Technological Knowledge and Artifacts: An Analytical View

Abstract

The philosophy of technology is a fairly young discipline, compared to, for example, the philosophy of science. Most of what was published in the early days of this discipline was fairly critical. Authors such as Martin Heidegger and Jacques Ellul wrote in rather negative terms about the impact of technology on humans and on culture. These authors are commonly reckoned to be the Continental philosophers, the term “Continental” referring to the European Continent (with countries such as Germany and France). It is also common use to contrast this Continental stream in philosophy with the analytical stream. This, of course, is a strange way of defining contrasting philosophical streams, as “Continental” is related to the geographical origin of authors, while analytical has to do with the nature of what the philosophers in that stream do. The reference to geographical differences is becoming more and more problematic, as nowadays many analytical philosophers are from the Continent. Therefore a better way of distinguishing the two streams is not by referring to the background of the philosophers but to the kind of philosophical work they do. Then it seems appropriate to distinguish between two functions or tasks of philosophy: an analytical function, and a critical function (De Vries, 2005a). The analytical function deals with conceptualization (Scruton, 1996).