Thomas P. Hughes (historian)

Thomas Parke Hughes (September 13, 1923 – February 3, 2014) was an American historian of technology.

Quotes

• Technology is messy and complex.… In its variety, it is full of contradictions, laden with human folly, saved by the occasional benign deeds, and rich with unintended consequences.
  • Human-Built World: How to Think about Technology and Culture; University of Chicago Press, 2004 [1]

• Over the years, I have tried to understand the character of the engineering profession and, in a limited way, broaden its horizons by helping it to see the central role and daunting responsibilities that it has in the modern world. Engineers lament that they are not appreciated. They do not need the appreciation of others so much as they need secure self-esteem. This would come, I believe, if they accepted the messy complexity and moral dimensions of their calling.
  • [2]

About Hughes

• Tom wanted to distinguish between the drive for simple explanations sought by scientists and the complex reality of many aspects of large-scale engineering systems.
  • [3]

• More than anyone else, he sought to reinterpret the American experience as one that aspires to a “second creation,” in the tradition of Francis Bacon — who, Hughes wrote, saw technical knowledge and ability “as a way to recover from the Edenic Fall and to regain a paradise characterized as within the reach of all men.”
  • G. Pascal Zachary, [4]

• Tom was no saint, but when he was wrong on an intellectual issue, he would always acknowledge it and graciously moved on. ... After Agatha drove Tom safely off the Nimitz Freeway in Oakland shortly before it collapsed during the 1989 San Francisco Earthquake, I asked him what went through his mind. Tom told me in a deadpan voice that he supposed a large scale technological system was collapsing. ... Tom never found the general audience his work deserved. He refused to dumb down his ideas and never took the easy route of making technology anything less than what it is—one of the most complex and complicated aspects of human life.
  • Trevor Pinch, [5]