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Article ID: CBB834087348

Machines as “Mental Tools” (2016)

Isis: International Review Devoted to the History of Science and Its Cultural Influences
Volume: 107
Issue: 4
Pages: 777-780

URI: http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/689766

DOI: 10.1086/689766

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Clocks and Watches Technology Information technology Nature Steam engines; steam turbines Measurement

In an earnest effort to clarify his historiographical choices, Frans van Lunteren characterizes his scheme as “analytic rather than historicist” and as providing “a pattern rather than a plot.” Clearly he is keener on panoramic painting than on storytelling. Both the panoramic and the narrative genres are suitable for popular audiences: the former provides a static picture, whereas the latter stresses dynamic changes. Despite the limitations of its methodology—which, remarkably, the author points out in his concluding remarks—the essay opens up a broad anthropological perspective that could be further elaborated. Thanks to its focus on ontology, this quick survey of interactions between technology, science, and society clearly assumes the cultural and historical relativity of our concepts of nature and machine.

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