edu The abrupt reversal of culturally ascribed primacy in the science‐technology relationship—namely, from the primacy of science relative to technology prior to circa 1980, to the primacy of technology relative to science since about that date—is proposed as a demarcator of postmodernity from modernity: modernity is when ‘science’ could, and often did, denote technology too; postmodernity is when science is subsumed under technology. In support of that demarcation criterion, I evidence the breadth and strength of modernity’s presupposition of the primacy of science to and for technology by showing its preposterous hold upon social theorists—Marx, Veblen, Dewey—whose principles logically required the reverse, viz. the primacy of practice; upon 19th and 20th century engineers and industrialists, social actors whose practical interests likewise required the reverse; and upon the principal theorizers in the 1970s of the role of science in late 20th century technology and society. The reversal in primacy between science and technology ca 1980 came too unexpectedly, too quickly, and, above all, too unreflectively to have resulted from the weight of evidence or the force of logic. Rather, it was a concomitant of the onset of postmodernity. Oddly, historians of technology have remained almost wholly unacknowledging of postmodernity’s epochal elevation of the cultural standing of the subject of their studies, and, specifically, have ignored technology’s elevation relative to science. This I attribute to the ideological character of that discipline, and, specifically, to its strategy of ignoration of science.

/pdf/the-primacy-of-science-in-modernity-of-technology-in-3g4wkcbhnd.pdf

The Primacy of Science in Modernity, of Technology in Postmodernity, and of Ideology in the History of Technology

The rise of large-scale laboratory research in nineteenth-century Germany has often been portrayed as a continuous success story. Taken as indicative are the two sciences on the leading edge of the trend, chemistry and physiology; developments in biology, physics, and the technical fields are then depicted either as imitations of or as the results of knowledge or personnel transfer from the leading disciplines. At first glance, the founding in 1879 of the world's first continuously operating psychological laboratory in Leipzig by Wilhelm Wundt, a physiologist turned philosopher, seems to fit this model very well. In one study, Joseph Ben-David and Randall Collins assert that this instance of “role hybridization,” as they call it, marked experimental psychology's “take-off into sustained growth” as a scientific discipline.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/S0008938900009602

Academic politics in the history of science: experimental psychology in Germany, 1879-1941.

This article suggests that the widely adopted principles of the ‘Cinema of Attractions’ is a limited framework for studying the early period of the invention of moving pictures and proposes the use of ideas drawn from writers on the social construction of technology as the basis for a more useful and comprehensive methodology for analysis of the early period of invention. With examples drawn from both the technological artefacts of early cinema (the Maltese Cross intermittent mechanism, the Lumiere Cinematographe) and from emerging cinematic practices (travelling exhibitors, optical projection systems), the alternative methodology described here is shown to be helpful in re-evaluating and restructuring the archaic inherited master narrative of the invention of moving pictures. The essay suggests that by looking at the material technology and practices of early cinema without prejudice or prior assumption, there is still much to be learned from surviving resources too long ignored; which in turn reveals a ...

Demolition d’un mur: The social construction of technology and early cinema projection systems

We present a short sketch of higher technical schools in Europe at the half of nineteenth century With the aim of making some comparisons, we have consulted original documents and present the organisation of the Polytechnic in Karlsruhe in detail as an examplary case

European polytechnic schools in nineteenth century and Karlsruhe’s exemplary case

.................................................................................................................................. ix Acknowledgements ............................................................................................................... xi List of figures ........................................................................................................................ xxi List of tables ....................................................................................................................... xxiii Abbreviations ...................................................................................................................... xxv Chapter 1 Introduction and story of the thesis ............................................................... 1 1.1. Aims of the study ................................................................................................... 1 1.2. Background to the study ...................................................................................... 3 1.3. Motivation ............................................................................................................... 7 1.4. Thesis structure ..................................................................................................... 9 Chapter 2 – Research Strategy and processes of data collection and data analysis ............................................................................................................................................... 13 2.

Sociotechnical transformation of the livestock market in Tanzania: appropriation of mobile phones by the Maasai and Wasukuma pastoralists

Developing a Festschrift with a Difference.- In Conversation with Alan Bishop.- Teacher Decision Making.- Decision-Making, the Intervening Variable.- Teachers' Decision Making: from Alan J. Bishop to Today.- Spatial Abilities, Visualization, and Geometry.- Spatial Abilities and Mathematics Education - A Review.- Spatial Abilities Research as a Foundation for Visualization in Teaching and Learning Mathematics.- Spatial Abilities, Mathematics, Culture, and the Papua New Guinea Experience.- Cultural and Social Aspects.- Visualising and Mathematics in a Pre-Technological Culture.- Cultural and Social Aspects of Mathematics Education: Responding to Bishop's Challenge.- Chinese Culture, Islamic Culture, and Mathematics Education.- Social and Political Aspects.- Mathematical Power to the People.- Mathematical Power as Political Power - The Politics of Mathematics Education.- Teachers and Research.- Research, Effectiveness, and the Practitioners' World.- Practicing Research and Researching Practice.- Reflexivity, Effectiveness, and the Interaction of Researcher and Practitioner Worlds.- Values.- Mathematics Teaching and Values Education - An Intersection in Need of Research.- Valuing Values in Mathematics Education.

Reinhard Rürup

Papers

Wissenschaft und Gesellschaft : Beiträge zur Geschichte der Technischen Universität Berlin, 1879-1979

Historians and Modern Technology: Reflections on the Development and Current Problems of the History of Technology