Technology and the West: A Historical Anthology from "Technology and Culture" by Stephen

H. Cutcliffe; Terry S. Reynolds; Technology and American History: A Historical Anthology

from "Technology and Culture" by Stephen H. Cutcliffe; Terry S. Reynolds
Review by: K. Austin Kerr
Technology and Culture, Vol. 40, No. 2 (Apr., 1999), pp. 388-390
Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press and the Society for the History of Technology
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25147316 .
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BOOK REVIEWS

Technology and the West: A Historical Anthology from Technology

and Culture.
Edited by Stephen H. Cutcliffe and Terry S. Reynolds. Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 1997. Pp. 461; index. $37.95 (cloth); $18.95 (paper).

Technology and American History: A Historical Anthology from

Technology and Culture.
Edited by Stephen H. Cutcliffe and Terry S. Reynolds. Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 1997. Pp. 448; index. $37.95 (cloth); $18.95 (paper).

The articles selected for these two anthologies, designed for classroom use
and for the general reader, demonstrate excellence in scholarship. Tech
nology and theWest reprints eighteen articles from this journal, Technology
and American History fifteen. The selections demonstrate that scholars

working in the history of technology have been capable of great breadth,

insight, and clear analysis as the field expanded over the past several
decades. The subjects range from preindustrial technologies to the nature
of technological development in "postindustrial society." The anthologies
will be welcome to teachers to assign essays on
especially wishing scholarly
different subjects in different time periods, essays that show excellence in
research and critical analysis. The editors have provided introductions that
explain the importance of understanding technology in its social and his
torical context and not as an independent force that determines human
behavior and social organization. Moreover, they chose to begin Technology
and theWest with an edited version of Melvin Kranzberg's 1985 presiden
tial address to the Society for the History of Technology. That address
offered general propositions for understanding the history of technology,
and the editors use it to help readers understand the significance of the
other essays in the volume.
There are some differences between the two volumes, from their
arising
subject matter. Technology and theWest is evenly balanced between articles

Permission to reprint a review published here may be obtained only from the
reviewer.

388

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 BOOK REVIEWS

on preindustrial and industrial technology. In it we learn about subjects

such as air pollution in medieval London and the thermal pollution that
results from nuclear and American a
power. Technology History, covering
shorter time span, is almost entirely about industrial technology. It begins
with an essay by Norman B. Wilkinson explaining the importance of
American borrowing of European technology, which shows the importance
of transatlantic transfer in technology as well as in law, religion, political
philosophies, and other areas. The book concludes with an article by
Richard F.Hirsh and Adam H. Serchuk on recent developments in the elec
tric utility industry. There is one article common to both volumes: Ruth
Schwartz Cowan's piece on the industrial revolution in the home, which has
done so much to enlarge our knowledge of the impact of technological
on lives.
change people's
The editors selected articles according to time period; nevertheless,
of the selections were of one sort or another. As is
many prizewinners
almost always the case with anthologies, these volumes have little concep
tual unity. To be sure, the editors explain carefully that what unites the arti
cles is the realization that technology must be understood in its social and
historical context. Their summaries of the essays selected help the reader
understand this important general point. Beyond this, however, thematic
development is left for the reader (or, presumably, the teacher who has
assigned the volumes to a class). Thus, other than to say that the general
point about context is convincing, it is impossible for me to critique the
historical themes proposed and developed, for such are absent. In the
absence of any extended thesis or thematic development, it seems unlikely
that the volumes will have much appeal for the general reader.
The books seem ideally suited for classroom adoption in courses on the
history of technology, either inwestern civilization or in United States his
Informed teachers will, however, need to exercise some care in their
tory.
use. In Technology and theWest, the editors offer a limited definition of
technology ("the ability to manipulate or control nature," p. 23) appropri
ate for understanding early civilizations, but they offer nothing similar in
Technology and American History. The Kranzberg presidential essay will
careful use, for it was written for an audience of insiders dif
require quite
ferent from students, and some of its references are dated (even bright,
well-prepared students have not seen "Love Canal and Bhopal crowding the
headlines," p. 13). Similarly dated references appear elsewhere in the books.
In short, these are not articles that one can without careful
scholarly assign
guidance to students before they begin reading the material.
The general reader might prefer to gain an introduction to the history
of technology from works that provide a cohesive narrative explaining and
developing main themes. However, for a person without much background
in this field, these anthologies provide an excellent entry into a specialized
literature that gets at important ideas. Specialists will likely already be

389

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TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE

familiar with these essays, and some of their ideas have, since their original
publication, crept into our general knowledge about the history of western
civilization and of the United States. Strangely, however, neither book gives
the original citation for the essays selected, so scholars will have to look
elsewhere to understand the context in which any particular essay was writ
ten and published.
APRIL
In sum, these are useful instructional tools for courses in
anthologies
1999 the history of technology. They demonstrate the brilliance and scope of
VOL. 40 scholarship in the field. Readers wanting a narrative or a developed thesis
or theme, however, will have to look elsewhere.

K. AUSTIN KERR
Dr. Kerr is professor of history at Ohio State University. He is known for his work on the his
tory of government-business relations, including prohibition reform and its opponents in the

distilling and brewing industries. He is also coauthor of a leading text in American business

history. Kerr's most recent book is a coauthored history of BFGoodrich.

Pasteur's Quadrant: Basic Science and Technological Innovation.

By Donald E. Stokes. Washington, D.C: Brookings Institution Press, 1997.

Pp. xiv+180; notes, index. $38.95 (cloth); $14.95 (paper).

Donald Stokes, who was dean of theWoodrow Wilson School of Public and
International Affairs at Princeton University before his death in 1997, has
written a book aimed at science policymakers, but it should also be read by
historians of technology because it provides a provocative new way to look
at the between science and The main purpose of
relationship technology.
the book is to analyze, critique, and eventually rethink the linear model of
the relationship between science and technology that was put forward by
Vannevar Bush in his report Science, the Endless Frontier, which became a
major influence on science policy in the post-World War II period. Near the
end ofWorld War II, Franklin Roosevelt asked Bush, then head of wartime
research as the director of the Office of Scientific Research and Develop
ment, to prepare a report on the role of science in peacetime. While the

Truman administration rejected and delayed some of the organizational

aspects of Bush's plan, the basic ideology of the report served as the foun
dation for science policy throughout the cold war era.
Bush's linear model was based on two fundamental postulates: first,
"basic research is performed without thought of practical ends," and sec
ond, "basic research is the pacemaker of technological progress" (p. 3). The
resulting model of the relationship between science and technology was
linear in both its static and dynamic forms. In its static form, the funda
mental relationship between basic and applied research could be visual
ized in terms of a spectrum or line with basic research at one end and
applied research on the other. Such a model implied an essential tension

390

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