This paper points out that the provincial mechanics' institutes of England in their early years were as much the product of a general and pervasive scientific culture as they were of a particular educational movement. To this extent the institutes can be interpreted within the context of wider social and economic changes. The bulk of the paper relates to the Mechanics' Institute at Sheffield in the period 1832–50, but through this and other material it is argued that this case study (...) deserves general consideration. (shrink)

This paper attempts to suggest the changing organisation of scientific culture and scientific institutions in London in the approximate period 1790–1820. A preliminary survey of the varieties of science in the city is followed by a treatment of one instance of informal association, the Askesian Society of 1796–1807. The intention is to provide a significant amount of data in an extra-institutional manner, and to illustrate a possible relationship between scientific culture and scientific advance. It is hoped that the essay might (...) provide a starting-point for subsequent treatments of group science in urban contexts during this phase of England's history. (shrink)

This paper, the first of two on science and technology in Modern China, sets out to estimate the success of China's technology strategy since 1949. It focuses on a clarification of such key terms as ‘appropriate technology’ and ‘alternative technology’. We argue that any statement about technology policy or its success involves an analysis of institutions as well as physical artifacts or production processes. A review of Chinese economic development in terms of technological phases suggests that recent changes designed to (...) improve the capacity of the Chinese technological system to absorb advanced technology from outside are not, in fact, a denial of the past, but are one measure of the reasonable success of past technological strategies. (shrink)

SummaryThe contrasting economic and technological histories of Japan, China, and India prior to 1914 are very often explained in socio-cultural terms. It is too easily assumed that culturally Japan was somehow more ‘prone’ to development along Western lines than were either of China and India. This paper addresses the socalled ‘failure’ of economic modernization in China and India in terms of socioeconomic processes and mechanisms. Knowledge and machinery were transferred to all three nations prior to 1914. But only in Japan (...) were conditions favourable to the subsequent adoption, diffusion, and adaptation of technologies. A major argument is that officialdom in China and India was not unwary or dissolute but merely hamstrung through a removal of effective sovereignty over decision making. The reduction of sovereignty was of greater importance than the supposed retardative impact of deeply held cultural traits. (shrink)

(1978). Robert Goodacre's astronomy lectures (1823–1825), and the structure of scientific culture in Philadelphia. Annals of Science: Vol. 35, No. 4, pp. 353-363.

Often enough, the uniqueness of Japanese economic history has been analysed in terms of overarching ‘cultural’ imperatives. The following paper utilizes key episodes in the transition of the Japanese economy in order to suggest that its impetus lay in the political economy of the nation's relations with Western science and technology and the subsequent developments whereby technological change became institutionalized. The power of the Japanese State—forged from a heady mixture of relative backwardness, fear, and militarism—was a necessary feature of national (...) ‘response’, and therefore an integral ingredient of the process whereby Japan began to pose a serious challenge to the superiority of ‘Western’ modes of development and change. The learning process was not, predominantly, one of national acculturation. Rather, the Japanese leadership from the Tokugawa period onwards deliberately and overtly set out to assimilate Western science and technology within an institutional framework which would ensure self-sustained and increasingly independent economic development. We end with an approach to technological systems which may be considered of more general interest to historians of modern technology. (shrink)