How Much Did Science and Technology Change?
The course's last extent question
- Explain the extent to which science and technology brought change in the period from 1900 to the present.
- Extent is a degree, exactly as in 5.10, 8.9 and 6.8 — the course keeps asking the same skill of new material.
- So the routine is unchanged: largest change, largest continuity, then a specific degree.
Select all the domains the CED says science and technology advanced.
Five domains in one Key Concept, and each is measurable.
The case for very large change
- Rapid advances in science and technology altered the understanding of the universe and the natural world and led to advances in communication, transportation, industry, agriculture and medicine.
- 9.1 supplies the evidence: distance reduced, productivity raised, a growing population fed, lives lengthened, fertility transformed.
- That is five domains in one Key Concept, and each is measurable.
Select all the limits available for this answer.
The same advances that lengthened lives supplied the century's weapons.
The case for limits
- Diseases associated with poverty persisted (9.2), and the CED marks their persistence as a distribution problem rather than a knowledge one.
- Technology also produced the environmental pressures and resource competition of 9.3, and the higher casualties of 7.3 and 7.7.
- So the same advances that lengthened lives supplied the century's weapons — the degree has to account for both.
Evidence of change, evidence of a limit, or the degree?
Sort each element of a final extent answer.
The CED treats the persistence of poverty-associated diseases as...
They are treatable and preventable conditions that continued anyway.
The same advances lengthened lives and supplied the century's weapons. 9.1 and 9.2 record medicine and agriculture; 7.3 and 7.7 record technology raising casualties, and 9.3 records environmental pressure. A degree that counts only the benefits has not read the course it is summarising.
A defensible degree is: transformative in capability, ____ in distribution.
It can be defended from unit 9 alone.
Three more review statements
- States responded in a variety of ways to the economic challenges of the 20th century.
- Rights-based discourses challenged old assumptions, and access became more inclusive in much of the world.
- Popular and consumer culture became more global. All three interact with technology, and none is only a technology story.
Put the final extent routine in order.
The course has asked this same skill in units 5, 6, 8 and 9.
A final extent routine
- Name the largest change with one measurable piece of evidence.
- Name the largest limit — persistence of poverty diseases, or the environmental and military costs.
- Give a specific degree: transformative in capability, uneven in distribution is defensible from unit 9 alone.
Change: a child born in 2000 could expect decades more life than one born in 1900, on evidence from vaccines, antibiotics and food supply. Limit: malaria, tuberculosis and cholera persisted throughout, and the CED calls that a matter of distribution. Degree: transformative in capability, uneven in distribution.
Rapid advances in science and technology altered the understanding of the universe and the natural world and led to advances in communication, transportation, industry, agriculture and medicine. The limits: poverty-associated diseases persisted as a distribution problem, and technology also produced environmental pressure and higher wartime casualties. A defensible degree: transformative in capability, uneven in distribution.