Page 163 - Encyclopedia Of World History Vol III

982 berkshire encyclopedia of world history

generation, as well as horizontally among individuals
through instruction and imitation. Needless to say, in most
past societies they were rarely written down: farmers and
artisans were rarely literate and did not really have to be
to exercise their crafts.Yet the mechanisms that passed on
industrial technologies from generation to generation
were closely linked to how the economies of these soci-
eties operated. In a primitive society of farmers and crude
James Watt's beam condensing steam
craftsmen, much of this teaching was purely personal
engine, an improvement on earlier versions.
and one to one. In many cases, it took place in the form
of parent-to-offspring or master-to-apprentice relation-
ships: mothers the world over taught their daughters to
importance in various societies.A third element of indus- spin yarn, while fathers taught their sons the basic prin-
trial technology is raw materials: industrial technologies ciples of farming or iron working. When the techniques
transform materials that come from agriculture, from became more involved, the learning process became
minerals, or sometimes from the atmosphere, the ocean, more formal and complex, both in China and in Europe,
the forest, or another common resource. where it was often fully specified by craft guilds. In Eur-
ope, many skilled crafts demanded both a learning period
Competence and (apprenticeship) and a practice known as journeyman-
Transmission ship, during which experience was believed to provide
One obvious fact about the instructions that constitute the necessary competence. Some scholars indeed feel that
industrial technology is that they are always and every- the main function of the medieval craft guild was to pro-
where incomplete. It is rarely possible to write a set of vide the institutional framework for the intergenerational
“instructions” that fully encompasses all of the three transmission of industrial technology. In the modern age
components above. After all, instructions are expressed the process was further formalized, taking place in
or written in code (and they do not include their own schools of engineering or vocational institutions.
code). Thus, if a blacksmith’s instruction is to heat the
iron until it reaches a certain temperature, it is assumed Industrial Technology
that he knows what this temperature means and can de- Before 1750
termine when it has been reached.Sometimes code books Where did industrial techniques come from? For most of
are provided, but of course they themselves are written in human history, technology resulted from a combination
code.The knowledge that is not included in the codified of trial and error and serendipity. People often stumbled
instructions proper is known as tacit knowledge (Polanyi on procedures that led to new products or made old pro-
1962), and it is this tacit knowledge that can be regarded cesses work better by trying variations and refinements.
as workmanship or competence. Competence is an essen- There is no question that all societies contain innovative
tial element of industrial technology: we cannot drop a individuals, people willing to challenge tradition and
modern technique, such as building microprocessors, on looking for a better way to make things and thus improve
a backward society, in which the workmanship to carry their life.Yet the rate at which this type of advancement
out the instructions does not exist. took place before 1750 was excruciatingly slow by our
Industrial techniques are part of human culture, if we standards, and therein lies much of the secret of eco-
define culture as that part of predictable and shared nomic modernity.The reasons why the rate was so slow
human behavior that is passed on from generation to in the past are well understood. One was that even when