An Introduction to the Historiography of the General History of Technology

Introduction to the Historiography of the General History of Technology

//Note: this article has not yet been completed. I am only giving Wu laoshi an account in advance during the discussion… Next I will flesh out the concept of “the history of technological thought” a bit more.

1. A Survey of Western Research on the History of Technology

In the English-speaking world, the history of technology as an academically institutionalized discipline roughly began in the 1950s. Its markers were the publication of the monumental Oxford edition of A History of Technology (Volumes 1 through 5 were published in 1954–1958, the last two volumes in 1978, and the general index of Volume 8 was completed in 1984), as well as the founding of the American “Society for the History of Technology” (SHOT) in 1958 and the launch of its journal Technology and Culture in 1959.

From roughly the late 1950s to the late 1970s was the first stage in the emergence of the history of technology. John M. Staudenmaier’s Technology’s Storytellers[1] reviews and reflects on the work in the history of technology during this period. At this stage, scholars paid more attention to the origin and development of technical inventions themselves; the history of technology tended to emphasize the recording and display of all kinds of human inventions and innovations. Technology was often regarded as an instrument for conquering nature or as the application of science, and the history of technology reflected the history of human progress.

Charles Singer, the editor of the Oxford edition of A History of Technology, held a rather representative view: “The Editors are convinced that in our technological civilization the value of man consists in understanding methods and skills by which he exercises control over his environment and gradually makes actual life more comfortable.”[2]

Of course, this narrow view of technology was questioned from the outset. Lewis Mumford, in his 1934 Technics and Civilization, had already criticized this notion of human nature as “man is a tool-using animal.” For Mumford, although technology is the thread running through history, the protagonist or focal point of history is always human beings, and human value lies in rich cultural creation rather than in mere increases in power. For this reason Mumford always discussed specific technologies within broader cultural environments and historical contexts.

Lynn White’s 1962 Medieval Technology and Social Change[3] is also a paradigmatic work, examining technology within an integrated context that includes culture, economics, religion, and all other aspects.

By the late 1970s, doing the history of technology within cultural background and historical context had gradually become the mainstream in the field. The sign of this was a series of academic conferences held by American historians of technology to commemorate the bicentennial of the founding of the United States; in particular, at The Roanoke Conference[4], participants unanimously agreed that the history of technology should not be confined within a discipline, but should draw on the resources and perspectives of economic history, human history, social history, and so on, to examine the historical context of technological development.

The sixth and seventh volumes of the Oxford edition of A History of Technology, published in 1978, also reflected this trend. These two volumes differed somewhat in style from the preceding five volumes, and paid more attention to the corresponding social and political environments.

At the same time, with the rise of the sociology of scientific knowledge (SSK) in the 1970s, social constructivism also exerted a profound influence on research in the history of technology in the 1980s. Bijker, Hughes, and Pinch’s 1987 The Social Construction of Technological Systems[5] may be regarded as a manifesto for social-constructivist history of technology.

On the other hand, also in the 1970s and 1980s, the fashion in the historical profession shifted from cliometrics to the New Cultural History. The New Cultural History no longer clung to charts and data, but focused on the overall cultural environment and the subtle scenes of everyday life. Subsequently, many historians also started from cultural history and turned their attention to material cultural history, the history of the body, the history of everyday life, and so on, thereby entering the domain of the history of technology.

In short, from the 1980s onward, the history of technology, in line with trends in philosophy of science and history, moved toward contextualism.

Of course, this does not mean that before the 1980s historians of technology cared only about technology itself and not about other aspects of culture. One can see from the name of the journal Technology and Culture that the history of technology as a discipline never ignored culture from the beginning. But in the early period, the other aspects of culture were often mentioned only as negative peripheral elements when describing the history of technology, as reference dimensions parallel to technological development, with no direct relation to the origin and development of the inventions themselves. After the 1970s, however, “culture” was more often seen as positive, constructive factors—necessary preconditions for technology to be invented or disseminated. In addition, early history of technology, including some strands of social constructivism, was more concerned with the process of invention or innovation itself, focusing on technology’s internal logic, or merely on the impact of cultural factors on technological invention, without paying attention to the impact of newly disseminated and applied technologies on the cultural environment. The new trend, however, no longer concentrates on technological invention. In short, technology and culture are no longer parallel to one another, nor in a relation of mutual determination; rather, they are interwoven and mutually constitutive.

In addition, the center of attention in the history of technology, or the “protagonist” of its narrative, is also changing. In Staudenmaier’s 2009 review[6], this is regarded as the most important change in the history of technology scholarship in the past twenty years. That is to say, scholars no longer focus on those world-famous great inventions of a (male-dominated) kind, nor on the corresponding inventors, engineers, and entrepreneurs; instead, they pay more attention to the technological practices of ordinary workers and ordinary citizens. In the new narratives of the history of technology, petty urbanites and inventors are equally important; the kitchen and the R&D laboratory are equally important; technological explorations that ultimately failed are examined alongside successful major inventions; and fields that were originally marginal—women, non-Western traditions, minority groups, and so on—also receive greater attention.

 

2. The General History of Technology in the New Era

As we can see, the basic trend in the history of technology in recent decades has been to avoid “grand narratives,” oppose a Whiggish view of progress, enter historical contexts, and emphasize subtle scenes of everyday life.

But under this current, writing a general history has become a problem. Postmodern historians pay more attention to specific questions that are subtle, marginal, and fragmented, but as for how to organize a complete and coherent general history, they seem to have no better strategy.

Of course, collecting together narratives about all kinds of technologies from various periods is one way to compile a general history of technology, as in Singer’s Oxford edition of A History of Technology and Carlson’s Technology in World History[7]. But without a clear thread to connect them, such a general history can only be a compilation of materials, and can hardly serve as a complete, independent historical account. For example, we can simply arrange Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Journey to the West, Outlaws of the Marsh, and Dream of the Red Chamber into a book in chronological order, but that book would still only be “the Four Great Classical Novels” and not “one story.” As a general history, however much it may inevitably involve leaps, it should after all tell a coherent story; merely attaching the corresponding date labels to various events and arranging them accordingly is not enough to connect them into a whole.

To solve the problem of a general history that is not “general,” we need, while absorbing the new developments in the history of technology over recent decades, to re-examine the historiographical issues of the history of technology and investigate the relationship between technology and human nature, and between the history of technology and human history.

 

1. Why We Need a General History of Technology

The question is, why can’t we be satisfied with fragmented history, and must we tell a complete story?

First, perhaps this is a pedagogical or popularization need: we need to provide a beginner’s, overview picture. But the question is, is this overarching historical picture a necessary precondition for people to understand the technological scene of a specific era? In fact, just as a world map is not a prerequisite for a local tourist map, a general history is not a prerequisite for understanding specific historical details.

But although a general history does not help us deeply understand a specific historical context, it does help us understand the relations between different historical contexts, especially the historical position of our own present situation.

The significance of history is not merely to provide a few odd stories for curiosity’s sake; historical interest arises from our questioning of our own condition: who are we? Where do we come from, and where are we going?

And history answers the question: what position do we occupy in human history, and what is the origin and development of this condition?

As the author of A History of the Modern World, Stavrianos, said: “Each age must write its own history. This is not because the earlier history was written incorrectly, but because each age confronts new problems, raises new questions, and seeks new answers.”

The appearance of the world map changed not only people’s understanding of the world, but also human self-understanding; the impact of the world map on Chinese people when Western learning was spreading eastward was precisely a re-understanding of the self. A picture of a general history would likewise provide a kind of self-understanding. A Whiggish history of progress, like the fantasy of the Central Kingdom, places itself at the center of everything. We must break with this arrogant and overbearing picture, but that does not mean we should no longer draw a new picture. Whether or not our position ought to be central, we always hope to identify and establish the place where we should stand.

 

2. The Completeness of General History

To provide a general, complete, and coherent picture of the history of technology, one must necessarily carry through some basic thread or interest. But as Staudenmaier says, contextualism makes narrative forms with a clear line[8] suspicious. Whether it is progress or decline, it is very difficult for us to find a clear thread that runs through the rich variety of historical situations from beginning to end.

In fact, what integrates the picture may not be a single thread, but rather a specific perspective. History is an answer to the question of our present condition; that is to say, we organize historical materials from our own point of view.

In a certain sense, this is a return to “Whig history.” If we define Whig history in the broad sense as reasoning backward from present outcomes, then this is indeed a kind of Whig history. But unlike Whig history in the narrow sense, first, our reconstruction of history is conscious, a perspective adopted after reflection, rather than an unexamined prejudice; second, we acknowledge the multiple possibilities of history, suspend value judgments, and do not take modern outcomes as the only or highest standard. In short, drawing a neighborhood map from my own standpoint is one thing, while placing myself at the center of the neighborhood map is quite another. From my own angle, the location of the public toilet may be more important than the direction of Old Zhang’s house, so in the map I draw, the positioning and marking of the public toilet will often be more prominent, but this by no means means that I think Old Zhang’s status is lower than the toilet’s.

The writing of a general history of technology should be based on the concerns of our own era. For example, if we are concerned about modern people’s mechanized worldview and rigid rhythms of life, then we will try to trace the origins and development of the relevant mechanical technologies and examine the necessity and contingency within them. If I am concerned about modern people’s political systems and social life, then I may need to trace the origins and development of the relevant communications-media technologies more extensively.

Thus, in our historical picture, the relative weight of different things depends on our different concerns in relation to the present situation. Of course, through historical tracing, this may in turn affect our understanding of the present situation. There is no objective standard that transcends any perspective by which to measure the historical significance of each thing.

 

3. Integrating Technological Determinism and Social Constructivism

In the study of the history of technology, there has always been a debate between technological determinism and social constructivism. Around 1990, American historians of technology influenced by social constructivism consciously “settled accounts”[9] with technological determinism. Social constructivism no longer held that technology is an autonomous system with its own internal logic of development; rather, it was seen as being shaped by society at every moment.

But the contradiction between technological determinism and social constructivism may only be a misunderstanding. This opposition is based on a certain view of technology or society, namely, treating technology/things and society/culture as two mutually opposed things, and thus giving rise to the question of “who determines whom.” In fact, the relation between technological artifacts and human society may well be a two-sided relation such as “inside–outside” or “positive–negative.” Technology is the solidification or externalization of social structure, while social interaction is constrained and guided by technological structure. Rather than saying that technology determines culture or culture constructs technology, it may be better to say that technology and culture are different aspects of the same structure.

Therefore, the general history of technology is simultaneously a cultural history. We take the development and changes of technological artifacts as the thread of historical narration, but what we are simultaneously concerned with is precisely the transformation of human culture. Technology is both the external manifestation of cultural change and its internal cause. Technology and culture mutually constitute one another, just like the question of whether the chicken came first or the egg came first; asking who determines whom is meaningless. Of course, in concrete situations we can explain which egg a certain chicken may have hatched from, or from which chicken a certain egg originated. In specific contexts, we can analyze the social origin of a new technology, or trace the technological preconditions of a certain social form.

 

4. Reconsidering the Relation between Technology and Science

At the very beginning of the rise of the history of technology as a field, scholars had already basically abandoned the narrow “common sense” that “technology is the application of science.” But if we then simply conclude that technology has nothing to do with science, that would probably be too lazy. Since a general history of technology traces its development from the contemporary situation in which science and technology are closely intertwined, it certainly cannot avoid the question of how technology and science are entangled. If the combination of technology and science in this era is not accidental, then how is it possible?

We believe that science in the narrow sense, that is, modern natural science in the mathematical-experimental tradition, can be regarded as a special branch of technology, one of the consequences of Western history of technology. The development of modern technology around the time of the First Industrial Revolution, although in fact it was indeed not the application of modern science but developed independently of it, nevertheless shares certain logic with modern science and shares the same spirit of the age.

And in a broader sense, if science refers to general human knowledge, including bodily knowledge and tacit knowledge, then technology can in turn be said to be a kind of “application of science,” a form of the solidification and retention of knowledge, an extension of human memory.

Therefore, the general history of technology can simultaneously be a cultural history or an intellectual history. That is to say, technological objects, like scientific theories, are regarded as achievements of human thought, except that the latter are forms of knowledge solidified by specific technologies such as paper and pen, while other technologies likewise solidify human knowledge in their own different forms. And by investigating the thought structures embodied in various technological objects, one can also outline a developmental logic of human thought.

 

 

 

References

Staudenmaier, J. M. (1985), Technology’s Storytellers, MIT Press

Staudenmaier, J. M. ‘SHOT at Fifty’, Technology and Culture,Vol. 50, No. 3 (Jul., 2009), pp. 623-630

Staudenmaier, J. M. ‘Rationality, Agency, Contingency: Recent Trends in the History of Technology’, Reviews in American History, Vol. 30, No. 1(Mar., 2002), pp. 168-181

The Roanoke Conference–Critical Issues in the History of Technology: Roanoke, Virginia, August 14-18, 1978, I. Summary, see Technology and Culture, Vol. 21, No. 4 (Oct., 1980), pp. 617-620

Bijker, W. E., Hughes, T. P., & Pinch, T. J. (Eds.). (1989 (1987)). The Social Construction of Technological Systems: New Directions in the Sociology and History of Technology. The MIT Press.

Carlson, W. Bernard(2005). Ed. Technology in World History, New York: Oxford University Press,.

Merritt Roe Smith(1994) Ed., Does Technology Drive History? : The Dilemma of Technological Determinism. MIT Press.

White, Lynn (1962). Medieval Technology and Social Change, Oxford University Press

David Edgerton, ‘Innovation, Technology, or History: What Is the Historiography of Technology About’, Technology and Culture, Vol. 51, No. 3 (July 2010), pp. 680-697

Pacey, Arnold(1990).. Technology in World Civilization: A Thousand-Year History. Cambridge: MIT Press.

Pacey, Arnold(1992).The Maze of Ingenuity: Ideas and Idealism in the Development of Technology, MIT Press.

Pacey, Arnold (2001). Meaning in Technology , MIT Press

Chen Yulin (2010): The Cultural Turn in the Study of Technology History, Northeastern University Press.

Xingge, Humyard, and Hall (eds.) (2004): Technology History I, translated by Wang Qian and Sun Xizhong, Shanghai Science and Technology Education Press.

Mumford (2009): Technology and Civilization, translated by Chen Yunming et al., China Architecture & Building Press.

Stavrianos (2006): A Global History, translated by Wu Xiangying et al., Peking University Press.

 

Translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The original text is authoritative.

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