2 - Technology and common sense in America

Summary

Introduction

Building on the previous analysis, the purpose of this chapter is to help develop the possible application and investigation of the instrumental-substantive taxonomy by adding a further level of cultural-historical awareness to it. Its aim is to ‘fill in’ elements of the content of American common sense on technology by illustrating its manifestations, and to indicate how – in methodological terms – we might identify this form of common sense in the discourse of missile defence advocacy. As Gramsci puts it,

From our point of view, studying the history and logic of the various philosophers' philosophies is not enough. At least as a methodological guide-line, attention should be drawn to the other parts of the history of philosophy; to the conceptions of the world held by the great masses, to those of the most restricted ruling (or intellectual) groups, and finally to the links between these various cultural complexes and the philosophy of the philosophers.

This chapter takes several related steps in this light. The first is to establish, at a broad level, what American attitudes to technology are in a longue durée sense and how they have developed over time. Here it is argued that the historical development of these attitudes has generally been understood and articulated in terms that are frequently comparable to the instrumental and substantive categories.