Edward W Constant

Biographic Data

ID1173604
NAMEEdward W Constant
GIVEN NAMESEdward W
FAMILY NAMEConstant
SIGNATURECONSTANT E W
AFFILIATIONSCarnegie Mellon University
VERIFIEDNo
TOTAL WORKS30
TOTAL CITATIONS30
AUTHOR COUNT30
EDITOR COUNT0
FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR1973
LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR2007
H-INDEX4

  • Communications

    Steven Thompson, Steven L Thompson et al.ARTICLETechnology and Culture2007

    Communications To the editor: Edward Constant's excellent article in the April 2006 issue of Technology and Culture, "A Tale of Two Bonanzas: How Knowledgeable Communities Think about Technology" (pp. 253–85), was a joy to read. However, because his elegant theory of the Belief-O-Meter is calibrated by sales figures alone, there are some messy questions that his work leaves unaddressed. Recognizing this, Constant notes that we would need a detail…

  • A Tale of Two Bonanzas: How Knowledgeable Communities Think about Technology

    Edward W ConstantARTICLETechnology and Culture2006

    For owners and pilots of V-tail Beechcraft Bonanzas, the fall of 1986 truly was the best of times and the worst of times. On the one hand, they were the proud possessors of arguably the most beautiful, and certainly the most widely recognized, private airplane in the world. On the other hand, the classic V-tails of their Model 35 Bonanzas had an indisputable tendency to come off at inopportune moments, with predictably untidy results. Owners of s…

  • Certainties of Very Low Probability

    Edward W ConstantARTICLETechnology and Culture2006

    Certainties of Very Low Probability Edward W. Constant II (bio) Oxymorons are paradoxes gone bad, as our title attests. We learn simple causal relations with great facility. As Clark Glymour has observed, even infants know this: to get the pacifier, tug on the blanket it lies on. But we have a harder time getting our minds around the meaning of very small probabilities over very long time scales, likely because our hominid ancestors never lived l…

  • Performance Is a Moving Target, Reliably

    Edward W ConstantARTICLETechnology and Culture2000Cited by: 1

    Troisieme et ultime partie d'une discussion portant sur une theorie socio-constructiviste de l'histoire de la technologie et sur la notion de performance et de fiabilite de la connaissance

  • Reliable Knowledge and Unreliable Stuff: On the Practical Role of Rational Beliefs

    Edward W ConstantARTICLETechnology and Culture1999Cited by: 4

    Reliable Knowledge and Unreliable StuffOn the Practical Role of Rational Beliefs Edward W. Constant II (bio) Over the past twenty years or so, the collection of approaches and endeavours loosely known as "the social construction of technology," which may be construed broadly to include perspectives actually antagonistic to orthodox social constructivism (such as actor-network theory and ethnomethodology), undoubtedly has transformed the history o…

  • Bless the Pure and Humble: Texas Lawyers and Oil Regulation, 1919-1936

    Edward W Constant, Edward W Constant Ii et al.ARTICLEThe Journal of Southern History1998

    When oil was first struck in America in the nineteenth century, the courts were ill-prepared to deal with the legal issues it raised. Since it flowed across property lines, as a deer or other wild animal could cross boundaries, judges resorted to the of to determine ownership--the person who extracted it had full rights to it. Applied to the massive oil boom of the 1920s in Texas, this rule precipitated a series of crises, forcing operators and r…

  • In and about the World: Philosophical Studies of Science and Technology

    Edward W Constant, Edward W Constant Ii et al.ARTICLETechnology and Culture1998

    Reviewed by: In and About the World: Philosophical Studies of Science and Technology * Edward W. Constant II (bio) In and About the World: Philosophical Studies of Science and Technology. By Hans Radder. Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press, 1996. Pp. x+225; notes, bibliography, index. $21.95. Most of the essays in this book have been published previously. While they are ostensibly thematically connected, the whole lacks the cogency o…

  • Science on the Run: Information Management and Industrial Geophysics at Schlumberger, 1920-1940

    Edward W ConstantREVIEWTechnology and Culture1996

  • Science on the Run: Information Management and Industrial Geophysics at Schlumberger, 1920-1940 by Geoffrey C. Bowker

    Edward W ConstantARTICLETechnology and Culture1996

    202 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE tem of flip-discs whose light and dark sides could be programmed to create moving words and numbers on signs, came partly to the rescue. There is much of interest here, too, on the related issues of foreign control and technology transfer. Packard Electric started out making American products for the Canadian market but in time adapted them to meet local requirements such as reliability under extremes of te…

  • Exploring the Black Box: Technology, Economics, and History. Nathan Rosenberg

    Edward W ConstantARTICLEIsis1996

  • Regulated Enterprises: Natural Gas Pipelines and Northeastern Markets, 1938-1954 by Christopher J. Castaneda

    Edward W ConstantARTICLETechnology and Culture1994

    TECHNOLOGYAND CULTURE Book Reviews 879 for husbands and fathers to build the necessary additions to the house. But since nearly all the buyers were veterans in the same age group, these newer models exhibited a limited response to concerns offamilies whose children would soon be approaching adolescence. The intensely gendered domesticity of togetherness embedded in the design of the house reinforced the preciousness of the idealized nuclear famil…

  • "Comment on "The Retractable Airplane Landing Gear and the Northrop 'Anomaly

    Edward W ConstantARTICLETechnology and Culture1994

    Comment on “The Retractable Airplane Landing Gear and the Northrop ‘Anomaly’” Edward W. Constant (bio) Edward W. Constant Dr. Constant is associate professor of history at Carnegie Mellon University. Footnotes 1. Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago, 1962, reprint, 1970). See esp. Margaret Masterman, “The Nature of a Paradigm,” in Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge, ed. Imre Lakatos and Alan Musgrave (Cambridge, 197…

  • Regulated Enterprises: Natural Gas Pipelines and Northeastern Markets, 1938-1954

    Edward W Constant, Edward W Constant Ii et al.ARTICLETechnology and Culture1994

  • Science in Society: Petroleum Engineers and the Oil Fraternity in Texas, 1925-65

    Open AccessEdward W ConstantARTICLESocial Studies of Science1989Cited by: 4

    Despite the great attention lavished on science and technology by a diversity of academic disciplines and specialties, surprisingly little is known about the pre-eminent vectors for scientific knowledge and the foremost practitioners of technology — ordinary engineers. Elite (and therefore, by definition, unrepresentative) cases aside, what is known about engineers normally concerns either their aggregate numbers and gross levels of education, or…

  • Cause or Consequence: Science, Technology, and Regulatory Change in the Oil Business in Texas, 1930-1975

    Edward W Constant, Edward W Constant IiARTICLETechnology and Culture1989Cited by: 4

    Edward W. Constant II, Cause or Consequence: Science, Technology, and Regulatory Change in the Oil Business in Texas, 1930-1975, Technology and Culture, Vol. 30, No. 2, Special Issue: Essays in Honor of Carl W. Condit (Apr., 1989), pp. 426-455

  • Whittle: The True Story. John Golley , Bill Gunston , Frank Whittle

    Edward W ConstantARTICLEIsis1988

  • The Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Meeting, October 23-26, 1986

    Paul Durbin, Brooke Hindle et al.ARTICLETechnology and Culture1987

    Organizational Notes THE PITTSBURGH, PENNSYLVANIA, MEETING, OCTOBER 23—26, 1986 More than 275 people attended the twenty-ninth annual meeting of the Society for the History of Technology (SHOT) at the Pittsburgh Hilton, October 23—26, 1986. The meeting was held simultaneously with those of the History of Science Society (HSS), the Philosophy of Science Association (PSA), and the Society for Social Studies of Science (4S); total attendance at Pitt…

  • The History of Science and Technology in the United States: A Critical and Selective Bibliography by Marc Rothenberg (review)

    Edward W ConstantARTICLETechnology and Culture1985

    technology and culture Book Reviews 731 thropy, and elite medical schools and research centers across the nation. Carolyn G. Shapiro Dr. Shapiro teaches history at Grand Valley State University. Her recently com­ pleted dissertation, “The Scientific Community and Typhoid Prevention: Public Health and the Chicago Drainage Case, 1900-1906” (Yale University, 1993) explores public health research in the Midwest. The History of Science and Technology …

  • The History of Science and Technology in the United States: A Critical and Selective Bibliography

    Edward W Constant, Marc Rothenberg et al.ARTICLETechnology and Culture1985

  • Stronger Than a Hundred Men: A History of the Vertical Water Wheel

    Edward W Constant, Terry S ReynoldsARTICLETechnology and Culture1985

  • Inside the Black Box: Technology and Economics. Nathan Rosenberg

    Edward W ConstantARTICLEIsis1984

  • Bringing Aerodynamics to America . Paul A. Hanle

    Edward W ConstantARTICLEIsis1983

  • Scientific Theory and Technological Testability: Science, Dynamometers, and Water Turbines in the 19th Century

    Edward W ConstantARTICLETechnology and Culture1983Cited by: 7

    An increasingly central concern among historians of technology is the nature of technological knowledge as distinct both from science and from the design of specific artifacts. This concern is reflected in diverse scholarship addressing such issues as the relationships among scientific investigation, technological research, and the process of innovation;1 the creation of technological knowledge in engineering science through such specifically tec…

  • The High-Speed Frontier: Case Histories of Four Naca Programs, 1920-1950 . John V. Becker

    Edward W ConstantARTICLEIsis1982

  • The Origins of the Turbojet Revolution

    W David Lewis, Edward W Constant et al.ARTICLETechnology and Culture1982