His is one of the most searching and comprehensive classifications, and it has been rightly praised for its rigor, originality, and exhaustiveness.2 It begins by distinguishing (as I did above) between the narrow sense of technology (used by engineers) and the broad sense (used by social scientists). One might use this distinction to proscribe all philosophy of technology by insisting that technology, as its clear and narrow meaning suggests, be left to the experts, the people who truly know what technology is in its mechanical, chemical, and electrical aspects. But most of Mitcham’s efforts are devoted to clarifying the phenomena located toward the broader end of the spectrum that spans the meaning of technology, and he attends to the philosophical tasks that are implied in those phenomena. These efforts assume that the way in which the products of technology in the narrow sense enter the everyday world is problematic and that this problem is perhaps more troubling and important than the technical problems that are internal to engineering. Mitcham’s procedure is open to a more ambitious assumption, namely, that a profound problem of technology arises not just locally at the intersection of engineering products and the everyday world but that there is a global problem of technology; technology may be thought of as a force or an approach to reality that is all-pervasive. In that view engineering is not the origin and focus of technology and its problems but merely one and perhaps the clearest manifestation of a more inclusive and decisive phenomenon. It was to make room for this radical thesis that the distinction between the substantive and the instrumental sense of technology was introduced above.
Initially, at any rate, Mitcham rejects the radical thesis by defining technology as “the human making and using of material artifacts in all forms and aspects.”3 Technology so understood contrasts according to Aristotle’s distinction with “human doing—e.g., political, moral, or religious action.”4 This point, as Mitcham stresses, is important for its force regarding philosophical practice. Philosophical analysis has traditionally ignored human making, and today, too, one will look in vain for philosophical reflections on technology in most textbooks and anthologies. But it is not clear that the Aristotelian distinction corresponds to a contemporary difference. Today it may be illuminating only in the remarkable fact of its disappearance. Human making has overgrown and suffocated human doing, truly political action in particular. That, at least, is the point of Hannah Arendt’s influential book on The Human Condition.5
Mitcham then distinguishes three major dimensions within the full spectrum of the meaning of technology: the subject or material, the functional or structural, and the social or historical. It is the middle one that is further analyzed, and it is best understood from its complements. The material dimension lies close to technology in its technical or engineering sense. The social and historical dimensions are entrusted to historians and social scientists. To call the remaining dimension structural or functional is, it seems to me, simply to use cautious terms for “essential.”6
But why the concern with the essence of technology? One answer might be that knowledge of the essence of technology would allow us to gain a firm grip on technology. Yet in one sense technology is nothing but the systematic effort to get everything under control.7 And so the pursuit of the essence of technology would result in the unchecked advancement of technology—instead of what? Again the distinction between the substantive and the instrumental sense of technology makes room for an answer. If technology is thought of as a nearly irresistible instrument, the danger arises that we embark on an endless and aimless course of problem solving. If technology is said to be a force in its own right, we may pause and consider the ways of technology. In particular we will reflect on whether technology fulfills our deepest aspirations, and such reflections in turn may lead us to ask what in the world moves and sustains us most deeply. These questions are, of course, among the essential ones of traditional philosophy, and they, I am sure, are the basis of Mitcham’s concern with the essence of technology.8
Though the substantive notion of technology opens up these questions, it also, as noted before, closes them too quickly and simply. Mitcham forces one to be more circumspect; he points out that the function or structure of technology displays three distinct aspects: “technology-as-knowledge, technology-as-process, and technology-as-product—or thoughts, activities, and objects.”9 Mitcham rightly insists that any definition (and theory, to be sure) of technology ought to be tested in light of these essential distinctions. They reflect a traditional ordo essendi in that the distinctions apply well to human technology from its first beginnings; and an ordo cognoscendi in that most scholarship is centered on one of these aspects of technology. Thus the distinctiveness of modern technology and the particular claims of a theory of technology have an appropriate background in the terms of Mitcham’s distinctions. Particularly as regards the objects of technology, it is a fair if demanding requirement that a philosophical theory of technology have something to say about the machines and products that surround us daily, and to do this in a mode that undercuts and illuminates the language of engineering and economics in which we normally speak about the technological furniture of our age. In discussing technology as process or activity, Mitcham singles out making and using as the “root distinctions.”10 Here again the traditional cast of this distinction provides an adequate focus for a crucial phenomenon in modern technological societies, the fact, i.e., that the balance of making and using has been shifted to using in the mode of consumption. Membership in that society is typically exercised through consumption. The general participation in making, on the other hand, has declined in terms of expertise and responsibility. These too are matters on which a theory of modern technology must shed light.
Regarding technology as knowledge, the inevitable task of a contemporary theory is to come to grips with the relation of modern science and technology. This is perhaps the most basic task of an investigation of technology and the one that is most often neglected or ineptly treated. Mitcham distinguishes a fourth aspect in the structure of technology—technology as volition. Most philosophers would accept knowing, doing, and objects as phenomena or distinctions sufficiently well-grounded in the prereflective, everyday world to provide unobjectionable starting points for philosophical analysis. To be sure, people make everyday distinctions between knowing and willing as often but not as well. Many philosophers would protest this distinction from the start as being prejudicial or confused. Mitcham acknowledges the obscurity of the nature of willing.11 And one should add that, while knowing in the general sense in which it designates the mental realm and contrasts with the realm of activity and of objects is fairly unproblematic, knowing when distinguished from willing becomes itself questionable in its outlines and boundaries. The reason why Mitcham persists with the problem of technology as volition is his insight that when the three preceding aspects of the structure of technology are attended to, there remains a troubling question about the ultimate springs and principles of technological activity.12 In particular, he argues that attention to technology as volition can open the problem of how or indeed whether technological means do conform to our deepest aspirations, a problem that too often gets a facile treatment in terms of the selection and realization of one’s values.13 We return here to the issue that is approached from a different angle when one asks: Is technology a powerful instrument in the service of our values, a force in its own right that threatens our essential welfare, or is there perhaps no clear problem of technology at all, merely an interplay of numerous and variable tendencies?
The three parts of this question are raised and answered affirmatively by the instrumentalist, the substantive, and the pluralist schools of thought. That they cannot all be right at once is readily apparent. The more helpful lesson that we can learn from Mitcham’s survey tells us that modern technology is evidently too complex and powerful a phenomenon to fit one of the answers above to the exclusion of the others. This point in turn leads us back to the task of discovering a fundamental pattern in techn
ology that, when explicated, corrects and unites partial and, at first sight, incompatible views. One source of the inconsistency and confusion that one discovers in surveying the dominant views of technology is the lack of a principled understanding of science. Science and technology are usually named in the same breath when one tries to discern the character of our time. Science and technology are thought to be much the same or at least aspects of one and the same enterprise. This is a fatally misleading and confusing assumption as I now want to show.
4
Scientific Theory
Science is both the subject and the rival of the philosophy of technology. A theory of technology must talk about science to explain the relation between science and technology. But it is also true that a theory of technology, in attempting to outline a world view, is in competition with science since it is science that today sets the standard of explanation and is widely thought to give the most accurate description of our world.
We accept this privileged rank of science in our dealings day in and day out. When asked to explain an illness, the phases of the moon, or the rate of inflation, we will not resort to the wrath of God, a dragon in the sky, or the vices of people. Rather we attempt to give a physiological, astronomical, or economic analysis as best we can. When a well runs dry, a horse becomes lame, or a car breaks down, we demand that action be taken on the basis of scientific information. We talk seriously about the origin and the structure of the universe in scientific terms and save stories of creation and of the sun’s chariot for special occasions.
It is difficult to establish whether such reflections accord with sociological fact, and the chief difficulty is this: one cannot presuppose, either with the public or among experts, a clear and common notion of what science is. There is no general agreement whether a sharp distinction must be made between science and technology. And among those who are willing to distinguish there is much controversy about the origin and status of scientific laws and explanations.
It is possible to measure the public’s command of scientific facts, and it is deplorably weak.1 Science as a whole seems to be a prohibitively complex and confusing phenomenon to the public, and its responses depend on what facets of the phenomenon and which inclinations of the respondents come into play. Science is sometimes confused or identified with technology.2 But if the questions are suitably framed, a distinction is made.3 Generally people’s opinion of science and scientists is high.4 In particular people respect and trust science more the better educated and the more acquainted they are with it.5 The vociferous critique of science as an unprincipled and dehumanizing force is clearly not shared by the public at large. Do people therefore have a scientific view of the world? One very limited study suggests that this is so where people are in command of their situation and that they resort to religion for an explanation of their predicament when resignation is all that is left.6
We touch here upon a problem that will require more attention. It is of the first philosophical rank and concerns the question: With what degree of insight has the normal citizen of the technological society appropriated his or her world? An answer must aim at an equilibrium of reflection and empirical research.7 The latter is required because the intuitions that guide our reflections are at times entirely at variance with more general facts. Yet the available data are always inconclusive because opinion surveys are of necessity directed by simple and brief questions which must elicit ambiguous responses. A survey as a rule cannot invite respondents to probe, clarify, and justify their responses. If today’s typical world possession is of concern, one must boldly develop one’s insights as an eyewitness and member of this society. But one is also bound to test these insights as far as possible against empirical findings.8
The entire exercise will of course be pointless if no attempt is made to expose today’s normal world citizenship to criticism, to expose its inconsistencies and liabilities, and to free and strengthen its profoundest aspirations. As a first step in this direction, let us try to remove some of the confusions that beset the common view of science by separating three senses of (modern) science. These are (1) science as a human and social enterprise, (2) science as the body of well-established laws and theories, (3) science in its applications. Of these, the second sense is central. The laws and theories of science are the goal of science as a social enterprise and the basis of its applications. Science in its central sense gives a representation of the general structure of reality that, for the first time in human history, exacts universal assent. Whereas science as a human enterprise shows all the features of other human works—ambition, ingenuity, heroic effort, resignation, treachery, jealousy, failure—science as a body of laws and theories is objective and cogent. Again, in the application of science there is resourcefulness, imperialism, generosity, wastefulness, recklessness. But none of these is attributable to or sanctioned by science in its second meaning. It makes no difference to the validity of a scientific law whether it has been discovered by a Jesuit or a Communist and whether it is applied to kill or to cure.
To argue this way is to urge a distinction between science and technology. Science in its third sense should be called technology. And science in its first sense only is essentially dependent on or allied with technology. But it is dangerous to settle matters so quickly. Do all scientific theories have an equal claim to objectivity and cogency? How precisely do they establish a standard for explaining and understanding our world as was earlier said? How does technology fit into the scientific view of the world? Is it merely applied science? We need more detail and illustration to answer these questions. Let us look at an example of scientific explanation.
5
Scientific Explanation
Why does grape juice turn to wine? It has long been known that through the influence of yeast the sugar in the must is converted into alcohol. How does the yeast get into the must? Some have held that it is generated spontaneously. But beginning in the eighteenth century, experiments were conducted to show that yeast does not arise from nothing, only from yeast. Yeast is already present on the grapes or in the vats and casks. From the same must, it can produce wines that differ in alcohol content, color, and taste. “Yeast” is a collective term and covers many strains, some of which aid in the making of bread and beer. Most beloved of winegrowers is Saccharomyces cerevisiae var. ellipsoideus.1 Like all yeasts, it consists of microorganisms as was first seen by van Leeuwenhoek in 1680 with hardly more than a good magnifying glass.2
How does yeast transform sugar into alcohol? Fermentation can be described by a formula, first reported by Gay-Lussac in 1810:
C6 H12 O6 = 2C2 H5OH + 2CO2
One sugar molecule is converted into two alcohol and two carbon dioxide molecules.3 But like “yeast,” “sugar” and “alcohol” cover many kinds. Here we have glucose and ethanol. What role does the yeast play in this? Does the yeast bring about the transformation by rearranging the atoms in mechanical fashion? That view was put forward by Liebig in the nineteenth century.4 Pasteur argued, however, that in fermentation the yeast ingests the sugar, releases the alcohol and carbon dioxide as waste products and retains a net gain of energy for growth.5 It took many more decades to work out the links in the long chain of these reactions in which enzymes play a crucial role.6
Anyone would give an answer of this sort to the question of why must turns to wine and to the subsequent questions. We may not go so far into the history of science or into chemistry, but we would approve of the directions. No one would invoke the god Dionysus or insist on spontaneous change, that is, one that is not traceable to antecedent conditions in a lawful way. As the example shows, the drift to a scientific explanation is gradual and inescapable. More precisely, we move in the realm of scientific intelligibility from the start, and this becomes more evident as we pursue the explanation of a problem. Once we grant that yeast plays a role in fermentation, we cannot very well reject van Leeuwenhoek’s invitation to look through his primitive microscope and to recognize that yea
st consists of small organisms. And if Buchner succeeds in distilling a substance from yeast cells and finds that the substance alone brings about a kind of fermentation in a sugar solution, we have no good reason to withhold acceptance.7 Then, if organic chemistry identifies that substance as a mixture of enzymes and isolates these catalysts and the reactions they make possible, this is but a further and consistent series of steps in the explanation of the change from must to wine. Finally, we might press on and explain organic chemistry in terms of physical chemistry, the latter in terms of physics, and we may end with a consideration of work at the frontier of physics, namely, in nuclear physics.
Along the explanatory route, there may be obstacles or dissent about this step or that. We have seen that this is historically so. But such controversy does not regard the direction and consistency of the explanatory course. If one accepts fermentation and yeast, one will accept cells, enzymes, chemical reactions, and so on down to our best current knowledge of subnuclear structures and processes. Such considerations amount to an argument in support of scientific realism, the view, in other words, that the directly unobservable elements and processes of which science speaks are just as real as the tangible phenomena from which it proceeds and to which it returns.
The opponents of this standpoint, the scientific instrumentalists, are struck by the differences between the point of departure, bubbling, frothing, brownish, sweet-sour must, and the final explanatory level of nuclear physics with its abstract formulas, intangible particles, and its austere language. So they want to draw a line between the tangible reality of the everyday world and the abstract objects of scientific explanation. But where can a principled line be drawn across the explanatory continuum that encompasses both extremes?
Technology and the Character of Contemporary Life: A Philosophical Inquiry Page 3
