Abstract
The purpose of the model proposed here for technology was and is historical; that is, it is intended to be utilitarian and heuristic rather than definitive or ‘clean’. It grew out of work on turbine systems, specifically turbojets, in which I found conventional explanations of invention inadequate: the turbojet is neither the product of unique genius nor a simple-minded ‘new combination of old ideas’. I therefore developed an ‘ideal-typical’ model for the structure of technological practice, and for technological change. I use ‘ideal-typical’ in its Weberian sense: an artificial construct intended to portray the essential relations among conjectured entities, the purpose of which is to illuminate rather than to replicate ‘social reality’.1 The goal is not comprehensive or finished theory, but rather the beginning of secure historical understanding.
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Notes and References
Max Weber, ‘Objectivity in the Social Sciences,’ in his The Methodology of the Social Sciences (1904; reprint, New York: Free Press, 1964 ).
Diana Crane, ‘An Exploratory Study of Kuhnian Paradigms in Theoretical High Energy Physics,’ Social Studies of Science 10 (1980), 23–54.
Ibid., 48.
See Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962) for the communal, paradigmatic basis of scientific practice; Karl R. Popper, Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge (New York: Harper and Row, 1963) for the importance of testability and attempted refutation; Imre Lakatos and Alan Musgrave, Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970), especially Lakatos’ long essay, for progressive and degenerative research programmes.
Donald T. Campbell, ‘Objectivity and the Social Locus of Scientific Knowledge, Presidential Address to the Division of Social and Personality Psychology of the American Psychological Association, 1969; Robert K. Merton, ’The Normative Structure of Science,’ in The Sociology of Science (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970); Ian I. Mitroff, ’Norms and Counter-norms in a Select Group of the Apollo Moon Scientists,’ American Sociological Review 39 (1974), 579–595.
These ideas are more fully developed in my The Origins of the Turbojet Revolution (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980).
Edwin Mansfield, Technological Change (New York: Norton, 1980); Nathan Rosenberg, Technology and American Economic Growth ( New York: Harper, 1972 ).
For notions of technological disequilibrium, see Nathan Rosenberg, ‘Technological Change in the Machine Tool Industry, 1840–1910,’ Journal of Economic History 23 (1963), 414–446; for ’reverse salients’, see Thomas P. Hughes, ‘The Science-Technology Interaction: The Case of High-Voltage Power Transmission Systems,’ Technology and Culture 17 (1976), 646–662.
Edward Constant, ‘On the Diversity and Co-Evolution of Technological Multiples: Steam Turbines and Pelton Water Wheels,’ Social Studies of Science 8 (1978), 183–210.
See note 4 above.
Derek J. deSolla Price, Little Science, Big Science, (New York: Columbia University Press, 1963) holds that the literature of technology is sparse. I disagree with that conclusion.
Edward Constant, ‘Scientific Theory and Technological Testability: Science, Dynamometers, and Water Turbines in the 19th Century,’ Technology and Culture, 24 (1983), 183–198.
Herbert Simon, The Sciences of the Artificial (Cambridge: Mass.: MIT Press, 1969 ).
See, for example, Walter G. Vincenti, ‘The Air-Propeller Tests of W. F. Durand and E. P. Lesley: A Case Study in Technological Methodology,’ Technology and Culture 20 (1979), 712–751; or John V. Becker, The High-Speed Frontier (Washington, D.C.: NASA, 1980), for the central role of experimental technology in setting aeronautical research agendas.
Herbert A. Simon, Administrative Behavior 3d. ed. ( New York: Free Press, 1976 ).
Donald T. Campbell, ‘Evolutionary Epistemology,’ in P. A. Schlipp, ed., The Philosophy of Karl Popper ( LaSalle, Ill.: Open Court, 1974 ), 413–63.
Albert Wolfson, ‘Origin of the North American Bird Fauna: Critique and Reinterpretation from the Standpoint of Continental Drift,’ American Midland Naturalist 53–62 (1955), 353–80.
Edwin T. Layton, ‘Mirror Image Twins: The Communities of Science and Technology in Nineteenth Century America,’ in George Daniels, ed., Nineteenth Century American Science ( Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1972 ).
Thomas P. Hughes, ‘Regional Technological Style,’ Tekniska Museet Symposia (Stockholm) 1 (1977), 211–34.
These factors may help explain such phenomena as non-price competition, price leadership, product differentiation, stratified markets, and so on.
John Francis Guilmartin, Jr., Gunpowder and Galleys ( Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1974 ).
Derek de Solla Price, ‘Philosophical Mechanism and Mechanical Philosophy,’ Annali Dell’Instituto E Museo di Storia Della Scienza Di Firenze V (1980), 75–85.
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Constant, E.W. (1984). Communities and Hierarchies: Structure in the Practice of Science and Technology. In: Laudan, R. (eds) The Nature of Technological Knowledge. Are Models of Scientific Change Relevant?. Sociology of the Sciences Monographs, vol 4. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-7699-4_2
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