3. Science and Industrialization

Andrew Jamison

Theories of Science and Research

What was/is Industrialization?

An economic and technical revolutionthe growth of modern industry, or mechanization

A process of social change

the coming of industrial society and its institutions

Cultural, or human transformations from rural communities to an industrial way of life

mechanization

socialization

modernization scientification globalization

socialism populism

modernism anticolonialism

environmentalismfeminism

1800 1850 1950 20001900

Cultural and Social Movements

”Long Waves” of Industrialization

enlightenment romanticism cooperation

IT, biotechtechnoscience

telegraph railroads

atomic energy”big science”

textile machinesfactories

Cycles of Creative Reconstruction

electrificationIndustrial R&D

The First Cycle

”the industrial revolution” (ca 1780-1830)

iron, textile machines, and steam engines

technologies of mechanization

the factory as an organizational innovation

social and cultural movements:• ”machine-storming” and romanticism• cooperation and polytechnics

James Watt

The Iron Bridge

The Spinning Jenny

Industrialization as hubris

Manchester in the 1830s

The Luddites

Mary Shelley:Challenging the hubris

”Learn from me, if not by my precepts, at least

by my example, how dangerous is the

acquirement of knowledge, and how much

happier that man is who believed his native

town to be the world, than he who aspires to

become greater than his nature will allow...”

• mixed Naturphilosophie with experimentation

• to look for the ”spirit in nature”...

• discovered electromagnetism (1820)

• and founded DTU in 1829

The Hybrid Imagination:Hans Christian Ørsted (1777-1851)

The Hybrid Imagination: Samuel Morse (1791-1872)

• the scientist-artist who invented the telegraph (1832)

• made a machine that could communicate

• devised a new technical language, Morse code (1838)

A Hybrid Imagination:NFS Grundtvig (1783-1872) and the folk high schools

”The theories of the natural scientists do not, of course

appeal to me when they try to make history unnecessary, but

there is no one more willing to sing the praises of their praxis

than me.”

Af udkast til tale om historiens forhold til livet, 1839

”Learning for life”

The Hybrid Imagination: Henry David Thoreau (1817-62)

• a ”romantic” scientist, author of Walden

• one of the founders of environmentalism

• also wrote On the Duty of Civil Disobedience (1849)

From Walden

”I went to the woods because I wished to live

deliberately, to front only the essential facts of

life, and see if I could not learn what it had to

teach, and not, when I came to die, discover

that I had not lived...”

Thoreau’s theory of science

”The true man of science will know nature

better by his finer organization; he will smell,

taste, see, hear, feel better than other men. His

will be a deeper and finer experience. We do

not learn by inference and deduction, and the

application of mathematics to philosophy, but

by direct intercourse and sympathy...”

The Second Cycle

”the age of capital” (ca 1830-1880)

railroads, telegraph, and steel

technologies of socialization

the rise of the corporation (Carnegie, Krupp)

social and cultural movements:• socialism and populism • science fiction and arts and crafts

George Inness, 1851

”The machine in the garden”

George Inness, 1851

The industrial society

Claude Monet

A hybrid imagination: Karl Marx (1818-1883)

Philosophy (Hegel) meets economics (Ricardo)

Positivism (Comte) meets socialism (Owen)

Idealism (Kant) meets materialism (Bentham)

Theory of science meets the industrial society

A theory of industrial science

”Modern industry never views or treats the existing form of

a production process as the definitive one. Its technical

basis is therefore revolutionary, whereas all earlier modes

of production were essentially conservative. By means of

machinery, chemical processes and other methods, it is

continually transforming not only the technical basis of

production but also the functions of the worker and the

social combinations of the labour process.”

From Das Kapital, 1867

”Darwin has directed attention to the history of

natural technology, i.e. the formation of the organs

of plants and animals, which serve as the

instruments of production for sustaining their life.

Does not the history of the productive organs of

man in society, of organs that are the matrial basis

of every particular organization of sciety, deserve

equal attention?... ”

Science as technology

”...Technology reveals the active relation of

man to nature, the direct process of the

production of his life, and thereby it also

lays bare the process of the production of

the social relations of his life, and of the

mental conceptions that flow from those

relations.”

A Hybrid Imagination: William Morris (1834-1896)

A romantic poet turned designer

Combined artistry and business

Mixed tradition and innovation

A utopian who was also practical

From ”Useful Work versus Useless Toil”:

”Our epoch has invented machines which would have

appeared wild dreams to the men of past ages, and of

those machines we have as yet made no use. They are

called ”labor-saving” machines – a commonly used

phrase which implies what we expect of them; but we do

not get what we expect. What they really do is to reduce

the skilled labourer to the ranks of the unskilled.”

”

A major influence on…

Arts and crafts movements, garden cities

Interior and industrial design

Architecture: Wright, Gehry, Utzon

Art Nouveau and functionalism

Socialist politics and fantasy literature

The ”education of desire”

A Hybrid Imagination:Poul La Cour (1846-1908)

- a ”populist” scientist-engineer

- taught physics at Askov folk high school

- wrote Historisk Mathematik and Historisk Fysik

- built laboratory for wind energy experimentation

- founded Danish Wind Electricity Society in 1903

The Poul La Cour Museum, Askov

Industrialization and science

New technological, and science-based universities

New fields of social and human sciences

Professional science and engineering societies

Research laboratories in education and industry

”science as a vocation” (Max Weber)

Justus Liebig and his laboratoryat the University in Giessen, 1840s

The Carlsberg Laboratory in Valby, founded 1872, one of the first industrial research laboratories in the world

Alexander Graham Bell (1847-1922)and his ”electrical speech machine”

Thomas Alva Edison (1847-1931)

The laboratory at Menlo Park

Edison’s ”Kinetoscope”

I am experimenting upon

an instrument which does

for the eye what the

phonograph does for the

ear, which is the recording

and reproduction of things

in motion ...."

--Thomas A. Edison, 1888

4. Science and Modernization

Andrew Jamison

Theories of Science and Research

The Third Cycle

”the age of empire” (ca 1880-1930)

Electricity, automobiles, and airplanes

Technologies of modernization

Research becomes incorporated (GM, GE, AT&T, etc)

Social and cultural movements:

• modernism and anticolonialism

• cultural and human sciences

Henry Ford with his 10 millionth car

An Age of Hubris

”Natural science gives us an answer to the

question of what we must do if we wish to

master life technically. It leaves quite aside,

or assumes for its purposes, whether we

should and do wish to master life

technically and whether it ultimately makes

sense to do so.”

Max Weber, Science as a Vocation, 1918

”The whole industrial world – and

instrumentalism is only its highest

conscious expression - has taken

values for granted...An instrumental

philosophy which was oriented

toward a whole life would begin...by a

criticism of this one-sided

idealization of practical contrivance.”

Lewis Mumford, 1926

National Styles of Science

empiricism and economics in UK Smith and Ricardo to Mill and Russell

positivism and sociology in France Condorcet and Comte to Durkheim and Bergson

historicism and humanities in Germany Kant and Hegel to Weber and Dilthey

pragmatism and planning/management in US Franklin and Emerson to Dewey and Taylor

Theoretical Tensions

In terms of the logic of explanationinduction versus deduction, facts versus concepts

In terms of the logic of discovery experiments versus mathematics, data versus models

In terms of the logic of justification, or verificationempiricism versus rationalism, practice versus theory

Competing Traditions

empiricism – largely a British, and then American ”style” closely connected to the economyobservations and data are central

rationalism –largely a French ”style” closely connected to the state and religionbeliefs and concepts are central

A Synthetic, or Hybrid Tradition

largely a German-dominated ”style”

Combining empiricism and rationalism

Emphasis on systems, wholes

Often connected to social, or political change

Characterized by hybrid identities

”Imagination is more important than knowledge”

A Hybrid Imagination: Albert Einstein (1878-1955)

Principles of Empiricism

An emphasis on observation and data collection

Observations provide basis for generalizations

A preference for quantitative methods

Science a search for law-like regularities, for facts

and for theories that can be tested empirically

The Empirical Tradition

17th century: Francis Bacon, John Locke

18th century: Hume’s skepticism

19th century: Bentham, Mill & utilitarianism

20th century: Russell, Dewey & pragmatism

Principles of Rationalism

An emphasis on concepts and rational thought

Concepts the basis for exemplification

A preference for qualitative methods

Science a search for logical truths, for insights

and for theories that can be applied to reality

The Rational Tradition

17th century: Descartes & the analytical method

18th century: Diderot, Condorcet & enlightenment

19th century: Comte & positivism

20th century: Merleau-Ponty & phenomenology

Principles of Synthesis

Truth a matter of combining opposites

A ”dialectical” view of nature, or reality

A preference for systematizing methods

Science a search for a unified theory

and for a deeper, more ”holistic” understanding

The Synthetic Tradition

17th century: Leibniz’s logic, Spinoza’s ethics

18th century: Goethe’s holism, Kant’s idealism

19th century: Marx, Weber and human sciences

20th century: Carnap, Popper, and systems theory

”Imagination is more important than knowledge”

A Hybrid Imagination: Albert Einstein (1878-1955)

Logical Empiricism

about verification, the justification of truth claims

focus on coherence of scientific statements

theories seen to provide causal explanations

stress the importance of ”thought experiments” science is a matter of logical rules, or ”language

games” (Wittgenstein)

Popper’s Falsificationism

an individual model of science as a”logic of discovery”

negativism, rather than positivism

theories are conjectures, hypotheses

experiments seen as attempts to refute theories

truth is a goal rather than a result

science is a continuous, cumulative process

Thomas Kuhn’s Revolution

a collective, ”big science” model of science

research guided by paradigms, or disciplinary matrices

”normal” science as a form of puzzle-solving

disrupted by periodic revolutions: paradigm conflicts

science is a discontinuous process

pre-paradigmstage

paradigmatic, or normal science

new paradigm

different ideas disciplinary disciplinary coexist formation restructuring

an exemplary anomalies thatexplanation, or theory lead to revolution

Kuhn’s Model

The Popper-Kuhn Debate

Methodologically: how science worksA debate between a normative, or philosophical, and a

descriptive, or historical approach

Ontologically: what science is

A debate about whether science is about reality or about perceptions of reality

Epistemologically: how science growsA debate about how scientific knowledge develops over

time

Recent Developments

the concept of research programs (Lakatos)

finalization and post-normal science

methodological pluralism: ”anything goes” (Feyerabend)

constructivism and situated knowledge (Latour, Haraway)

transdisciplinarity and mode 2 (Gibbons et al)

social epistemology, social theories of science

The Idea of a Research Program

The research front

The researchfield

A ”hard core”

pre-paradigmstage

paradigmatic, or normal science

finalized, or post-normal science

different ideas disciplinary transdisciplinarycoexist science science

anomalies that external interestslead to revolution that need science

The Finalization Thesis

Principles of Constructivism

Science a kind of ”situated knowledge”

Importance of tacit knowledge and intuition

Scientists ”construct” facts and theories

Science a search for ”socially robust” knowledge

A relative, or relativist notion of truth