Abstract
Historians of science and historians of technology have recently turned their attention to the conceptual history of ‘applied science’ and ‘technology’ respectively. ‘Technology’ was a concept introduced in the nineteenth century as concerning both ‘applied science’ and ‘industrial arts.’ A developed version of this concept caught on after the first decades of the twentieth century, following the establishment of technological networks and the rise of ‘Fordism,’ ‘Taylorism’ and ‘technocracy.’ Based on interpretations of the nineteenth-century circuit of the steam engine and the twentieth-century network of electric power, this chapter brings together observations from the history of science, the history of technology and the critique of classic political economy to elaborate on the suggestion that ‘technology’ has been a ‘hazardous’ concept. Central to the argument of the chapter is the retrieval of a correspondence between the conceptual couples ‘technology’-‘technics’ and ‘surplus value’-‘value.’
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Notes
- 1.
For those who want to follow the development of the historiography of technology, there are, for example, the accounts by Eugene Ferguson (1974), Reinhard Rürup (1974), John Staudenmaier (1985) and Alex Roland (1997). The assumption that technology is applied science could not be sustained once the attention was shifted from the moments of the invention of technology to its long-term use. The reconfiguration of technology in use involved hardly any science. Influential here has been an article by David Edgerton (1999). For equally insightful articles, see the ones by Carol Purcell (1995) and Ruth Cowan (1996), which show that the shaping of technology in use is inherently a process of construction of gender. A balanced integration of constructivist approaches to the historiography of technology has certainly contributed to opening up the definition of technology beyond the limits set by those who assumed that technology is applied science, Staudenmaier (2002, 2009), Tympas (2005).
- 2.
On the history of the concept ‘technology’ and/or the meaning of ‘applied science’, some of the most valuable contributions are authored by Ronald Kline (1995), Wolfgang König (1996), Leo Marx (1997), Ruth Oldenziel (1999), Eric Schatzberg (2006, 2012), Carl Mitcham and Eric Schatzberg (2009), Jennifer Alexander (2012), Robert Bud (2012), Graeme Gooday (2012) and Paul Lucier (2012). Earlier attempts at a history of the concept ‘technology’ include the ones by Graham Hollister-Short (1977) and Jean-Jacques Salomon (1984).
- 3.
For scattered and rather experimental uses of ‘technology’ before the nineteenth century, see the review of Carl Mitcham and Eric Schatzberg (2009). The Oxford English Dictionary credits the naturalist-theologian William Whewell with the introduction of the term ‘scientist’ in 1834. Before then, ‘science’ was used to signify any knowledge that was well established.
- 4.
- 5.
For the emergence of the classic political economy and its labor theory of value, see the clarifications offered by John Milios (2009).
- 6.
The kinetic theory of heat had prepared for the equivalence between heat and motion. The development of thermodynamics and the use of the concept ‘energy’ marked the establishment of this equivalence. For an introduction to the history of thermodynamics as a socially situated science, see, for example, a perspective offered by Faidra Papanelopoulou (2008).
- 7.
There is much known about the continuity between mechanical and electrical engineering through the work of Stathis Arapostathis (2008). On the broader continuity of mechanical, electrical and electronic engineering, see my argument in (Tympas 2007). For the influence of the emergence of technological networks in Einstein’s concept of ‘energy’, see the history offered by Peter Galison (2003). A very useful history of the history of the transition from steam engines to electric power networks has been written by Louis C. Hunter and Lynwood Bryant (1991).
- 8.
The development of the meaning of ‘technology’ over the course of the Second Industrial Revolution was associated with a shrinking in the meaning of the concept ‘arts’. As the arts were devaluated in comparison to both industry and science, the meaning of ‘technology’ came to cover both the industrial arts and applied science. On this point, see (Schatzberg 2012). For Leo Marx’s argument about a “semantic void”, see (Marx 1997).
- 9.
- 10.
For an introduction to Insull, see that of Thomas Hughes (1989).
- 11.
The most influential study of Taylorism is, perhaps, that of Harry Braverman (1974).
- 12.
For a relevant history of engineering, see the classic by David Noble (1977).
- 13.
On the international spread of ‘Americanism’ (the Fordism-Taylorism mix), see (Hughes 1989).
- 14.
On the Marxian concepts, see (Milios 2009).
- 15.
The opening paragraph of the infamous On the Age of Sun’s Heat by Sir William Thompson (Lord Kelvin), which was published in Macmillan’s Magazine on March 5, 1862 (vol. 5, pp. 388–393), touches on this irreversible loss in nature, which would lead to death if the universe were not finite: “The second great law of thermodynamics involves a certain principle of irreversible action in Nature. It is thus shown that, although mechanical energy is indestructible, there is a universal tendency to its dissipation, which produces gradual augmentation and diffusion of heat, cessation of motion, and exhaustion of potential energy through the material universe. The result would inevitably be a state of universal rest and death, if the universe were finite and left to obey existing laws.”
- 16.
For Guido Frison’s observation, see (Frison 1988). For a further contextualization of this, see other articles by Frison (1993a, b, 1998) and by Fumikazu Yoshida (1983a, b). Little has been written on Karl Marx in history of technology journals. For one of the few exceptions, see the 1984 article in Technology and Culture by Donald Mackenzie (1984).
- 17.
A suggestive update on the persistence of technological determinism is given by Sally Wyatt (2008).
- 18.
- 19.
For a first attempt at such periodization, see (Tympas 2002). For a sample of studies on the futurism of technological determinism, see (Sinclair 1986; Corn 1988, 1996; Marvin 1990; Wright 1992; Nye 1994; Corn and Horrigan 1984). For the construction of a history of technology in antiquity by modern Greek engineers and its integration into technological determinism, see (Tympas et al. 2005).
- 20.
Gavroglu et al. (2008).
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Tympas, A. (2015). On the Hazardousness of the Concept ‘Technology’: Notes on a Conversation Between the History of Science and the History of Technology. In: Arabatzis, T., Renn, J., Simões, A. (eds) Relocating the History of Science. Boston Studies in the Philosophy and History of Science, vol 312. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-14553-2_22
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