Paths of Fire : an Anthropologist's Inquiry into Western Technology
Technology, perhaps the most salient feature of our time, affects everything from jobs to international law yet ranks among the most unpredictable facets of human life. Here Robert McC. Adams, renowned anthropologist and Secretary Emeritus of the Smithsonian Institution, builds a new approach to understanding the circumstances that drive technological change, stressing its episodic, irregular nature. The result is nothing less than a sweeping history of technological transformation from ancient times until now. Rare in antiquity, the bursts of innovations that mark the advance of technology have gradually accelerated and now have become an almost continuous feature of our culture. Repeatedly shifting in direction, this path has been shaped by a host of interacting social, cultural, and scientific forces rather than any deterministic logic. Thus future technological developments, Adams maintains, are predictable only over the very short term. Adams's account highlights Britain and the United States from early modern times onward. Locating the roots of the Industrial Revolution in British economic and social institutions, he goes on to consider the new forms of enterprise in which it was embodied and its loss of momentum in the later nineteenth century. He then turns to the early United States, whose path toward industrialization initially involved considerable "technology transfer" from Britain. Propelled by the advent of mass production, world industrial leadership passed to the United States around the end of the nineteenth century. Government-supported research and development, guided partly by military interests, helped secure this leadership. Today, as Adams shows, we find ourselves in a profoundly changed era. The United States has led the way to a strikingly new multinational pattern of opportunity and risk, where technological primacy
1 online resource (309 pages)
9781400822225, 140082222X
1027486670
Cover
PATHS OF FIRE
Title
Copyright
Dedication
Contents
List of Tables
Preface
1. Paths of Fire: The Idea of Technological Change
2. The Useful Arts in Western Antiquity
3. Technology and the New European Society
4. England as the Workshop of the World
5. Atlantic Crossing: The American System Emerges
6. The United States Succeeds to Industrial Leadership
7. The Competitive Global System
8. New Paths: Technological Change in a Borderless World
Notes
References Cited
Index
Tables. 3-1 Numbers of New Eighteenth-Century Steam Engines, by Decade
4-1 Total British Exports and Exports of British Cotton
4-2 Indices of Output, Various Industries
5-1 Nineteenth-Century Gains in Agricultural Productivity
6-1 Percentage Shares of Agriculture and Industry, Value Added in Constant Prices
6-2 Percentage of Steel Produced by Various Methods, 1870-1940
6-3 Energy Sources as Percentage of Aggregate Consumption
6-4 Aggregate Miles of Railroad Trackage
6-5 American Agricultural Exports, 1867-1901
7-1 U.S.R & D by Performing Sector and Fund Source, 1960-1993. 7-2 Basic/Applied Research Funding by Selected Federal Agencies
7-3 R & D Expenditures by U.S. Manufacturers, 1958-1990
7-4 Earned Doctoral Degrees by Field and Percentage of Women, 1960-1991
7-5 Percentage of U.S. Doctorates Earned by Noncitizens, 1977-1991
7-6 Science and Engineering Masters Degrees, 1966 and 1991
7-7 Federal Obligations for Academic R & D by Agency, 1971-1993
7-8 1991 Federal and Nonfederal R & D Expenditures at Academic Institutions by Field
7-9 Corporate R & D Expenditures for Drugs and Medicines
7-10 Scientists and Engineers in R & D by Country, 1965-1989