Cultural reflections

摘要

It is a truism that culture, broadly defined, shapes science and technology as much as they shape culture. This once controversial position became the conventional wisdom decades ago, after purely internal histories of science and technology, followed by largely uncritical interpretations of their developments, were displaced as the dominant models. In their excellent book Hubris and Hybrids, historians Mikael Hard and Andrew Jamison engage in a cultural assessment of science and technology. They replace the traditional 'heroic tale' of scientific genius with stories of the frequently mixed blessings of science and technology.