The highly sophisticated techniques of modern engineering are normally conceived of in practical terms. Corresponding to the instrumental function of technology, they are designed to direct the forces of nature according to human purposes. Yet, as soon as the realm of mere skills is exceeded, the intended useful results can only be achieved through planned and preconceived action processes involving the deliberately considered application of well designed tools and devices. This is to say that in all complex cases theoretical reasoning becomes an indispensable means to accomplish the...

Friedrich Rapp, in this magisterial and critical essay on technology, the complex human phenomenon that demands philosophy of science, philosophy of culture, moral insight, and historical sensi- tivity for its understanding, writes modestly of the grave and ten- tative situation in the philosophy of technology. Despite the pro- found thinkers who have devoted time and imagination and ratio- nal penetration, despite the massive literature now available, the varied and comparative viewpoints of political, analytic, despite metaphysical, cultural, even esthetic commitments, indeed despite the...

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Only recently has the phenomenon of technology become an object of in- terest for philosophers. The first attempts at a philosophy of technology date back scarcely a hundred years - a span of time extremely short when com- pared with the antiquity of philosophical reflections on nature, science, and society. Over that hundred-year span, speculative, critical, and empiricist approaches of various sorts have been put forward. Nevertheless, even now there remains a broad gap between the importance of technology in the real world and the sparse number of philosophical works dedicated to the...

The highly sophisticated techniques of modern engineering are normally conceived of in practical terms. Corresponding to the instrumental function of technology, they are designed to direct the forces of nature according to human purposes. Yet, as soon as the realm of mere skills is exceeded, the intended useful results can only be achieved through planned and preconceived action processes involving the deliberately considered application of well designed tools and devices. This is to say that in all complex cases theoretical reasoning becomes an indispensable means to accomplish the...