History and Philosophy of Technology

Catalog description

In this course we read influential classic and recent works in the history and the philosophy of technology, looking at how these two fields are analytically structured and related to each other. We start with Karl Marx, arguably the most influential historian and philosopher of technology of the modern era, and discuss him in relation to what has been one of the most visible debates in the historiography of technology – the question of technological determinism. From there, we engage key periods and methodological issues in roughly chronological order, visiting the Middle Ages and historical theoreticians of the Annales School, the early modern period, and processes of industrialization along with the questions that it raises about “what’s modern about modern technology.” Mid-way through the class, we discuss classic and recent works in the philosophy of technology, which grapple with the question about the relationship between industrialization, technology, philosophy, and modernity. Engaging the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries, we explore applications of the social constructivism debate to the history of technology, which will bring us back to our earlier debate about technological determinism, and we end the class with exploring periodicals and monographs within the history of technology at large. Throughout the class, we ask about narratives of modernity, about how the field of the history and the philosophy of technology have evolved, their relationship to the history of science and the history of medicine, funny episodes in their lifetimes, and examples of “really good work.”