The history of technology is one of those subjects that most people know more about than they realize. Long before the academy recognized it as a specialized field of scholarly inquiry, American schools were routinely disseminating a sketchy outline of that history to millions of pupils. We learned about James Watt and the steam engine, Eli Whitney and the cotton gin, and about other great inventors and their inventions. Even more important, we were led to assume that innovation in the mechanic arts is a-perhaps the-driving force of human history. The theme was omnipresent in my childhood experience. I met it in the graphic charts and illustrations in my copy of The Book of Knowledge, a popular children's encyclopedia, and in the alluring dioramas of Early Man in the New York Museum of Natural History. These exhibits represented the advance of civilization as a sequence of the inventions in the mechanic arts with which Homo sapiens gained a unique power over nature. This comforting theme remains popular today and is insinuated by all kinds of historical narrative.
展开▼
