Abstract
Contrary to the common view that modern technology derives from modern science, Heidegger presents a reverse picture in which science originated in the essence of technology, wherein Being speaks. We argue that it is in this sense that Heidegger speaks of the Same [das Selbe] of science and technology, both being ultimately grounded in the history of Being. In the long span from 1938 to 1976, Heidegger has continuously delved into the relation of science and technology. In our research we also engage ourselves with various claims made by philosophers of technoscience. We show that Heidegger has always kept himself well-informed of traditional as well as new types of technology and science, including quantum physics, atomic technology (as used in nuclear reactors), and biophysics (including speculations about genetic manipulation in the 1950s). Nevertheless, one cannot ascribe to Heidegger the view that these new developments originate a new Epoch of Being.
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Notes
- 1.
[Most of the participants at the 2001 conference, organized 25 years after Heidegger’s initial 1976 question, did address Heidegger’s question, including Heidegger’s student, Ute Guzzoni in her presentation. A German version of her essay appears in the proceedings and an English translation of her presentation is included in Glazebrook 2012. Holger Schmid also takes up Heidegger’s question. See Schmid’s chapter to follow in the present volume.—BB].
- 2.
For other abbreviations of Heidegger’s works see the list of references included at the end of this chapter. Page numbers of English translations if available follow the page numbers of the original.
- 3.
The term ‘technoscience’ is a term that is now widely used in “Science & Technology Studies.” Most contemporary philosophers of technology (such as Feenberg, Ihde, Latour) subscribe to the thesis that science and technology cannot (anymore) be separated and should be studied via detailed case studies (i.e. philosophy of science and technology “after the empirical turn”). They are critical of Heidegger because he is considered an essentialist, determinist, and pessimist. Ihde’s Heidegger’s Technologies: Postphenomenological Perspectives is a systematic discussion of important differences between Heidegger’s approach and his own “pragmato-phenomenological account” (which “leaves in shambles the metaphysical Heideggerian tale”) Ihde (2010), 113.
- 4.
- 5.
See for example two pages of insightful notes on the steam engine (MWT 367–8), including “the politics of artifact.” How the steam engine moved the working place of women and children from home to the factory, from country side to town. Examples regarding more recent technologies are given in Sects. 4 and 5.
- 6.
GA 54, 114/77. On Heidegger’s use of the Same in regard to intellectual relations between philosophers, see Ma (2008), 202.
- 7.
According to Ihde (2010), 93, Heidegger’s interest in science and technology is shown only in a few brief periods, that is: the period of Being and Time, the mid 1930s, the mid 1950s, and, after “a gap,” his last statement of 1976. This picture is unconvincing in view of Heidegger’s own writings, as the citations in this section show.
- 8.
At GA 16, 349, one finds a summary of this lecture, the last sentence of which reads: “neuzeitliche Wissenschaft [ist] eine Weise der Technik.” This is the same lecture, elsewhere referred to as “Die Begründung des neuzeitlichen Weltbildes durch die Metaphysik” of 9 June 1938 (GA 16, 802), which led to the published text of ZWB.
- 9.
MWT 126: “Die neuzeitliche Wissenschaft als “Technik”—Dieser Schritt im Vortrag 1938 noch nicht vollzogen, obzwar alles bereit.” The “step” was also prepared in Beitr. (1936/1938), but also there not fully taken. For example, in § 76 Heidegger provides a list of propositions on science. In proposition number 19 (155/107), he speaks of the “growing consolidation of the machinational-technical essence of all science”, which can be considered as support for the claim that Heidegger was prescient concerning technoscience. In the revised list of propositions on science in his notes of 1940 he is more explicit (proposition 22, MWT 124–5): “Modern science is research because it has its essential foundation (Wesensgrund) in technology.”
- 10.
The editors of the Gesamtausgabe don’t give a date for this bundle of notes, except for indicating that it is from the period of ÜM (1936/1946). The years given for various text on MWT 126f suggest 1940 as the best guess.
- 11.
“Was die neuzeitliche Wissenschaft ist: »Technik«. Was »Technik« ist—Vollendung der Metaphysik.” For a discussion of the relation of technology and metaphysics see §1 in Ma and van Brakel (2014).
- 12.
“die Einfügung der neuzeitlichen Wissenschaft in das Wesen der neuzeitlichen Technik, das später als sie erscheint, aber früher im Wesen waltet” (MWT 127); “reine Naturwissenschaft [ist] ein Wesensvollzug der Technik” (125). “Die Einheit der neuzeitlichen Wissenschaft als »Technik«” (128).
- 13.
“Das Wesen der modernen Technik, das Ge-stell, begann mit dem wesensmäßigen Grundakt des Bestellens, insofern es zuerst die Natur als den Grund-Bestand im vorhinein sicher stellte. Die moderne Technik ist nicht angewandte Naturwissenschaft, vielmehr ist die neuzeitliche Wissenschaft Anwendung des Wesens der Technik, …” (BV 43).
- 14.
Marginal note to W&B only in GA 7, 62. “Das, was die moderne Wissenschaft in ihrem innersten Wesen bewegt, das, wodurch sich der gezeigte unscheinbare Sachverhalt ereignet, können wir heute nur erst ganz unzureichend und überdies leicht mißdeutbar kennzeichnen, wenn wir dafür den Namen »Technik« nennen.”
- 15.
EP 72/58. Cf. ZWB, 85/64: “From an inner compulsion, the researcher presses forward into the sphere occupied by the figure of, in the essential sense, the technologist.”
- 16.
“das Eigene der neuzeitlichen Technologie und der in ihm schon gründenden Wissenschaften: die Gestellnis.” On Gestellnis see Ma and van Brakel (2014).
- 17.
“Die Natur wird daraufhin herausgefordert, d. h. gestellt, sich in einer berechenbaren Gegenständlichkeit zu zeigen. … Dieses Her-Stellen, d. h. das Eigentümliche der Technik, vollzieht sich auf eine einzigartige Weise innerhalb der Geschichte des europäischen Abendlandes durch die Entfaltung der neuzeitlichen mathematischen Naturwissenschaft. Deren Grundzug ist das Technische, das zuerst durch die moderne Physik in seiner neuen und eigentlichen Gestalt zum Vorschein kommt” Heidegger (1963), 156.
- 18.
“Die neuzeitliche Physik ist der in seiner Herkunft noch unbekannte Vorbote des Ge-stells” (FT 23/303).
- 19.
Heidegger being prescient concerning “technoscience” was already apparent in Beitr. “Natural sciences will become a part of machine technology and its operations.” To this could be added Heidegger’s early awareness of the “knowledge economy”: what counts is not anymore which country has the richest natural resources (minerals etc.), but the country which is most successful in technological innovation (Bedr 9).
- 20.
Kockelmans has given a still useful and insightful overview of Heidegger’s view of science drawing on FD (1935/1936), ZWB (1938), WhD (1951/1952), W&B (1953), FT (1953), G (1955). See in particular ch. 5 “Toward an Ontology of the Modern Natural Sciences.” Of course at the time of writing Kockelmans did not have access to sources which have become available from the many volumes of the Gesamtausgabe published up to now.
- 21.
For Heidegger’s broad notion of “the mathematical” see FD 69-77/249-255, ZWB 78/58, Kockelmans (1985), 142f, 150–1, and Dea (2009). Ta mathemata means for the Greeks that which man knows in advance in observing entities and dealing with things. Carson (2010) characterizes it as a view of mathematization as prescription that things make their appearance as objects predictable, calculable, and governable in a technological sense.
- 22.
In “Wesen der Sprache” (WS 178/74) Heidegger ascribes to Nietzsche the insight that “method” is more essential than “result.” Scientific method is not a mere instrument, “it has pressed science into its own service.” To be contrasted with “thinking”, where there is “neither method nor theme.”
- 23.
- 24.
Heidegger may also be said to be prescient concerning the current “research” phase of modern science: research in groups, distinction of Geisteswissenschaften and Naturwissenschaften disappearing, institutionalisation, intertwined with industry, becoming an enterprise. See ZWB and Kockelmans (1985), 152–162.
- 25.
And this is further interpreted in Ge-stell terms (135/105): “the point is control and domination of the processes of nature” (em. or.). This is followed by a citation from the last part of Descartes’ Discourse on Method; “we render ourselves the master and possessors of nature” (136/105). [Descartes, Philosophical Writings, 1: 119. “Nous render comme maîtres et possesseurs de la nature.”].
- 26.
Heidegger is well aware that, as expressed by the Scholar in the conversation (14/9): “I just can’t rid myself of the suspicion that you are interpreting the Greek word τέχνε in terms of your own dogmatically asserted definition of the essence of modern ‘technology’.”
- 27.
FT 303-4/21-2. Also BV 43.
- 28.
Kockelmans (1985), 177 interprets these passages by saying “although science is first ‘in execution’, technicity was first in a perhaps still unconscious intention.”
- 29.
Given the typical Heideggerian view that “That which is primally early shows itself only ultimately to men” (FT 23/327).
- 30.
That revealing concerns nature, above all, as the chief storehouse of the standing energy reserve. “For physics, nature is the standing reserve [Bestand] of energy and matter” (BV 42).
- 31.
“Der Mensch selbst ist gestellt, ist daraufhin angesprochen, dem genannten Anspruch zu entsprechen” (ÜTS 20/138). Cf. FT 21/302: “It remains true, nonetheless, that man in the technological age is, in a particularly striking way, challenged forth into revealing.”
- 32.
Cf. WM 257/197: “Sometimes it seems as if modern humanity is rushing headlong toward this goal of producing itself technologically” (em. or.).
- 33.
The reference is to “[Friedrich] Wagner, Die Wissenschaften und die gefährdete Welt.[Eine Wissenschaftssoziologie der Atomphysik, München, 1964] pp. 225 ff., 462 ff.”
- 34.
“Das automatische Zeitalter nach dem III. Weltkrieg” (MWT 368); “Die zweite industrielle Revolution. Die Eingabe des Entscheidens in die Maschine” (MWT 376).
- 35.
Heidegger has provided detailed accounts of the work of Galileo and Newton (FD 77-95/255-271). Dea (2009), 54 interprets these accounts in Being and Time terms: “Before Newton, the fore-understanding the scientist brought to his understanding of nature included an interest in individual entities and, hence, a hermeneutical opennes to Being; after Newton, the scientists’ hermeneutical horizon is restricted by the fore-understanding that individual entities are the indifferent manifestations of universal laws.”
- 36.
He asks, without implying that “an other beginning” is occurring: “What understanding of beings and what concept of truth is it that underlies the transformation of science into research?” (ZWB 86/65).
- 37.
According to Ihde (2010), 109, it is by the mid-fifties that Heidegger came to recognize that “quantum physics totally resituates the early modern subject-object distinction.” This is incorrect, as we will see.
- 38.
Heidegger citing Heisenberg in W&B 54/172.
- 39.
Cf. Heisenberg (1955).
- 40.
Some time before the meeting, Heidegger had distributed a draft of the text that was later to be published with the title “Wissenschaft und Besinnung” (W&B).
- 41.
ZS 246f/310. From the letter a month earlier (dated September 30), it is apparent that Heidegger had been working on the preparation of his lecture and public discussion with Heisenberg for a considerable period of time. It would seem that his notes and drafts in this summer have not (all?/yet?) been published (cf. GA 76).
- 42.
Cf. BV 43: “Although atomic physics is differently disposed [geartet]—only statistical instead of determinate [eindeutig] calculability–, it is still the same physics.” W&B (54/172): “atomic physics admits only of the guaranteeing of an objective coherence that has a statistical character.”
- 43.
“Among all the objects he can only meet himself—but what is ‘himself’ in this case: the instrumentation!” GA 7, 57.
- 44.
Comments on Heisenberg etc. were occasioned after the participants of the seminar had objected to Heidegger using classical physics as a “general” characterization of science.
- 45.
Heidegger acknowledges that quantum physics has changed the notion of causality “once again …. It seems as though causality is shrinking into a reporting, ‘a reporting challenged forth’ of standing-reserves that must be guaranteed either simultaneously or in sequence” (FT 24/304).
- 46.
Including an empirically equivalent alternative to “standard” quantum mechanics, viz. Bohm mechanics, which presupposes a deterministic world and, by present standards, leads to the same predictions as “standard” quantum mechanics.
- 47.
Heidegger seems to be pointing to a similar direction when he writes (Beitr 132/92): “It is very difficult to grasp historically the emergence of what is machinationally ownmost to beings, because basically it has been effective in operation since the first beginning of Western thinking.”
- 48.
Other “falsifying” examples (discussed by Ihde) could be clocks determining daily life in Europe long before the rise of modern science or technology. Also: technology used in navigation on the Atlantic for the past millennium (to be contrasted with “lifeform” navigation on the Pacific—which in some sense was equally successful). Ihde (2010), 68: “through the use of technologies, experience had already become prepared for the scientific experience of the world.”
- 49.
“The rule of das Gestell has challenged humans as long as they have existed” Riis (2010), 116.
- 50.
In a somewhat different context Claude Lefort has argued that there is a definite connection between political discourse and modernity and that therefore the societies of ancient Rome and Athens are modern societies.
- 51.
What might be exceptions? Inuit, Aboriginals, Khoisan, Polynesians?
- 52.
“It’s a contraption made by shaping a piece of wood. The back end is heavy and the front end light and it raises the water as though it were pouring it out, so fast that it seems to boil right over!”
- 53.
See on the latter issue Ma (2008), 92–99.
- 54.
Heidegger mentions five essential features of modernity, including science and machine technology (ZWB 75f/57f). According to him the fundamental event of modernity is the conquest of the world as picture (94/71).
- 55.
It has been said that the burden of science and technology lies not in their calculative style but rather in their insistent and aggressive spirit. Alderman (1978), 43. However, we agree with Rojcewicz (2006), 114 that “science attacks nature with experiments is not what is impositional, but the prime imposition is the representation of nature.”
- 56.
“Manche scheinen heute mit der Not zu ringen, für das Walten der modernen Technik und der mit ihr identischen Wissenschaft eine Vorstellung von der Geschichte zu finden, in die sich der durch jenes Walten bestimmte Weltzustand einordnen” GA 13, 151.
- 57.
We are citing the translator of Was heißt Denken? Heidegger himself wrote: “man heute.”
- 58.
MWT 144: “‘Technik’ Ist sie nur die Anwendung der Naturwissenschaften auf …—worauf denn? Oder ist die neuzeitlichte Naturwissenschaft die Folge der ‘Technik’? Aber diese (Kraftmas-chinentechnik) zeitlich später als neuzeitliche Naturwissenschaft. Das schließt nicht aus, daß das metaphysische Wesen dieser Technik das sachlich wesensmäßig frühere.”
- 59.
W&B, marginal note only in GA 7, 62: “Das Wesen der modernen Technik ist indessen noch dunkler als dasjenige der Wissenschaft—so dunkel, daß wir vermutlich noch nicht einmal dahin gelangt sind, nach der modernen Technik sachgerecht zu fragen.”
- 60.
Meunier is the translator of Heidegger’s inaugural lecture “Was ist Metaphysik?” into French.
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Ma, L., van Brakel, J. (2014). Heidegger and the Reversed Order of Science and Technology. In: Babich, B., Ginev, D. (eds) The Multidimensionality of Hermeneutic Phenomenology. Contributions to Phenomenology, vol 70. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-01707-5_11
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