Comparison of the research strategies of V. P. Goryachkin and D. D. Artsybashov in their works on agricultural mechanics in the second half of the 1900s - the first half of the 1910s

The history of Russian agricultural mechanics is rapidly evolving, attempting to understand the development of this science at the beginning of the 20th century. However, this understanding is impossible without a direct comparison of the views and approaches of key figures in agricultural mechanics of that time: V. P. Goryachkin, the founder of theoretical agricultural mechanics, and D. D. Artsybashev, the first head of the Bureau of Agricultural Mechanics of the Main Directorate of Land Management and Agriculture. Such a comparison, however, had never been conducted before in science. The research focus is on the works of these two key pre-revolutionary Russian specialists in agricultural mechanics. The objective of this study is to establish the validity of the established scientific opinion regarding their continuity as teacher and student, and to present the differences in methodologies in studying technology through these key figures in Russian agricultural mechanics. The study was conducted using a comparative historical analysis and identifying the research strategies of the scientists in question (i.e., in terms of planning, goal-setting, and research structure, different approaches to the creation of a new methodology, and different theoretical foundations for their classifications of agricultural machinery). The results were interpreted using B. Latour's actor-network theory. It was established that V. P. Goryachkin's research strategy was aimed at examining the equipment for the purpose of further developing more advanced models based on the laws of mechanics, which determined the consistent scientific nature of his work (including a specific research procedure, an emphasis on understanding the operating principles of mechanisms, the involvement of foreign literature, innovation in the field of creating measuring equipment, etc.), while D. D. Artsybashev's research strategy remained focused on the operator of the equipment, which determined the desire not to understand the operating principles of the mechanisms under study, but to describe the "functional essence" of the processes, with an emphasis on interaction with other branches of agricultural science and on recommendations for use. An unambiguous conclusion has been made that D. D. Artsybashev and V. P. Goryachkin represent two different stages in the history of agricultural mechanics: the first remained at the empirical stage of knowledge, without the need to deepen his research, while the second, with different goals, began the transition to the theoretical stage.