Technology from Engineering to Decision Theory

Abstract

This last chapter is devoted to the philosophy of technology lato sensu. Most philosophers have ignored technology, that major component and powerful motor of modern culture particularly since the First Industrial Revolution (which started ca. 1750). Those few who have been struck by technology have either sung or cursed it for its impact on man, but usually without pausing to analyze it as a body of knowledge with philosophical inputs and outputs, and therefore just as worthy of philosophical analysis as science. (Ortega y Gasset, 1939, was an early exception.)