History of Science 288: History and Philosophy of Technology

- Thursday 4pm 6pm, SC 359 Instructor:

Adelheid Voskuhl
Science Center 365
Email: avoskuhl@fas.harvard.edu
Phone: 617 496 5226

Office Hours:
Tuesday, 2:30pm-3:30pm
Thursday, 3pm-4pm
and by appointment.

Course Description:
In this course we read influential classic and recent works in the History and the
Philosophy of Technology, tackling both the ways in which the fields are analytically
structured and their relation to each other. We also discuss approaches and
methodological questions prominent in the writing of general history. We start with Karl
Marx, arguably the most influential historian and philosopher of technology of the
modern era, and discuss him in relation to what has been one of the most visible
debates in the historiography of technology the question of technological determinism.
We then travel in a roughly chronological order through key periods and methodological
issues in the fields. During our journey we encounter the Middle Ages and historical
theoreticians of the Annales School, the early modern period and questions about
intellectual history, and the so-called Industrial Revolution and the questions it raises
about whats modern about modern technology. Mid-way through the class, we discuss
two classics in the philosophy of technology, Martin Heidegger and Jrgen Habermas,
who grapple precisely with the question about the modern element in industrial
technology. As we enter the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, we expand our
methodological horizon to include examples from the cultural history of technology and
applications of the social constructivism debate to the history of technology. We end the
class with work on technologys users a comparatively recent trend in the
historiography of technology in the realms of media and medical technologies.
Requirements and Grade Distribution:
The class is conducted in a seminar format, and your participation and contributions
are its most important dimension. Two students will prepare and lead discussion each
week in cooperation with me. In the week preceding the respective session, the three of
us will meet to discuss the key issues to be addressed and plan the seminar session.
There will be one short, analytical paper on one or more of the texts covered in class
(about 2000 words), due just after Spring Break; and there will be one longer final
paper (about 5000 words), due at the end of Reading Period. It is possible (and, in fact,
recommended), that the long paper build on the short one in some way. Papers can be
research-based seminar papers or essays dealing with
theoretical/methodological/philosophical issues. Students should consult with me in
advance about their paper topics. The long paper will make up 40% of your final grade,
the short paper 20%, and participation in class discussion will make up 40%.
University Policies and Regulations:
I respect and uphold University policies and regulations pertaining to the observation of
religious holidays, assistance available to the physically handicapped, visually and/or
hearing impaired students, plagiarism, sexual harassment, and racial or ethnic
discrimination. All students are advised to become familiar with the respective

University regulations and are encouraged to bring any questions or concerns to the my
attention.
Readings:
Most of the books are on reserve in Lamont Library
(http://lib.harvard.edu/libraries/0027.html), and you can check availability on the
course website. Most articles are easily accessible online through the library. The ones
that are not are available as PDFs on the course website. Please let me know if there are
problems coming up with availability of readings. Readings listed on the separate
reading list are not subject matter of class discussion. They serve as starting points for
further reading, the final paper, and/or a field exams in History/Philosophy of
Technology.
TIMETABLE AND READINGS
Week 1 (26th January 2012): Introduction
General Introduction: History and Philosophy of Technology
Week 2 (2nd February 2012): History, Technology, and Marx
Marx, Karl. Capital. A Critique of Political Economy. Transl. Ben Fowkes. New York :
Vintage Books, 1977. Parts 3 and 4, pp. 283-639 (reserve, Lamont Library).
MacKenzie, Donald. Marx and the Machine. Technology and Culture 25 (1984), 473503 (online).
Week 3 (9th February 2012): NO CLASS. Individual meetings in weeks 6 and 7.
Week 4 (16th February 2012): Technology and Determinism
Smith, Merritt Roe and Leo Marx. Introduction. In Does Technology Drive History? The
Dilemma of Technological Determinism, edited Smith, Merritt Roe and Leo Marx,
Cambridge, MA: MIT Press 1994, ix-xv (reserve, Lamont Library).
Heilbroner, Robert. Do Machines Make History? Technology and Culture 8 (1967), 335345 (online).
Heilbroner, Robert. Technological Determinism Revisited. In: Does Technology Drive
History? The Dilemma of Technological Determinism, 67-78.
Bimber, Bruce. Three Faces of Technological Determinism. Does Technology Drive
History? The Dilemma of Technological Determinism, 79-100.
Kline, Ron. Technological Determinism. International Encyclopedia of the Social and
Behavioral Sciences (ESBS), New York: Elsevier 2001, 15495-15498 (online)
Winner, Langdon. Autonomous Technology. Technics-out-of-Control as a Theme in
Political Thought. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1977. Introduction and chapters 1,
2, and 4 (reserve, Lamont Library).
Week 5 (23rd February 2012): Medieval Technology and the Annales School
White, Lynn Jr. Medieval Technology and Social Change. (reserve, Lamont Library)

Hall, Bert. Lynn Whites Medieval Technology and Social Change after thirty years. In
Technological Change. Methods and Themes in the History of Technology, edited
Robert Fox, Australia: Harwood Academics, 1996, 85-101 (PDF, course website).
Burke, Peter. The French Historical Revolution: the Annales School 1929-1989. Stanford,
CA: Stanford University Press, 1990. Introduction and Chapter 1 (pp. 1-11)
(PDF, course website).
Week 6 (1st March 2012): Early Modern Technology and Intellectual History
Mayr, Otto. Authority, Liberty, and Automatic Machinery in Early Modern Europe.
Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986 (reserve, Lamont Library).
LaCapra, Dominick. Rethinking Intellectual History and Reading Texts. In Rethinking
Intellectual History. Texts, Contexts, Language by Dominick LaCapra, Ithaca, NY:
Cornell University Press, 1983, pp. 13-72 (please read the Introduction, too!)
(reserve, Lamont Library)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- CONSULT WITH ME ABOUT SHORT PAPER THIS WEEK ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Week 7 (8th March 2012): Technology and the Narrative of Industrial Modernity
Dohrn-van Rossum, Gerhard. History of the Hour. Clocks and Modern Temporal Orders.
Transl. Thomas Dunlap. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1996
(reserve, Lamont Library).
Thompson, E. P. Time, Work-Discipline, and Industrial Capitalism. Past and Present
38 (1967), 56-97 (online).
Week 8 (15th March 2012): Spring Break
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- SHORT PAPER DUE THIS WEEK: 19th March, 2012, 4pm ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Week 9 (22nd March 2012): Technology and the British Industrial Revolution
Berg, Maxine. The Age of Manufactures 1700-1820. Industry, Innovation and Work in
Britain. New York: Routledge, 1994, chapters Introduction, 1, 3, 4, 6, 7, 8, 9,
Conclusion (reserve, Lamont Library)
Landes, David. The Unbound Prometheus. Technological Change and Industrial
Development in Western Europe from 1750 to the Present. Second Edition.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003, chapters 1 and 2 (pp. 1-124)
(reserve, Lamont Library)
Week 10 (29th March 2012): Philosophy of Technology and Industrial Modernity
Heidegger, Martin. The Question Concerning Technology, in Martin Heidegger, The
Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays, New York: Harper and Row,
1977, 3-35 (reserve, Lamont Library).

Habermas, Jrgen. Technology and Science as Ideology, in Jrgen Habermas, Toward

a Rational Society, Boston: Beacon Press, 1970, 81-122 (reserve, Lamont
Library).
Ihde, Don. Philosophy of Technology: An Introduction. New York: Paragon House, 1993,
pp. 1-46 (reserve, Lamont Library).
Mitcham, Carl. Thinking through Technology. The Path between Engineering and
Philosophy. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1994, pp. 1-134 (reserve, Lamont
Library).
Week 11 (5th April 2012): Technology and Cultural History
Thompson, Emily. The Soundscape of Modernity: Architectural Acoustics and the Culture
of Listening in America, 1900-1933. MIT Press, 2002, chapters 1, 2, 4, 5, 7
(reserve, Lamont Library).
Nye, David. Narratives and Spaces: Technology and the Construction of American
Culture. University of Exeter Press, 1997, chapters 1, 2, 4, 5, 7, 9, 10 (reserve,
Lamont Library).
Week 12 (12th April 2012): Technology and Social Construction
MacKenzie, Donald. Inventing Accuracy. A Historical Sociology of Nuclear Missile
Guidance. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1990 (reserve, Lamont Library).
Pinch, Trevor and Wiebe Bijker. The Social Construction of Facts and Artefacts: Or
How the Sociology of Science and the Sociology of Technology Might Benefit
Each Other. Social Studies of Science 14 (3) (1984), 399-441 (online).
Bloor, David. Knowledge and Social Imagery. Second edition. Chicago: Chicago
University Press, 1991, Chapter 1: The Strong Programme in the Sociology of
Knowledge, pp. 1-24 (reserve, Lamont Library).
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- CONSULT WITH ME ABOUT FINAL PAPER THIS WEEK --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Week 13 (19th April 2012): Users, Consumers, Bodies, Media
Greenberg, Joshua M. From BetaMax to Blockbuster : Video Stores and the Invention of
Movies on Video, chapters 1-4 and 7. Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 2008.
Oudshoorn, Nelly and Trevor Pinch. Introduction: How Users and Non-Users Matter,
and Shobita Parthasarathy, Knowledge is Power. Genetic Testing for and
Patient Activism in the Inited States and Britain, in How Users Matter: the CoConstruction of Users and Technologies, ed. by Nelly Oudshoorn and Trevor
Pinch. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2003, 1-25 and 133-150 (PDFs, course
website).
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- FINAL PAPER DUE: 3rd May, 2012, 4pm ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------