Edward W. Constant

Bio: Edward W. Constant is an academic researcher. The author has contributed to research in topics: Scientific theory & Information management. The author has an hindex of 9, co-authored 13 publications receiving 975 citations.

Stronger Than a Hundred Men: A History of the Vertical Water Wheel

Abstract: Like many apparently simple devices, the vertical water wheel has been around for so long that it is taken for granted. Yet this \"picturesque artifact\" was for centuries man's primary mechanical source of power and was the foundation upon which mills and other industries developed.Stronger than a Hundred Men explores the development of the vertical water wheel from its invention in ancient times through its eventual demise as a source of power during the Industrial Revolution. Spanning more than 2000 years, Terry Reynolds's account follows the progression of this labor-saving device from Asia to the Middle East, Europe, and America-covering the evolution of the water wheel itself, the development of dams and reservoirs, and the applications of water power.

A Model for Technological Change Applied to the Turbojet Revolution

Abstract: During the four decades following the Wright brothers' flight, the combination of propeller and piston engine constituted the normal means of aircraft propulsion. In those years, tremendous progress was made within that system, and, by the adoption of new subsystems, great difficulties were overcome. By the early thirties, the pistonengined airplane still promised, and would deliver, significantly improved performance: it had in no objective sense reached the limits of its development. Thus what seems to be commonly thought the precondition for major technological change-conventional system failure-did not then exist in aeronautics. The men who built the first turbojets responded not to failure but to new scientific insights which implied both future difficulty for the normal system and the possibility of an entirely new system. In the case of the turbojet, scientific advance directly caused radical technological change. This particular technological revolution, which will be explored in detail below, permits hypothesizing a tentative but general interpretation of technological change thought to be especially helpful for the study of recent technology and for understanding the links between science and technology. Before proceeding with the actual history of the shift from propeller and piston engine to turbojet, the details of our model are explained systematically in the first third of our article in order to make explicit our theoretical position. Possibly unfamiliar terms, such as "presumptive anomaly" and "candidate paradigm," are explained and used, and distinctions are made between revolutionary change and its sources and normal developmental change.

Scientific Theory and Technological Testability: Science, Dynamometers, and Water Turbines in the 19th Century

Abstract: An increasingly central concern among historians of technology is the nature of technological knowledge as distinct both from science and from the design of specific artifacts. This concern is reflected in diverse scholarship addressing such issues as the relationships among scientific investigation, technological research, and the process of innovation;1 the creation of technological knowledge in engineering science through such specifically technological methodologies as parameter variation and through the application of technologically relevant concepts such as control-volume theory;2 and the sociological and epistemological relationship between scientific and technological knowledge.3 At the same time, recent research by Edwin T. Layton, Norman Smith, Louis Hunter, and Terry Reynolds has provided basic

Sorting Things Out: Classification and Its Consequences

Abstract: What do a seventeenth-century mortality table (whose causes of death include "fainted in a bath," "frighted," and "itch"); the identification of South Africans during apartheid as European, Asian, colored, or black; and the separation of machine- from hand-washables have in common? All are examples of classification -- the scaffolding of information infrastructures. In Sorting Things Out, Geoffrey C. Bowker and Susan Leigh Star explore the role of categories and standards in shaping the modern world. In a clear and lively style, they investigate a variety of classification systems, including the International Classification of Diseases, the Nursing Interventions Classification, race classification under apartheid in South Africa, and the classification of viruses and of tuberculosis. The authors emphasize the role of invisibility in the process by which classification orders human interaction. They examine how categories are made and kept invisible, and how people can change this invisibility when necessary. They also explore systems of classification as part of the built information environment. Much as an urban historian would review highway permits and zoning decisions to tell a city's story, the authors review archives of classification design to understand how decisions have been made. Sorting Things Out has a moral agenda, for each standard and category valorizes some point of view and silences another. Standards and classifications produce advantage or suffering. Jobs are made and lost; some regions benefit at the expense of others. How these choices are made and how we think about that process are at the moral and political core of this work. The book is an important empirical source for understanding the building of information infrastructures.

Sources, Procedures, and Microeconomic Effects of Innovation

Abstract: Fabio Arcangeli, Paul David, Frank Engelman, Christopher Freeman, Massimo Moggi, Richard Nelson, Luigi Orsenigo, Nathan Rosenberg, Michele Salvati, G. N. von Tunzelman, two anonymous referees, and the participants at the meeting of the Committee on Distribution, Growth, and Technical Progress of the Italian National Research Council (CNR), Rome, November 16, 1985, have helped with various redraftings. A particularly grateful acknowledgment is for the insightful and patient help of Moses Abramovitz. This work has been undertaken at the Science Policy Research Unit (SPRU), University of Sussex, as part of the research program of the Designated Research Centre, sponsored by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC). Earlier support to the research that led to this paper by the Italian National Research Council (CNR) is also gratefully acknowledged. The statistical research has been undertaken with the assistance of Stephano Brioschi, Ilaria Fornari, and Giovannu Prennushi.

The social construction of facts and artefacts: or How the sociology of science and the sociology of technology might benefit each other

Abstract: The need for an integrated social constructivist approach towards the study of science and technology is outlined. Within such a programme both scientific facts and technological artefacts are to be understood as social constructs. Literature on the sociology of science, the science-technology relationship, and technology studies is reviewed. The empirical programme of relativism within the sociology of scientific knowledge and a recent study of the social construction of technological artefacts are combined to produce the new approach. The concepts of `interpretative flexibility' and `closure mechanism', and the notion of `social group' are developed and illustrated by reference to a study of solar physics and a study of the development of the bicycle. The paper concludes by setting out some of the terrain to be explored in future studies.