At 9:06 AM 8/16/99, Diane Dismukes wrote:

> Technology is created by humans and the changes in technology
>are based on choices humans make in response to their environment.
>Examining the history of technology, from pointed sticks to
>computers, is examining the choices humans have made about
>what they need in their infrastructural repertoire to
>interface with the physical and cultural
>environment in which they live.

Agreed.  I have no quibble with people who apply anthropological insights
to other lines of research. The world would be a lot more civilized if this
were a more common practice.

But the history of technology is a free-standing discipline, frequently
more a branch of engineering than of anthropology. If I am digging an iron
furnace stack, I am a servant first of the historians of ironmaking
technology. I will contribute to the knowledge base of that discipline,
which is equally as respectable as anthropology.

I can't accept Scholl's dismissal of other disciplines as less worthy.

                 ____    It's almost her birthday!
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