Abstract
Thomas Hughes has recently noted that historians of technology have been shifting from their traditional concern with the interrelations of science and technology to a focus on the nature of technological development.1 This shift, however, provides a good opportunity for philosophers of science, who have traditionally neglected the topic, to take up the question of science and technology. The reason is that an important strategy in historians’ analyses of technological change has been the application of models of scientific change — specifically Thomas Kuhn’s — to technology. Reflecting on such applications — e.g., on the extent of their success, on the sorts of modifications they require in the model of science — provides a good starting point for a philosophical account of the peculiar ways science and technology are both distinct and connected.
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Notes and References
Thomas Hughes, ‘Emerging Themes in the History of Technology,’ Technology and Culture 20 (1979), 706.
For a bibliography of this literature, see Gary Gutting, ed., Paradigms and Revolutions: Applications and Appraisals of Thomas Kuhn’s Philosophy of Science ( South Bend, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1980 ).
D.L. Eckberg and L. Hill, Jr., ‘The Paradigm Concept and Sociology: A Critical Review,’ American Sociological Review 44 (1979), 925–937. Reprinted in Gutting, Paradigms and Revolutions.
C. Lammers, ‘Mono- and Poly-paradigmatic Developments in Natural and Social Science,’ in R.D. Whitley, ed., Social Processes of Scientific Development ( London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1974 ), 123–147.
Edward Constant, The Origins of the Turbojet Revolution (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980 ). Page references will be given in the text.
David Wojick, ‘The Structure of Technological Revolutions,’ in G. Bugliarello and D. B. Doner, eds., The History and Philosophy of Technology ( Urbana: Illinois, University of Illinois Press, 1979 ). Page references will be given in the text.
Very helpful discussions with Thomas Hughes at the Pittsburgh Conference have suggested to me that the concept of an exemplar may also be very useful for understanding the process of technological discovery. For example, Hughes suggested that much of Sperry’s work employed the negative feedback mechanism as an exemplar. However, these same discussions have made me realize that the notion of an exemplar requires very careful articulation if it is to be faithful to the complexities of technological thinking.
Mario Bunge, ‘Technology as Applied Science’ and Henryk Skolimowski, ‘The Structure of Thinking in Technology,’ both originally published in Technology and Culture 7 (1966), 329–347 and 371–383. Page references (given in the text) are from reprints of these articles in Friedrich Rapp, ed., Contributions to a Philosophy of Technology (Dordrecht,Holland: Reidel, 1974.)
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© 1984 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
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Gutting, G. (1984). Paradigms, Revolutions, 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_3
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