Explaining technological impacts without determinism: Fred Cottrell's sociology of technology and energy

Fred Cottrell's pioneering work on the energy-society interface is built on a sociology able to explain technology's social and environmental impacts without relying on technological determinism. While technology conditions the types of possible social structures and value hierarchies that are amendable to its physical feedback and the range of ends that can be pursued through its use, societies choose whether or not to adopt technologies, and how they are used, based on preexisting social structures, values, ecological and geographical conditions, and, as stressed by Cottrell, power inequalities. Through this framework, Cottrell made substantial and still pertinent contributions, including a call for a social science that is conscious of the likelihood of future shrinking energy throughput relevant to discussions surrounding planned economic contraction (“degrowth”). To help illuminate the unique elements of his approach, Cottrell is compared to the following overlapping figures: Leslie A. White, Julian Steward, Lewis Mumford, and Howard T. Odum.