ABSTRACT
A note on terminology is in order here. The (admittedly not very elegant) verb ‘to problematize’ derives from the work of the Althusser and Balibar (1970) who coined the term problématique (problematic) to refer to the field of problems or questions that define an area of scientific enquiry. The term is fairly closely related to Thomas Kuhn’s idea of a scientific ‘paradigm’ (Kuhn, 1970). So, to problematize a domain is to transform it into a scientific problem-area, to construct new concepts which permit the posing of precise scientific questions. In the pre-modern era engineers and sea captains would know from experience how many men or horses must be employed, using pulleys and windlasses, to raise a mast or obelisk. Millers knew that the grinding capacity of water mills varied with the available flow in the mill lade. But there was no systematic equation or measure to relate muscular work to water’s work, no scientific problematic of effort. That had to wait for James Watt, after whom we name our modern measure of the ability to work.
