Dear Sigrid:

Thanks for your response.  Allow me to be more specific.  I am interested in technology and science as means of human attempt at mastery over nature.  For 290,000 years Homo sapiens thrived with a worldview that did not have sharp lines of demarcation between "us" and the rest of nature. About 10,000 years ago, that changed with the rise of the first farmers. But early farmers systematically domesticated plants and animals hence a new worldview emerged: anthropocentrism (human-centeredness).  I am interested in learning as much as I can about the use of technology and science that has been used in history to dominate and control nature.  In my view, that is at the base of all class societies and the root-cause of alienation from nature (hence social alienation). (I have written this up in Part 2 of my Economics, Socialism, and Ecology: A Critical Outline) To address the present-day social and planetary crisis (one and the same from my perspective), we must work our way out of this dilemma. Science for the People would be a group of us that embraces a transition to a new science and technology paradigm that works with nature and not to dominate and control it for the human purpose at a cost to other species. 

I have received valuable recommendations from Chandler Davis, Phil Gasper, and Prof. Lorraine Dostan (Director, Max Planck Institute for the History of Science) who Chandler introduced to me.  

If you and others any suggested reading (I would eventually need to choose a few as the list gets larger) I would be much obliged. 

Once I have more recommendation, I will share the suggested readings with the entire list.

Happy 2018.

Kamran

On Fri, Dec 29, 2017 at 4:50 AM, Sigrid Schmalzer <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

The field is so vast... Which areas are you most interested in?

If you want books on SftP or related subjects (history of science and political activism in the Cold War US), here are a few good ones:

Kelly Moore, Disrupting Science
Sarah Bridger, Scientists at War
Paul Rubinson, Redefining Science
and of course... the new Science for the People documentary collection available this week!! Science for the People: Documents from America's Movement of Radical Scientists

But of course there are lots of other subjects out there of interest. :)

On 12/28/2017 12:08 PM, Kamran Nayeri wrote:

Dear folks:

Could anyone recommend really good literature review(s) or books on the history of science and technology?

Thank you.

Kamran

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Sigrid Schmalzer
Professor, History Department
University of Massachusetts Amherst

Red Revolution, Green Revolution: Scientific Farming in Socialist China (University of Chicago Press, 2016)

Forthcoming from UMass Press in December, 2017: Science for the People: Documents from America's Movement of Radical Scientists

Forthcoming from Tilbury House Publishers in February, 2018: Moth and Wasp, Soil and Ocean: Remembering Chinese Scientist Pu Zhelong (picture book)

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Kamran Nayeri