Technology and Creativity by Subrata Dasgupta

Abstract

966 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE trusted by the general public. In explaining their approach the edi­ tors expend considerable energy attacking the works of Thomas Kuhn and Leo Marx who, for reasons not clear to me (since the editors point out that Kuhn and Marx have had few imitators), they regard as having had a disastrous effect on the practice ofAmerican history in recent years. It is difficult to see how the editors’ grand scheme can be applied over nearly two centuries of history, no matter how well chosen the examples in this volume. New areas of expertise have been created, arrogated by experts, and imploded by various forces throughout the history of modern industrial societies. Moreover, it seems to be in the very nature of societies with democratic tendencies to live in tension between the knowledge elites who are called on to perform special tasks and those who oppose the power accumulated in the process. The ambiguities of this tension are well illustrated in Alan I. Mar­ cus’s final essay dealing with the DES beef controversy of the 1970s. In a debate over the health risks of eating beef from cattle fed syn­ thetic estrogen to make them grow faster, it was difficult for the pub­ lic to decide what expert information was reliable and in what forum the debate should be held. Marcus notes that the New York Times proved to be an effective way for experts to get their arguments be­ fore the public, presumably because journalism required that their scientific concepts be presented in lay terms. By virtue of its stimulating essays this volume is recommended to the readers of Technology and Culture. Darwin H. Stapleton Dr. Stapleton is the director of the Rockefeller Archive Center in North Tar­ rytown, New York. Technology and Creativity. By Subrata Dasgupta. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1996. Pp. xvii+233; figures, notes, bibliography, index. $25.00 (cloth). Subrata Dasgupta, professor ofcomputer science and engineering at the University of Southwestern Louisiana, has set out to explore the elements of a systematic and empirically tested “general cogni­ tive theory of technological creativity” (p. 186). His are tentative steps, and this book presents a lot of raw material that underpins this search, often by explication of the ideas of other authors rather than by directly presenting a comprehensive theory. His first chap­ ters deal with definitions of technology, technological “problems,” and the role of the technologist as an intellectual. He then shifts to a discussion of the interplay between invention and design. Then, TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 967 for the first time employing historical case studies, he examines the process of defining and testing hypotheses, developing new ap­ proaches, and evolving new artifactual forms. Finally, in what is the richest chapter, Dasgupta sets out to define the nature of technologi­ cal knowledge. Dasgupta draws on a disparate set ofcase studies: the development of superalloys for gas-turbine blades, the convex-hull algorithm, the Britannia Bridge, the Newcomen engine, and ENIAC. In each in­ stance he recounts the developmental process undertaken by the primary characters as a means of reconstructing the articulation and testing of hypotheses and then the development of breakthrough, creative approaches. All of this is his way of testing his own “Knowl­ edge-Level Hypothesis on Ideation” (p. 102). By this Dasgupta means that the creative solution to a technological problem is the output of a cognitive process where the sought-after technological goal is the input. The thrust here is to highlight the “minds of indi­ vidual cognitive agents and not . . . some collective historical con­ sciousness” (p. 149). When it comes to the nature of technological knowledge, Das­ gupta devises an approach inspired by philosopher Michael Polanyi ’s conception of “operational principles.” Much of the chapter is spent in refuting the reductionist “technology as applied science” perspective by illustrating the development of technological opera­ tional principles through design and invention, experimentation, prior experience, visualization, and the abstraction of preexisting scientific principles. The value of this material lies in the elaboration of categories oftechnical knowledge and the discussion ofprocesses by which new knowledge is generated. Dasgupta is not the first to tackle these issues, of...