000 01551cam a2200157 4500500
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041 _afre
042 _adc
100 1 0 _aRibeill, Georges
_eauthor
245 0 0 _aFrom Technical Object to Social Utopia
260 _c2001.
500 _a49
520 _aFROM TECHNICAL OBJECT TO SOCIAL UTOPIA The motivating forces of engineers' technological imagination in the XIXth century This paper highlights a number of underlying and structuring factors in the nineteenth century technological imagination of the civil engineer - a creative, inventive and speculative engineer who had often cast off all academic orthodoxy and, in a competitive environment, was devoted to the promotion of intellectual projects and material achievements. A representative sample of six engineers was selected for their careers and inventions. The study of their works (books, brochures, etc.) reveals their tendency, in the name of 'the law of irrepressible progress'? and by virtue of their fruitful inventiveness, to undo everything that had been done before them and to rebuild a better society for all. From better in the best of worlds, it is a small step towards the new ideal promised society. Although the construction of a utopia is not always explicitly recognized or achieved, it does constitute the underlying tendency, the asymptotic horizon of French engineers' speculations.
786 0 _nRéseaux | o 109 | 5 | 2001-10-01 | p. 114-144 | 0751-7971
856 4 1 _uhttps://shs.cairn.info/journal-reseaux-2001-5-page-114?lang=en
999 _c209297
_d209297