ABSTRACT
The concept of technology, in all the uses for which institutionalists employ it, refers to an aspect of culture. The theory of knowledge, action, and valuation that informs institutionalist perspective in general, and the concept of technology in particular, is that which evolved in the United States under the name of “pragmatism” and, at the hands of Dewey, “instrumentalism.” The theory of instrumental valuation completes the concept of technology within the institutionalist perspective. In the nature of the case, an evolutionary theory cannot be predictive of discrete “facts,” since evolutionary events are non-repeatable. Mechanistic models are constrained to assume, contrary to fact, that cultural events are infinitely repeatable, and even reversible, movements to and from stasis. The degree of emphasis accorded to general concept formation or to descriptive and applied phases of scientific inquiry has varied greatly among institutionalists, as it does among practitioners of any science.
