Technology and Dialectics

Tyabji, Nasir (1997): Technology and Dialectics. Published in: Economic and Political Weekly , Vol. 32, No. 13 : pp. 651-656.

Abstract

The industrial revolution was defined by the phenomenon of the application of systematically acquired knowledge (of thermodynamics) to the improvement of production methods(the steam engine). The implications of this lay, decisively, in opening the area of knowledge of production methods, in general, to human enquiry. This was given the (refurbished) name of technology, and accorded a central role in the dialectics of capitalism. Later, the 1931 Interntational Conference on the History of Science and Technology formulated key ideas in the dialectics of technology. This groundwork laid the basis for substantial advances in the history of technology in the subsequent years. However, inadequate theoretical elaboration of the institutional forms in which technological knowledge is commercialised has created the space for the growth of arcane theories of technology, which attribute to it a malignant agency. The emotive appeal of these theories is indicative of the reality: the results of the post-1945 scientific and technological revolution are expressed in forms structured by a transnational-dominated world economy.

• Item Type: MPRA Paper
• Language: English
• Keywords: Technology; dialectics;Scientific and Technological Revolution (STR)
• Subjects: N - Economic History > N7 - Transport, Trade, Energy, Technology, and Other Services > N70 - General, International, or Comparative; O - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth > O3 - Innovation ; Research and Development ; Technological Change ; Intellectual Property Rights > O31 - Innovation and Invention: Processes and Incentives

References

Anchiskin, Alexander (1987): Science, Technology and the Economy, Progress Publishers, Moscow.

Bagrit,Leon (1966): The Ageof Automaion:The Reith Lectures, 1964. Penguin Books, Harmnondsworth.

Belt, van den Henk and Rip, Arie (1987): 'The Nelson-Winter-Dosi Model and Synthetic Dye Chemistry' in Bijker et al (1987).

Bhattacharya, Sabyasachi and Redondi, Pietro (eds) (1990): Techniques to Technology: A French Historiography of Technology,Orient Longman, New Delhi.

Bijker, Wiebe E et al (1987): The Social Constructiono of Technological Systems: New Directions in the Sociology and History of Technology, MIT Press,Cambridge, Mass.

Daumas, Maurice (1969): 'The History of Technology: Objectives, Limits and Methods', in Bhattacharya and Redondi (1990).

Davies, John T (1980): 'Chemical Engineering: How Did It Begin and Develop?' in Furter (ed) (1980).

Freeman, Chris ( 1994): 'The Economics of Technical Change', Cambridge Journal of Economics, XVIII:463-5 14.

Furter, William F (1980): History of Chemical Engineering, American Chemical Society.

Harvey, David (1990): The Condition of Post- Modernity, Basil Blackwell, Oxford.

Heinman, S A, (1981): Scientific and Technical Revolution: Economic Aspects, Progress Publishers, Moscow.

Hessen, B (1931): 'The Social and Economic Roots of Newton's 'Principia" in Science at the Crossroads, papers presented to the International Congress of the History of Science and Technology held in London from June 29 to July 3, 1931 by the Delegates of the USSR, Foreign Languages Press, Kniga; 2nd Edition, Frank Cass, London, 1971.

Ilyenkov,EV( 1982): The Dialectic of the Abstract and the Concrete in Marx's Capital, Progress Publishers, Moscow.

Kedrov,Bonifaty( 1977): 'Criteria of the Scientific Revolution' in USSR Academy of Sciences.

Kolontayev, A (1981): 'The Scientific and Technological Revolution and the Machine Stage of Production in the Developing Countries' in USSR Academy of Sciences, India: Problems of Development, Oriental Studies in the USSR, No 4, Social Sciences Today Editorial Board, Moscow.

Koyre, Alexandre (1989): 'Galileo and Plato' reprinted in Redondi with Pillai, 120-45.

Landau, Ralph and Rosenberg, Nathan (1992):'Successful Commercialisation in the Chemical Process Industries' in Nathan Rosenberg et al (eds), 73-119.

Mikulinsky, Semyon (1977): 'History of Natural Sciences as Science: Present State and Theoretical Problems' in USSR Academy of Sciences.

Mitcham,Carl(1994): Thinking Through Technology: The Path between Engineering and Philosophy, University of Chicago Press,Chicago.

Nikolayev, A (1975): R and D in Social Reproduction, Progress Publishers, Moscow.

Noble, David F (1979): America by Design: Science, Technology and the Rise of Corporate Capitalism, Oxford University Press, New York.

Olwell, Russell (1996): "Condemned to Footnotes':Marxist Scholarship in the History of Science', Science and Society. LX, 1:7-26.

Parathasarathi, Ashok (1987): 'Acquisition and Development of Technology: The Indian Experience', Economic and Political Weekly, XXII, 48.

Redondi, Pietro and Pillai, P V(1989): The History of Sciences: The French Debate, Orient Longman, New Delhi.

Rosenberg, Nathan (1976): 'Marx as a Student of Technology', Monthly Review, XXVIII, July-Aug:56-77 reprinted in Rosenberg(1982).

- (1982): Inside the Black Box: Technology and Economics, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

- (1991): 'Critical Issues in Science Policy', Science and Public Policy, XIII:335-46, reprinted in Rosenberg (1994).

- (1994): Exploring the Black Box: Technology, Economics and History, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

Rosenberg. Nathan et al(1992): Technology and the Wealth of Nations, Stanford University Press, Stanford.

Salomon, Jean-Jacques (1990): 'What is Technology? The Issue of Its Origins and Definitions', in Bhattacharya and Redondi (1990).

Sheinin, Y (1978): Science Policy: Problems and Trends, Progress Publishers, Moscow.

USSR Academy of Sciences, Institute of the History of Natural Science and Technology(1977): Soviet Studies in the History of Science, Social Sciences Today Editorial Board, Moscow, Problems of the Contemporary World Series, No 53.