Technical Craft Research Articles

The Allure of a "Truly General Theory of Knowledge and Science": A Comment on Pels

in danger of being compromised by a series of at its theoretical core. These deficiencies he attributes to the movement's legacy in the work of the later Wittgenstein. Pels associates Wittgenstein's reflections on grammar and logic with an attitude of valuefree which integrates a strongly antiepistemological and antinormativistic temper within a radically contextualist and descriptivist methodology (p. 32). This general analytical temperament is then identified with the emphasis in recent studies upon the local constructive achievements of working scientists and the consequent foregrounding of ethnographically detailed descriptions of laboratory practice. According to Pels, although these microstudies have demonstrated time and again the intertwining of scientific with practical reasoning, the historicity of scientific experiments, and the social constitution of scientific results, they have so far failed to deliver a truly general theory of knowledge and science. Pels's new agenda aims to move studies out of the lab by integrating their (presumably micro) concerns with textuality, representation, and technical craft within a (presumably more macro) program of Mannheim-inspired, explanatory theorizing. Because so much of Pels's argument rests on the tacit claim that the development of general theory constitutes the natural telos of all sociological inquiry, and because I believe that Wittgenstein and his interpreters have laid the groundwork (several times over) for the decisive refutation of this claim, I have organized my remarks around the issue of why the quest for a truly general theory of knowledge and science persists, especially in such close quarters as Pels's serious and well-informed treatment of contemporary studies. The answer to this question is intertwined with foundational questions not only in sociology and social theory, but in philosophy, linguistics, and the cognitive, natural, and mathematical sciences as well. Indeed, if Hacking (1983) is correct, the pursuit of truth via the medium of explanatory theorizing not only forms the dominant regime of thought throughout the moder period, it also provides the prevailing historical matrix for comprehending the nature of those developments. The discourse of contemporary studies has been shaped in no small part by an interest in questioning the assumption, still present in Kuhnian historiography, that scientific developments are linked directly to developments in explanatory theory. Contrary to Pels, who attributes the turn toward ethnography in studies to the failures of radical relativism and the consequent retreat from the responsibilities of normative theorizing, I argue that the microstudies being done by sociologists and historians of are part of a broad-based, epistemological critique

The Impact of Working Conditions upon Acting Style

All artistic conventions of each theatrical era have two intertwining aspects: the aesthetic goals, and the technical crafts for achieving them. In some cases, a particular combination or development of skills results in a refinement of the art or the discovery of a newly desirable aesthetic; in others, the demand for new artistic effects leads to the invention of appropriate techniques. Thus, when painterly standards and drafting methods of central perspective spread rapidly over Northern Italy in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, illusionistic spectacle became an indispensable element of theatrical performance. It was eagerly supplied by architects in whom the printing of Vitruvius's De Architectura (1486) awakened both the responsibility for and the challenge embodied in designing theatrical scenery. Conversely, as Elizabethan playwrights conceived of plots dependent on avoidance of meetings between certain exiting and entering characters, second and third entrances were provided—either by cutting into the tiring house wall, or by hanging a curtain with several slits in front of it, to accommodate stage traffic.

Making Inventions Patent

Making Inventions Patent CAROLYN C. COOPER Not all the arts have been found; we shall never see an end of finding them. Every day one could discover a new art. . . indeed they are being found all the time. [Fra Giordano of Pisa, February 23, 1306] Fra Giordano went on to tell the faithful assembled that day in Florence’s Santa Maria Novella that only twenty years earlier “there was discovered the art of making spectacles which help you to see well, and which is one of the best and most necessary in the world. ... I myself saw the man who discovered and practiced it, and I talked with him.” Lynn White, jr., considered that this sermon by a Dominican monk not only provided “our best evidence of the invention of eyeglasses in the 1280s” but also “sang the praises of the recent invention of invention.” It demonstrated that by the early 14th century Europe had “arrived at a technological attitude toward problem solving which was to become of inestimable importance for the human condition.”1 More than 600 years later, eminent engineer and inventor Vannevar Bush, testifying in 1939 before the Temporary National Economic Committee in Washington, D.C., struggled to communicate his idea (and Fra Giordano’s) of the dynamism of Western technology. The metaphor he found appropriate was that of an endless frontier of knowledge. His interlocutors were concerned about the character of the exploration parties on that frontier: Was it fair to the lone scouts that corporations were increasingly sending out bigger, bettersupplied expeditions into the technological unknown? Further, which kind of expedition—individual or collective—more effectively pro­ vided American society with the better technology? Although Fra Giordano and Vannevar Bush shared a vocabulary of discovery in describing invention, much had happened, of course, to Dr. Cooper, currently a visiting scholar at the National Museum of American History, is guest editor for this issue. 'Lynn White,jr., “Cultural Climates and Technological Advance in the Middle Ages,” in his Medieval Religion and Technology (Berkeley, Calif., 1978), p. 221.© 1991 by the Society for the History of Technology. All rights reserved. 0040-165X/91/3204-0011$01.00 837 838 Carolyn C. Cooper change technology in the intervening six centuries, including the rise of the nation-state and of modern science. Along the way, Westerners had become self-conscious about invention and had come to see it not as a random gift of the gods but as a human activity that was amenable to social manipulation, to some extent. They attempted to devise institutional inducements for invention. Important among these was the institution of patents. The authors of this issue of Technology and Culture look at patents from several angles. They variously view patent systems as historical outcomes of changes in culturally imbedded Western attitudes toward creative activity in general and technical creativity in particular; as differing across cultures (e.g., France, Great Britain, and the United States); and as evolving from previous systems (e.g., in France) that had similar intentions and effects in some respects. Inside a given society (the United States) they describe 19th-century patent manage­ ment as intersecting several other social subsystems—legal, economic, political, and intellectual; as subject to excesses of patent-management behavior (i.e., abuse of the system) that provoked changes in patent rules; as shaped, through the legal system, by political-economic interests. They view American patent records as sources of informa­ tion about invention and inventors, both as collectivities and as individuals, and warn of shortcomings in the records for those purposes. They raise questions about the relevance of the patent system to a historically important class of inventions (railroad equip­ ment) and describe the discourse of an attempted but abortive reform of the American patent system in the mid-20th century. In her essay on history of invention, authorship, intellectual prop­ erty, and the origin of patents, Pamela Long strips away anachronistic modern assumptions concerning the “natural law” basis of patents in intellectual property rights. Instead she traces from Greek and Roman antiquity into the Renaissance the evidence for the late medieval formation in occidental societies of authorship in writings, visual arts, and technical crafts. Only once...

Accounting Error as a Factor in Business History

The questions and issues that arise in thinking about the role played by accounting in business history are complex. While accounting policies and practices have economic consequences, they also are a product of decisions made by individuals and organizations in their own self-interest. Cause and effect relationships in accounting are, therefore, difficult to identify. Paradoxically, business and economic historians have not paid much attention to the details of accounting which is often seen as a technical craft. While it is not customary to regard accounting data as information in the sense that data can be translated into estimates of parameters of interest, a formal error concept is a useful one because it makes the case against viewing accounting as neutral and mechanistic quite compelling. Even if accounting is neutral and accounting choices do not reflect self-interest, accounting errors can influence behavior. The purpose of this paper is to reflect on the nature of error in accounting by using st...

Option Choice for Girls and Boys

Abstract Children in the third year of ten co‐educational comprehensive schools were asked to identify the factors that influenced their subject choice. Both sexes named the same influences on their choices in general. More detailed analyses of subject choice in physics and technical craft showed that boys enjoyed these subjects more than girls and perceived greater support from parents, teachers and friends for continuing with them. This support was one of the strongest predictors of subject choice. Sex had no direct influence on subject choice in physics, but operated indirectly through other variables such as enjoyment of the subject, person orientation and perceived usefulness for getting a job. However boys were more likely than girls to continue with technical craft even when other factors had been taken into account.

Spatial visulaization skills and technical crafts education

Spatial visulaization skills and technical crafts education