On the Early Forms of Technical Knowledge and the Ways of their Investigation

Tatjana Shashkina

This paper is intended to report on an inquiry into the historical craft of bell-founders which was used as a source for the clarification of some genetic and evolutionary problems of early forms of technical knowledge.
Traditional bell-founding ist uniquely conservative in keeping to the ancient forms of technical knowledge and to the archaic behaviourial pattern of tradition itself. This becomes clear even by superficial examination of recent textbooks on bell-founding or other literature sprang up around this old technology. They show that bell founders still keep to rely on their own experience; it could be said, with some minor reserves, that they present an indigenous minority within modern scientifically-based industries. At the same time certain forms of traditional know-how of bell founders (their legendary secrets) are in the process of radical transformation due to the contributions from scientific rationalization (with some, more advanced companies), or extinction (with others, who have no living descendants).

The main issues of the paper will be: 1) to present the results achieved, so far in the reconstruction of the autochtone patterns of thought typical for the community of bell founders, 2) to formulate the methodological position developed by the author for the reconstruction, and 3) to introduce a conceptual model for bell-founding technological history, focusing on its mental products.