A Brief Introduction to Ways of Knowing and Ways of Working

Pickstone John V. , Ways of knowing: A new history of science, technology and medicine (Manchester, 2000, and Chicago, 2001), and “Working knowledges before and after circa 1800: Practices and disciplines in the history of science, technology and medicine”, Isis, xcviii (2007), 489–516.

See discussion in Pickstone , “Working knowledges” (ref. 1), 492.

Abbott Andrew , The system of professions: An essay on the division of expert labour (Chicago, 1988).

Herschel John , Preliminary discourse on the study of natural philosophy (London, 1835), 93.

Hughes Thomas P. , Networks of power: Electrification in Western society 1880–1930 (Baltimore, 1983).

I am most grateful to the contributors for their papers and patience, and for their useful comments on my offerings. My colleague Jonathan Harwood also commented, and kindly suggested that a relatively simple introduction might help the uninitiated reader. He is usually right.