Readings

What is technology?

The history of technology - the concept, the word

Aims of the course

In-class reading: excerpt from Don DeLillo, White Noise, pp. 124-129

Discussion: What do we mean by technology? (PDF)

Ancillary reading

Scharff, Robert, and Val Dusek, eds. "The Historical Background," and "Defining Technology." Part I and III in Philosophy of Technology: The Technological Condition - An Anthology. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2003, pp. ix-xi, 1-60, and 206-244. ISBN: 9780631222194.

• Introduction.
• Plato. "On Dialectic and 'Techne'" (from the Republic).
• Artistotle. "On 'Techne' and 'Episteme'" (from Nichomachean Ethics).
• Bacon, Francis. "On the Idols, the Scientific Study of Nature, and the Reformation of Education." (Compiled from various sources).
• Kline, Stephen J. "What is Technology?"
• Gehlen, Arnold. "A Philosophical-Anthropological Perspective on Technology."
• Pinch, Trevor J., and Wiebe E. Bijker. "The Social Construction of Facts and Artifacts."
• Winner, Langdon. "Social Constructivism: Opening the Black Box and Finding it Empty."

Schatzberg, Eric. "Technik Comes to America: Changing Meanings of Technology before 1930." Technology and Culture 47, no. 3 (2006): 486-512.

Jefferson, Thomas. Notes on the State of Virginia.

Jefferson, Thomas, and Alexanderr Hamilton. "Debate over Manufactures." In [S&C], pp. 103-142.

Ancillary reading

In Scharff and Dusek, eds., pp. 38-65:

• Kant, Immanuel. "Idea for a Universal History from a Cosmopolitan Point of View."
• Comte, Auguste. "The Nature and Importance of the Positive Philosophy."
• Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. "On the Sciences and Arts."

Whitehead, A. N. Science and the Modern World. New York, NY: Free Press, 1997, pp. 1-18 and 57-94, chapters 1 and 3-5. ISBN: 9780684836393.

Adams, Henry. The Education of Henry Adams. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1999, chapters 1-3, 22, 25, 33, and 34. ISBN: 9780192823694. (Download a version from Project Gutenberg.)

Ancillary reading

Arnold, Matthew. "Introduction," and "Conclusion." Chapters 1-3 in Culture and Anarchy. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 1993. ISBN: 9780521377966. (Download a version from Project Gutenberg.)

Trachtenberg, Alan. "Mechanization Takes Command." Chapter 2 in The Incorporation of America (selections). New York, NY: Hill and Wang, 2007, pp. 38-69. ISBN: 9780809058280.

Williams, Raymond. "Introduction," and "J. H. Newman and Matthew Arnold." In Culture and Society: 1780-1950. New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 1983. ISBN: 9780231057011.

Williams, Rosalind. "Afterword" to Castell's The Network Society: A Cross-Cultural Perspective (2004).

Melville, Herman. Moby-Dick, chapters 41-96.

———. "Hawthorne and His Mosses." In Moby-Dick, 2nd Norton Critical Edition, pp. 517-532.

Jewett, S. O. The Country of the Pointed Firs.

Marx, Leo. "The Idea of Nature in America." Daedalus 137, no. 2 (Spring 2008): 8-21.

McKibben, Bill. "The Challenge to Environmentalism." Daedalus 137, no. 2 (Spring 2008): 5-7.

Ritvo, Harriet. "Beasts in the Jungle (or wherever)." Daedalus 137, no. 2 (Spring 2008): 22-30.

Kevles, Daniel J. "The Contested Earth: Science, Equity and the Environment." Daedalus 137, no. 2 (Spring 2008): 80-95.

McKibben, Bill. The End of Nature.

Ancillary reading

Cronon, William, ed. "The Trouble with Wilderness." In Uncommon Ground: Toward Reinventing Nature. New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Company, 1995, pp. 69-90. ISBN: 9780393038729.

McKibben, Bill. "Walking Through an Idea." Appalachia (Winter/Spring 2008): 32-36. [An excerpt from Wandering Home: A Long Walk Across America's Most Hopeful Landscape: Vermont's Champlain Valley and New York's Adirondacks. Crown, 2005.]