K. Alder, MAKING THINGS THE SAME - REPRESENTATION, TOLERANCE AND THE END OF THEANCIEN-REGIME IN FRANCE, Social studies of science, 28(4), 1998, pp. 499-545
Citations number
170
Categorie Soggetti
History & Philosophy of Sciences","History & Philosophy of Sciences","History & Philosophy of Sciences
This paper documents the connection between the technological and poli
tical transformations of late 18th-century France. Its subject is the
efforts of state military engineers to produce functionally identical
artifacts (interchangeable parts manufacturing). These efforts faced r
esistance from artisans and merchants attached to the corporate-absolu
tist ancien regime, for whom artifacts were idiosyncratic, and 'thick'
with multiple meanings. I argue that to oblige artisans to produce st
andardized artifacts, the military engineers defined these artifacts w
ith instruments such as technical drawing and the tools of manufacturi
ng tolerance, which the engineers then refined in increasingly rule-bo
und ways to forestall further subversion by artisans. Hence, I offer a
historical account of how the 'objectivity' of these artifacts was th
e outcome of social conflict and negotiation over the terms of an exch
ange. In particular, I explain why engineers eventually turned to proj
ective drawings (including the descriptive geometry) over alternative
ways of representing artifacts (such as free-hand, academic, and persp
ectival drawings). And I document the origins of manufacturing toleran
ce, in which the dimensions of an artifact were circumscribed with gau
ges and machine-tools to preclude possible sources of disagreement. Th
e paper closes with its own 'thick' narrative of how standards of prod
uction emerged out of social conflict in a particular community on the
eve of the French Revolution - a process which reflected the emerging
political 'toleration' of the French state for its citizen-producers.
The SCOT programme can be used to provide a political account of how
the operation of seemingly 'objective' artifacts can be coordinated ac
ross vast physical, temporal and cultural boundaries.