¹ For an interesting brief account of this, see Singer, Charles, Bulletin of the British Society for the History of Science, 1 (1949–1954), pp. 1–6.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

² This is the implication of the otherwise often opposed positions of Popper, Karl, The Logic of Scientific Discovery (New York: Science Editions, 1961), at, e.g. p. 279,Google Scholar note 2, and Kuhn, T. S., The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962).Google Scholar

³ Perhaps the best example is to be found in the works of the Marxist-oriented historians of science, especially Bernal's, J. D., The Social Function of Science (London: Routledge, 1939);Google Scholar and his Science in History (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1969) four vols.Google Scholar See also Popper's recent ‘The Moral Responsibility of the Scientist’, Encounter (03, 1969), pp. 52–7.Google Scholar

⁴ The latest positions of the leading proponents will be found in the recent collection by I. Lakatos, and Musgrave, A., eds., Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970).CrossRefGoogle Scholar An interesting sociological appraisal of Kuhn's work was presented by Martins, Herminio, ‘A critique of contemporary sociologies of knowledge,paper read to the British Sociological Association Conference,1969.Google Scholar

⁵ Merton, Robert K., ‘Science, Technology, and Society in Seventeenth-Century England’, Osiris, 4 (1938), pp. 360–632;CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Social Theory and Social Structure (New York: Free Press of Glencoe, 1957), Part IV.Google Scholar For an effective critique of the Osiris thesis which demonstrates the utility of the socio-historical approach to science, see Kemsley, Douglas S., ‘Religious Influences in the Rise of Modern Science: A Review and Criticism, Particularly of the “Protestant-Puritan Ethic” Theory’, Annals of Science 24 (09, 1968), pp. 199–226.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁶ This is the name of a British Foundation whose aims are outlined by its director Goldsmith, Maurice, in the Guardian (London), 11 16, 1965.Google Scholar

⁷ Price, D. J. de Solla, Science since Babylon (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1961);Google Scholar and Little Science, Big Science (New York: Columbia University Press, 1963).Google Scholar

⁸ May, Kenneth O., ‘Quantitative Growth of the Mathematical Literature’, Science, 154 (12 30, 1966), pp. 1672–3,CrossRefGoogle Scholar supports the Price thesis but halves the rate of growth, while Schmookler, Jacob, Invention and Economic Growth (London: Oxford University Press, 1966), in an incisive note, pp. 60–1 throws doubt on Price's method.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁹ In Goldsmith, Maurice and Mackay, Alan, eds., The Science of Science (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1966), p. 244.Google Scholar

¹⁰ See, for example, the collections edited by Lakoff, Sanford A., Knowledge and Power (New York: Free Press, 1966),Google Scholar and by Dupre, J. Stefan and Lakoff, , Science and the Nation (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1962); and the work of the Science Policy Research Unit at the University of Sussex, England, under the guidance of Christopher Freeman. The publications of the Directorate for Scientific Affairs, Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, are particularly useful for students in this field.Google Scholar

¹¹ I have discussed this question with relation to some early twentieth-century writers in my paper ‘The Revolt against the Machine: Some Twentieth-Century Criticisms of Scientific Progress’, Journal of World History, XII (1970), pp. 479–89.Google Scholar

¹² Ellul, Jacques, ‘The Technological Order’, in Stover, Carl E., ed., The Technological Order (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1963), pp. 10–37.Google Scholar The quotations are from pp. 10–12.

¹³ In Ellul, , The Technological Society (London: Cape, 1965) (trans, by Wilkinson, J.), p. ix.Google Scholar

¹⁴ Ibid., pp. xxiv, xxxi.

¹⁵ Ibid., p. 10. For the view that science and technology ‘have their own separate cumulating structures’, see Price, D. J. de Solla, ‘Is Technology Historically Independent of Science? A Study in Statistical Historiography’, Technology and Culture, 6 (Fall, 1965), pp. 553–68.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹⁶ The Technological Society, p. 150.Google Scholar

¹⁷ Ibid., p. 175.

¹⁸ By Wrong, Dennis, ‘The Oversocialized Concept of Man in Modern Sociology’, American Sociological Review, 26 (1961), pp. 184–93;CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Homans, George C., ‘Bringing Men Back In’, A.S.R., 29 (1964), pp. 809–18.Google Scholar This debate is part of the larger controversy surrounding sociological functionalism, for which see Demerath, N. J., III and Peterson, Richard A., eds., System, Change, and Conflict (New York: Free Press, 1967).Google Scholar

¹⁹ The Technological Society, p. 176. It is clear that in Ellul's case a distinction must be made between methodological and ‘moral’ sociologism.Google Scholar

²⁰ Ibid., pp. 224–5. In this connection, it is interesting to recall that Sartre says that ‘statistics can never be dialectics’, as noted by Ellul, ibid., p. 206.

²¹ Ibid., p. 209.

²² Ibid., p. 215.

²³ Ibid., p. 227.

²⁴ Ibid., p. 264.

²⁵ Ibid., p. 303. ‘National’ sporting achievements and the presentation of American and Russian success in space are but two examples of the accuracy of Ellul's judgment here.

²⁶ Ibid., p. 306.

²⁷ Ibid., p. 390.

²⁸ Ibid., p. 29.

²⁹ The Technological Order, pp. 24–5.Google Scholar This is very near the Laing and Cooper school of ‘anti-psychiatry’, though no doubt Ellul would give them no special dispensation for their techniques. See Laing, R. D., The Divided Self (London: Tavistock, 1959),Google Scholar and Cooper, D., Anti-Psychiatry (London: Tavistock, 1968).Google ScholarFoucault, Michel, Madness and Civilization (London: Tavistock, 1967), has many interesting things to say in this connection.Google Scholar

³⁰ The Technological Society, p. 339.Google Scholar

³¹ Ellul has written extensively on this topic. See his Propaganda (New York: Knopf, 1965);Google Scholar and Histoire de la Propagande (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1967).Google Scholar

³² The Technological Society, p. 388.Google Scholar

³³ de Jouvenel, Bertrand, ed., Futuribles: Studies in Conjecture (Geneva: Droz, 1963), pp. 27–64. The quotation is from p. 56.Google Scholar

³⁴ The Political Illusion (New York: Knopf, 1967) (trans, by Kellen, K.), p. 65.Google Scholar

³⁵ Ibid., pp. 140–1. See Crozier, Michel, The Bureaucratic Phenomenon (London: Tavistock, 1964).Google Scholar

³⁶ Meynaud, Jean, Technocracy (London: Faber & Faber, 1968) (trans, by Barnes, P.) p. 302.Google Scholar

³⁷ Exégèse des nouveaux lieux communs (Paris: Calmann-Lévy, 1966).Google Scholar

³⁸ Metamorphose du bourgeois (Paris: Calmann-Lévy, 1967), pp. 177, 207. (My translation.)Google Scholar

³⁹ The Technological Order, p. 28. The following quotations are from pp. 25–8.Google Scholar

⁴⁰ Marcuse, Herbert, One-Dimensional Man (London: Sphere, 1968), p. 11.Google ScholarZhukov, E. M., in ‘Concepts of Progress in World History’, Soviet Review, 2 (10 1961), pp. 40–52,Google Scholar argues similarly that ‘the capitalist system has now become a brake o n social progress’. Marcuse's Soviet Marxism (New York: Vintage Books, 1961),Google Scholar indicates that he is not entirely satisfied with Zhukov's alternative. Ernest Gellner has observed that Aldous Huxley's influential book, Brave New World, put forward the similar idea that technology leads to a kind of ‘social freezing’. I am grateful to Professor Gellner for this and other comments.

⁴¹ This is, of course, an ongoing debate. A sophisticated account of the state of play is found in Aron, Raymond, Eighteen Lectures on Industrial Society (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1967) (trans., by Bottomore, M. K.).Google Scholar

⁴² One-Dimensional Man, p. 19.Google Scholar

⁴³ Ibid., pp. 73,97, 64; Marcuse is located in the Frankfurt school, where he rightly belongs, in a most interesting unsigned article in the Times Literary Supplement (London) 06 5, 1969, pp. 597–600.Google Scholar

⁴⁴ In ‘The Revolt against the Machine’, op. cit.

⁴⁵ The Technological Order, pp. 28–37.Google Scholar

⁴⁶ Ibid., p. 35.

⁴⁷ Gellner, Ernest, Thought and Change (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1964), p. 221.Google Scholar

⁴⁸ Ibid., p. 179, and ch. 8 passim. See also pp. 68–73.

⁴⁹ Ibid., pp. 69, 71. A straightforward attack from the left on the type of theory that Gellner advances is contained in Walzer, Michael, ‘The Only Revolution’, Dissent, xi (1964), pp. 432–43.Google Scholar

⁵⁰ Gellner, , ‘Democracy and Industrialization’, European Journal of Sociology, 8 (1967), p. 59.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁵¹ Some relevant pieces will be found in Barber, Bernard and Hirsch, Walter, eds., The Sociology of Science (New York: Free Press, 1962);Google ScholarSpicer, Edward H., ed., Human Problems in Technological Change (New York: Science Editions, 1965);Google Scholar and Bennett, Edward, Degan, James and Spiegel, Joseph, eds., Human Factors in Technology (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1963).Google Scholar Interesting in this connection is Krieghbaum, Hillier, Science and the Mass Media (London: University of London Press, 1968).Google Scholar The problems of automation have received a very great amount of attention and for a well organized review see Sultan, Paul and Prasow, Paul, ‘Automation, Some Classification and Measurement Problems’, Labour and Automation, Bulletin 1, 1964, pp. 1–25.Google Scholar

⁵² Marcuse, , One-Dimensional Man, pp. 51–2.Google Scholar

⁵³ This distinction is elaborated in my volume The Sociology of Progress (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1970), where the historical and theoretical context of the debate around varying notions of progress is discussed.Google Scholar

⁵⁴ Particularly interesting in this context are the articles by Gusfield, Joseph R., ‘Tradition and Modernity: Misplaced Polarities in the Study of Social Change’, American Journal of Sociology 72 (1967), pp. 351–62,CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Dov Weintraub's extremely suggestive ‘Concepts of Traditional and Modern in Comparative Social Research-An Empirical Evaluation’, Sociologia Ruralis, 9 (1969), pp. 23–42.CrossRefGoogle Scholar