In 1969, after taking up a Visiting Scholarship at King’s College, Cambridge, I was approached by the Department of the History and Philosophy of Science, Cambridge University, to give a public lecture. The subject-matter I chose was ‘Three Revolutions: The Scientific, Industrial and Scientific-Technical’. When it was announced in the University Reporter (100 (1969-1970), p. 1577), for some reason the Scientific-Technical Revolution metamorphosed into the Scientific-Industrial.
I gave the lecture on 4 May 1970, and in it I attempted to convey that the Three Revolutions were products of, and factors in, historically far-reaching societal transformations, and that the place of science and technology cannot be left out of the societal picture. It was this perspective that led me to return to the subject-matter and address it now in book form.
Apart from underestimating the difficulties of presenting a short account of the issue, other commitments prevented me from focusing solely on the project. When I reached my 90th birthday, it occurred to me that if I was to contribute to the debates regarding these three great movements of thought and action, a viable course would be to produce the work in three separate parts, of which The Scientific Revolution Revisited is the first. It turned out to be a thorny journey; the other two parts are in preparation.
Autumn 2014