Machines as the measure of men: science, technology, and ideologies of western dominance

Part I: Before the Industrial Revolution

First encounters: impressions of material culture in an age of exploration

The ascendancy of science: shifting views of non-Western peoples in the era of the Enlightenment

Part II: The age of industrialization

Global hegemony and the rise of technology as the main measure of human achievement

Attributes of the dominant: scientific and technological foundations of the civilizing mission

The limits of diffusion: science and technology in the debate over the African and Asian capacity for acculturation

Part III: The twentieth century

The Great War and the assault on scientific and technological measures of human worth

Epilogue: Modernization theory and the revival of the technological standard.