History and Technology

This article was downloaded by:[Forman, Paul] [Forman, Paul] On: 23 April 2007 Access Details: [subscription number 777307305] Publisher: Routledge Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK History and Technology An International Journal Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information: http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/title~content=t713643058 The Primacy of Science in Modernity, of Technology in Postmodernity, and of Ideology in the History of Technology To cite this Article: , 'The Primacy of Science in Modernity, of Technology in Postmodernity, and of Ideology in the History of Technology', History and Technology, 23:1, 1 - 152 To link to this article: DOI: 10.1080/07341510601092191 URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/07341510601092191 PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE Full terms and conditions of use: http://www.informaworld.com/terms-and-conditions-of-access.pdf This article maybe used for research, teaching and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, re-distribution, re-selling, loan or sub-licensing, systematic supply or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. The publisher does not give any warranty express or implied or make any representation that the contents will be complete or accurate or up to date. The accuracy of any instructions, formulae and drug doses should be independently verified with primary sources. The publisher shall not be liable for any loss, actions, claims, proceedings, demand or costs or damages whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with or arising out of the use of this material. © Taylor and Francis 2007 History and Technology Vol. 23, No. 1/2, March/June 2007, pp. 1–152 The Primacy of Science in Modernity, of Technology in Postmodernity, and of Ideology in the History of Technology Paul Forman TaylorGHAT_A_209163.sgm10.1080/07341510601092191History0734-1512Original2007231/2000000March/[email protected] and& and Article Francis (print)/1477-2620Francis Technology Ltd2007 (online) Downloaded By: [Forman, Paul] At: 17:39 23 April 2007 The abrupt reversal of culturally ascribed primacy in the science–technology relation- ship—namely, from the primacy of science relative to technology prior to circa 1980, to the primacy of technology relative to science since about that date—is proposed as a demarcator of postmodernity from modernity: modernity is when ‘science’ could, and often did, denote technology too; postmodernity is when science is subsumed under technology. In support of that demarcation criterion, I evidence the breadth and strength of modernity’s presupposition of the primacy of science to and for technology by showing its preposterous hold upon social theorists—Marx, Veblen, Dewey—whose principles logi- cally required the reverse, viz. the primacy of practice; upon 19th and 20th century engi- neers and industrialists, social actors whose practical interests likewise required the reverse; and upon the principal theorizers in the 1970s of the role of science in late 20th century technology and society. The reversal in primacy between science and technology ca 1980 came too unexpectedly, too quickly, and, above all, too unreflectively to have resulted from the weight of evidence or the force of logic. Rather, it was a concomitant of the onset of postmodernity. Oddly, historians of technology have remained almost wholly unacknowledging of postmodernity’s epochal elevation of the cultural standing of the subject of their studies, and, specifically, have ignored technology’s elevation relative to science. This I attribute to the ideological character of that discipline, and, specifically, to its strategy of ignoration of science. Keywords: Technology as Applied Science; Science as Technology; Revolts Against Science; Modern; Postmodern; Heidegger; Marx; Sombart; Bukharin; Veblen; Dewey; Mumford; Lorenzen; Daniel Bell; Lyotard; Erlanger Schule; Starnberger Schule; Finalization; Romanticism; Lebensphilosophie; Technological Determinism Paul Forman is a curator at the Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC 20013-7012. E-mail: [email protected] ISSN 0734–1512 (print)/ISSN 1477–2620 (online) © 2007 Taylor & Francis DOI: 10.1080/07341510601092191 2 P. Forman Liberation of our conception of technology from the functional dependence and cultural inferiority implied by ‘applied science’ was a principal constitutive program of the discipline of the history of technology, and so it has remained through four decades to the present day. When the historians of technology first began to revolt against ‘the linear model’ and its view of science as originative source, as unmoved mover, of technological progress, they were setting themselves against prejudices deeply entrenched in modern culture.1 Meanwhile, however, the times have been achanging. To campaign today against the linear model is to throw oneself against a door that has been wide open for two decades. In the epochal global transformation from modernity to postmodernity that has been taking place in recent decades, technology has acquired, beginning about 1980, the cultural primacy that science had been enjoying for two centuries world-wide, and in the West for two millennia. Of this postmodern reversal of primacy between science and technology there is no more apposite evidence than the shift of the center of interest in all varieties of ‘science studies’ from science to technology. That shift began about 25 years ago, and today, if one asks a historian or sociologist or philosopher of science what they are working on, odds are they will describe an inquiry at the center of which is technology. This is true even also of those who are now old enough to collect their pensions, and who, conse- Downloaded By: [Forman, Paul] At: 17:39 23 April 2007 quently, having begun their scholarly careers at a time when science’s primacy was unquestioned, could not then have imagined ending it oriented as they are toward technology.2 This turnabout has come about because we historians and sociologists and epistemologists have become so largely postmodern—not postmodernists neces- sarily or even generally, but anima adapted to postmodernity.3 In modernity, the cultural rank of science was elevated by that epoch’s most basic cultural presuppositions—not merely the presupposition of the superiority of theory to practice, but more importantly the elevation of the public over the private and the disinterested over the interested, and, more importantly still, the belief that the means sanctify the ends, that adherence to proper means is the best guarantee of a ‘truly good’ outcome. Today, on the contrary, technology is the beneficiary, and science the maleficiary, of our pragmatic-utilitarian subordination of means to ends, and of the concomitants of that predominant cultural presupposition, notably, disbelief in disin- terestedness and condescension toward conceptual structures. Some evidence of this unprecedentedly high cultural standing of technology in recent decades is presented in Section I of this paper. More particularly, I argue there that only a sudden and drastic shift ca 1980 in cultural presuppositions could explain the evident inclination across the scholarly spectrum—from philosophers to sociologists to scientists—to ascribe to technology that primacy in role and rank that previously all had ascribed to science. Did all ascribe such primacy to science prior to postmodernity? In order to establish the fundamentality of the postmodern reori- entation in cultural commitments, it is necessary to show that in the two centuries, at least, prior to ca 1980 the primacy of science to and for technology was a firm fixture in nearly everyone’s thought, regardless of their philosophical commitments or social interests. Thus Section II, the bulk of this paper, is devoted to making out that case. History and Technology 3 That effort is needful as there does not exist, to my knowledge, any scholarly exposition of the fact of the near universal belief in the primacy of science to and for technology prior to postmodernity. The absence of such an exposition is surely due in good part to the fact that a generation ago, when we now pensionable historians and sociologists of science began our careers by taking science as our subject, we would have regarded a proof of science’s primacy as pointlessly pedantic. The transposition of our point of view has meanwhile taken place so fundamentally and so complacently that today a presupposed primacy of science to technology is conceivable only as a preposterous, even malicious, mythology.4 Although the primacy that science enjoyed in modernity—a primacy not merely with respect to technology, but in cultural standing quite generally—came to appear preposterous only through the perspective enjoined by postmodernity upon layman and scholar alike, not everyone in modernity approved of the fact that science enjoyed such primacy. Of that I take note repeatedly in the course of my exposition. Among the malcontents were the adherents of the emerging discipline of the history of technology, who in the course of the 1970s rejected the primacy of science and took as program- matic objective liberation of technology, and of themselves, from subordination to science. I show in Section III that as their principal means of effecting that end, histo- Downloaded By: [Forman, Paul] At: 17:39 23 April 2007 rians

Load more