La Technologie, science humaine: Recherches d’histoire et d’ethnologie des techniques by André-Georges Haudricourt

Abstract

TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 175 This collection of thirty-one previously published articles and an interview with the French anthropologist Georges Haudricourt is akin to a Pointillist painting. Each small piece has its own intrinsic value, but if one steps back mentally into the middle distance, the pieces coalesce into larger patterns of meaning. The book merits attention from historians of technology precisely because Haudricourt was an early advocate of the study of technology as part of the study of human culture. A student of the ethnopsychologist Marcel Mauss (nephew and disciple of Émile Durkheim), Haudricourt also had close ties with Marc Bloch and the Annales school of historical research and thus with some of the major 20th-century figures in French history and anthropology. His work, which draws on the Annaliste interest in mentalité as well as material life, is well represented in these small capsules dating from 1936 to 1978 and helped establish a method rooted in ethnography and linguistics for the study of technology. The book is organized into six sections, with an editor’s preface. The first section defines the field and method of Haudricourt’s inquiry, the others cover an impressive range of topics and cultures. There are articles on the origins of early-modern transportation vehicles and cultivated grains and on the relationship between habit­ ual gestures, the design of clothing, and the way heavy loads are carried. Haudricourt also wrote on how the knowledge of ironmaking passed from China to Europe in the Middle Ages and on the origins of animal fertilizer. Two facets of Haudricourt’s work are of special importance: his method and sources and his definition of technology. He was partic­ ularly interested in the archaeology and structure of language as a source of information about the development and spread of human culture. In this way, the analysis of terms for tools and techniques found in dictionaries and travelers’ diaries helped him establish the geographical and intellectual routes along which technologies moved from one culture to another, as well as the collective mentality of the societies and individuals that produced them. The conceptual frame­ work proposed by Haudricourt for the study of technology within preindustrial societies is broad and controversial. He defined technol­ ogy as a human science. Tools, techniques, and technical terms were closely interwoven with other forms of social and mental life. When studied in a rational and systematic way, they provided a deeper understanding of the development and spread of human civilization. The implications of his definitions and method were far-reaching, offering a foundation for the study of the history of technology as a discipline within the domain of the humanities and social sciences alongside other forms of culture. Although this foundation may be overly inclusive, the idea that technology is part of human culture still needs reiterating, as editor François Sagaut points out. He published this selection for the dual purpose of introducing Haudricourt’s work to a new generation of 176 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE scholars and promoting the study of technology as a valid academic enterprise. Hence, the term science humaine refers both to the fact that technology is the product of human knowledge and organized activity and that the study of technology should be an integral part of the university curriculum. While in France this position has political overtones, the argument is of some importance for historians of technology everywhere who are working to reform the curricula of their colleges and universities. I hope Haudricourt’s work will soon be translated into English so that a wider audience can examine it critically. If we cannot have an entire book, the essays in the section on methodology would be well worth the effort. Miriam R. Levin Dr. Levin is assistant professor of history in the Program in History of Technology and Science at Case Western Reserve University. She is the author of Republican Art and Ideology in Late Nineteenth Century France and is currently working with Pamela Mack on a history of science education in liberal arts colleges. Sciences et techniques en perspective. Vol. 15: La mutation de l'enseignement scientifique en France (1750—1810) et le rôle des...