Preliminary Programme

While there is a long-established tradition of understanding science and indeed other cultural forms through fictional stories told about them, less work has been conducted on the role of allegorical historical precedents as means of interpreting and indeed defining current cultural practice. This paper outlines an approach taken to interpreting the nature of applied science, a concept widely disseminated in the 19th century.

In recent years there have been attempts to interpret the literal meaning underlying the proclamations of proponents of applied science, only to encounter confusion and contradiction. Applied science has been treated as a philosophical concept meaning either the application of pure science or as a thing in itself. However influential speakers such as Lyon Playfair have seemed to swing between these two interpretations, while Louis Pasteur and Thomas Huxley both denounced the concept.

The argument here is that certain phrases such as ‘applied science’ have acquired meaning from their role in debate within the public sphere and that understanding the ways in which stories of past achievement were used, the nature of the debates and their sociology helps us understand how such phrases can be interpreted without resorting to philosophical hermeneutics.

This paper will look at the process of definition using Kenneth Burke's concept of the 'representative anecdote' and the specific power relations being exercised in the events that framed the reciting of historical precedents.. The paper will focus on Britain but will look to the use of stories to frame the meaning of 'Angewandte Wissenschaft' in German and 'science appliquée aux arts' in French. The principal contexts examined, chosen on the basis of newspaper use of the phrase, are debates over the establishment of new institutions for the teaching of applied science, in Leeds and Birmingham, but also in Paris and Berlin.

Sophisticated studies of the formation of the Conservatoire des Arts et Metiers and of the Technisches Universität in Berlin and the concepts underpinning them are already available. I have now begun work on the formation of the ‘School of applied science’ founded in Birmingham, which became Birmingham University and its counterpart in Leeds which became Leeds university. In both the politically active liberal editors of local newspapers were actively supportive. The supposedly well-known achievements and qualities of local heroes James Watt and Robert Stephenson were cited to give meaning to the phrase ‘applied science’ and to proposed curricula.

The paper is intended to stimulate discussion about the interpretation of such rehearsals of well-known narratives in other contexts. The role within social science history and the sociology of knowledge of such narratives and the benefits and pitfalls of such analytic tools. (Show less)

Technological activity, which has characterized humankind since its earliest days, turned into engineering in the modern sense when engineers aligned themselves with science in regularly applying scientific knowledge to technical practice. Or, somewhat later, when engineers adopted a scientific view of the world, acquired professional status, and initiated the course of modern engineering education. Since the Renaissance, modern culture has been oriented toward the future — toward creation by design, invention, and technical progress. Earlier cultures might best be called "canonical," based on time-honored traditions. So inventors in the modern sense could not have been part of these cultures — though there certainly were inventions, and even a sort of design function latent in earlier canons that eventuated in modern design culture. And we would say it was this hidden design aspect that actually constituted the philosophy, in the sense of self-reflection, of the technologies of these earlier cultures. The development of the modern engineering activity and scientific technology in the design culture: engineering before emergences of engineering sciences; technology as an applied science and emergence of engineering sciences: the structure of engineering activity; organization of the modern engineering activity: systems engineering and interdisciplinary research. (Show less)

The idea of a heavier-than-air fixed-wing airplane drew more and more interest over the 19th century.

An enormous amount of communication on this topic was documented. In this paper we examine a database with 13,000 publications in bibliographies of aeronautics up to 1910, based on publications of Brockett (1910, 1921). We also have hundreds of letters between experimenters of the time, and hundreds of aeronautics-related patents from 1800-1910. Most of the publications and patents were European, but they were in contact with interested experimenters and others from around the world. The publications in the bibliography were overall most likely to be in French, then English, then German ; but English overtook French starting in 1908-9 in this literature.

We discuss the relevant journals of the time, which generally speaking focused on balloning then they included increasingly materials related to fixed wings, propellers, and the idea of aerial navigation was increasingly referred to. The number of publications and clubs grew exponentially over time.

With the demonstrated success in the air, the number of patents and publications grew sharply in 1906-1910, and we see the beginnings of an industry in all the industrial countries. The new companies appeared in the same countries where the earlier experimenters had been ; but few experimenters were involved in the new companies. The fact that the industry arose so quickly after viability of the technology was established adds evidence to the proposition that the key technologies were in the public domain. With interesting exceptions, it was not yet tightly bound to intellectual property at this time. Other new industries sometimes have this same look to them; they arise from an open scientific or technical basis. It can be called open-source innovation.

It seems likely therefore that certain particularly important individuals had not existed or had not participated, an invention like the airplane would have been made anyway, not long afterward, using the information base and networks that are described here. We can imagine and discuss such counterfactuals.

This paper contributes to our understanding of invention and startup industries by its discussion of databases and documentation of this inventive episode which led to a large industry in the long run, and its findings which may be portable to other inventive episodes and new industries. The story is not really new but the databases and statistics here are. (Show less)

This paper aims to explain the relationship between the building of railways in Portugal and both houses of the Portuguese parliament. We will try to explain what the expectations regarding the investment in railways were, what the fears were and how the successive governments proposed to pay for those investments, comparing speeches in two distinct moments in time: when the congressman were in the benches of the opposition and when they acted as ministers. We will then try to determine to what extent were the railways given a political and rhetorical use and in what form (if any) were they used as a weapon by both government and opposition in order to meet their agendas. To do so we will rely on the parliament diaries that published the speeches and the discussions maintained in both chambers of the Portuguese assembly. Then, using content analysis, we will try to achieve our goals. At the same time we will keep an eye on other institutions that also had something to say about the deployment of railways, namely the engineers and the army officials. The engineers spoke in two assemblies: at the ministry of Public Works (acting as consultants on any matter regarding Public Works) and at the Portuguese Engineers Association. The first used to have meetings, which records are kept at the Portuguese Ministry of Public Works Historical Archive. As for the Portuguese Engineers Association, it used to issue a journal in which several texts about railways were published. As far as the military are concerned, there are some texts in the Portuguese Army Historical Archive and a paper debating defensive matters. At last, we must determine who these people were. To do so there’s a Biographical Dictionary available for the congressman. As far as the engineers and the military are concerned, one must search in the individual processes kept at the mentioned archives. (Show less)

The magic or the wise jar was originally designed by Ahmad ibn Musa, the famous Iranian scientist, in the ninth century A.C. It consists of a jar with a mechanism inside, which is capable of segregation of two liquids on the bases of their densities. The two liquids are poured in; separately through the same inlet, and are flown out through certain different outlets, corresponding to their densities.
This jar was manufactured and tested as a part of a research project, called, "Revitalization of the Iranian old technologies" undertaken by the mechanical engineering research center of the Iranian research organization for science and technology (IROST).
The jar was designed in detail, manufactured and tested according to the book (Al Hiyal) to verify the concept of its original design. However, to establish correct operation of the jar, minor modifications were made to its original design and it was tested and as a result the jar operated as expected. (Show less)