Thinking again about science in technology

ISIS

Volumn 103, Issue 3, 2012, Pages 518-526

  Alexander, Jennifer Karns ^a  

^a University of Minnesota   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

HISTORY; NOMENCLATURE; NOTE; SCIENCE; TECHNOLOGY;

HISTORY, 20TH CENTURY; SCIENCE; TECHNOLOGY; TERMINOLOGY AS TOPIC;

EID: 84869445353     PISSN: 00211753     EISSN: 15456994     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1086/667975     Document Type: Note

References (62)

1. Ronald Kline, "Forman's Lament," History and Technology, 2007, 23:160-166, on p. 162.
2. Paul Forman's articles include the foundational "The Primacy of Science in Modernity, of Technology in Postmodernity, and of Ideology in the History of Technology," ibid., pp. 1-152 (it was this article to which Kline responded).
3. "From the Social to the Moral to the Spiritual: The Postmodern Exaltation of the History of Science," in Positioning the History of Science, ed. Jürgen Renn and Kostas Gavroglu (Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, 248) (Berlin: Springer, 2007), pp. 49-55.
4. "(Re)Cognizing Postmodernity: Helps for Historians- of Science Especially," Wissenschaftsgeschichte, 2010, 33:157-175.
5. Forman, "Primacy of Science in Modernity," pp. 71, 127 n 420.
6. Kline, "Forman's Lament," pp. 162-163.
7. John Staudenmaier, S.J., Technology's Storytellers: Reweaving the Human Fabric (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1985), p. 120.
8. "Forman: An Exchange between Bob Post and John Krige," Hist. & Technol., 2008, 24:379-381.
9. Forman described the inattention to science he sees among historians of technology as an anti-science ideology.
10. Forman, "Primacy of Science in Modernity" (cit. n. 1), p. 84 n 81.
11. "Antagonism" is Forman's term for the history of technology's attitude toward science.
12. Forman, "Primacy of Science in Modernity," p. 56.
13. Staudenmaier, Technology's Storytellers (cit. n. 3), pp. 95-103.
14. Forman's "Primacy of Science in Modernity" was published in a forum along with four other essays, solicited by the editor of History and Technology:
15. Martin Collins, "Values, Intellectual History, and the Standpoint of Critique," Hist. & Technol., 2007, 23:153-160.
16. Kline, "Forman's Lament" (cit. n. 1).
17. Chunglin Kwa, "Shifts in Dominance of Scientific Styles: From Modernity to Postmodernity," Hist. & Technol., 2007, 23:166-175.
18. Philip Mirowski, "Invention as the Mother of Necessity: Reflections on Paul Forman's 'The Primacy of Science in Modernity,'" ibid., pp. 176-184.
19. The comments contained pointed and often harsh criticisms. Critics responding to Forman's article objected to his definitions, labeling his idea of technology "ahistorical".
20. Collins, "Values, Intellectual History, and the Standpoint of Critique," p. 156.
21. Kline, "Forman's Lament," p. 162.
22. Mirowski, "Invention as the Mother of Necessity," p. 181.
23. Staudenmaier, Technology's Storytellers, pp. 98, 97.
24. Mario Bunge, "Technology as Applied Science," Technology and Culture, 1966, 7:329-347.
25. Carl Mitcham, "Petroski's Policy: Henry Petroski, The Essential Engineer," Technology and Culture, 2011, 52:380-384, on p. 381.
26. Henry Petroski, The Essential Engineer: Why Science Alone Will Not Solve Our Global Problems (New York: Vintage, 2010), p. 109 (describing Bush's paradigm); Oxford English Dictionary, s.v. "applied," http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/9713redirectedFrom_%22applied%20science%22#eid385383 (accessed 22 Nov. 2011).
27. Richard S. Westfall, "Science and Technology during the Scientific Revolution: An Empirical Approach," in Renaissance and Revolution: Humanists, Scholars, Craftsmen, and Natural Philosophers in Early Modern Europe, ed. J. V. Field and Frank A. J. L. James (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1993), pp. 63-72, on p. 64 n 3.
28. Ronald Kline, "Construing 'Technology' as 'Applied Science': Public Rhetoric of Scientists and Engineers in the United States, 1880-1945," Isis, 1995, 86:194-221, on p. 197.
29. David Edgerton, "'The Linear Model' Did Not Exist: Reflections on the History and Historiography of Science and Research in Industry in the Twentieth Century," in The Science-Industry Nexus: History, Policy, Implications, ed. Karl Grandin, Nina Wormbs, and Sven Widmalm (Sagamore Beach, Mass.: Science History Publications, 2004), pp. 31-57.
30. Edgerton, "Innovation, Technology, or History: What Is the Historiography of Technology About?" Technol. & Cult., 2010, 51:680-697.
31. Vannevar Bush, "The Engineer," in Listen to Leaders in Engineering, ed. Albert Love and James Saxon Childers (Atlanta: Tupper & Love/David McKay, 1965), pp. 9-12.
32. Kwa, "Shifts in Dominance of Scientific Styles" (cit. n. 6), esp. p. 167.
33. Mirowski, "Invention as the Mother of Necessity" (cit. n. 6), p. 177
34. Mirowski takes issue most fundamentally with Forman's conception of culture, asking how he has failed to notice the complete disintegration of the concept of culture itself.
35. Forman, "From the Social to the Moral to the Spiritual" (cit. n. 1), p. 50.
36. Bruno Latour, Science in Action: How to Follow Scientists and Engineers through Society (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1987), p. 174.
37. Martin Carrier and Alfred Nordmann, "Science in the Context of Application: Methodological Change, Conceptual Transformation, Cultural Reorientation," in Science in the Context of Application, ed. Carrier and Nordmann (Dordrecht: Springer, 2011), pp. 1-7, esp. pp. 1, 4.
38. Nordmann, "Science in the Context of Technology," in Science in the Context of Application, ed. Carrier and Nordmann (Dordrecht: Springer, 2011), pp. 467-482, esp. p. 469.
39. Wybo Houkes, "The Nature of Technological Knowledge," in Philosophy of Technology and Engineering Sciences, ed. Anthonie Meijers (Amsterdam: Elsevier, 2009), pp. 309-350.
40. John Pickstone uses the term to describe the rise of institutional collaborations between science and technology late in the nineteenth century; Kline, similarly, writes that "technoscience" is accurately applied only to specific technical and scientific endeavors around the same time.
41. John Pickstone, Ways of Knowing: A New History of Science, Technology, and Medicine (Chicago: Univ. Chicago Press, 2001), pp. 163-165.
42. Kline, "Forman's Lament" (cit. n. 1), p. 162.
43. Staudenmaier, Technology's Storytellers (cit. n. 3), p. 99.
44. James E. McClellan III, "What's Problematic about 'Applied Science,'" in The Applied Science Problem, ed. McClellan (Jersey City, N.J.: Jensen/Daniels, 2008), pp. 1-36, on p. 17.
45. Staudenmaier, Technology's Storytellers, p. 1
46. McClellan, "What's Problematic about 'Applied Science,'" p. 17.
47. McClellan cites the practice of co-locating HSS and SHOT meetings every few years, rather than holding occasional joint meetings. Several joint sessions took place at the most recent co-located meeting, held in Cleveland in fall 2011.
48. Edwin T. Layton, Jr., "Through the Looking Glass; or, News from Lake Mirror Image," Technol. & Cult., 1987, 28:594-607, on p. 597.
49. Kline, "Construing 'Technology' as 'Applied Science'" (cit. n. 7).
50. McClellan, "What's Problematic about 'Applied Science,'" pp. 16-19.
51. Staudenmaier, Technology's Storytellers, pp. 103-120.
52. Arguments that applied science was a myth take several forms: that technologies often preceded scientific explanations for how they worked (that steam technology stimulated work in thermodynamics is a common example); that engineering research was more important to commercial products than was basic scientific research.
53. Ronald R. Kline and Thomas C. Lassman, "Competing Research Traditions in American Industry: Uncertain Alliances between Engineering and Science at Westinghouse Electric, 1886-1935," Enterprise and Society, 2005, 6:601-645, esp. p. 639.
54. And that design is a distinguishing and unique feature of engineering, not in applying scientific concepts but in bridging between incomplete cognitive models and real-world complexities.
55. Barry Allen, Art and Design: Art and Technology in Human Experience [Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell Univ. Press, 2008].
56. Staudenmaier, Technology's Storytellers, p. 99.
57. Irwin Goodwin, "Engineers Proclaim Top Achievements of Twentieth Century; Neglect Attributing Feats to Physics," Physics Today, May 2000, 53:48-49.
58. Petroski, Essential Engineer (cit. n. 7), p. 45.
59. Bruce E. Seely, "The Other Re-Engineering of Engineering Education, 1900-1965," Journal of Engineering Education, 1999, 88:285-294.
60. Seely, "Research, Engineering, and Science in American Engineering Colleges: 1900-1960," Technol. & Cult., 1993, 34:344-386.
61. Bruce E. Seely, "SHOT, the History of Technology, and Engineering Education," Technol. & Cult., 1995, 36:739-772, on p. 771.
62. John K. Brown, Gary Lee Downey, and Maria Paula Diogo, "The Normativities of Engineers: Engineering Education and History of Technology," Technol. & Cult., 2009, 50:737-752, on pp. 742, 747 (quoting participants in a 2007 conference discussion about renewing interest in engineering history).