Images of Technology in Sociology
Computer as Butterfly and Bat
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 4020516 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Bernward Joerges (corresponding author) |
| Year | 1990 |
| Volume | 31 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 203 |
| Publication date | 1990-04-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Technology and Culture (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0040-165X • E-ISSN: 1097-3729 |
| Publisher | JSTOR (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1353/tech.1990.0047 |
| OpenAlex | W4377694406 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 3 |
Seventeenth-Century England, what he later, in his "Shandean Post script," came to call the "kindle cole" principle: the "sociological discovery of the distorting effects of public (as distinct from private) polemics among men of science."1According to the kindle cole (or "Hooke-Newton-Merton") principle o f scientific polemics, scientists ought to avoid engaging in public controversies and try to insulate themselves from the responses of the "excitable crowd," both scientific and other.Social scientists' attempts to come to grips with com puter technol ogy provide a line example of both the inevitability and the calamities of becoming entangled in the "m anagem ent of meaning out there."How to solve the dilemma?As Merton demonstrates, "there are almost as many ways to insulate truthseekers from the mob as there are to skin the eat."2If the rem arks offered here on sociologists' use of computer rhetoric may sound polemical at times, this is not meant to "kindle cole" but rather to draw a slightly different line between sociological, technological, and public discourse than that followed by those whom 1 shall call "new sociologists of technology."In a series of essays written some time ago, David Edge looked at the social power o f technological metaphors.Drawing on such exam ples of Dm kheimian social anthropology as Mary Douglas's Natural D r J oeri.i '. is a scnim research Icllow at the Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin fur
Biology · Butterfly · Butterfly effect · Dilemma · Epistemology · Linguistics · Meaning (existential) · Media studies · Power (physics) · Rhetoric · Sociology · Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science · Contemporary Sociological Theory and Practice · Ecology · Philosophy · Social Media and Politics
| Unique citing works | 3 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,09 |
| Citation span | 1992 - 2014 (23) |
| Citation velocity | historical |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 3 |