Study On Brian Arthur's Thought Of Technological Evolution

Brian Arthur is an American economist and technical ideologist and one of founders of complexity science.With an eye to modern technology,he transformed the traditional research path of technological evolution theory,applying genetics and evolution theory into technological evolution.Due to the new perspective of starting from technological interior,Arthur opened the “black box” of technology,starting with the origin of technology and structuring novel technological theory involving technological essence,structure,innovation and evolution.Arthur opened technology “ black box”,dismantled the structure of technology from perspective of technological interior and explored the internal connection and power among technologies.He made clear the context of technological evolution,clarified the process of technological invention “ birth ” and disclosed the “ mysterious veil ” of technological innovation.The paper started from the realistic background of China urgently needing to promote innovation of technological R&D and improve technological independent innovation.Firstly,the origin of Arthur ' s technological evolution theory was explored from the inspiration Arthur obtained from economics,the research background of complexity science and the influence of technological combination view on Arthur ' s technological theory.Secondly,the author analyzed theoretically Arthur ' s technological evolution theory from technical principle,internal logic and theoretical end result.To protrude the central theme that“ combination ” was both the approach of technology formation and core mechanism of technological evolution,which was proposed by Arthur,the author took “ technological combination” as the logic line to analyze Arthur's technological formation and evolution theories.Moreover,the author chose the ultra precision gear technology,the typical case of independently innovation of China and also a core technology suffering from bottleneck,and opened its “ black box by the approach of Arthur opening “ black box ” to explore the evolution process ultra precision gear technology from accuracy level 4 to level 1.The author summed up the path and approach of realizing local core technological innovation.That's an attempt on practice of philosophy of technology and empirical turn.Finally,the theoretical inspiration of Arthur's technological evolution theory on theory of philosophy of technology and realistic inspiration on technological innovation were stated.Most importantly,it's found from the case of ultra precision gear technology that the reason why China was the first to master core technology of standard gear with level-1 accuracy around the world was because China had unique innovative path dependence of ultra precision gear technology.Meanwhile,Arthur put forward opinions on technological innovation practice in the light of path dependence of innovation and view of driving technological innovation by reproductive economy,which were inspiration on problems in current technological innovation of China,such as independent R&D ability was weak,there were no enough major scientific researches to guide,supporting industries were not developed and market conversion rate of major technological achievements was low.