Philosophy of Technology
The philosophy of technology brings logical, metaphysical, epistemological, ethical, and political philosophical questions to bear on the making and using of artifacts. The particular balance among these questions will differ within related regionalizations of philosophy, such as the philosophy of science or the philosophy of art. In the philosophy of technology, for instance, epistemology typically plays a lesser role than in the philosophy of science but a greater role than in the philosophy of art. Any philosophical assessment of technology is thus partially defined by its own inner balance in relation to philosophy as a whole.
Historical Emergence
Although limited discussions of techne and associated or derivative phenomena can be found in ancient, medieval, and early modern philosophy, it was not until the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries that technology, as something distinct from technics or technique, became a subject for theoretical examination. Among the earliest contributing texts, the mechanical engineer Franz Reuleaux's Theoretische Kinematik (1875) developed an extended conceptual analysis of different types of tools and machines. More generally, Ernst Kapp's Grundlinien einer Philosophie der Technik (1877), in the first book to use "philosophy of technology" in its title, outlined a theory of culture grounded in technics understood as the extension and differentiation of human anatomy and physiology.
This is a free page. This page contains 201 words. This
article contains 6,400 words (approx. 21 pages at 300
words per page).
Read the rest of this Article with our Philosophy of Technology Access Pass.
