The Evolution of Useful Things by Henry Petroski

192 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE treatment of the social context, he has conceded an important failure. Perhaps this is a failure of method, for the methods employed in the book are clearly inadequate for the needed synthesis. Such methods are, however, available today, for example, in the seminal works produced in recent years by the “social construction of technology” school. Buchanan has rejected this school (“As far as the contribution of the exponents of the ‘social construction’ of technology is con­ cerned this has generated considerable enthusiasm and warmth, but as yet remarkably little light” [p. 34]). Had he not rejected it, he would have produced a different and more interesting book, although one harder to write. As it is, The Power of the Machine is a competent tour d’horizon of our held written not for us but for the general public, where we can only wish it many readers. Otto Mayr Dr. Mayr, who recently retired as director of the Deutsches Museum, received SHOT’S Leonardo da Vinci Medal in 1992. The Evolution of Useful Things. By Henry Petroski. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1992. Pp. xi + 288; illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. $24.00. There are several problems that Henry Petroski addresses in The Evolution of Useful Things. One is the sheer abundance of “useful artifacts”; he draws on several sources to suggest that the number is in the millions and most of us will encounter over 20,000 different objects of human design in our lives. A greater puzzle is the diversity of things that ostensibly do the same thing. Explanations abound, ranging from the purely functional to the crassly exploitive. A ball-peen hammer, a claw hammer, a trip-hammer, a fence-tool each performs an operation or combination of operations better than other hammers. On the other hand, what are the useful functions of clear Ivory washing-up liquid or Count Chocula cereal or infant booties with Strider labels? Petroski does not deny the validity of any of the explanations for diversity in design, and his specific examples of the histories of things such as forks, chopsticks, paper clips, can openers, and wheelbarrows demonstrate how varied and complex are the networks of causes. Different things can respond to influences ranging from climate and available natural resources to patent laws and a perverse public’s inexplicable resistance to change. At the root, it is Platonic, implying a faith that TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 193 somewhere beyond each object is its essential Idea, the perfect Form, stripped of ornament, temporal accidents, and individual eccentrici­ ties. If this were the case, Petroski argues, the shapes and forms of objects would tend toward unity, not diversity. Furthermore, if form really were dictated by function, the Bauhaus-styled useful objects that are available from the Museum of Modern Art’s gift shop would actually perform their functions both well and universally, as, for example, their award-winning toilet-bowl brush does not. This example is mine, not Petroski’s, but I use it to show his method of refutation, which is to take everyday objects and question whether they do indeed perform a function as they purport, and whether their forms would brook no improvement. It is in each of these objects and their evolutionary histories that readers are likely to find greatest interest. Eating utensils, especially forks, receive the most attention, both in the first chapter and as a link throughout the book. These are a good choice, because behind the evolution and the diversity of forms is a genuine and basic human need that all individuals equipped with a single functioning hand can satisfy without forks, namely, to get food into one’s mouth. “We may find food indispens­ able, but it is not necessary to eat it with a fork,” says Petroski. “Luxury, rather than necessity, is the mother of invention” (p. 22). In

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