Technics and Praxis: A Philosophy of Technology (Boston Studies in the Philosophy and History of Science Book 24)

Depending on how one construes the kinship relations, technology has been either the stepchild of philosophy or its grandfather. In either case, technology has not been taken into the bosom of the family, but has had to wait for attention, care and feeding, while the more unclear elements - science, art, politics, ethics - were being nurtured (or cleaned up). Don Ihde puts technology in the middle of things, and develops a philosophy of technology that is at once distinctive, revealing and thought­ provoking. Typically, philosophy of technology has existed at, or beyond, the margins of the philosophy of science, and therefore the question of technology has come to be posed (when it is) either by historians of technology or by social critics. The philosophy of technology, as analysis and critique of the concepts, methodologies, implicit epistemologies and ontologies of technological praxis and thought, has remained underdeveloped. When philosophy does turn its attention to the insistent presence of technology, it inevitably casts the question in one or another of the dominant modes of philosophical interpretation and reconstruction. Thus, the logic of technological thinking and practice has been a subject of some systematic work (e. g. , in the Praxiology of Kotarbinski and Kotarbinska, among others). And the question of technology's relation to science has been posed in the framework of the nomological model of explanation in the sciences - e. g. Depending on how one construes the kinship relations, technology has been either the stepchild of philosophy or its grandfather. In either case, technology has not been taken into the bosom of the family, but has had to wait for attention, care and feeding, while the more unclear elements - science, art, politics, ethics - were being nurtured (or cleaned up). Don Ihde puts technology in the middle of things, and develops a philosophy of technology that is at once distinctive, revealing and thoughtƯ provoking. Typically, philosophy of technology has existed at, or beyond, the margins of the philosophy of science, and therefore the question of technology has come to be posed (when it is) either by historians of technology or by social critics. The philosophy of technology, as analysis and critique of the concepts, methodologies, implicit epistemologies and ontologies of technological praxis and thought, has remained underdeveloped. When philosophy does turn its attention to the insistent presence of technology, it inevitably casts the question in one or another of the dominant modes of philosophical interpretation and reconstruction. Thus, the logic of technological thinking and practice has been a subject of some systematic work (e. g., in the Praxiology of Kotarbinski and Kotarbinska, among others). And the question of technology's relation to science has been posed in the framework of the nomological model of explanation in the sciences - e. g This book examines how the world is known in the context of technological science, particularly through the contemporary use of instrumentation. Instruments embody the scientific search for knowledge, and in doing so, transform human experience. Examinations of subtle effects of technology are explored in areas such as contemporary music, cinema and television. It is the non-neutrality of technology and its capacity to change experience which forms the major theme of the essays included in this book. Technology is shown to be essential ambiguous in both threat and promise through a series of concrete studies. Both the simple technologies, such as the dentist's probe, and the complex technologies, such as the computer, as shown to have certain invariant features. Also included are critical studies of pioneer thinkers concerned with technology like Martin Heidegger, Hans Jonas, and Paul Ricoeur.-- From publisher's description Front Matter....Pages i-xxviii Front Matter....Pages 1-1 The Experience of Technology: Human-Machine Relations....Pages 3-15 A Phenomenology of Instrumentation....Pages 16-27 A Phenomenology of Instrumentation....Pages 28-39 A Phenomenology of Instrumentation....Pages 40-50 Front Matter....Pages 51-51 The Existential Import of Computer Technology....Pages 53-65 Technology and the Transformation of Experience....Pages 66-81 Vision and Objectification....Pages 82-92 Bach to Rock, A Musical Odyssey....Pages 93-100 Front Matter....Pages 101-101 Heidegger’s Philosophy of Technology....Pages 103-129 Technology and the Human: Hans Jonas....Pages 130-140 The Secular City and the Existentialists....Pages 141-150 Back Matter....Pages 151-163