Science in Revolution

THE last third of the eighteenth century was the period of the political upheavals that we know as the American and French revolutions. In this era there also occurred an Industrial Revolution and a Chemical Revolution, which were likewise supremely important. The Industrial Revolution involved the substitution of machinery for hand tools, the introduction of the factory system and the rise of mass production. In the course of the Chemical Revolution, old, erroneous theories were rapidly over-thrown and the science of chemistry was placed on a firm foundation. It has been pointed out that revolutions are simply signals that evolution has taken place. The forces that produce them have been gathering momentum for a long time before they break out into visible and sometimes violent changes of existing conditions. The American Revolution, which began in 1775, resulted from the gradually increasing strength of the colonies and their growing unwillingness to play a subordinate role, as well as from such specific happenings as the passing of the Stamp Act (1765), the Boston Massacre (1770) and the Boston Tea Party (1773). The age-old misery of the French peasants, popular displeasure over the privileges enjoyed by the upper classes and the spirit of defiance engendered by the French "philosophers" of the eighteenth century all these factors had molded the spirit of the French people over a period of many years, so that the actual outbreak of revolution in 1789 came merely as a long anticipated climax. 

So it was with the Chemical and Industrial revolutions. The Chemical Revolution did not spring full fledged from the brow of some scientific Zeus. It was the product of many generations of scientists and pseudo scientists, who had gruelingly accumulated facts and advanced theories. The Industrial Revolution, in its beginnings, was not so intimately bound up with the history of a science, but it was rooted partly, at least, in earlier scientific achievement.the most complex science related articles facing humanity today It waxed and grew as men realized more and more that the methods of scientific thinking could be applied to the problems of industry and could bring about astonishing improvements in the manufacture and distribution of goods. One of the important results, indeed, of the Industrial Revolution was the development of applied science, or technology.