Technology as Knowledge

TECHNOLOGY AS KNOWLEDGE EDWIN T. LAYTON, JR. In their monumental History of Technology Charles Singer, E. J. Holmyard, and A. R. Hall define technology as “how things are com­ monly done or made” and “what things are done or made.”1 That is, they treat technology as technique and the technologist as a techni­ cian. In this usage the traditional definition of technology as “sys­ tematic knowledge of the industrial arts” becomes quite meaningless. The editors are, of course, well aware of this. They characterize the usual definition, in their phrasing, “systematic discourse about the (useful) arts,” as a modern, “artificial” formation, since, as they explain, it was not until the 19th century that technology acquired a “scientific content and came ultimately to be regarded as almost synonymous with ‘applied science.’ ”2 The denial of a thought component to technology is thus the con­ sequence of adopting a theory of the relationships of science and technology. This theory holds that scientists generate new knowledge which technologists then apply. Two assumptions are critical here. The first is that technological knowledge is essentially identical with natural philosophy. The second is that this knowledge has been pro­ duced by scientists since 1800. Logical deduction from these premises leads to an absurdity: that prior to 1800 technology involved no knowledge at all. The French counterpart of/I History ofTechnology, the Histoire gene­ ral des techniques, edited by Maurice Daumas, arrives at similar his­ toriographic results by a different route.3 Here too the history of technology is reduced to the history of techniques and the things produced by techniques. But in this case, as Lynn White has pointed out, the emphasis is on economic determinants ofsocial change rather Dr. Layton, associate professor of the history of science and technology at Case Western Reserve University, is the author ofThe Revolt ofthe Engineers: Social Responsi­ bility and the American Engineering Profession. He was awarded the Dexter Prize of the Society for the History of Technology for that book in 1971. 'Charles Singer, E. J. Holmyard, and A. R. Hall, A History of Technology, 5 vols. (London, 1954-58), l:vii. 2Ibid. 3Maurice Daumas, Histoire general des techniques, 3 vols. (Paris, 1962-68); English translation of first two volumes by Eileen B. Hennessy, A History of Technology and Invention (New York, 1969). 31 32 Edwin T. Layton, Jr. than scientific leadership in intellectual development.4 But in either case, the net result is the same. In the name of a theory, technology is made subordinate to other types of social and intellectual activity and virtually denied an independent role of its own. In particular, both theories of history deny technology a significant component of thought. Historians of technology in the United States have taken a different point of view. Melvin Kranzberg and Carroll Pursell in their Technology in Western Civilization use work as an organizing principle.5 This does at least three things: it broadens the scope of the history of technology, it makes technology an independent historical force, and it includes thought as a part of technology, at least by implication. Indeed, the emphasis on thought is characteristic of many American writers on the history of technology. Lynn White, Carl Condit, and Ladislao Reti (a mixture of both European and American traditions), among others, have written on the role of ideas in technology.6 Eugene Ferguson, Derek Price, and A. Hunter Dupree have dis­ cussed the flow of knowledge or information within technological so­ cial systems.7 Many other examples could be cited, too many to list here. However diverse the individual approaches, these works represent an important development whose historiographic implications deserve study. Despite significant countervailing tendencies, the emphasis on technique has had a distorting effect on the writing of the history of technology in America, as elsewhere. It has produced a certain defensiveness and confusion. As Robert Multhauf has pointed out, we have no word for the “improver of technology” comparable to the “scientist,” the man who advances science.8 This theory has the 4Lynn White, “Pumps and Péndula: Galileo and Technology,” in Galileo Reappraised, ed. Carlo L. Golino (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1966), pp. 99-100. 5Mclvin Kranzberg and Carroll W. Pursell...