The Rise of the Technocrats: A Social History

459 Pages·2006·8.942 MB·English

by  W.H.G. Armytage

STUDIES IN SOCIAL HISTORY
THE RISE OF THE TECHNOCRATS

THE RISE OF THE TECHNOCRATS
A Social History
W. H. G. ARMYTAGE
ROUTLEDGE RTayoloru &t Flreandcisg Gero up
LONDON AND NEW YORK
First published in 1965
This edition published in 2007 by
Routledge
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Transferred to Digital Printing 2010
© 1965 W. H. G. Armytage
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A CIP catalogue record for this book
is available from the British Library
The Rise of the Technocrats
ISBN10: 0-415-41305-2 (volume)
ISBN10: 0-415-40266-2 (set)
ISBN13: 978-0-415-41305-3 (volume)
ISBN13: 978-0-415-40266-8 (set)
Routledge Library Editions: Studies in Social History
THE RISE
OF THE
TECHNOCRATS
A Social History
by
W. H. G. Armytage
Professor of Education
University of Sheffield
LONDON: Routledge and Kegan Paul
TORONTO: University of Toronto Press
First published 1965
in Great Britain by
Routledge and Kegan Paul Limited
and in Canada by
University of Toronto Press
Printed in Great Britain by
W. & J. Mackay & Co. Ltd., Chatham
© W. H. G. Armytage 1965
No part of this book may be reproduced
in any form without permission from
the publisher, except for the quotation
of brief passages in criticism
Contents
PREFACE Page ix
Part I: Seed-Beds of Science
1 GARDEN ECONOMIES 3
2 THE BEAT OF THE IMAGINATION 16
3 ACADEMIC HONEYCOMBS 28
4 GLANDS OF THE PLANTOCRACY 41
Part II: The Epiphany of the Technocracy
5 FROM PHYSIOCRACY TO PHYSICISM 61
6 MATERIALISTS AND MONISTS 76
7 EMERGENT OPERATIONALISM IN ENGLAND 94
8 THE LAWS AND THE PROPHETS 107
Part III: Frontier Problems
9 IMPROVISED EUROPEANS 131
10 THE ZAPADNIKI 145
11 SCIENCE AND THE AMERICAN FRONTIER 162
12 THE RISE OF THE RUSSIAN TECHNICAL INTELLI
GENTSIA 184
13 THE NEW POLITICAL ARITHMETIC IN BRITAIN 202
Part IV: The Politics of Science
14 AMERIKANSKI TEMPO 219
15 TECHNOCRATS AND THE POLITICS OF POWER 238
16 SCIENCE AND SOCIAL RECUPERATION IN BRITAIN 261
17 THE TWO LEVIATHANS 286
Part V: The Diaspora of Technology
18 THE CONVERSION OF THE MANDARINS 305
19 SCIENCE AND THE SAMURAI 319
20 MAO'S MODEL: THE RED EXPERT FOR EXPORT 328
21 AN OPERATIONAL WORLD? 340
INDEX OF PERSONS 422
INDEX OF SUBJECTS 435
vii

Preface
WHILST trying to convince his fellow-citizens to reject the
wooden horse left by the Greeks, Laocoön was crushed to death
by two serpents emerging from the sea. Similarly latent, but
aggressive, social forces emerge from below the 'social horizon'
to confound historians. Just such a one was identified by E. M.
Forster as 'the implacable offensive of science'.1
This implacable offensive has not arisen from its environment
in a simple unilinear fashion as that stern determinist, Karl
Marx, himself acknowledged.2 Its momentum, though owing
much to what Max Scheler called 'real factors'—race, geo
politics, political power structures or the production machine—
has increased by accretion.3 The aggregation of those sustaining
the momentum—demonstrators of truths based on observable
facts, or exploiters of trustworthy methods for discovering 'new
truths'—has taken place as the offensive intensifies.4
The following pages offer an interpretation of the attitude of
such groups to social policy over the last 400 years. 'The histori
cal setting appears, indeed,' said Carl Becker, 'to be an instruc
tive procedure of the modern mind. We do it without thinking,
because we can scarcely think at all without doing it.'5 But in
doing so, he warned us that 'We can identify a particular thing
only by pointing to the various things it successively was before
it became that particular thing that it will presently cease to
be'.6
These attempts to identify various knowledge-producing
groups began as a clumsy response to the generous invitation
of the University College of North Wales at Bangor to deliver
the Ballard-Matthews lectures in 1963. They sketch the rise of
the technical intelligentsia, whose outlook and activities are
so absorbing that, for those whose interest may be whetted,
further reading is offered in the notes. For the index that follows
I have to thank Anne Gray, Margaret Revitt and Kay Johnson
for much help at short notice.
ix