Abstract
Our previous exploration has already introduced the element of technique into the scope of elements relevant to labour and work. The sphere of this discussion was man’s attitude to nature as representing or embodying reality. Technique is a kind of intermediary between man and nature since on the one hand it relates to man’s given needs and on the other to his intervention in nature for the sake of satisfying these needs through means invented by himself and moulded by the given instruments of work. Nature is the environment while technique is the equipment for facing that environment, going beyond the given instruments but retaining the purpose of fulfilling the functions which the given equipment cannot fulfil by itself.
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References
Cf. J. Ellul: The Technological Society, transi. J. Wilkinson, New York, Knopf, 1964; and his:
Cf. J. Ellul: ‘Symbolic functions, technology and society’, Journal of Social Biological Structures, Vol. 1, No. 3, 1978, pp. 207ff.
This connotation probably underlies the title and the main argument of Denys Gabor’s Inventing the Future, Harmondsworth, Penguin Books, 1963.
Henry Bergson: La Perception du Changement, Conferences faites à l’Université d’Oxford, The Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1911.
J. Dewey: The Quest for Certainty, A Study of the Relation of Knowledge and Action, London, Allen and Unwin, 1930, p. 234.
I. Kant: Kritik d. Urteilskraft, Akad. Ausgabe, Bd. V, para. 10, p. 220, Meredith, transi. Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1964, p. 61.
J. S. Mill: On Liberty, in On Liberty and Considerations on Representative Government, ed. R.B. McCallum, Oxford, Blackwell, 1964, p. 102
R. Descartes: Discourse on Method of Rightly Conducting the Reason, The Philosophical Works, Vol. 1 (E.S. Halane & G.R.T. Ross, Transl.). New York, Dover, 1933, p. 92.
This is the gist of the first part of Bacon’s Novum Organon.
Cf. D. Boorstin: The Republic of Technology, Reflections on Our Future Community, New York, Harper & Row, 1978.
The present author’s Theory and Practice, An Essay on Human Intentionalities deals with some aspects of technology, pp. 206ff. The Hague, Martinus Nijhoff.
Eugen Fink in Traktat über die Gewalt des Menschen, Vittorio Klostermann, Frankfurt a/M presents a significant analysis of the topic.
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© 1985 Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, Dordrecht
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Rotenstreich, N. (1985). Diversification of Action: History and Technology. In: Reflection and Action. Phaenomenologica, vol 97. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-010-9738-3_4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-010-9738-3_4
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