Cognitive Traditions and Communities in Technological Change

Cognitive Traditions and Communities in Technological Change

ABSTRACT: Many efforts have been made to discover some paradigm-like changes in mathematics, the social sciences, arts, history, etc. Gary Gutting forcefully criticizes the tendency of over-constraining the original conception that mostly led to insignificant analogies. But some applications may fall between correct isomorphic utilization and insignificant analogizing. The paradigm conception of technological change emerged in the early 1980's. This paper shows how fruitful the analogy has been for developing the idea of technological 'paradigms.' But a technological paradigm shows decisive differences which concern the values (which are not only cognitive ones) of technologies, the hierarchical systemic communities, the partly different nature of crises (through 'presumptive anomalies,' by Constant), and the necessarily integrated nature of technological knowledge leading to successful artifacts linked to goal-oriented research. Technological-paradigms-thinking became an established part of evolutionary economics also. According to this, paradigms rival conceptions that show further changes in comparison to the original Kuhnian approach. I conclude by discussing the nature of scientific change from the viewpoint of technological paradigms.

Following Kuhn's seminal work paradigms were claimed to be discovered in many scientific fields including sociology, economics, psychology, mathematics, even literature, arts and history. It is well known that Kuhn himself was astonished to see that, for him unexpected, escalation. Garry Gutting rightly emphasized 198O that most of the applications of the paradigm conception led to nowhere but to insignificant, relatively trivial analogies, to assertions that "supertheories" exist. (1) But some application may have overcome trivial analogies. The story of technological "paradigms" is one case for this.

The trial to apply the paradigm conception to technological change came 1O-15 years later then the applications to other fields. (2) In an important case study for history of technology (published 198O), E. W. Constant II set up a general model for technological change. (3) In this model technological change is represented by knowledge change and put into an evolutionary epistemology perspective, overtaken from D. Campbell. Constant exploits philosophy of science, mainly Kuhn's paradigm conception. He finds a community structure in technological practice, traditions of practice, normal technology with its puzzle solving character and technological changes initiated by recognizing two types of failure. He claims that, from time to time, technological changes are technological revolutions. "We define a technological paradigm as an accepted mode of technical operation. . . . It is the conventional system as defined and accepted by a relevant community of technological practitioners.