Agazzi, E.

Lenk, Hans

English

KITopen

PHIL & TECH 4:1 Fall 1998 Agazzi and Lenk, Introduction/1ADVANCES IN THE PHILOSOPHY OFTECHNOLOGYPROCEEDINGS OF A MEETING OF THE INTERNATIONAL ACADEMY OF THE PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE, KARLSRUHE, GERMANY, MAY 1997INTRODUCTIONEvandro Agazzi, University of Fribourg, and Hans Lenk, University of KarlsruheIn philosophy proper, thus far, technology and technics have been ratherpoorly represented.  Their stature is low because of a tendency to class themamongst merely practical things in merely practical realms—while "realphilosophy" is thought of as dealing with fundamental, primarily theoreticalproblems.  And this is so despite a respectable tradition in the modern era, notablyhighlighted by Immanuel Kant, of granting primacy to practical philosophy(unfortunately, most often only in principle or in theoretical terms).With the exponentially-increasing growth in the realm of industrialization,it has become clear that technology will inevitably gain a prominent and importantplace in the modern world.  Nonetheless, problems of technology have beenlargely ignored by philosophers.  Although a few specialized books on philosophyof technology were published in the nineteenth century (for example, byBeckmann in 1806 and Kapp in 1877), they were largely ignored by mainstreamphilosophers.  Only relatively recently have philosophers with internationalreputations begun to emphasize the importance—indeed, the central role—oftechnology in the history of humankind, and notably in the modern era.Karl Jaspers and Martin Heidegger have stressed technology as the fate ofhumankind.  Jaspers called technology "the main problem" (Hauptproblem) of ourmodern situation.  And Heidegger (in Vorträge und Aufsätze, 1967, p. 72) called"technique," or technology, our "perfected metaphysics" (vollendete Metaphysik). According to Heidegger, technology is "essentially" identical with modernmetaphysics, providing for us a kind of metaphysical constitution of the world thatis presupposed as the fundamental core of any human possibility or opportunity ofPHIL & TECH 4:1 Fall 1998 Agazzi and Lenk, Introduction/2action or potentiality of world-making.  In technology, humans confront nature,they corner it like game brought to bay—and they do so according to afundamental necessity of anticipatory confrontation, where instrumentation offersthe conditions or requirements for human action, even survival.  Thus,technology, with its ever-increasing growth and acceleration, seems not to remaina mere universe of instruments.  Instead, it seems to impose itself as afundamental trait or factor of modern world-making—at least if we are thinkingabout changing the world or reshaping its character.In this sense, technology seems to have become the total fate ofhumankind.  Is it a good fate or a bad fate?  That is a question that is gaining evermore prominence, especially as all of us, because of overpopulation problems ona planetary scale, become quite literally dependent on improvements intechnology—which then requires the controlling of its rampant proliferation oracceleration.In contradistinction to Heidegger's diagnosis, that technology has becomethe metaphysical fate of Being today, independent of human life and action, webelieve that technology and the technological world are human-made; iftechnology has any "ontological" or "metaphysical" character, it is only becausehumans have granted it such, based on human or anthropological (notmetaphysical) considerations.  Humans today are, indeed, dependent ontechnology; however, on the other hand, humankind has never had greater scopefor action, greater energy, or greater potential than is the case today.  And this isprecisely (for good or ill) because of the increase of technological power, astechnology gets ever more systematized and takes over more and more realms.What all of this means is that, even if technology is the fate ofhumankind, the fateful aspect is of secondary importance:  our world is human-made, and we must shoulder our responsibilities.  Humankind cannot avoid orevade its responsibility precisely for the technological world, for all the featuresof technology.  Neither can the human race overlook its duties toward theenvironment—at the global, regional, or national level—while attributingtechnological development to some non-personal, non-human factor (likeHeidegger's fate of Being).  It is not Being but humans who have expanded theirpowers at an exponentially accelerating rate; and it is this technological growth,with its drastic encroachments on nature and the global ecosystem, that we have toPHIL & TECH 4:1 Fall 1998 Agazzi and Lenk, Introduction/3fear.  In proportion to the growth of the power of technology, human—yes,humankind's—responsibility must grow at the same pace.On the other hand, problems of the responsibility for large-scaletechnological development and environmental degradation—problems ofmaintaining the biosphere as "humanity's living room" (along with all the plantand animal species with which we must coexist)—seem to fade away, to escapebeing assigned to any individual bearers.  Technological power seems to runrampant, to escape domestication or taming or getting worn down by anyresponsible human action.This leads to a further development.  A worldwide "technopolitics" seemsto be called for in order to avoid the traps that nature and society lay before us inthe form of human disillusions, pollution, and the exhaustion of systems andnatural resources.  World-scale technology assessments, and social andenvironmental impact assessments have become a matter of necessity.  Inparticular, preventive measures to avoid imminent problems of climate and theenvironment are urgent issues now.  Traditional social and political structures,including nation states and loose confederations, do not seem adequate to dealwith the dramatic, ever-accelerating problems of the contemporary world onplanet Earth.To that extent, Jaspers and Heidegger were right on at least one point:  aphilosophy adequate to deal with technological problems cannot any longer rely,for ethical responses, on the practical reason of individual persons' insights. Politically pressing problems of major import—planning, just distribution, publicparticipation, effective social organization—all of these are now urgent on a worldscale.  But large-scale problems of this nature have scarcely been mentioned intraditional philosophy of technology of the Jaspers/Heidegger sort.  Meanwhile,they have taken center stage in the international political arena—as in the worldenvironment and world climate conferences at Rio de Janeiro and Kyoto.Another point:  it is not only the environment and the biosphere that havebeen shaped by technological development with its systemic interconnections andinteractions.  The social, political, and information realms have also come to becharacterized by new features—especially information networks and relatedsystems technologies, which have gained prominence and had ever-increasingPHIL & TECH 4:1 Fall 1998 Agazzi and Lenk, Introduction/4impacts in recent decades.  Even traditional technologies have come to bedominated by computer and information technologies, by multimedia electronicsystems—and by the managerial approach associated with them.  And this trend,like the others mentioned here, is also accelerating exponentially.Technics are older than science, and the technics of ancient history werelater transformed by craft techniques; then these gave way to science-basedtechnology.  Now it has become all too apparent that systemstechnologies—computer-generated, computer-assisted, and computer-guided onthe basis of information, software, and systems management—have come todominate the scene.  And all of this requires management by large, complex,dynamic social systems—so-called "socio-technical systems"—that in turn requirelarge-scale organization, systems management, and even systems engineering.  Infact, systems engineering—involving large-scale organization, management, andinformation-based strategies such as operations research—has become increasinglyprominent and important.All of these developments call for new methods in the philosophy oftechnology.  Not only does philosophy of technology have new anthropological,social, and political problems to deal with; it must also wrestle with complex andnew methodological problems.  These involve relationships and interactionsbetween the sciences and various technical disciplines, as well as problems of thereliability (even the continued viability) of traditional technology assessment,environmental impact assessment, social impact, and planning methodologies.This leaves many tasks to be undertaken, much business to be done byphilosophers of technology, both now and in the future.  So it seemed natural andworthwhile for the International Academy of the Philosophy of Science to addressthese problems of a new and modern philosophy of technology.  This world-renowned organization took up the challenge at an international conference inKarlsruhe, Germany, May 20-26, 1997, under the title, "Advances in thePhilosophy of Technology."  More than 65 participants— philosophers, scientists,and graduate students from 22 countries—took part in the sessions, which touchedon all the topics mentioned here, but in a practice-oriented fashion.  Everythingfrom general topics—such as the relations between science and technology,technology and culture, and the ethics of technology—to special fields of appliedtechnology was dealt with.  A selection of papers from the conference is presentedPHIL & TECH 4:1 Fall 1998 Agazzi and Lenk, Introduction/5here in the Society for Philosophy and Technology's quarterly electronic journal. These papers will fill all four issues of volume 4 of the journal.On behalf of the Academie Internationale de Philosophie des Sciences, wethank all the speakers at the conference, the contributors to this volume, and theSociety for Philosophy and Technology, including the general editor of itspublications and its current president, Paul Durbin.We would like also to add one final note.  The board of the Academychose Karlsruhe for this conference because of the long history of the Universityof Karlsruhe, founded in 1825 as the first Technical University in Germany.  Forover a century, Karlsruhe has been recognized not only for its engineering andtechnical contributions, but also for work in Engineering Philosophy, EngineeringEthics, and Philosophy of Technology.  Especially noteworthy have beencontributions of Eberhard Zschimmer and Simon Moser.  One of us (Hans Lenk)will summarize some of these accomplishments in one of the papers includedhere.

Advances in the philosophy of technology: proceedings of a meeting of the International Academy of the Philosophy of Science, Karlsruhe, Germany, May 1997 - Introduction

https://publikationen.bibliothek.kit.edu/236098/2494

Advances in the philosophy of technology: proceedings of a meeting of the International Academy of the Philosophy of Science, Karlsruhe, Germany, May 1997 - Introduction

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