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Material Culture: Historical Agencies and the Historian ed. by Lucius F. Ellsworth, Maureen A. O’Brien (review)

1970; Johns Hopkins University Press; Volume: 11; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/tech.1970.a894074

1097-3729

Peter H. Smith,

Anthropology: Ethics, History, Culture

TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 661 by the outcome, and study what methods, fields, time term, and personal type of predictor have yielded the most success, statistically measured. And while we may learn from the mistakes as well as the hits, probably our most useful data will be the books or at least whole articles by the predictors who scored the highest average of success. For single pre­ dictions may be right by mere luck, but a statistically reliable high bat­ ting average has undeniable significance. Hence this reviewer has been pursuing this plan to establish a science of prediction or futurology by the rough use of the quasi-experimental method in various papers since 1920. (In my opening paper at the first Conference on “Technological Forecasting for Industry and Govern­ ment,” held in 1967, I cited my various articles and researches on the question.) Many have approved my proposal, but none have definitely taken up the work, unless very recently in the State University of New York at Albany. Thus to establish the new science of “Futurology” will be a vast work, comparable to its analog, the creation of the sciences for deciphering the world’s prehistory. We do not blame Cetron and his confrères for going ahead as well as they can, without following our project for establishing Futurology. But it is a glorious work that must be carried through sometime. And it is not too hard a task for many a professor or free scholar to start on right now. All the equipment needed for it is provided by books in the libraries, by generalized higher education, and the elementary notions of statistics. And, with the great interest in the future which has sprung up in the last half-dozen years, preliminary findings can be immediately published. S. C. Gilfillan* Material Culture: Historical Agencies and the Historian. Edited by Lucius F. Ellsworth and Maureen A. O’Brien. Philadelphia: Book Reprint Service, Inc., 1969. Pp. 336; illustrations. $10.00. The student of material culture in the United States has long needed a book that brings together many of the standard articles on the subject. These twenty-four articles are a very basic bibliography of material culture theory, and as such constitute a pioneering work and present a systematic approach to this particular subject area. This work was planned in a narrow framework for limited distribution to the Fellows of the Hagley Program of the University of Delaware and then put on the open market. It was coedited by the program’s former and present graduate student coordinators who provide the liaison between the Hagley Museum and the University. The history of technology is necessarily an important part of the study of material culture. The physical appearance of America is due in great part to the advancements during the past century and a half in ‘ Dr. Gilfillan, of Santa Monica, California, is the author of Invention and the Patent System, Inventing the Ship, and Sociology of Invention. 662 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE the realm of technology. The artifacts of this technology are in large part the documents in which historians of technology must find their history. The avowed purpose of this book of readings is “to introduce the historian to the theory of material culture and the types and func­ tions of historical agencies” (p. 2). The result should have pleased the historian of technology more than it does. The book is divided into two sections: the first deals with the theory, method, and application of material culture and the second with the definition and history of historical agencies. The second section is ad­ mittedly weaker than the first because the editors were unable to find suitable articles to illustrate the history of each type of historical agen­ cy (historical society, history museum, historic house, and historical library). It is the first section that should interest the historian of technology. The lead article is a definition of culture by Alan R. Beals. The remain­ der of the articles analyze the object as a cultural document and show its relationship to studies in social history, art history, and the history of technology. Those by Richard Sykes, John Kouwenhoven...