Technology and social change

The broader reason for producing this volume is even more important in the eyes of the authors. We believe that the impact of technology on social change in Western society, potent for many years, has now become so crucial in various respects that greater emphasis on this whole subject is urgently needed. It is clear that this concern is shared by many other people including (indeed especially) physical and biological scientists, many of whom see great danger in such problems as that of nuclear radiation. This is evident from recent meetings of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and from articles and editorials in such journals as the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. Serious concern has been registered regarding the social aspects of science, centering on two principal consid erations: (1) the place of science in society, and (2) the impact of science and technology upon society. Representatives from different branches of science have contributed valuable ideas on these subjects, but certainly discussion of the social aspects of science calls for the participation of social scientists. For many years social scientists have been probing the subtleties of the social structure and appraising effects of innovations upon the vast and complex array of social relationships. Some sociologists, for example, Robert K. Merton and Bernard Barber, have recently addressed. themselves to the first subject mentioned above (the place of science in society), but the second one-crucial as it is in the latter 1950's-has been largely neglected. The writers of this volume-all sociologists-have there fore set themselves to fill what is to them a major gap in the literature by attempting to treat systematically the impact of science and technology upon society.