MAKING THINGS THE SAME - REPRESENTATION, TOLERANCE AND THE END OF THEANCIEN-REGIME IN FRANCE

Authors
Citation
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
Journal title
ISSN journal
03063127
Volume
28
Issue
4
Year of publication
1998
Pages
499 - 545
Database
ISI
SICI code
0306-3127(1998)28:4<499:MTTS-R>2.0.ZU;2-1
Abstract
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.