ideological Cold War that held up American science, and scientists, as beacons of freedom in contrast to their peers in the Soviet Union. Arranged chronologically and thematically, the book highlights how ideas about the appropriate relationships among science, scientists, and the state changed over time.
Author: Alex Roland Publisher: Oxford University Press ISBN: 0190605391 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 152
Book Description
The war instinct is part of human nature, but the means to fight war depend on technology. Alex Roland traces the co-evolution of technology and warfare from the Stone Age to the age of cyberwar, describing the inventions that changed the direction of warfare throughout history: from fortified walls, the chariot, battleships, and the gunpowder revolution to bombers, rockets, improvised explosive devices (IEDs), and nuclear weapons. In the twenty-first century, new technologies continue to push warfare in unexpected directions, while warfare stimulates stunning new technological advances. Yet even now, the newest and best technology cannot guarantee victory. Brimming with dramatic narratives of battles and deep insights into military psychology, this book shows that although military technologies keep changing at great speed, the principles and patterns behind them abide.
Author: Thomas J. Craughwell Publisher: Pier 9 ISBN: 9781741963854 Category : Combat Languages : en Pages : 304
Book Description
This title looks at the individuals through history who have invented military technologies, the human faces behind life-saving and death-dealing science. It examines their motivations, loyalties and passions, and sets out to investigate why they use their intellect in the service of war.
Author: Linda Dawson Publisher: Springer ISBN: 3319930524 Category : Technology & Engineering Languages : en Pages : 215
Book Description
With the recent influx of spaceflight and satellite launches, the region of outer space has become saturated with vital technology used for communication and surveillance and the functioning of business and government. But what would happen if these capabilities were disrupted or even destroyed? How would we react if faced with a full-scale blackout of satellite communications? What can and has happened following the destruction of a satellite? In the short term, the aftermath would send thousands of fragments orbiting Earth as space debris. In the longer term, the ramifications of such an event on Earth and in space would be alarming, to say the least. This book takes a look at such crippling scenarios and how countries around the world might respond in their wake. It describes the aggressive actions that nations could take and the technologies that could be leveraged to gain power and control over assets, as well as to initiate war in the theater of outer space. The ways that a country's vital capabilities could be disarmed in such a setting are investigated. In addition, the book discusses our past and present political climate, including which countries currently have these abilities and who the aggressive players already are. Finally, it addresses promising research and space technology that could be used to protect us from those interested in destroying the world's vital systems.
Author: Antoine J. Bousquet
Author: M. Susan Lindee
Author: Don Nardo
Author: Monte D. Wright
Author: Michael E. O'Hanlon
Author: Audra J. Wolfe
Author: Alex Roland
Author: Thomas J. Craughwell
Author: Linda Dawson
Author: Andrew Dickson White