Technology and Culture

Book Reviews The Geography of Science. By Harold Dorn. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991. Pp. xx + 219; notes, bibliography, index. $35.95. If you are interested in the history of science and technology this book belongs on your bookshelf next to Thomas Kuhn’s landmark The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Harold Dorn’s theme is that science is an expensive undertaking affordable only by societies with the considerable surplus needed, that there have been two models of scientific development on this planet, and that these can be best understood in terms of the geographies from which they have sprung. The model of science in today’s industrial world represents an amalgam of the two. The models are Babylonian and Greek. Babylonian science is derived from Marx’s Asiatic Mode of Production. Nameless scholars under state patronage applied knowledge to the needs of the central­ ized state, for the most part to manage irrigation waters. In Hellenic science, lone philosopher scientists abstractly probed the nature of the universe, supported by a rainfall agriculture with no need of state bureaucracy. Dorn derives these models, well summarized on page 32, from a study of the Dictionary of Scientific Biography. Of themselves, his conclusions are not new, being derived from Wittfogel and Childe, among others. Dorn extends his argument for environ­ mentalist causes to much of the ancient world, including such American hydraulic societies as the Maya. Cultural geographers, who have long been uncomfortable with environmentalism, will be pleased that Dorn is careful to note the possibility of diffusion. He argues that, if diffusion did occur, it would “confirm an environmental factor in the development of culture,” since hydraulic agriculture was accepted only by those in the right environment (pp. 65-66). Anthropologists, who have long been unhappy with diffusionism, will no doubt take refuge in his arguments for environmental causation! The real strength of Dorn’s synthesis, however, lies in his interpre­ tation of the feudal and modern worlds. Feudal Europe occupied, like Greece, an area where rainfall agriculture was possible. After a.d. 800 three-field agriculture produced, without the need for public works, the large surpluses needed to support scientists (p. 124). Permission to reprint a review from this section may be obtained only from the reviewer. 135 136 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Feudal scientists operated in the Hellenic mode, usually supported by great trading cities or the church. At this juncture Dorn separates science from technology, with science linked to philosophy and theory, technology to goals. In this respect technology owed much to magic, but it was gunpowder that unleashed European technology by making goals attainable. Technol­ ogists were pressed into the service of the state when it became clear that military technology could make the difference between survival and defeat. Feudal Europe reinvented the Babylonian model. It was, however, a reinvention with a difference. In the hydraulic civilizations there had been no obvious or immediate penalty for failure to innovate. In the European militaristic version the penalty for failure to develop new technology was absolute. In a final chapter Dorn argues provocatively that, in applied science and technology, the United States has largely returned to the Baby­ lonian model of science for the ends of the state. Large, faceless research teams are organized to solve practical problems in agricul­ ture and defense. He notes that “the Bureau of Reclamation has . . . exercised more authority than even a dynasty of Oriental despots” (p. 156). This can be traced (appropriately, perhaps, given their claim to be intellectual descendants of one of the lost tribes of Israel) to the Mormons, who reinvented hydraulic civilization to survive in the wilderness of the Great Salt Desert, and who have since achieved dominance in agricultural research. Dorn thus reaches two conclusions. The differential origin of science and technology in Europe produced a permanent and pro­ ductive tension between science and technology. Second, the milita­ ristic version of Babylonian science is geared to constant innovation. This has considerable implications for a developing literature in macroeconomics in which innovation is seen by many as the driving mechanism of long cycles in the global economy. Peter J. Hugill Dr. Hugill is professor of geography at Texas A&M University...