Natural Alliance or Forced Marriage? Changing Relations between the Histories of Science and Technology

摘要

It might seem that the alliance between the study of the history of science and the study of the history of technology is a natural one. But the fact is that relations have not always been easy, and such interactions as there have been have often resembled a forced marriage. Happily, in the last few years there have been signs of a new interest in an alliance between history of science and history of technology. Historians have reopened old questions about science-technology relations and posed new ones from a variety of intriguing perspectives. Before examining these signs of a new alliance, however, it is worth remembering that discussions of the relationship between science and technology have been complicated by the variety of competing definitions of the two enterprises.