Philosophy of Technology The Technological Condition: An Anthology

The new edition of this authoritative introduction to the philosophy of technology includes recent developments in the subject, while retaining the range and depth of its selection of seminal contributions and its much-admired editorial commentary.

• Remains the most comprehensive anthology on the philosophy of technology available
• Includes editors’ insightful section introductions and critical summaries for each selection
• Revised and updated to reflect the latest developments in the field
• Combines difficult to find seminal essays with a judicious selection of contemporary material
• Examines the relationship between technology and the understanding of the nature of science that underlies technology studies

Robert C. Scharff is Professor of Philosophy at the University of New Hampshire. He is the author of Comte After Positivism (1995; 2002) and the former editor of Continental Philosophy Review (1995-2005). He publishes on 19th- and 20th-century Continental philosophy (especially Dilthey, Heidegger, and the hermeneutics of science), the history of positivism (especially Comte and Mill, and the connection between classical positivism and recent analytic philosophy), and the philosophy of technology. He is currently finishing a book manuscript, “How History Matters to Philosophy” and a collection of essays on Heidegger and technology, and editing a Blackwell Guidebook Series volume on Heidegger’s Being and Time.

Val Dusek is Professor of Philosophy at the University of New Hampshire. His research focuses on the history and philosophy of science and technology, with a particular interest in the social factors influencing scientific and technological development. He has written on non-mainstream philosophical influences (Asiatic, hermetic, romantic) on the history of electro-magnetic theory. His numerous publications include Philosophy of Technology: An Introduction (Wiley-Blackwell, 2006) and co-editorship of the first edition of this volume.

Source Acknowledgments ix

Introduction to the Second Edition xiii

Part I The Historical Background 1

Introduction 3

1 On Dialectic and “Technē” 9
Plato

2 On “Technē” and “Epistēmē” 19
Aristotle

3 The Greek Concepts of “Nature” and “Technique” 25
Wolfgang Schadewaldt

4 On the Idols, the Scientific Study of Nature, and the Reformation of Education 33
Francis Bacon

5 Idea for a Universal History from a Cosmopolitan Point of View 47
Immanuel Kant

6 The Nature and Importance of the Positive Philosophy 54
Auguste Comte

7 On the Sciences and Arts 68
Jean-Jacques Rousseau

8 Capitalism and the Modern Labor Process 74
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels

Part II Philosophy, Modern Science, and Technology 89

Positivist and Postpositivist Philosophies of Science 91

9 The Scientific Conception of the World: The Vienna Circle 101
Rudolf Carnap, Hans Hahn, and Otto Neurath

10 Paradigms and Anomalies in Science 111
Thomas Kuhn

11 Experimentation and Scientific Realism 121
Ian Hacking

12 Hermeneutical Philosophy and Pragmatism: A Philosophy of Science 131
Patrick A. Heelan and Jay Schulkin

13 What are Cultural Studies of Science? 147
Joseph Rouse

14 Revaluing Science: Starting from the Practices of Women 161
Nancy Tuana

15 Is Science Multicultural? 171
Sandra Harding

16 On Knowledge and the Diversity of Cultures: Comment on Harding 183
Shigehisa Kuriyama

The Task of a Philosophy of Technology 187

17 Philosophical Inputs and Outputs of Technology 191
Mario Bunge

18 Analytic Philosophy of Technology 201
Maarten Franssen

19 On the Aims of a Philosophy of Technology 205
Jacques Ellul

20 Toward a Philosophy of Technology 210
Hans Jonas

21 The Technology Question in Feminism: A View from Feminist Technology Studies 224
Wendy Faulkner

Part III Defining Technology 239

Introduction 241

22 Conflicting Visions of Technology 249
Mary Tiles and Hans Oberdiek

23 The Mangle of Practice 260
Andrew Pickering

24 The Social Construction of Facts and Artifacts 266
Trevor J. Pinch and Wiebe E. Bijker

25 Actor-Network Theory (ANT) 278
Bruno Latour

26 Actor-Network Theory: Critical Considerations 289
Sergio Sismondo

Part IV Heidegger on Technology 297

Introduction 299

27 The Question Concerning Technology 305
Martin Heidegger

28 On Philosophy’s “Ending” in Technoscience: Heidegger vs. Comte 318
Robert C. Scharff

29 Focal Things and Practices 329
Albert Borgmann

30 Heidegger and Borgmann on How to Affirm Technology 350
Hubert L. Dreyfus and Charles Spinosa

31 Philosophy of Technology at the Crossroads: Critique of Heidegger and Borgmann 362
Andrew Feenberg

Part V Technology and Human Ends 375

Human Beings as “Makers” or “Tool-Users”? 377

32 Tool Users vs. Homo Sapiens and the Megamachine 381
Lewis Mumford

33 The “Vita Activa” and the Modern Age 389
Hannah Arendt

34 Putting Pragmatism (especially Dewey’s) to Work 406
Larry Hickman

35 Buddhist Economics 421
E. F. Schumacher

Is Technology Autonomous? 426

36 The “Autonomy” of the Technological Phenomenon 430
Jacques Ellul

37 Do Machines Make History? 442
Robert L. Heilbroner

38 The New Forms of Control 449
Herbert Marcuse

39 Technological Determinism Is Dead; Long Live Technological Determinism 456
Sally Wyatt

Technology, Ecology, and the Conquest of Nature 467

40 Mining the Earth’s Womb 471
Carolyn Merchant

41 The Deep Ecology Movement 482
Bill Devall

42 Deeper than Deep Ecology: The Eco-Feminist Connection 491
Ariel Salleh

43 In Defense of Posthuman Dignity 495
Nick Bostrom

Part VI Technology as Social Practice 503

Technology and the Lifeworld 505

44 Cultural Climates and Technological Advance in the Middle Ages 511
Lynn White, Jr.

45 Three Ways of Being-With Technology 523
Carl Mitcham

46 A Phenomenology of Technics 539
Don Ihde

47 Postphenomenology of Technology 561
Peter-Paul Verbeek

48 Technoscience Studies after Heidegger? Not Yet 573
Robert C. Scharff

Technology and Cyberspace 582

49 Consciousness in Human and Robot Minds 588
Daniel C. Dennett

50 Why Heideggerian AI Failed and How Fixing It Would Require Making It More Heideggerian 597
Hubert L. Dreyfus

51 A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century 610
Donna Haraway

52 A Moratorium on Cyborgs: Computation, Cognition, and Commerce 631
Evan Selinger and Timothy Engström

53 Anonymity versus Commitment: The Dangers of Education on the Internet 641
Hubert L. Dreyfus

Technology, Knowledge, and Power 648

54 Panopticism 654
Michel Foucault

55 Do Artifacts Have Politics? 668
Langdon Winner

56 The Social Impact of Technological Change 680
Emmanuel G. Mesthene

57 Technology: The Opiate of the Intellectuals, with the Author’s 2000 Retrospective 693
John McDermott

58 Democratic Rationalization: Technology, Power, and Freedom 706
Andrew Feenberg

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