Reflection 3 Computer ethics

CONTEMPORAR Y CURRENTS Polytechnic Inst. of New }brk

What is the Philosophy of Technology?

Carl Mitcham

PHILOSOPHIES DO not spring full grown into consciousness the way Pallas Athena was reportedly born from the head of Zeus. They suffer a natural and

historical-not to say psychological and sociological-growth; only slowly do they develop to maturity. And even in maturity philosophies undergo change and altera- tion, advance and decay. Despite the fact that the period since the Industrial Revolu·· tion might well be termed the "age of technology," the development of anything like a philosophy of technology remains in its formative stages; until quite recently there was little discussion which consciously saw itself as part of such a cooperative, reflec- tive effort. The reasons are both historical and philosophical. One way to introduce the philosophy of technology is by means of a brief examination of this historical and philosophical situation.

One historical problem with the philosophy of technology is not only that its birth is somewhat overdue, but that it is not even the outgrowth of a single conception. The philosophy of technology has gestated as a set of fraternal twins exhibiting a fair amount of sibling rivalry even in the womb. The "philosophy of technology" can mean two quite different things. When "of technology" is taken as a subjective geni- tive, indicating that which is the subject or agent, philosophy of technology is an at- tempt by technologists or engineers to elaborate a technological philosophy. When" of technology" is taken as an objective genitive, indicating the object being dealt with, then philosophy of technology refers to an effort by philosophers to take technology seriously as a theme for systematic reflection. The first child tends to be more pro- technology, the second somewhat critical. Before trying to decide which is more lovable-at least to those who are called upon to practice a love of wisdom-let us simply observe some behavioral differences.

I

Engineering philosophy of technology clearly has the distinction of being the first born of these twins. Two early manifestations were termed "mechanical philosophy" and "philosophy of manufacturers." In 1832 an American mathematics teacher (later lawyer) named Timothy Walker (1802-1856) took it upon himself to respond to Thom- as Carlyle's criticism of mechanics in Signs of the Times (1829). Actually Walker did not fully appreciate the contrast Carlyle drew between mechanics and dynamics as poles of human action and feeling, nor did he appreciate Carlyle's subsequent call for a reintegration of dynamics with mechanics-a reintegration which he later argued should be brought about by "captains of industry" (Past and Present, 1843). Never- theless, Walker's "Defense of Mechanical Philosophy" makes a prototypical argu-

74 MITCHAM

ment that technology is a means for making democratically available the kind of free- dom enjoyed only by the few in a society based on slavery.

In 1835 the Scottish chemical engineer Andrew Ure (1778-1857) coined the second related phrase, "philosophy of manufacture," to designate his "exposition of the gen- eral principles on which productive industry should be conducted with self-acting machines." Ure's exposition sketches out a number of conceptual issues which have continued to concern the philosophy of technology: distinctions between craft and in- dustrial production, the classification of machines, and the possibility of rules for in- vention. Yet because this discussion is coupled with an enthusiastic apology for the factory system, his more analytic side is usually overlooked. Contemporary cybernet- ics, systems theory, and operations research can nevertheless be seen as natural exten- sions of Ure's approach.

Forty years later it was the German philosopher Ernst Kapp (1808-1896) who coined the phrase "Philosophie der Technik." But Kapp was an unusual kind of philosopher; especially was he an unusual kind of German philosopher. Like his contemporary Karl Marx (1818-1883), Kapp was a left-wing Hegelian who fell out with the German authorities in the 1840s because of his political attempts to translate Hegel's dynamic idealism into firm materialist terms. But unlike Marx, whose materialism remained limited to an abstract and scholarly analysis of economics, Kapp developed what would now be called an environmentalist philosophy, and when forced to leave Ger- many chose not London (and the British Musuem) but the American frontier. Kapp immigrated to the German pioneer settlements of central Texas, and for the next fif- teen years led the practical life of farmer, inventor, hydrotherapist, and corresponding member of the newly formed Smithsonian Institution. As such he had a close engage- ment with tools and machinery.

Following his return to Germany in 1865, he reflected on this experience and for- mulated a philosophy oftechnology in which tools and weapons are understood as dif- ferent kinds of "organ projections." Although this idea may have been hinted at by Aristotle (De Anima III, 8, 432al; and Eudemian Ethics VII, 9, 1241b24)~ it was cer- tainly Kapp who gave it detailed and systematic elaboration. The railroad is described as an externalization of the circulatory system, the telegraph as an extension of the nervous system. Well before Arnold Gehlen (1904-1976) and Marshall McLuhan (1911-1980), it was Kapp who first articulated such ideas.

In the same decade as Kapp's death, the Russian engineer P. K. Engelmeier began to publish papers in German periodicals employing the term "philosophy of technol- ogy" and calling for the philosophical elaboration and social application of the engi- neering attitude toward the world. In 1911 Engelmeier restated this thesis before the IVth World Congress of Philosophy held at Bologna, Italy. And with the founding of the Russian Engineering Society in 1917, Engelmeier undertook to proselytize for what in America became known as the technocracy movement-that is, the idea that society should be transformed and managed according to technological principles. In- deed, because of this Engelmeier fell out of favor with the Marxist authorities in the Soviet Union, and was almost certainly executed for counter-revolutionary tendencies during the Industrial Party Affair of the early 1930s.

A few other nodal points in the development of this technological philosophy: the two engineers, Max Eyth (1836-1906) and Alard DuBois-Reymond (born 1860), inde- pendently undertook to analyze the technical invention process. Eyth distinguished between the creative germination of an idea, its development, and final utilization.

PHILOSOPHY OF TECHNOLOGY 75

DuBois-Reymond likewise stressed the difference between invention as psychological event and material artifact. And both authors sought to identify the initial creative in- spiration in the mind of the engineer with what goes on in the mind of the fine artist, in an effort to relate engineering and the humanities. It is significant that whenever subsequent similar efforts have been made, almost invariably an argument has arisen concerning the oneness of creativity in both the technological and aesthetic realms. Samuel Florman's Existential Pleasures of Engineering (1974) is a good recent case in point.

In 1913 the German chemical engineer Eberhard Zschimmer (1873-1940) became the third person to use the term "philosophy of technology" as the title of a small volume in which he defended technology against its cultural critics and proposed a neo-Hegelian interpretation oftechnology as "material freedom." Zschimmer's slight book went through many editions, and in the 1930s was revised so as to reflect the ideas of National Socialism. Partly as a result, Zschimmer's thought has been stigma- tized and ignored, although it presents a cogent technical interpretation of the mean- ing of freedom, one implicitly or explicitly reiterated in many contemporary engi- neering apologies for technological activity. That the goal of technology is human freedom achieved through and understood in terms of the material mastery of an escape from the limitations of nature has been, for instance, a common theme in the celebration of space exploration from Sputnik I in 1957 to the moon landing of 1969 and space shuttle operations of today.

Following World War II engineering-related philosophy of technology went through a period of sustained, systematic growth. In Germany the first formal organizational developments took place within the Verein Deutscher Ingenieure (VOl or Society of German Engineers) which conducted a series of conferences on themes related to the philosophy of technology. In 1956 the VOl established a special "Mensch und Tech- nik" study group, which was broken down into working committees on education, religion, language, sociology, and philosophy. Since its inception members of this study group such as Simon Moser, Hans Lenk, Gunter Ropohl, Alois Huning, Hans Sachsse, and Friedrich Rapp-most of whom teach in technical institutes and/or have degrees in both engineering and philosophy-have become the most prominent philosophers of technology in Germany. The 1970s witnessed the publication of a number of books by these men, with Rapp's Analytical Philosophy of Technology hav- ing recently been translated into English (1981).

Outside Germany, the term "philosophy of technology" has not been so common. There have, however, been related developments. The French engineer Jacques Lafitte (1884-1966) undertook in Rtijlexions sur la science des machines (1932) to sketch what he termed a "mechanology," or a comprehensive analysis of technical evolution from passive machines (bowls, clothes, and houses) to active and reflexive ones (energy transformation and self-directing devices, respectively). This analysis has been deepened by Gilbert Simondon, an associate of Merleau-Ponty and psychologist concerned with human factors engineering, in Du Mode d'existence des objects tech- niques (1958). The thrust of both works is toward a descriptive phenomenology of the technological phenomena. Simondon, for instance, whose work has influenced Jacques Ellul, distinguishes between elements (parts), individuals (devices), and ensembles (systems) as kinds of technological existence, and proposes a theory of technological evolution on the basis of detailed references to examples like the inter- nal combustion engine, the telephone, and vacuum tube.

76 MITCHAM

In the Netherlands, the engineer Hendrik van Riessen began a second career in philosophy with Filosofie en Techniek (1949), a work which still provides the most comprehensive historico-philosophical survey of the field to its date of publication. Van Riessen's student, the engineer-philosopher and present Dutch Senator, Egbert Schuurman, has made similar contributions to a philosophical analysis of the struc- ture of modern technology, along with an appraisal of the developing philosophy of technology tradition.

The English phrase "philosophy of technology" makes its first significant occur- rence as the title for a symposium in the summer, 1966, issue of Technology and Cul- ture-the journal of the Society for the History of Technology, an association (and discipline) which, from its inception, has also had strong alliances with the engineer- ing community. The title "Toward a Philosophy of Technology" was initially the title of a contribution by Mario Bunge, an Argentine philosopher with intimate knowledge of West European discussions and strongly attracted to the positivist attempt to create what he calls a scientific philosophy. For him "technophilosophy," as he now calls it, is just one aspect of this larger project, which involves interpreting reality in scientific- technological terms and reformulating humanistic disciplines such as philosophy and ethics along scientific and technological models.

Bunge's conception of technophilosophy is also closely related to the idea of "social technology," or what Karl Popper calls "piecemeal social engineering," which in turn exhibits affinities with the technocracy movement. Thorstein Veblen's argument in The Engineers and the Price System (1921)-and even earlier in The Instinct of Workmanship (1914)-for the re-organization of economic (and political) life so as to free engineering principles from commercial (and political) corruption continues to exercise a certain appeal even when the term "technocracy" has acquired negative connotations.

The most outstanding figure in engineering-philosophy discussions, however, both before and immediately after World War II, was Friedrich Dessauer (1881-1963). Dessauer is also the fourth person to employ the term "philosophy of technology" in the titles of his works. As a research engineer and entrepreneur who pioneered in the development of X-ray therapy, and a Christian social democrat who openly opposed Nazism, Dessauer not only deepened the engineering analysis of technology; he sought as well to open up a dialogue with existentialists, social theorists, and theo- logians. His work spans the first half of the 20th century, from Technische Kultur? (1908) and Philosophie der Technik (1927) to Seele im Bannkreis der Technik (1945) and Streit um die Technik (1956). It is the work of Dessauer that is most often cited in those instances where philosophers of science mention philosophy of technology.

Indeed, one way to summarize Dessauer's philosophy of technology is to contrast it with standard philosophies of science. The latter either analyze the structure and validity of scientific knowledge or discuss the implications of specific scientific theories for cosmology and anthropology. For Dessauer, both approaches fail to rec- ognize the power of scientific-technical knowledge, which has become, through mod- ern engineering, a new way for humanity to relate to the world. Dessauer attempts to provide a Kantian explanation of the transcendental preconditions of this power, as well as to reflect on the ethical implications of its application.

To the three Kantian critiques of scientific knowing, moral doing, and aesthetic feeling Dessauer proposes to add a fourth-a critique of technological making. In the

PHILOSOPHY OF TECHNOLOGY 77

Critique of Pure Reason, Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) argued that scientific knowl- edge is necessarily limited to the world of appearances (the phenomenal world); it can never make unmediated contact with "things-in-themselves" (noumena). Critical metaphysics is, however, able to delineate the a priori forms of appearances, and to postulate behind phenomena the possible existence of some noumenal reality. The Critique of Practical Reason (on moral doing), and the Critique of Judgment (con- cerned with aesthetic evaluation), go farther; they affirm the necessary existence of a "transcendent" reality beyond appearances as a precondition for the exercise of moral duty and the sense of beauty. Practical and aesthetic experience, nevertheless, do not make positive contact with this transcendent reality; nor can the analyses of these realms of experience articulate noumenal structures.

Dessauer argues that making, particularly in the form of invention, does establish positive contact with things-in-themselves. This contact is confirmed by two facts: that the invention, as artifact, is not something previously found in the world of ap- pearance; and that, when it makes its phenomenal appearance, it works. An invention is not just something dreamed up, imagination without power; it derives from a cogni- tive encounter with the realm of pre-established solutions to technical problems. Technological invention involves "real being from ideas'~that is, the engendering of "existence out of essence," the material embodying of a transcendent reality.

Although philosophers generally find something naive and crude about Dessauer's adaptation of Kant, we should not overlook his authentic extension of the Kantian point of view. For Kant, all reasoning is oriented toward the practical; the more prac- tical it is, the closer experience comes to a decisive transcending of its own phenom- enal limitations. With Kant such transcendence as is possible takes place in the realm of moral and aesthetic experience. Dessauer, however, locates the decisive penetra- tion of appearances precisely in a kind of practical experience that Kant failed to recognize as worthy of serious consideration-that is, modern technology.

In harmony with this metaphysical analysis, Dessauer proposes a theory of the moral, not to say mystical, significance of technology. Most such theories limit them- selves to a consideration of practical benefits. For Dessauer, however, the autonomous, world-transforming consequences of modern technology are witness to its transcen- dent moral value. Human beings create technology, but its power-which resembles, he says, that of "a mountain range, a river, an ice age, or planet'~goes beyond any- thing man expected; it brings into play more than this-worldly forces. Modern tech- nology should not be conceived simply as "the relief of man's estate" (Francis Bacon); it is, instead, a "participating in creation, ... the greatest earthly experience of mor- tals." With Dessauer even religious experience is interpreted in technological terms.

II

Engineering philosophy of technology-or analyses of technology from within, and the understanding of the technological way of being-in-the-world as paradigmatic for comprehending other kinds of human thought and action-may well claim primo- geniture in the order of birth. However, what might be called humanistic philosophy of technology-or the attempt of religion, poetry, and philosophy (the humanities) to bring non- or trans-technological perspectives to bear on interpreting the meaning of technology-may nevertheless make some claim to priority in the order of concep- tion. From the origins of human history ideas about the meaning of human making ac-

78 MITCHAM

tivities have found expression in sacred myth, in poetry, and in philosophic discourse. The attempt by Francis Bacon (1561-1626) to turn human attention toward and invest human energy in the pursuit of technology in preference over politics and philosophy (not to mention religion and poetry) was itself undertaken by philosophical and rhe- torical means. It was, we might say, the humanities which conceived technology, not technology which conceived the humanities. Technology is a relationship to the human, not the human a relationship to technology.

Although this principle-the primacy of the truly human over the technological-is the foundation upon which humanistic philosophy of technology rests, it is not a prin- ciple which, especially in a highly technological culture, is self-evident or goes un- challenged. For Aristotle it was obvious that making was not an end in itself and was subordinate to various possible understandings of the good as well as to the political orders which they entailed. In the face of the success of Bacon's challenge to this traditional understanding and the subsequent appearance of a technological society, humanistic philosophy of technology can be seen as a series of attempts to argue for or defend precisely this fundamental idea ofthe primacy of the non-technical.

The defense of the human as larger and more extensive than the technological comes to the fore initially in the Romantic Movement. Jean Jacques Rousseau, for in- stance, in his Discourses on the Arts and Sciences (1750) criticizes the Enlightenment idea that scientific and technological progress automatically contribute to the ad- vancement of society by bringing about a unification of wealth and virtue. According to Rousseau not only have our minds "been corrupted in proportion as the arts and sciences have improved"; "the arts and sciences owe their birth to our vices." By vices Rousseau refers to selfishness and fear, with allusions, no doubt, to Bernard Mandeville's Fable of the Bees (1714), in wJ;1ich it is argued that private vice (enlight- ened self-interest) does indeed lead to public virtue (wealth and power). "The politi- cians of the ancient world were always talking of morals and virtue," observes Rous- seau; "ours speak of nothing but commerce and money." It is ill an attempt to affirm the primacy of a humanity that transcends such limitations that Romanticism becomes fascinated by the idea of a humanity outside the structures of civilization and the possibility of some vital faculty of mind (for the early Romantics it was imagination) with an access to deeper truths about reallty than the rational intellect.

The subsequent romantic critique of modern technology as somehow obscuring or covering over essential elements of human life is a rich and varied tradition. In the first half of the 20th century existentialist and almost existentialist philosophers such as Henri Bergson (1859-1941), Jose Ortega y Gasset (1883-1955), Karl Jaspers (1883- 1969), and Gabriel Marcel (1889-1973) all make use of a Lebensphilosophie frame- work to point up problematic aspects of modern technological society. Even the sociologists from Marx to Ellul can be read as exhibiting an affinity with this ap- proach. For present purposes, however, it is best to concentrate, against the indicated background, on two contemporary but commonly unassociated representatives of the romantic tradition who make the strongest case for a humanistic philosophy of tech- nology, namely, Lewis Mumford (1895- ) and Martin Heidegger (1899-1976).

Lewis Mumford

Mumford's theory of human nature is in the American tradition of worldly idealism that runs from Ralph Waldo Emerson to Paul Goodman. The tradition is worldly in

PHILOSOPHY OF TECHNOLOGY 79

its concern with the ecology of the American environment: the harmonies of urban life, the preservation of wilderness, and sensitivity to organic realities. It is idealist in insisting that material nature is not the basis of organic activity, at least in its hu- man form. The basis of human action is mind and man's struggle for creative self- realization.

Mumford makes such an argument in The Myth of the Machine (2 vols., 1967 and 1970) in the following manner. Although human beings are necessarily in worldly ac- tivities, the species is not properly understood as homo faber but as homo sapiens. It is not making but thinking, not tools but mind, which confers humanity. Against what Mumford considers a technological-materialist image of man, he maintains that tech- nics in the narrow sense of tool making and using has not been the main agent in human development. All human technical achievements are, Mumford maintains, "less for the purpose of increasing food supply or controlling nature than for utilizing his own immense organic resources ... to fulfill more adequately his superorganic demands and aspirations." The elaboration of symbolic culture through language, for instance, "was incomparably more important to further human development than the chipping of a mountain of hand-axes." For Mumford "man is preeminently a mind- making, self-mastering, and self-designing animal."

On the basis of this anthropology, Mumford constructs a distinction between two kinds of technology: polytechnics and monotechnics. Poly- or biotechnics is the pri- mordial form of making; at the beginning (logically if not historically), technics was "broadly life-oriented, not work-centered or power-centered." This is the kind of technology that is in harmony with the polymorphous needs and aspirations of life; and it functions in a democratic manner to realize a diversity of human possibilities. In contrast, mono- or authoritarian technics is "based upon scientific intelligence and quantified production, directed mainly toward economic expansion, material reple- tion, and military superiority':""-in short, toward power.

Although modern technology is a primary example of mono-technics, this authori- tarian form did not originate in the Industrial Revolution. Its origins go back five thousand years to the discovery of what Mumford calls the "megamachine':""-that is, rigid social organization. Standard examples of the megamachine are large armies or organized work forces such as those that built the Pyramids and the Great Wall of China. The megamachine often brings with it striking material benefits, but at the ex- pense of a delimitation of human activities and aspiration which is dehumanizing. Large armies can conquer territory and extend power, but only by enforcing among its member soldiers a discipline which either does away with or rigorously subordinates family life, play, art, literature, and music to military ends. The consequence is the "myth of the machine," or the notion that megatechnics is both irresistible and ulti- mately beneficent. This is a myth and not reality because the megamachine can be resisted and is not ultimately beneficial. Mumford's work as a whole is an attempt to demythologize megatechnics and thereby initiate a radical reorientation of mental atti- tudes to transform monotechnical civilization.

An important feature of Mumford's work is that his negative criticisms of mono- technics was complemented by positive studies of urban life, culminating in the wide- ly acclaimed The City in History (1961). Mumford is clearly not arguing for a simple- minded rejection of all technology. He seeks to make a reasoned distinction between two kinds of technology. one of which is in accord with human nature, the other of which is not.

80 MITCHAM

Martin Heidegger

Martin Heidegger's philosophy of technology is not quite so easy to pin down, although it ultimately exhibits a similar structure. Like Mumford, Heidegger adopts the romantic strategy of distinguishing between two kinds of technology, and without rejecting it in any simple sense, trying to enclose modern technology within a larger framework.

In approaching Heidegger's discussion of technology, however, two points must be kept in mind: (1) Heidegger is a philosopher in the Socratic tradition of raising ques- tions more than providing answers. He thinks that more than anything else questions, conundrums, or problems are what philosophy is all about. He has no desire to answer questions and solve problems-after the manner of Wittgenstein and some other analytic philosophers, for instance, who want to free us from or solve certain philosophical problems. In fact, Heidegger is inordinately suspicious of all answers or solutions. (2) The overriding question for Heidegger concerns Being. Now exactly what this question is has been much debated. Heidegger himself has worded it dif- ferently at different points in his life. Originally it was the question of the meaning of Being; then it became the question of the place of Being. Later still he resorts to an ar- chaic spelling of the German Sein (Seyn) or simply crosses it out (Bemg). Yet he in- sists that it is one and the same question he is trying to formulate.

Now it is significant in this respect that of the three works by Heidegger to be en- titled "The Question of .. .':""-as distinct from actually being questions themselves (which accounts for at least another five works)-one is entitled "The Question of Being" (1955), another "The Question of the Thing" (1967), and a third "The Ques- tion of Technology" (1954). This suggests that we need to ask ourselves, what is the "question of technology," especially in relationship to the "question of Being," and perhaps even "the question of the thing." It may also be that these other two questions concerning the thing and technology can help illuminate that most fundamental ques- tion dealing in some way with Being.

Technology is a question or a problem in at least three senses. The first concerns the whatness or essence of what we call technology. This is the initial focus of Heidegger's essay on the technology question. Heidegger rejects traditional answers to the ques- tion "What is technology?':""-answers describing technology as a neutral means or a human activity. In contrast to the instrumental view of technology as neutral means, Heidegger argues that technology is a kind of truth or revealing, and that modern technology in particular is a revealing which sets up and challenges nature to yield a kind of energy which can be independently stored and transmitted.

To clarify this characterization of modern technology as a revealing that has the special character of a "setting-upon" and "challenging-forth;' Heidegger contrasts the traditional windmill or water wheel with an electric power plant. Each harnesses the energy of nature and puts it to work to serve human ends. Yet the windmill and water wheel remain related to nature in a way that makes them, Heidegger suggests, similar to works of art. First, of course, they are dependent on the earth in ways that modern technology is not, simply because they only transfer motion. If the wind is not blow- ing or the water is not running, nothing can be done. Second, even as structures they generally tend to fit into a landscape, intensifying and deepening its character, often revealing and throwing into relief geographic features which would otherwise be easily overlooked. The windmill stands forth on the plain like a lighthouse, calling at-

PHILOSOPHY OF TECHNOLOGY 81

tention to a small oasis and highlighting by its upright posture the stark flatness of this region of the earth.

A coal-fired electric power plant, by contrast, unlocks basic physical energies and then stores them up in abstract, nonsensuous form. It does not just transmit motion; it transforms or releases and transforms it. From prehistoric times until the Industrial Revolution the materials and forces human beings worked with remained fairly constant-timber, stone, wind, falling water, animals. But modern technology pro- ceeds in a new way to exploit the earth-extracting stored-up energy in the form of coal, then transforming it into electricity that can be re-stored and kept ready for distribution or use at human will. "Unlocking, transforming, storing, distributing, and switching are ways of revealing" characteristic of modern technology. Moreover, an electric power plant seldom fits into or complements the natural landscape. Large dams flood canyons and cover over rapids; nuclear reactors not only contaminate the environment with heat and radiation; their location is determined by urban utilities, and they have a form which is hostage to internal structural calculations, so that they exhibit a univocal character wherever they are set down upon the landscape.

It is this latter fact which connects the question of technology to the question of the thing. Heidegger argues that technological processes, unlike traditional techniques, never create things in the genuine sense. The atom bomb, Heidegger says elsewhere, only makes explicit what has already happened, the destruction of all thinghood. In place of unique things like the potter's earthen jug, modern technology generates a world of what Heidegger calls Bestand--"'!'stock," "standing-reserve," objects that are "in supply." The world of modern artifacts always stands ready and available for manipulating, consuming, or discarding. This is not just because of mass production, but because of the kind of articles which are mass produced. Bestand consists of ob- jects with no inherent value apart from human use. Like plastic, their whole form is dependent on human decisions about what they will be used for and how they will be decorated or packaged.

Note, too, how this ties in with what Heidegger has argued elsewhere about the relationship between modern science and technology. Modern science is charac- terized by an objectification of the natural world, the re-presentation of the world in mathematical terms which necessarily leaves out of account its earthiness, thus setting up the possibility for producing objects without true individuality or thinghood. In- stead of describing technology as applied science, Heidegger thinks it would be more accurate to call science theoretical technology.

At this juncture, however, Heidegger raises the question of technology in a second sense: Who or what brings about the technological revealing of the world as pure ob- ject'? Is it, as a positivist or anthropological view of technology would suggest, merely the result of human agency? Is modern technology the simple result of a personal or collective human decision? Not according to Heidegger. For Heidegger what lies behind or beneath modern technology as a revealing which sets up and challengfls the world is what he calls Gestell. With this term he admits to taking a common word, which in its normal usage means something like "stand," "frame," or "rack," and giving it a deeper philosophical meaning. The root stell alludes to stellendes ("setting- upon"), thus connoting that cognitive frame of mind which conceives nature as a technologically manipulative system. The standard English translation is "enfram- ing," which emphasizes the active character of Gestell, although perhaps an equally good translation would be "framework," keeping in mind the English expression

82 MITCHAM

"framework of thought." In any case, says Heidegger, "Gestell is not another part of technology; it is that attitude toward the world which is at the foundation of, yet whol- ly present within, modern technological activity. It is, simply put, the technological attitude toward the world.

From one point of view Gestell is an impersonal cognitive framework. But ac- cording to Heidegger, in what is undoubtedly his most provocative argument, Gestell is more fundamentally what might be termed an impersonal volition. Not only does Gestell "set upon" and "challenge" the world-a description that already hints at volitional elements; it also sets upon and challenges man to set upon and challenge the world. Ultimately, it is not just human needs and desires that give rise to modern technology. "The essence of modern technology starts man upon the way of that revealing through which the real everywhere, more or less distinctly, becomes Bestand." Heidegger wants to say, perhaps, that the very fact that nature leaves itself open to technological manipulation to some extent calls such manipulation forth. Nature must bear some responsibility for its own exploitation, in the same way that a householder who leaves the door unlocked must accept some responsibility when a robbery takes place.

Such an idea now raises the question of technology in still a third sense: This "chal- lenging Gestell not only conceals a former way of revealing [i.e., art or craft and its production of things], but it conceals revealing itself and with it That [capitalized] wherein unconcealment, i.e., truth, comes to pass." Nature or Being hides itself. This is the deepest sense in which modern technology presents itself as a problem or a question. It is also at this level that the relation between the question of technology and the question of Being comes to the fore. When Heidegger speaks of the "That [capitalized] wherein unconcealment ... comes to pass" he is referring to Being. Modern technology not only covers over or obscures the thinghood in things, it also covers over or obscures the Being in beings, and ultimately itself. Technology cannot be understood with more technology.

Heidegger's idea can be rephrased in terms adapted from Socrates. According to Socrates, dogmatic opinion such as that exhibited by Euthyphro and Ion, not to men- tion Polus and Thrasymachus, obscures the truth. It does this not so much because it is formally false. Socrates ultimately agrees with Thrasymachus that justice is "the in- terest of the stronger," provided "stronger" is correctly understood. It obscures the truth more because it does not properly understand itself. At the same time, Socrates does not claim to have the truth in any substantive sense. His wisdom consists merely in knowing he does not know. Indeed, it is precisely Socrates' studied or cultivated ig- norance (also known as irony) that makes him open to the truth. Modern technology, in Heidegger's view, can be characterized as a kind of reified dogmatism. It is so cer- tain about how to construct this or fabricate that. It has an efficient method or pro- cedure which excludes all other methods or procedures. And in this it does not recog- nize its own limits; it does not know itself.

(Parenthetically, let me suggest that one can appreciate Heidegger's point without necessarily buying his own substantive theory about the character of Being as an event which is ever undergoing historical changes in its worldly manifestations. One can simply say that an overwhelming involvement in the material plane tends to detract from spiritual or metaphysical reality. Technology is a kind of existential rejection of, in the sense of not paying attention to, the spiritual or metaphysical, in the same way

PHILOSOPHY OF TECHNOLOGY 83

that any dogma, precisely in its worldly powerfulness, rejects or ignores the more subtle affairs of heart and mind.)

But what is the way out of this difficulty? How can one respond to this reified dogmatism with the deepest part of oneself? The proper response is decidedly not, says Heidegger, simply to try to get rid of technology, to reject its rejection. "Tech- nology will not be struck down; and it most certainly will not be destroyed." The overcoming of technology is more like "what happens when, in the human realm, one gets over grief or pain." The rejection must be lived through, extended and deepened, the way grief or pain can be lived through to the point where it becomes itself a grief or pain, and thus in some mysterious way is transcended.

When we suffer or are in pain we are simply too close to what we are experiencing; we need distance, some self-knowledge, appreciation of who we really are and our limitations. But this is acquired not through rejection or repression of the pain; it comes only with time and the naming of the source of our pain by means of asking questions or talking about it, rendering our suffering or recalling its background of happiness in poetry and art, sitting quietly and experiencing its presence or rather that which is immediately and unobtrusively there just on the other side of the curtain of our disturbed feelings, gradually standing back and becoming detached from the tossed surface of our conscious calculations.

It is remarkable that, as if to provide a positive counterpoint to his negative critique of technology, Heidegger, in other works, mentions precisely just these kinds of ex- periences: questioning; art and poetry; Denken or meditative, non-discursive think- ing; Gelassenheit or detached acceptance. But at the end of the essay on "The Ques- tion of Technology" he places the emphasis, appropriately enough, on questioning alone. "For questioning," Heidegger writes, "is the piety of thinking." There is, in the end, a sense in which technology must be questioned, and indeed invites its own questioning, in the same way that Euthyphro's self-certainty almost begs for question- ing. And it is this questioning of technology, or the attempt to enclose technological certitude within philosophical questioning, which is at the core of Heidegger's philos- ophy of technology.

III

The operative metaphor in this paper has been that of the philosophy of technology as a set of fraternal twins exhibiting vigorous but natural sibling rivalry. Different from the moment of conception, engineering and humanistic approaches to the philos- ophy of technology are necessarily going to be at odds with one another. Technologi- cal philosophy emphasizes an analysis of the nature oftechnology itself-its concepts, its methodological procedures, its cognitive structures, and objective manifestations. It proceeds to interpret the larger world in predominantly technological terms. It thus may reasonably be said to increase or extend technological consciousness.

Humanistic or what has also been called hermeneutic philosophy of technology seeks, by contrast, insight into the meaning of technology-its relationships to the human: art and literature, ethics and politics, religion. It thus seeks to reinforce an awareness of the non-technological. The word "hermeneutics" crops up in this con- text because of the central place which interpretation-as a non-rule governed, intui- tive, and tacit but non-arbitrary activity-occupies in all the humanities. Hermeneutics can be described as the attempt to reach out for sympathetic understanding rather than

84 MITCHAM

logical explanation, and as such is directed toward matters which are not indifferent or external to the mind. In its primary manifestations the hermeneutic or interpretive enterprise is pervaded by collective and personal, permanent yet historically condi- tioned elements, and thus held tenuously within a human world of intersubjective agreement. Humanistic philosophy of technology subsists within this fragile realm of the life-world in opposition to the hard-edged presence of utilitarian artifacts and logical manipulations.

In some sense, of course, it is unfair to appropriate the term "humanistic" for this non-engineering philosophy of technology. Certainly the engineer thinks of himself as a partisan of the human, and indeed pursues his profession precisely because he views it as humanizing. His activity is necessarily grounded in some conception of the human, a self-understanding if you will, which he nevertheless takes as given in a wholly unproblematic manner. He does not question it, and even commonly regards questions raised by others as distracting or beside the point. As a result he naturally undertakes to translate other activities into his language, to view the larger human world in technological terms. Hermeneutic philosophy of technology, however, does approach the human precisely as a question, even as the most fundamental question, perhaps one which cannot in principle ever be answered. As such, whenever those who are thus called humanists because of their commitment to the priority of this question come in contact with new or different languages, their impulse is not just to translate them into some already known language, but to try to learn them, to interpret and understand them. Translation, even the most sophisticated kind, always leaves a residue of untranslated and untranslatable meaning in its wake. Aspects of the human are obscured and diminished.

In the present instance, however, it is undoubtedly ironic to speak of a humanistic or hermeneutic philosophy of technology, precisely because this approach to the philos- ophy of technology so often appears to reject learning the new language of technology. It seems to close itself off to this overriding aspect of the human. It does so, though, only out of self-protection. Technological philosophy often criticizes humanistic philosophy of technology for being too speculative or based on too narrow an em- pirical foundation. It does not understand what it talks about, says the engineer. The hermeneutic thinker replies, perhaps with some uneasiness, that a commonsense ac- quaintance with the technological is a solid enough basis for understanding its mean- ing, and that to become mired in the details of technology and its manifold processes tends to obscure its true relationship to other aspects of the human. Its rejection of this language is at its basis an act of self-defense, in the face of a language that appears ready to reduce all others to interesting but non-essential dialects.

Nevertheless, any hermeneutic philosophy is forced to admit that the common- sense understanding of a subject is historically conditioned. Today even the common man is more acquainted with the details and principles of science and technology than the few of pre-modern times. Not only is it reasonable to expect some deepening of the common sense acquaintance with the technological, and thus some implicit if limited rapprochement between competitive siblings; it is also true that even the most competitive siblings sometimes intentionally cooperate. Along this line one could mention any number of instances in which serious cooperation is indeed taking place, so that there is emerging what Hans Lenk and Gunter Ropohl (two German engineer philosophers) and Paul Durbin (an American pragmatist) have referred to respectively as interdisciplinary pragmatic or social philosophy of technology. The omens for such

PHILOSOPHY OF TECHNOLOGY 85

cooperative efforts are good, and the signs for the emerging of such work encourag- ing, especially in areas like artificial intelligence, bioethics, and environmental ethics.

By expanding on the prospects for such cooperation one could easily put off, per- haps indefinitely, dealing with that deeper and more emotion-laden issue which was broached near the beginning of this paper-the question of which one of the philos- ophy of technology twins is the more desirable child, especially to those who are called to practice the love of wisdom. But such a question should not be bypassed. Description must give way to argument.

My argument is that from its inception, philosophy has questioned the technolog-- ical, and that this questioning remains its deepest responsibility. Recall Socrates' ac- count of his own questioning in response to the words from the Delphic oracle that no one was wiser than he. He found it hard to think of himself as having any knowledge at all. So he decided to test or interpret these words by means of an encounter with those who appeared or claimed to have knowledge. Having found both politicians and poets wanting in this respect,

Finally [he said] I went to the artisans because I was conscious of knowing almost nothing, and I knew that I would find that they had knowledge of many ingenious things. And in this I was not disappointed; they knew things I did not know, and to that extcnt they were wiser than I. But, ... the good artisans seemed to me to have the same failing as the pocts: each of them, because of practicing his art well. thought himself very wise in other most important matters, and this error of theirs obscured the wisdom they had, so that I asked myself, on behalf of the oracle, whether I should prefer to be as I am, neither wise in their wisdom nor ignorant in their ignorance, or to have both. Thc answer I gave myself and the oracle was that it was better for me to be as I am (Apology of Socrates 22d-e).

Socrates' conclusion is that his wisdom, such as it is, is a kind of learned ignorance. "What is probable," says Socrates, "is that in fact the god is wise and that his oracle means that human wisdom is worth little or nothing, and that when he says this man. Socrates, he is using my name as an example, as if to say, 'This one among you, mor- tals, is wisest who, like Socrates, understands that his wisdom is worthless'" (23a-b).

Like Socrates, we must remain open to the possibility that others do possess wis- dom. We must be willing to seek them out and to ask questions of them. And it may well be that this conversation will at times and of necessity take on a somewhat tech- nical tone. A synthesis of the range of issues raised by technological and humanistic philosophy of technology will move from conceptual distinctions between tools, machines, cybernetic devices; methodological discussions of invention, design, and production; and epistemological analyses of engineering science, to speculate on the ontological status of natural entities versus artifacts and works of art, on the ethical problems engendered by a broad spectrum of specialized technologies, and on the multifarious political ramifications of technological pursuits. But such a comprehen- sive, systematic, or interdisciplinary analysis must remain finally subordinate to the love of wisdom, a love which will insist on a questioning of the technical even when it per chance ventures to engage its powers.

The conservative implications of this questioning should also be acknowledged. Socrates himself recognized that mathematical knowledge could be employed to create "winds, waters, seasons, and various things," but argued that a person could only become involved in such activities if he thought all ethical and political questions were already fully answered (Xenophon, Memorabilia I, i, 12 and 15). Often, this in-

86 MITCHAM

sistent and conservative return to questions of justice, virtue, and piety will be per- ceived as mere churlishness. Sometimes it will degenerate into ritual, not to say mechanical, performance. But were the philosophy of technology to become identi- fied solely with a philosophical extension of technological attitudes, it would not only close itself off to the rich otherness of reality, it would also abandon its claim to be philosophy. Questioning is indeed the ancestral heritage and vital home of thinking.

REFERENCES

Bunge, Mario. "The Five Buds of Technophilosophy," Technology in Society I (Spring 1979), 67-74.

Dessauer, Friedrich. Technische Kultur? Sechs Essays. Kempten and Munich: Kosel, 1908. _____ . Philosophie der Technik; das Problem der Realisierung. Bonn: F. Cohen, 1927.

The second quotation is from p. 58 of this volume. An English translation of three key chapters from this work can be found under the title "Technology in Its Proper Sphere," in Carl Mitcham and Robert Mackey, eds., Philosophy and Technology (New York: Free Press, 1972; paperback reprint, 1983), pp. 317-334.

_____ , and Xavier von Hornstein. Seele in Bannkreis der Technik. Olten: Otto Walter, 1945.

_____ . Streit um die Technik. Frankfurt: J. Knecht, 1956. The first quotation is from p. 234 of this volume. Abridged edition, Freiburg: Herder, 1959. Chapter two of this volume restates and elaborates the basic arguments of Philosophie der Technik (1927).

DuBois-Reymond, Alard. Erfindung und Erfinder. Berlin: Julius Springer, 1906. Durbin, Paul. "Toward a Social Philosophy of Technology," Research in Philosophy & Tech-

nology, 1 (1978),67-97. Engelmeier [also EngelmeyerJ, P.K. "Grundriss der Philosophie der Technik," Koln Zeitung,

no. 608 (1894). _____ . "Allgemeinen Fragen der Technik," Dinglers Polytechnisches Journal (Berlin-

Stuttgart), vol. 311, no. 2 (Jan. 14, 1899), 21-22. This book-length article is continued in the following eleven issues: vol. 311, no. 5 (Feb. 4, 1899),69-71; no. 7 (Feb. 18, 1899), 101-103; no. 9 (March 4, 1899), 133-134; no. 10 (March 11, 1899), 149-15\; vol. 312, no. 1 (April 8, 1899), 1-3; no. 5 (May 6, 1899), 65-67; no. 7 (May 20, 1899),97-99; no. 9 (June 3, 1899), 129-130; no. 10 (June 10, 1899), 145-147; vol. 313, no. 2 (July 15, 1899), 17-19; and no. 5 (Aug. 5, 1899), 65-67.

_____ . "Philosophie der Technik," in Atti del 4. Congresso internazionale di filosofia (Bologna), vol. 3 (Genoa: 1911), pp. 587-596. See also Engelmeier's "Essai d'une 'Heuro- logie' ou theorie gem!rale de la creation humaine," pp. 582-595.

Eyth, Max. Lebendige Krafte; Sieben J1Jrtril'ge ans dem Gebiete der Technik. Berlin: Julius Springer, 1903.

Florman, Samuel. The Existential Pleasures of Engineering. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1976.

Gehlen, Arnold. Die Seele in technischer Zeitalter; socialpsychologie Probleme in der in- dustrielle Gesellschaft. Hamburg: Rowolt, 1957. English trans. by Patricia Lipscomb; Man in the Age of Technology (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1980). For another translation of a key Gehlen article, see "A Philosophical-Anthropological Perspective on Technology," Research in Philosophy and Technology, 6 (1983),205-16.

Heidegger, Martin. The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays. Trans. William Lovitt. New York: Harper & Row, 1977. Quotations are from pp. 16, 20, 24, 27, 38, 39, and 35, respectively.

Kapp, Ernst. Philosophie oder vergleichende allgemeine Erdkunde als wissenschaftliche Dar- stellung der Erdverhiiltnisse und des Menschenlebens nach ihrem inneren Zusammenhang. 2 vols. Braunschweig: Westermann, 1845. One volume reprint under the shortened title Vergleichende allgemeine Erdkunde in wissenschaftlicher Darstellung. Braunschweig: Westerman, 1868.

PHILOSOPHY OF TECHNOLOGY 87

_____ . Grundlinien einer Philosophie der Technik; zur Entstehungsgeschichte der Cultur aus neuen Gesichtspunkten. Braunschweig: Westermann, IfJ"n. Reprinted, Dussel- dorf: Stern-Verlag Janssen, 1978. For an overview of Kapp's life and work see Hans-Martin Sass, "Man and His Environment: Ernst Kapp's Pioneering Experience and His Philosophy of Technology and Environment," in Glen E. Lich and Dona B. Reeves, eds., German Culture in Texas (Boston: Twayne, 1979), pp. 82-99.

Lafitte, Jacques. Reflexions sur la science des machines. Paris: Bloud & Gay, 1932. pp. 162. Reprinted, Paris: J. Vrin, 1972. A translation of this work has been made by Lynda Grant, John Hart, and Jean LeMoyne and published as Reflections on the Science of Machines (Computer Science Department, Univ. of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, Canada: Mechanology Press, n.d.). Translations of a small section from the book along with an article by Lafitte summarizing his conclusions, entitled "On the Science of Machines," (1933), appear as part of "Analysis of Machines in the French Intellectual Tradition," Re- search in Philosophy & Technology, 1 (1979),208-223.

Lenk, Hans, and Gunter Ropohl. "Toward an Interdisciplinary and Pragmatic Philosophy of Technology: Technology as a Focus for Interdisciplinary Reflection and Systems Research," Research in Philosophy & Technology, 2 (1979), 15-52.

McLuhan, H. Marshall. Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. New York: McGraw- Hill, 1964.

Moser, Simon. "Toward a Metaphysics of Technology," Philosophy Today, 15 (Summer 1971), 129-156. Trans. William Carroll, Carl Mitcham, and Robert Mackay from Metaphysik einst und jetzt (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1958). Revised German version published as "Kritik der traditionellen Technikphilosophie," in Hans Lenk and Simon Moser, eds. Techne, Technik, Technologie (Pullach: Verlag Dokumentation, 1973), pp 11-81.

Mumford, Lewis. The Myth of the Machine. Vol. 1: Techniques and Human Development. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1967. Vol. 2: The Pentagon of Power. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1970. Quotations from vol. I, pp. 8-9, and vol. 2, p. 155, re- spectively.

Popper, Karl R. The Open Society and Its Enemies. 2 vols. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1945; 4th ed., 1962. The discussion of social engineering first occurs in vol. I, ch. 3, sect. 4, but is then returned to throughout the book, with a distinction being drawn between utopian (bad) and piecemeal (good) social engineering.

Rapp, Friedrich. Analytical Philosophy of Technology. Trans. Stanley R. Carpenter and Theodor Longenbruch. Boston: D. Reidel, 1981.

Riessen, Hendrik van. Filosofie en techniek. Kampen: J.H. Kok, 1949. Rousseau, Jean Jacques. Social Contract and Discourses. Trans. G.D.H. Cole. New York:

Dutton, 1950. Quotations from pp. 150, 158-159, and 161, respectively. Schuurman, Egbert. Technology and the Future: A Philosophical Challenge. Trans. Herbert

Donald Morton. Toronto: Wedge, 1980. Pp. xxiii, 434. Translated from Techniek en toe- komst (Assen: Van Gorcum, 1972).

Simondon, Gilbert. Du Mode d'existence des objets techniques. Paris: Aubier-Montaigne, 1958. Reprinted, 1969.

"Toward a Philosophy of Technology," Technology and Culture 7 (Summer 1966), pp. 301- 390. Contents: Lewis Mumford's "Technics and the Nature of Man," James K. Feibleman's "Technology as Skills," Mario Bunge's "Technology as Applied Science," Joseph Agassi's "The Confusion between Science and Technology in the Standard Philosophies of Science," 1. O. Wisdom's "The Need for Corroboration: Comments on Agassi's Paper," Henryk Skolimowski's "The Structure of Thinking in Technology," and I. C. Jarvie's "The Social Character of Technological Problems: Comments on Skolimowski's Paper."

Ure, Andrew. The Philosophy of Manufactures, or An Exposition of the Scientific, Moral, and Commercial Economy of the Factory System of Great Britain. London: Charles Knight, 1835. Reprinted, New York: Augustus Kelley, 1967. Quotation from p. 1.

Veblen, Thorstein. The Instinct of Workmanship and the State of the Industrial Arts. New York: Macmillan, 1914. Reprinted New York: Augustus Kelly, 1964.

_____ . The Engineers and the Price System. New York: B. W. Huebsch, 1921. Reprinted New York: August Kelly, 1965.

88 MITCHAM

Walker, Timothy. "Defense of Mechanical Philosophy," North American Review, 33 (July 1832), 122-136. Reprinted in Carroll W. Pursell Jr., ed., Readings in Technology and Ameri- can Life (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1969), pp. 67-77.

Zschimmer, Eberhard. Philosophie der Technik; yom Sinn der Technik und Kritik des Unsinns iiber die Technik. Jena: E. Diederichs, 1914. 2nd edition, Jena: E. Diederichs, 1919. 3rd edi- tion, completely revised with a new subtitle, Einfiihrung in die technische Ideenwelt. Stutt- gart: F. Enke, 1933.

_____ . Philosophie der Technik. Berlin: E. J. Mittler, 1917. A pamphlet publishing a lecture.

_____ . Technik und Idealismus. Jena: Verlag der Jenaer Volksbuchhandlung, 1920. Another pamphlet of a lecture.

_____ . Deutsche Philosoph en der Technik. Stuttgart: F. Enke, 1937. Essays on Kapp, Eyth, Eduard von Mayer, Ulrich Wendt, DuBois-Reymond, and Viktor Engelhardt. Nazi in- fluence is indicated by the exclusion of Dessauer.

_____ . "V om Wessen des technischen Schaffens." Zeitschrift for deutsche Philologie. (Stuttgart), 6 (1940), 231-238.

This paper makes use of and builds upon research incorporated in two previous publications: "Philosophy of Technology;' in Paul T. Durbin, ed., A Guide to the Culture of Science, Tech- nology, and Medicine (New York: Free Press, 1980; paperback reprint, 1984), pp. 282-363; and "Engineering and the Philosophy of Technology," Science, Technology & Society, whole no. 32 (Nov. 1982), pp. 1-6.