The Order of Technological Knowledge. Crafting a New Language for Technology in France, 1750-1850

Abstract

THIS DISSERTATION EXAMINES the evolution of representations of technology in France between 1750 and 1850. It proposes a history of ways of representing technology and of inscribing technical objects within texts and especially images. The periodization that I introduce starts in the mid-18th century, with the publication of the Encyclopédie and of the Description des arts et métiers, which were the first large-scale attempts to collect, codify and systematize technological knowledge in France. It ends in the mid-19th century, with the blossoming of a specific engineering culture and the triumph of a new patent system. Instead of investigating the traditional sites of technological knowledge, such as the Academy of Sciences, the École Polytechnique, and the Conservatoire des Arts et Métiers, I adopt an oblique perspective and successively look at five different ways of not only thinking about, but also of interacting with, technology: judging, classifiying, owning, rationalizing and imagining. This dissertation argues that, during this century, a new language for technology emerged, which is indicative of changing conceptions, or epistemes, of technology. Representations of technical objects moved from humanist to geometric, from realist to schematic, and from reproductive to generative. By the mid-nineteenth century, texts and images no longer represented technical objects, but directly produced them.