3. Science and Industrialization

1. Theories of Science and Research 3. Science and Industrialization Andrew Jamison

2. What was/is Industrialization? • An economic and technical revolution • the 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

3. Cycles of Creative Reconstruction ”Long Waves” of Industrialization mechanization socialization modernization scientification globalization textile machines factories telegraph railroads electrification Industrial R&D atomic energy ”big science” IT, biotech technoscience 1850 2000 1800 1900 1950 enlightenment romanticism cooperation socialism populism modernism anticolonialism environmentalism feminism Cultural and Social Movements

4. 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

5. The Iron Bridge James Watt The Spinning Jenny

6. Industrialization as hubris Manchester in the 1830s

7. The Luddites

8. ”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...” Mary Shelley: Challenging the hubris

9. The Hybrid Imagination: Hans Christian Ørsted (1777-1851) • mixed Naturphilosophie with experimentation • to look for the ”spirit in nature”... • discovered electromagnetism (1820) • and founded DTU in 1829

10. 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)

11. ”Learning for life” 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

12. 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)

13. 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...”

14. 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...”

15. 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

16. ”The machine in the garden” George Inness, 1851 George Inness, 1851

17. The industrial society Claude Monet

18. 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

19. 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.”

20. 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?... ”

21. 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.”

22. 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

23. ”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.” ” From ”Useful Work versus Useless Toil”:

24. 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”

25. 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

26. 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)

27. Justus Liebig and his laboratory at the University in Giessen, 1840s

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

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

30. Thomas Alva Edison (1847-1931) The laboratory at Menlo Park

31. 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

32. Theories of Science and Research 4. Science and Modernization Andrew Jamison

33. 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

34. An Age of Hubris Henry Ford with his 10 millionth car

35. ”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

36. ”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

37. 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

38. Theoretical Tensions In terms of the logic of explanation induction 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 verification empiricism versus rationalism, practice versus theory

39. Competing Traditions • empiricism – • largely a British, and then American ”style” • closely connected to the economy • observations and data are central • rationalism – • largely a French ”style” • closely connected to the state and religion • beliefs and concepts are central

40. 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

41. A Hybrid Imagination: Albert Einstein (1878-1955) ”Imagination is more important than knowledge”

42. 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

43. The Empirical Tradition • 17th century: Francis Bacon, John Locke • 18th century: Hume’s skepticism • 19th century: Bentham, Mill & utilitarianism • 20th century: Russell, Dewey & pragmatism

44. 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

45. The Rational Tradition • 17th century: Descartes & the analytical method • 18th century: Diderot, Condorcet & enlightenment • 19th century: Comte & positivism • 20th century: Merleau-Ponty & phenomenology

46. 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

47. 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

48. A Hybrid Imagination: Albert Einstein (1878-1955) ”Imagination is more important than knowledge”

49. 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)

50. 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