参考文献
1: General Introduction
Books cannot take the place of first-hand exploration: hence any study of technics should begin with a survey of a region, working through from the actual life of a concrete group to the detailed or generalized study of the machine. This approach is all the more necessary for the reason that our intellectual interests are already so specialized that we habitually begin our thinking with abstractions and fragments which are as difficult to unify by the methods of specialism as were the broken pieces of Humpty-Dumpty after he had fallen off the wall. Open-air observation in the field, and experience as a worker, taking an active part in the processes around us, are the two fundamental means for overcoming the paralysis of specialism. As a secondary means for going deeper into technical operations and equipment, particularly for laymen whose training and scope of experience are limited, the Industrial Museum is helpful. The earliest of these is the Conservatoire des Arts et Métiers in Paris: educationally however it is a mere storehouse. The most exhaustive is the Deutsches Museum in München; but its collections have a little over-reached themselves in bigness and one loses sight of the forest for the trees. Perhaps the best sections in it are the dramatic reconstructions of mines; this feature has been copied at the Rosenwald Museum in Chicago. The Museums in Wien and in London both have educational value, without being overwhelming. One of the best of the small museums is the Museum of Science and Industry in New York. The new museum of the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia, and that of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington are respectively the latest and the oldest in the United States. The Museum of the Bucks County Historical Society at Doylestown, Pennsylvania, is full of interesting eotechnic relics.
Up to the present the only general introductions in English of any value have been Stuart Chase's Men and Machines and Harold Rugg's The Great Technology. Each has the limitation of historical foreshortening; but Chase is good in his description of modern technical improvements and Rugg is valuable for his various educational suggestions. There is no single, comprehensive and adequate history of technics in English. Usher's A History of Mechanical Inventions is the nearest approach to it. While it does not cover every aspect of technics, it treats critically and exhaustively whatever it does touch, and the earlier chapters on the equipment of antiquity and the development of the clock are particularly excellent summaries. It is perhaps the most convenient and accurate work in English. In German the series of books done by Franz Marie Feldhaus, particularly his Ruhmesblätter der Technik, would be valuable for their illustrations alone; they form the core of any historical library. Both Usher and Feldhaus are useful for their comments on sources and books. Topping all these books is that monument of twentieth century scholarship, Der Moderne Kapitalismus, by Werner Sombart. There is scarcely any aspect of Western European life from the tenth century on that has escaped Sombart's eagle-like vision and mole-like industry; and his annotated bibliographies would almost repay publication by themselves. The Evolution of Modern Capitalism, by J. A. Hobson, parallels Sombart's work; and while the original edition drew specially on English sources his latest edition openly acknowledges a debt to Sombart. In America Thorstein Veblen's works, taken as a whole, including his lessappreciated books like Imperial Germany and The Nature of Peace, form a unique contribution to the subject. For the resources of modern technics Erich Zimmerman's recent survey of Worid Resources and World Industries fills what up to recently had been a serious gap; this is complemented, in a degree, by H. G. Wells's somewhat diffuse study of the physical processes of modern life in his The Work, Wealth and Happiness of Mankind.
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