(philosophy And Technology 10) Marcos I. García De La Huerta (auth.), Carl Mitcham (eds.)-philosophy Of Technology In Spanish Speaking Countries-springer Netherlands (1993)

PHILOSOPHY OF TECHNOLOGY IN SPANISH SPEAKING COUNTRIES

PHILOSOPHY AND TECHNOLOGY VOLUME 10 Series Editor: PAUL T. DURBIN Editorial Board Albert Borgmann, Montana Mario Bunge, McGill Edmund F. Byrne, Indiana-

Purdue at Indianapolis

Stanley Carpenter, Georgia Tech Robert S. Cohen, Boston Ruth Schwartz Cowan, SUNY -

Stony Brook Hubert L. Dreyfus, California-

Berkeley Bernard L. Gendron, WisconsinMilwaukee Ronald Giere, Minnesota Steven L. Goldman, Lehigh Virginia Held, CUNY Gilbert Hottois, Universite Libre de Bruxelles Don Ihde, SUNY - Stony Brook Melvin Kranzberg, Georgia Tech Douglas MacLean, Maryland, Baltimore County

Joseph Margolis, Temple Robert McGinn, Stanford Alex Michalos, Guelph Carl Mitcham, Pennsylvania State

University Joseph Pitt, Virginia Polytechnic Friedrich Rapp, Dortmund Nicholas Rescher, Pittsburgh Egbert Schuurman, Technical University of Delft Kristin Shrader-Frechette, South Florida Elisabeth Str6ker, Cologne Ladislav Tondl, Czechoslovak Academy of Science Marx Wartofsky, CUNY Caroline Whitbeck, MIT Langdon Winner, RPI Walter Ch. Zimmerli, Bamberg

The titles published in this series are listed at the end of this volume.

OFFICIAL PUBLICAnON OF THE SOCIETY FOR PHILOSOPHY AND TECHNOLOGY

PHILOSOPHY AND TECHNOLOGY VOLUME 10

PHILOSOPHY OF TECHNOLOGY IN SPANISH SPEAKING COUNTRIES Edited by

CARL MITCHAM

The Pennsylvania State University

" ~

SPRINGER SCIENCE+BUSINESS MEDIA, B.V.

A c.I.P. Catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.

ISBN 978-94-010-4836-1 ISBN 978-94-011-1892-7 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-94-011-1892-7

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Ali Rights Reserved © 1993 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht Originally published by Kluwer Academic Publishers in 1993 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1993 No part of the material protected by this copyright notice may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the copyright owner.

PREFACE This volume grew out of the experience of the First Inter-American Congress on Philosophy of Technology, October 1988, organized by the Center for the Philosophy and History of Science and Technology of the University of Puerto Rico in Mayagiiez. The Spanish-language proceedings of that conference have been published in Carl Mitcham and Margarita M. Peiia Borrero, with Elena Lugo and James Ward, eds., El nuevo mundo de la filosofta y la tecnolog(a (University Park, PA: STS Press, 1990). This volume contains thirty-two papers, twenty-two summaries, an introduction and biographical notes, to provide a full record of that seminal gathering. Discussions with Paul T. Durbin and others - including many who participated in the Second Inter-American Congress on Philosophy of Technology, University of Puerto Rico in Mayagiiez, March 1991 raised the prospect of an English-language proceedings in the Philosophy and Technology series. But after due consideration it was agreed that a more general volume was needed to introduce English-speaking readers to a growing body of literature on the philosophy of technology in the Spanish-speaking world. As such, the present volume includes Spanish as well as Latin American authors, historical and contemporary figures, some who did and many who did not participate in the first and second inter-American congresses. The primary aim of this volume is simply to introduce readers to a broad spectrum of philosophical reflection on technology that would otherwise be obscured from their view. The basic organization of the volume highlights five more or less well-established centers or loci of philosophical reflection on technology in the Spanish-speaking world: in Chile, in Costa Rica, in Mexico, in Spain, and in Venezuela. In each of these countries there exists a historical tradition and something approaching a critical mass of scholars with a diversity of perspectives on philosophical issues associated with technology. The work of the Center for the Philosophy and History of Science and Technology of the University of Puerto Rico in Mayagiiez might also reasonably have been included. But precisely because of its synthetic commitments and the important involvement of Puerto Rican scholars in its development, this volume as a whole is witness to the existence of this other active group of scholars. We project for a future volume of Philosophy and Technology or Research in Philosophy and Technology a special symposium on Puerto Rican reflection on technology, as well as regular publication in the future of more contributions from thoughout the Spanish-speaking world. v

PREFACE Indeed. supplementary centers of reflection exist throughout the Hispanic world. in Argentina. in Colombia. in Peru. in Uruguay. and elsewhere. Some indications of the range of work in these and other communities are provided in part six. With regard to each of the six parts I am aware of other contributors who might have been included. The present collection is not meant to slight other. equally important work. It is simply one effort. undertaken within certain constraints of space and time. to bring to the attention of the English-speaking philosophical community the existence of a rich dialogue in a companion world. Because of its limitations and inadequacies. this volume will need to be followed by future publications extending such work. TRANSLATION POLICIES With regard to each article that I have had a role in translating. I am aware of the limitations of the translations that have been produced. My intention has been to strive for fidelity to the text. even when it results in slightly stilted English. in the belief that this is more likely to serve the best interests of the original philosophical writer and the philosophical reader. But Spanish is a rich language with many subtle variations throughout the countries in which it is spoken. and I am sure that given my inadequate knowledge there are many instances in which I have not succeeded in realizing my aims. I apologize to both authors and readers for these weaknesses. Two specific translation issues call for comment. One concerns the problem of translating the Spanish tecnica. Given that this term can have references that are divided among such English language words as "technique." "technics." and "technology." it is simply not possible to adopt some simple rule that would apply to the diversity of papers being translated. Different strategies were adopted for different essays depending on the context. A second concern is the Spanish word hombre. Like the English "man" this now is acquiring connotations that make ser hombre. "human being." preferable. But especially in those essays with a more historical character it seemed inappropriate to translate hombre as human being. The reader should. depending on context. in most cases understand "man" as a genus not a gender. In some cases I have slightly expanded or corrected notes and references without drawing attention to the fact. Any notes that have been added are placed in brackets. vi

PREFACE ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Because of the way these conferences served as background and influence on the formation of the present volume, it is important explicitly to acknowledge those papers included here that are translations or adaptations of presentations at one of the two Inter-American congresses on philosophy of technology. From the first congress (October 1988), with Spanish versions or summaries appearing in El nuevo mundo de la filosofta y la tecnolog(a:

Carlos Verdugo S., Ethics, Science, and Technology Luis A. Camacho Naranjo, Science, Technology, and Development: Some Models of Their Relationships Edgar Roy Ram(rezBricello, Technological Arguments, Technological Dangers, and Ethics Ramon Queralto Moreno, Does Technology 'Construct' Reality? Ernesto Mayz Vallenilla, The Present and Future of Humanity Raul Fornet-Betancourt, Ortega and Heidegger: Two Philosophical Approaches to the Issue of Technics and Their Implications for Latin America Margarita M. Pella Borrero, Reflections on Science, Technology, and Society Education in the Latin American Context Jane Robinett, The Moral Vision of Technology in Contemporary Latin American Fiction (earlier version) From the second congress (March 1991):

Eduardo Sabrovsky J., Thinking Machines and the Crisis of Modern Reason Jane Robinett, The Moral Vision of Technology in Contemporary Latin American Fiction (later version) Individuals who have made this volume possible or contributed to its development include all participants in the inter-American congresses. The following also require special mention: Paul T. Durbin, general editor of the Philosophy and Technology series, has provided overall advice and sound counsel at many points. His efforts to assist the volume editor have gone far beyond the normal responsibilities of any general series editor, and have been greatly appreciated. The simple fact is that without his help, his prodding, and his encouragement this volume would not have happened. His secretary, Mary Imperatore, also vii

PREFACE

took responsibility for the layout and composition, and to her and the Philosophy Department of the University of Delaware I am grateful. Ms. Annie Kuipers at Kluwer deserves thanks as well for her continued support, her patience, and her persistence. Margarita Peiia, Elena Lugo, and Jim Ward, my co-editors for El nuevo mundo de la filosofta y la tecnolog(a, continued to assist in various ways with this project. Leopoldo Molina, a visiting scholar in the Science, Technology, and Society Program at Pennsylvania State University during 1991, helped clarify structure and select articles, and provided exceptional translation support. James A. Lynch and Ana Mitcham also assisted a great deal with translation work. Richard Dietrich, Assistant Professor of STS at Penn State, did some editorial work. My secretary, Karen Hull, and our program's assistant secretary, Betsy Held, typed many of the original articles. And my student assistant, Mary Paliotta, did quality back-up work on research, typing, and editing that have measurably improved this volume. Paliotta also prepared the index. Excepting the secretaries, all of the above have served in some capacity as reviewer and/or critic. Others who have also served to help evaluate contributions include the following: Juan Entralgo (University of Minnesota), Javier G6mez (University of Castell6n, Spain), Hector Huyke (University of Puerto Rico, Mayagiiez), Ivan Illich (penn State University), Waldemar L6pez (Interamerican University), Jose Antonio L6pez Cerezo (University of Oviedo), Halley Sanchez (University of Puerto Rico, Mayagiiez), Jose Sanmartfn (University of Valencia, Spain), Carlos Verdugo (University of Valparaiso, Chile), and Leonard Waks (Temple University and Penn State University). The book was done under the shadow of Emiliano Zapata.

Pennsylvania State University

CARL MITCHAM

viii

TABLE OF CONTENTS PREFACE, Carl Mitcham

v

ANALYTIC TABLE OF CONTENTS

xii

INTRODUCTION: EL DESAFiO DE LA TECNOLOGiA: AUTHORS AND ISSUES IN PHILOSOPHY OF TECHNOLOGY IN THE SPANISH-SPEAKING WORLD, Carl Mitcham

xix

PART I From Chile MARCOS GARCIA DE LA HUERTA I. / Technology and Politics: Toward Artificial History?

3

MARCOS GARCIA DE LA HUERTA I. / Globalization: Homogenization with an Increasing Technological Gap

15

EDUARDO SABROVSKY J. / Thinking Machines and the Crisis of Modern Reason

39

CARLOS VERDUGO S. / Ethics, Science, and Technology

61

PART II From Costa Rica LUIS A. CAMACHO NARANJO / Contributions to the Philosophy of Technology in Costa Rica

71

LUIS A. CAMACHO NARANJO / Science, Technology, and Development: Some Models of Their Relationship

81

EDGAR ROY RAMIREZ BRICENO / Ethics, Pernicious Technology, and the "Technological Argument"

89

PART III From Mexico ENRIQUE DUSSEL / Technology and Basic Needs: Proposal for a Debate on Fundamental Criteria ix

101

x

TABLE OF CONTENTS

JOSE GAOS / On Technique

111

HUGO PADILLA / Technological Objects and Their Epistemological Base

121

LEOPOLDO ZEA / Satellites and Our Morality

133

PART IV From Spain MARiA LUISA GARCIA-MERITA / Technology and Human Nature

145

MANUEL MEDINA / Philosophy, Technology, and Society

153

RAM6N QUERALT6 MORENO / Does Technology "Construct" Scientific Reality? 167 MIGUEL ANGEL QUINTANILLA / The Design and Evaluation of Technologies: Some Conceptual Issues

173

JOSE SANMARTIN / From World3 to the Social Assessment of Technology: Remarks on Science, Technology, and Society

197

JOSE SANMARTIN / Genethics: The Social Assessment of the Risks and Impacts of Genetic Engineering

211

PART V From Venezuela JUAN DAVID GARCIA BACCA / Science, Technology, History, and Philosophy in the Cultural Atmosphere of Our Time

229

ERNESTO MAYZ VALLENILLA / The Present and Future of Humanity

249

LEOPOLDO MOLINA P. / Education for Freedom versus Socio-Technical Control by Pedagogical Means

259

TABLE OF CONTENTS

xi

PART VI From Other Americas RAUL FORNET-BETANCOURT / Two Philosophical Approaches to the Problem of Technics and Their Meaning for Latin America

271

MARGARITA M. PENA BORRERO / Science, Technology, and Society Education in the Latin American Context

283

JANE ROBINETT / The Moral Vision of Technology in Contemporary Latin American Fiction

289

JUDITH SUTZ / The Social Implications of Information Technologies: A Latin American Perspective

297

NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

309

NAME INDEX

313

ANALYTIC TABLE OF CONTENTS CARL MITCHAM, Introduction: El desafto de fa tecnofog(a: Authors and Issues in Philosophy of Technology in the Spanish-Speaking World Centers of Reflection on Technology Philosophy of Technology in Chile Philosophy of Technology in Costa Rica Philosophy of Technology in Mexico Philosophy of Technology in Spain Philosophy of Technology in Venezuela Philosophy and Technology beyond the Centers Comparisons and Achievements

XIX

xxi xxi xxiii xxiv

xxvii xxix

xxxi xxxi

PART I From Chile MARCOS GARCIA DE LA HUERTA I., Technology and Politics: Toward Artificial History? Technology, Instrumentality, and Science The End of History as Artificialization of History From Nova Scientia to New Technology The Experience of Chile The Greek Background The Foreground of the Sciences of Administration Again, the Experience of Chile MARCOS GARCIA DE LA HUERTA I., Globalization: Homogenization with an Increasing Technological Gap I. Seven Theses on Technology Transfer 1. Technology transfer follows a rule of survival 2. Technology transfer is based on a tendency to emulate efficiency in technological performances 3. Technology transfer leads to assimilation and convergence 4. Technology transfer is accompanied by cultural homogenization 5. Technology transfer presupposes constitutive opposition, inequalities, and disequilibrium 6. Technology transfer does not follow its own internal ru~

7. Technology transfer does not autonomously determine a social system xii

3 3 4

6 8

9 11 12

15 15 15 15 16 17

20

W 23

ANALYTIC TABLE OF CONTENTS

II. Technological Diffusion and Modernity The Inherent Problem of Modernity The Problem of Modernization in Latin America Modernization as "developmentism" in Latin America Modernization beyond Latin America III. Final Considerations EDUARDO SABROVSKY J., Thinking Machines and the Crisis of Modern Reason Introduction Instrumental Rationality and the "Lifeworld" Instrumental Rationality and the Universal Machine John Searle's Critique of Cognitivism Artificial Intelligence: A Radical Critique Technology and the Lifeworld Communicative Coordination versus Instrumental Rationality Conclusion: From a Danger to a Saving Power in Technology CARLOS VERDUGO S., Ethics, Science, and Technology Neutrality of Science, Culpability of Technology The Chilean Case The Positive-Normative Distinction Ethics and the Search for or Selection of Research Techniques The Role of Ethics in the Selection of Means for Solving Socio-Economic Problems

xiii

25 25 27 28 30 33 39 39 40 43 44 46 49 51 53 61 61 63 64 65 66

PART II From Costa Rica LUIS A. CAMACHO NARANJO, Contributions to the Philosophy of Technology in Costa Rica 1. Constantino Lc1scaris and the Origins 2. The Heritage of Lc1scaris 3. Results: Philosophy of Technology in Costa Rica 4. Conclusion: Science and Technology Policy in Costa Rica Bibliography LUIS A. CAMACHO NARANJO, Science, Technology, and Development: Some Models of Their Relationship Introduction: Origins of the Discussion The Assembly-Line Model and the Science-Technology Relationship The Assembly-Line Model and the Science-Technology-

71 71 73 75 77 78 81 81 82

xiv

ANALYTIC TABLE OF CONTENTS

Development Relationship Toward a New Concept of Development EDGAR ROY RAMIREZ BRICENO, Ethics, Pernicious Technology, and the "Technological Argument" 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11.

[Ethics involves rationality] [Reason must be related to historical conditions] [But reason should not be subordinated to history] [The historical situation in Latin America] [The problem of pernicious technology] [Ethical responsibility in science and technology] [The "technological argument"] [The concept of an "adequate technology"] [The issue of development] [Ethical dialogue] [Critical self-questioning]

84

85

89 89 90 90 91 91 92 93

94 95

96 97

PART III From Mexico ENRIQUE DUSSEL, Technology and Basic Needs: Proposal for a Debate on Fundamental Criteria 1. Technology and the Forces of Production 2. Three Social Contexts of Technology 3. An Overview of Technological Evolution in Latin America 4. The Real Ambit of Technological Options 5. The Different Languages of Basic Needs 6. Basic Needs and the Technological Project Postscript 1992 JOSE GAOS, On Technique [Introduction: Origins of this essay] [Technique, ancient and modern] [Technification of life or technocracy] [Primacy of "vehicles" in technification] [Contrast of acceleration and deceleration] [Homo faber and homo viator] [Homo viator as intensified to absurdity] [Existential ground of this intensification] [That nothing immediately follows from this analysis] HUGO PADILLA, Technological Objects and Their

101 101 102 103 104 105 107 108 111 111 112 113 114 114

116

117 118 119

ANALYTIC TABLE OF CONTENTS

xv

Epistemological Base 1. Introduction 2. The Structure of Technology 3. Basic Science and Applied Science 4. Inputs of Complex Knowledge 5. Distinct Types of Technological Objects 6. Explanation of Technological Objects 7. Conclusions

121 121 122 124 126 128 129 130

LEOPOLDO ZEA, Satellites and Our Morality [From nuclear weapons to artificial satellites] [Artificial satellites and Columbus's voyages of discovery] [Morality of groups versus morality of humanity as a whole] [Promise of open conquest threatened by open destruction] [That man may not be capable of seizing the morality opportunity offered by the new technology] [But there is hope]

133 133 134 136 137 138 140

PART IV From Spain MARiA LUISA GARCIA-MERITA, Technology and Human Nature Technified Nature Technology and Human Nature Effects on the Human Psyche

145 146 147 149

MANUEL MEDINA, Philosophy, Technology, and Society The Myth of Theory The Philosophy of Theory and Technique Philosophy, Technology, and Politics in Antiquity Philosophy and Technocracy

153 154 156 158 162

RAM6N QUERALT6 MORENO, Does Technology "Construct" Scientific Reality? 1. [Scientific knowledge as part of human knowledge] 2. [Technology as a necessary feature of science] 3. [Scientific knowledge cannot be reduced to technological construction] 4. [Constructionist charges arise when science is isolated from its real conditions] MIGUEL ANGEL QUINTANILLA, The Design and

167 167 169 170 172

xvi

ANALYTIC TABLE OF CONTENTS

Evaluation of Technologies: Some Conceptual Issues 1. The "Logic" of Technological Design 2. The Model of Scientific Explanation 3. Models of Artificial Intelligence 4. Inventions and Projects 5. Technological Evaluation 6. Efficiency and Control 7. Technological Progress JOSE SANMARTIN, From World3 to the Social Assessment of Technology: Remarks on Science, Technology, and Society 1. On the Autonomy of Scientific Theories 2. About Basic Science and Applied Science 3. On the External History of Science and Traditional Technology Assessment 4. Science and Technology as Social Products First Consequence Second Consequence Third Consequence JOSE SANMARTIN, Genethics: The Social Assessment of the Risks and Impacts of Genetic Engineering Parameters in the Social Assessment of Technology From Biotechnology to Human Genetic Engineering Genetic Diagnostic Testing in Clinical Contexts A Paradigmatic Genetic Disease: Sickle Cell Anemia A Paradigmatic Genetic Susceptibility to Disease: G-6-PD Deficiency Clinical Utilization The Minimization of Environmental Factors Human Genetic Engineering in Non-Clinical Contexts Aspects of the Social Assessment of Genetic Testing Epilogue: Toward Genethics

173 174 176 178 181 183 185 188 197 197 198 200 204 205 206 207 211 212 214 216 216 219 219 220 221 222 224

PART V From Venezuela JUAN DAVID GARCIA BACCA, Science, Technology, History, and Philosophy in the Cultural Atmosphere of Our Time 229 I. What Is Science?, as the First and Primary Element of Our Cultural Atmosphere 230 II. Technology, as the Second Element of Our Cultural Atmosphere 234

ANALYTIC TABLE OF CONTENTS

xvii

238 III. History, as the Third Element of Our Cultural Atmosphere IV. Philosophy: the Fourth Element of Our Cultural Atmosphere 243 ERNESTO MAYZ VALLENILLA, The Present and Future of Humanity Optical Space and Meta-Technical Spatiality Otherness and Meta-Technics 1. [In language] 2. [In ontology and epistemology] 3. [In society] Conclusion and Perspectives

249 250 252 253 254 255 257

LEOPOLDO MOLINA P., Education for Freedom versus SocioTechnical Control by Pedagogical Means 259 259 Dreams of Social Change Through Pedagogical Means Toward an Existential Theory of Education 260 The Challenge of Educational Policy 261 The Meanings of Reason 262 263 The Humanistic-Critical Movement in Education The Latin American Experience 264 PART VI From Other Americas RAUL FORNET-BETANCOURT, Two Philosophical Approaches to the Problem of Technics and Their Meaning for Latin America Ortega's "Meditaci6n de la tecnica" Heidegger's "Die Frage nach der Technik" The Thought of Ortega and Heidegger in the Light of Present Needs in Latin America

271 271 274 276

MARGARITA M. PENA BORRERO, Science, Technology, and Society Education in the Latin American Context 283 Education in Science, Technology, and Society: Definition and Evolution 283 Science, Technology, and Society Relations from a Latin American Perspective 284 Science, Technology, and Society Education: Possible 286 Contributions to Transformation JANE ROBINETT, The Moral Vision of Technology in Contemporary Latin American Fiction Introduction: Philosophy and Literature

289 289

xviii

ANALYTIC TABLE OF CONTENTS

Toward the Moral Vision of Technology From One Hundred Years of Solitude to The House of

290

Conclusion: A Moral Critique

295

the Spirits

JUDITH SUTZ, The Social Implications of Information Technologies: A Latin American Perspective Analytical Framework I: The Relevance of Information Technologies Analytical Framework II: Latin America in the 1990s Analytical Framework III: The Evolution of Information Technologies and Their Potential Impacts A Pessimistic but Probable Scenario Is It Possible to Construct a Different Scenario? Technical perspective Sociocultural perspective Political perspective What Kind of Foreign Support Would the Alternative Require? Conclusion

291

297 297 298 300 301 302 303 303 304 306 306

CARL MITCHAM

INTRODUCTION: EL DESAFio DE LA TECNOLOGiA: AUTHORS AND ISSUES IN PHILOSOPHY OF TECHNOLOGY IN THE SPANISH-SPEAKING WORLD

Philosophy of technology originated in Europe in two different forms, one among engineers and another among philosophers. i This origin was part of the modern transformation in the Western philosophical tradition that followed the rise and then questioning of Enlightenment thought. At the core of Enlightenment philosophy is a firm trust in and promotion of that new way of being-in-the-world which is characterized by modern technology. But this trust and promotion subsists in the absence of any profound analysis of technology itself or its meaning. The engineering reflection on the essence and meaning of technology that developed between the last half of the nineteenth and the first half of the twentieth centuries constitutes an attempt to fill this lacuna and is exemplified in the work of thinkers such as Ernst Kapp (1808-1896), Franz Reuleaux (1829-1905), and Friedrich Dessauer (1881-1963). Kapp's Grundlinien einer Philosophie der Technik (1877), the first book to be entitled a "philosophy of technology," argues for an anthropology of technology as "organ projection." Reuleaux's Theoretische Kinematik (1876), upon which Kapp comments, provides the first comprehensive theoretical framework for the science of engineering mechanics - and thus for mechanical engineering. Dessauer's Philosophie der Technik (1927) - especially in its revised and expanded version, Streit um die Technik (1956) - puts forth a Kantlike critique of the transcendental preconditions of technology as invention that extends the work of both Kapp and Reuleaux while reaching out to engage the thinking of a spectrum of philosophers, social scientists, and theologians who played various roles in what has been called the "culture criticism" of technology. I A radically different focus was developed within the tradition of culture criticism of technology which emerged as part of an articulation and analysis of the limitations and weaknesses of Enlightenment rationalism. As opposed to Enlightenment rationalism, this sometimes romantic criticism stressed lived existence - and thus can be called, in very general terms, an "existentialism. " In turning to address xix Carl Mitcham (ed.), Philosophy of Technology in Spanish Speaking Countries, xix-xxxvi. °1993 Kluwer Academic Publishers.

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CARL MITCHAM

technology, this existentialism found its major philosophical expressions during the first half of the twentieth century in works by Jose Ortega y Gasset (1883-1955) and Martin Heidegger (1889-1976). Of these two, the Spaniard wrote his foundational work on technology two decades before his German colleague. Because of his support of the Spanish Republic (1931-1936) and his resultant exile under Franco, Ortega's life is, moreover, explicitly linked with opposition to fascism. And in some ways Ortega's thought bridges the culture-criticism and engineering traditions of philosophical analysis of technology by arguing the inherently technical character of human life. Like the culture critics, Ortega appeals to life as the fundamental reality. With his phrase "raz6n vital" (life-reason) he anticipates later phenomenological references to a "lifeworld" - so that Ortega's philosophy is sometimes termed a "raciovitalismo" (vitalist rationalism). In accordance with this insight, Ortega also defines being human as inherently related to historical circumstances. As he phrases it in his first book, Meditations on Quixote (1914), "Yo soy: yo y mi circunstancia" [I am: I and my circumstance (or historical situation)]. But Ortega also argues in Meditaci6n de fa tecnica (a series of lectures at Santander in 1933) that human life is fundamentally an act of invention within historical circumstances. 2 It is the tension between circumstances and selfinvention - a self-invention that transcends and then alters the circumstances that I am - that constitutes the dialectic and challenge of human existence. Ortega's work has also exercised a major influence on development in the Spanish-speaking world of what may well be a tradition of reflection on technology that is even more vigorous than the traditions in the English, German, or French-speaking worlds - generally thought of as the loci for the philosophy of technology. Almost certainly, for instance, as Luis Camacho points out in his history of philosophy of technology in Costa Rica in this volume, it was here that the first philosophy journal to take technology as its theme was founded. And although a few of the contributors to this tradition - most notably Mario Bunge - have escaped the shadow into which the Anglo, German, and French philosophical communities have been wont to cast Hispanic scholarship, not even the names of such major figures as Juan David Garcia Bacca and Ernesto Mayz Vallenilla would be widely recognized outside the Spanish-speaking world. The present collection is a small attempt to begin to remedy this oversight - and to contribute as well to a deepening of intercultural reflection on the nature and meaning of technology.

INTRODUCTION

xxi

CENTERS OF REFLECTION ON TECHNOLOGY The working hypothesis of this collection is that at the present time in the Spanish-speaking world there are at least five centers of reflection on technology: in Chile, in Costa Rica, in Spain, in Mexico, and in Venezuela. Such a hypothesis highlights significant reflection not only in the mother country of Hispanic culture and in the largest of Spanishspeaking countries (that is, in Spain and in Mexico) but also its vigorous development in one of the wealthiest countries in Latin America (Venezuela) as well as much smaller countries that represent, in one instance, the longest democratic tradition in Latin America (Costa Rica) and recent experiences with authoritarianism (Chile).

Philosophy of Technology in Chile The roots of philosophy of technology in Chile are at least twofold: the existential isms of Ortega and Heidegger, and an interest in cybernetics that found expression in the work of Fernando Flores, an electrical engineer who served as Minister of Industry under Salvador Allende (1970-1973). (With reference to Ortega and Heidegger, it can be noted that Ortega's Meditaci6n de la tecnica was first published in Chile in a pirated edition in 1936, and that Heidegger's "Die Frage nach der Technik" was first translated into Spanish in Chile in 1983.i As for Flores, while working for Allende he proposed to establish a cybernetic network that would turn the chaos of Marxist economics into some semblance of order - technocracy with a human face. But after the Pinochet coup, Flores went into exile in the United States where he pursued the study of philosophy under Hubert Dreyfus at the University of California, Berkeley. His subsequent efforts to utilize Heidegger to guide office automation have become something of a cult. 4 During the generation-long hiatus of the Pinochet years (1973-1990) the work of Marcos Garcfa de la Huerta I., who teaches in the Center for Humanistic Studies in the College of Physical Sciences and Mathematics at the University of Chile, reached maturity. Garcfa de la Huerta's La tecnica y el estado moderno: Heidegger y el problema de la historia [Technology and the modern state: Heidegger and the problem of history] (Santiago: Ediciones del Departamento de Estudios Humanisticos, Universidad de Chile, 1978) is a commentary on Heidegger's famous speech, "The Self-Assertion of the German University" (1934), given when he assumed the rectorate at the University of Freiburg. Written during the dark years of the Pinochet regime, Garcfa de la Huerta's commentary perhaps offers insights not otherwise available. s His later Cr(tica de La raz6n tecnocrdtica [Critique

xxii

CARL MITCHAM

of technocratic reason] (Santiago: Editorial Universitaria, 1990), written in 1985 and circulated privately, was finally published after the return to democracy. The two papers translated here - "Technology and Politics: Toward Artificial History?" and "Globalization: Homogenization with an Increasing Technological Gap" - extend the critical analyses of this latter work within a transnational context. Eduardo Sabrovsky is an engineer and philosopher who has been active in trying to bridge the gap between these two worlds. For a number of years he worked as an independent researcher and consultant with the Instituto Latinoamericano de Estudios Transnacionales (ILET), a home for intellectuals who were not able to get positions in the universities during the Pinochet years. His books include Hegemonia y racionalidad po/(tica: Contribuci6n a una teorfa democratica del cambio [Hegemony and political rationality: Contribution to a democratic theory of change] (Santiago: Ediciones del Ornitorrinco, 1989) and the edited collection, Tecnologfa y modernidad en Latinoamerica: Etica, polftka y cultura [Technology and modernity in Latin America: Ethics, politics and culture] (Santiago: ILET-CORFU/Hachette, 1992). He also edited the technology supplement to the biweekly Apsi (1989-1990) prior to a period as editor of the monthly computer magazine Quinta Generaci6n (1990-1991). Sabrovsky's "Thinking Machines and the Crisis of Modern Reason" attempts further bridging between the thought of Jiirgen Habermas and Heidegger. Carlos Verdugo, a student of Garda de la Huerta, teaches at the University of Valparaiso where he is involved with engineering education. He is also a student of the thought of Karl Popper and as such quite anti-Marxist, though as he makes clear in his "Ethics, Science, and Technology" he is also strongly anti-technocracy. Indeed, this article includes explicit applications of arguments about the nonneutrality of technology to the areas of social and economic technology. In order to indicate the broad scope of philosophical reflection on technology that exists in Chile, it is reasonable to call attention to the work of Luis Flores Hernandez (Catholic University of Chile), which is represented in El nuevo mundo de lafilosofta y la tecnologfa (1990) by a discussion of "Las interrelaciones de la cultura, la ciencia y la tecnica" [The interrelations of culture, science, and technology]. In this same volume there is a summary of a paper by Jose Miguel Vera L. (University of Chile), "Impacto etico de la tecnologfa en la conducta social (asomandose al siglo XXI)" [The ethical impact of technology on social behavior (moving toward the twenty-first century)]. At least one other publication to be noticed is Sergio Silva's La idea de la tecnica moderna en el Magisterio de la Iglesia, desde pro XII hasta Juan Pablo II (1985) [The idea of modern technology in the Magisterium of the

INTRODUCTION

xxiii

Church from Pius XII to John Paul II (1985)], Anales de la Facultad de Teolog(a (pontificia Universidad Cat6lica de Chile), vol. 38, supplement 2 (1987), the only such analysis that exists in any language. 6

Philosophy of Technology in Costa Rica The development of philosophy of technology in Costa Rica is itself the subject of an extended narratIve in Luis Camacho's "Contributions to the Philosophy of Technology in Costa Rica." After describing the seminal influence of Spanish philosopher Constantino Lascaris (19231979) and his interest in the history and philosophy of science and technology, Camacho provides an overview of current work and a bibliography of publications. It would be superfluous to repeat these here. In his second contribution, "Science, Technology, and Development: Some Models of Their Relationship," Camacho provides a substantive illustration of the influence and tradition of reflection indicated by his first article. Edgar Roy Ramfrez's "Ethics, Pernicious Technology, and the 'Technological Argument'" further illustrates the tradition described by Camacho. Ramfrez himself teaches at both the University of Costa Rica and the Technological Institute of Costa Rica. In this paper he begins with brief statements on ethics and humanities-social sciences criticisms of technological development - the kinds of argument that could easily characterize discussions at the University of Costa Rica. Then, as if to take in the worldview of the Technological Institute, he considers prospects for alternative technology and reformulates this concept in a new way by outlining principles for an "adequate technology. " In his study of distinctive Costa Rican contributions to the philosophy of technology, Camacho mentions the founding of the International Development Ethics Association (IDEA). Because of its significance, it is perhaps useful to add a further note about this organization. Although its founding conference was held in Costa Rica (1987) with leading participation by Camacho and Ramfrez, it has since held conferences in Merida, Mexico (1989), Montclair, New Jersey (1991)/ and Tegucigalpa, Honduras (1992). From the Merida conference came a declaration of five ethical principles for alternative development - respect for personal dignity, pursuit of peace based on justice, affirmation of local autonomy, aspiring to a new relationship with nature, and articulation of "a rationality suited to exploited peoples." Associated with these principles, IDEA also committed itself "to maintain an international, intercultural, and interdisciplinary dialogue that brings together intellectuals, grassroots organizations, and decision-making groups. ,,8

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This aim to bridge intellectual and practical worlds, originating with Latin American philosophers who are also philosophers of technology, is now extending beyond the Americas, as IDEA plans to hold its first conference outside the Western Hemisphere in Stellenbosch, South Africa, in August 1993.

Philosophy of Technology in Mexico The contributions from Mexico, in contrast to those from other centers of reflection, are dominated by translations from works published a decade or more ago. The only exception is the postscript to the paper by Enrique Dussel. The articles in this section are also by established philosophers, none of which have made technology a major theme in their works - again except for Dussel. It is to be noted as well that both Dussel and Jose Gaos were born outside Mexico - in Argentina and Spain, respectively. Nevertheless, the presence of technology as an important supplementary theme in the works of Gaos, Hugo Padilla, and Leopoldo Zea in itself provides a useful contrast to work from the other centers while it further documents the importance of technology in philosophical reflection. Dussel's contribution is taken from his Filosofta de la producci6n (Bogota: Nueva America, 1984). This book begins by proposing in section 1 a "philosophy of poiesis," provides in section 2 a study of Marx's "Historical-Technological Notebook" of 1851, and develops in section 3 a general theory of the engineering design process. The analysis as a whole is related to Dussel's theology of liberation, which can be studied in two books available in English: A History of the Church in Latin America: Colonialism to Liberation, translated and revised by Alan Neely (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1981), and Philosophy of Liberation, translated by Aquilina Martinez and Christine Morkovsky (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1985). In this second volume, chapter 4, "From Nature to Economics"; chapter 5, "From Science to Philosophy of Liberation"; and the appendix, "Philosophy and Praxis," all anticipate and overlap with some of the analyses in sections 1 and 3 of Filosofta de la producci6n. The appendix to Filosofta de la producci6n, translated here as "Technology and Basic Needs: Proposal for a Debate on Fundamental Criteria," was originally used as a working paper in a preparatory meeting for a World Council of Churches conference on "Faith, Science and the Future" held at MIT in July 1979. 9 As such its neo-Marxist analysis may initially seem dated. But despite the collapse of the Communist empire, Dussel thinks that Marxist analyses remain viable, as he attempts to indicate in a brief addition to his text.

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Gaos's essay, "On Technique" (and technification), extends the work of his mentor, Ortega, into existential depths that Ortega himself only hints at in the last sections of his Meditaci6n de la tecnica. Gaos is, as well, the Spanish translator of Heidegger's Sein und Zeit. 1o Inspired by both Ortega and Heidegger, Gaos seeks to understand modern existence in its real historical circumstances and in relation to our willingness to face up to being present in and transcending these technological circumstances. Analyzing the importance of change, the options of acceleration and deceleration, ap.d the modern commitment to technological acceleration as a kind lof end in itself, Gaos argues, more explicitly than Ortega, that this self-invention is existentially grounded in a tension between the finite and infinite in human beings. We should note Gaos's opening comment (written in 1959) about how "philosophizing about technology h¥ already produced in the last ten years a whole new philosophical discipline, formally manifest as such in sections so titled in philosophical! encyclopedias." Such a claim undoubtedly strikes the English-speaking reader as an excessive exaggeration if not simply false. . After all, even a decade later discussion of technology was conspicuous by its absence in Paul Edwards's authoritative Encyclopedia of Philosophy (1967). Nevertheless, Gaos's claim is quit~ literally true. In the early 1940s Jos~ Ferrater Mora's great Diccionario de filosofla already had a substantial entry on "t~cnica. ,,11 And the same is true, both before and after, for a number of other standard Spanish reference works. 12 The simple fact is that Spanish-language philosophical discourse has recognized for much longer than English-language philosophical discourse the philosophical significance of technology. Padilla's essay is further testimony to this fact. His "Technological objects and Their Epistemological Base," an attempt at a logical empiricist study of technology, at a time when related English-language analyses were devoted almost solely to science, has become a minor classic. The need for translating it is in fact pointed out in Luis Camacho's study of the rise of the philosophy of technology in Costa Rica. Indeed, Padilla provides what is still one of the most sophisticated analyses of how modern technology can be grounded in science. Zea is among the most important Mexican philosophers of the twentieth century. Himself a student of Gaos - and through Gaos, of Ortega - Zea is the philosopher who most c6nsistently pursued . "mexicanidad" as a fundamental philosophical question. Echoing Ortega, Zea argues that In attempting to resolve human problems in whatever space or time, we have to take as our point of departure ourselves as we are; we must begin with our own circumstance ... conscious of our abilities as members of this cultural community called humanity,

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and of our limitations as children of one circumstance.13

His intellectual histories, El positivismo en Mexico [Positivism in Mexico] (1943) and Dos etapas del pensamiento en Hispanoamerica [Two stages of thought in Hispanic America] (1949), have attempted to do precisely this, and in consequence exercised a pervasive influence. According to Zea, the historico-philosophical trajectory of Hispanic America is quite distinct from that of North America and can be characterized by a continuing failure of people to become one with their circumstances, to truly experience their own history. The United States was colonized by families who came into contact with only small-scale indigenous populations, and who were from the beginning desirous of establishing new political orders. By contrast, Hispanic America was founded by conquistadors who wanted to extend an already existing world, and thus tried to impose their Old World orders on large-scale and opposing indigenous civilizations. For three hundred years a resulting mestizo culture was forced to live at odds with itself. Even the revolutions of the early 1800s were inspired as much by failed republican efforts in Spain as by authentic desires for freedom and selfdevelopment in the Americas. The attraction of positivism in the early 1900s was, similarly, an attempt to reject New World realities, using Old World ideas. "In America," writes Zea, two opposing political ideologies, democracy and monarchy, . . . were native to the races that colonized America, the Anglo-Saxon and the Hispanic. From them there arose two Americas. 14

The result was that Latin America had to realize by its own effort what North America had received as its heritage ... . South America had to turn against itself, against what it was, in order to be able .. . to become what it wished to be. 13

Like Gaos, Zea sees something of this same predicament in the modern experience of technology. In this sense his essay, "Satellites and Our Morality," considers how artificial satellites might contribute to a transformation of morality, carrying the theme of identity beyond the experience of Mexico, and extending it to that of technological humanity in general. Since Zea's essay, the ecological crisis has made the idea of a morality that "would be the work of all of humanity and not just one small group" - that is, moving from particularistic to global morality - even more relevant than when Zea argued this possibility over thirty years ago.

INTRODUCTION

XXVll

Philosophy of Technology in Spain Philosophy of technology in Spain, as has been indicated, can be traced back to the work of Ortega y Gasset, who was himself one of the philosophical originators in this field of philosophy. But during the Franco years (1939-1975) Ortega's opening was left largely undeveloped. As in Chile, however, the return to democracy has led to the flowering of the philosophy of technology, especially within an interdisciplinary, inter-institutional effort known as the Instituto de Investigaciones sobre Ciencia y Tecnologfa (lNVESCIT or Institute for Research concerning Science and Technology).16 One of the best ways to judge the achievements of INVESCIT since its founding in 1988 is in terms of a series of publications it has sponsored, most but not all of which are authored by institute associates: Jose Sanmartin. Los nuevos redentores: Rejlexiones sobre la ingenieria genetica, la sociobiologia y el mundo feliz que nos prometen [The new redeemers: Reflections on genetic engineering, sociobiology, and the happy world they promise us]. Nueva Ciencia 1. Barcelona: Anthropos, 1987. pp. 207. Carl Mitcham. i. Que es la filosofia de la tecnologfa? [What is the philosophy of technology?]. Trans. Cesar Cuello Nieto and Roberto Mendez Stingle. Nueva Ciencia 2. Barcelona: Anthropos, 1989. pp. 214. Santiago Vilanova. Chernobil: El fin del mito nuclear - El impacto informativo y bioLOgico del mayor accidente de la industria electronuclear [Chernobyl: The end of the nuclear myth - The information and biological impact of the great accident of the nuclear electric power industry]. Nueva Ciencia 3. Barcelona: Anthropos, 1988. pp.278. Jose Antonio Lopez Cerezo and Jose Luis Lujan L6pez. El artefacto de la inteligencia: Una rejlexi6n crftica sobre el determinismo bioLOgico de la inteligencia [The artifact of intelligence: A critical reflection on the myth of the biological determination of intelligence]. Nueva Ciencia 4. Barcelona: Anthropos, 1989. pp. 286. Andres Moya. Sobre la estructura de la teoria de la evoluci6n [On the structure of the theory of evolution]. Nueva Ciencia 5. Barcelona: Anthropos, 1989. pp. 174. Manuel Medina and Jose Sanmartin, eds. Ciencia, tecnologia y sociedad: Estudios interdisciplinares en la universidad, en la educaci6n y en la gesti6n publica [Science, technology, and society: Interdisciplinary studies in the university, in education, and in public administration]. Nueva Ciencia 6. Barcelona: Anthropos, 1990. pp. 222. Josep Puig and Joaquim Corominas. La ruta de la energia [Energy path]. Nueva Ciencia 7. Barcelona: Anthropos, 1990. pp. 480. Gilbert Hottois. El paradigma bioelico: Una elica para la lecnociencia [The bioethics paradigm: An ethics for technoscience]. Nueva Ciencia 8. Barcelona: Anthropos, 1991. pp. 205. Jose Sanmartin, Stephen H. Cutcliffe, Steven L. Goldman, and Manuel Medina, eds. Estudios sobre sociedad y lecnologia [Studies concerning society and technology]. Nueva Ciencia 9. Barcelona: Anthropos, 1992. pp. 334. 11 Nicanor Ursua. Cerebro y conocimiento: Un enfoque evolucionista [Brain and knowledge: An evolutionist approach]. Nueva Ciencia 10. Barcelona: Anthropos, 1993. pp. 377.

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CARL MITCHAM

As should be readily apparent, these volumes indicate a strong interest in issues arising from relations between society, modern biology, and biological technology. Five of the ten volumes (numbers 1,4,5, 8, and 10) are on genetic engineering, genetic theories of intelligence, evolutionary theory, and bioethics. A similar emphasis is reflected in the first and last papers contributed from Spain to the present volume, those by Marfa Luisa Garda-Merita and Jos~ Sanmartfn, both members of the INVESCIT group. Garda-Merita's short essay, "Technology and Human Nature," briefly sketches the theme of relations between technology and human nature. In so doing it points, as it were, to a general context of INVESCIT concern for what is called the social assessment of technology although Garda-Merita herself does not use this term. Manuel Medina, another INVESCIT member, in "Philosophy, Technology, and Society, " undertakes a much more substantial historicophilosophical analysis of science-technology-society relations in classical antiquity in a way that throws light on our understanding of their contemporary relations today. The argument of this paper, that theory reflects both practical skills and social organization - along with an essay in an earlier volume of Philosophy and Technologyl8 - are closely related to Medina's De la techne a tecnolog(a I: Techne y theoria: Los origenes y la epoca clasica (Valencia: Tirant Lo Blanch, 1985). Ram6n Queralt6, who is not associated with INVESCIT, in "Does Technology 'Construct' Scientific Reality?," provides an alternative interpretation of the relation between theory and social practices. For Queralt6 a constructive influence of technology on theory may exist, but it is more accidental than essential. Miguel Angel Quintanilla, also not directly associated with INVESCIT, has written one of the most comprehensive philosophies of technology in any language. The article translated here, "The Design and Evaluation of Technologies: Some Conceptual Issues," is taken from his Tecnolog(a: Un enfoque filos6fico [Technology: A philosophical perspective] (Madrid: FUNDESCO, 1989), and highlights the centrality of design as a little analyzed aspect of modern technology. Related studies can be found in his articles on "ciencia" and "t~cnica" in Miguel A. Quintanilla, ed., Diccionario defilosofta contemporanea, 3d edition (Salamanca: Sfgueme, 1985). Jos~ Sanmartfn's two essays, along with another published in an earlier volume of Philosophy and Technology,19 provide a good general overview of the philosophy of technology of the founding president of INVESCIT. In "From World3 to the Social Assessment of Technology: Remarks on Science, Technology, and Society," he takes off from Karl Popper's theory of objective knowledge to argue the need for social

INTRODUCTION

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assessments of technology. Then, in "Genethics: The Social Assessment of the Risks and Impacts of Genetic Engineering," he provides a specific example, a kind of case study of why and how a social assessment of technology might work. Both papers extend ideas argued in Los nuevos redentores [The new redeemers] (1987) and Tecnolog(a y futuro humano [Technology and the human future] (Barcelona: Anthropos, 1990). Also of note, and indicative of the importance of the work of both Sanmartin and INVESCIT, are two special issues of the journal Anthropos. The first is one devoted to the thought of Sanmartin (issue nos. 82-83, 1988). The second is a special issue edited by members of INVESCIT on "Filosoffa de la tecnologia: Una filosoffa operativa de la tecnologia y de la ciencia" [Philosophy of technology: A practical philosophy of technology and science] (nos. 94-95, 1989), accompanied by a supplement 14, "Tecnologia, ciencia, naturaleza y sociedad" [Technology, science, nature, and society], which collects texts from Heidegger, Husserl, Scheler, Ortega, Garda Bacca, Mumford, Ellul, Habermas,and Kropotkin, along with a comprehensive bibliography of SpanisJl. work and translations in the field of philosophy and technology. :lO Although the most extensive section of this volume, the collection of materials from Spain nevertheless clearly falls short in at least one important respect. It fails to include any translation from the work of Carlos Paris, one of the teachers of Sanmartin. From Mundo tecnico y existencia autentica [Technical world and authentic existence] (Madrid: Revista de Occidente, 1973) through EI rapto de la cultura [The kidnapping of culture] (Madrid: Manana, 1978; 2d edition, Barcelona: Laia, 1983) to Cr(tica de la civilizacion nuclear [Critique of nuclear civilization] (Madrid: Libertarias, 1984; 2d edition, 1991), Paris has advanced a sustained critical analysis of the technological world. It is unfortunate that the editor failed to pursue vigorously enough the possibility of securing a contribution from Paris.

Philosophy of Technology in Venezuela In Venezuela, Juan David Garda Bacca and Ernesto Mayz Vallenilla are two major figures in the philosophy of technology who in their work strongly represent the opposing traditions of engineering and humanities philosophy of technology. Garda Bacca is intoxicated with the idea that science and technology constitute a new epistemology and metaphysics. Mayz Vallenilla is concerned to explore the ways in which ratio technica, and what he terms "meta-technics," undermine traditional experience and culture. Although born in Spain and resident for extended periods in Ecuador

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CARL MITCHAM

and Mexico, Garda Bacca spent the major part of his prolific professional career at the Central University of Venezuela. He has written books on logic, systematic philosophy, history of philosophy, and literary essays; he has also done translations and textbook anthologies. One theme that runs through many of these works is an attempt to think through science and technology as the new reality of philosophy and human history. From his early interest in the powers of mathematical logic to later excitement about the way science transforms or, as he prefers to say, "transubstantiates" knowing just as technology transubstantiates acting,21 Garcia Bacca has tried to develop a positive philosophical appreciation of the new scientific-technological world. The pamphlet (published by the Central University of Venezuela) that is translated here as "Science, Technology, History, and Philosophy in the Cultural Atmosphere of Our Time," provides a succinct summary of Garda Bacca's basic attitude. Although increasingly well recognized as a major philosopher of the twentieth century in the Spanish-speaking world - see, for example, the special volume on Garda Bacca of Anthropos, issue no. 9 (1982), with its revision (October 1991) - he is virtually unknown outside this context. Mayz Vallenilla comes to the question of technology from a quite different perspective, with philosophical reflection initiated by a concern for the foundations of human alienation. 22 Because technology is identified as playing a leading role in alienation, Mayz Vallenilla first undertook to sketch out a "critique of technical reason"23 and then, as in the paper translated here as "The Present and Future of Humanity," to analyze how modern technology, which he prefers to call "metatechnology" - that is, a kind of technology beyond technology - no longer extends human perception but instead fundamentally turns against or contradicts it.24 Both Garcia Bacca and Mayz Vallenilla thus to some extent agree that modern technology transforms the human condition. The difference between them is not simply that Garcia Bacca reaches exceptionally positive conclusions about this transformation, and Mayz Vallenilla is quite uneasy about it. The difference is that Garda Bacca sees the new technical way of life as able to include in "transubstantiated" form those aspects of life that have traditionally been the focus of what are called the humanities (e.g., poetry, politics, religion), whereas Mayz Vallenilla sees the humanities as being excluded from a world meta-technically re-ordered. Leopoldo Molina, who did his dissertation on the work of Garcia Bacca, nevertheless brings to bear on techno-educational transubstantiations a kind of skepticism about their effectiveness and humanizing influence. At the same time, with regard to the humanistic-

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critical movement in education, his "Education for Freedom versus Socio-Technical Control by Pedagogical Means" is also not completely sanguine. PHILOSOPHY OF TECHNOLOGY BEYOND THE CENTERS The papers included in the final section of this collection serve to illustrate how even beyond the identified centers of reflection philosophy of technology is flourishing throughout the Spanish-speaking Americas. Again it should be emphasized that the authors included here provide no more than a small indication of a rich diversity. Raul Fornet-Betancourt was born in Cuba and now resides in Germany. As his paper on Ortega and Heidegger, "Two Philosophical Approaches to the Problem of Technics and Their Meaning for Latin America," indicates, he has in no way lost touch with his cultural roots. One can readily note the influence of the ideas of Gaos and Zea on his argument. Margarita Pefia, from Colombia, quickly sketches the prospects and problems of "Science, Technology, and Society Education in the Latin American Context." Her criticisms have implications for North America and Europe as well. The essay, "The Moral Vision of Technology in Contemporary Latin American Fiction," by Jane Robinett - who, although born in the United States, spent five years in Spain and has been a Fulbright Visiting Professor in Costa Rica - indicates how reflections on technology extend even beyond the strictly philosophical literature. The fact that her work is done in the United States also indicates how the Hispanic world is now properly beginning to have an impact in the Anglo-American world. Judith Sutz is an engineer and social scientist from Uruguay. Her essay, "The Social Implications of Information Technologies: A Latin American Perspective," can be read as providing further support for earlier arguments about the need for social assessments of technology. COMPARISONS AND ACHIEVEMENTS The uniqueness and unique strengths of this volume deserve to be stressed. To begin with, this is the first Philosophy and Technology volume to be devoted to a collection of papers from a geographical or cultural region. As a result there are more countries represented in this volume than in any previous one. Indeed, a greater percentage of these countries are new to the series than in any previous volume except the first. These two points are highlighted in the following table. (Dualcountry designations signify either an author from one nation teaching

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in another, or an author with a dual appointment at institutions in two different countries.) VollOllt

lIum~r

IIlIIIlheme

Countries rtprtstllttd bJ lIuthors

Countries NetrlTotal

1. Philosophy and Technology

Canada, Germany, Germany-Switzerland, US

4/4

2. Information Technology and Computerl in Theory and Practice

Czechoslovakia, Canada-Israel, France, Germany, Germany-Switzerland, US

3n

3. Technology and Responsibility

Belgium, Canada, Germany, Netherlands. UK, US

3/6

4. Technology and Contemporary

Canada-India, France, Germany, Germany-Switzerland, Israel, US

In

S. Technological Transformation: Contextual and CoaceptuaI lqIIicatiOlll

Canada, Canada-India, Canada-Israel. China, Germany, US

116

6. Philosophy of Technology: Practical, Historical and Other DimeosiOlll

Canada, China, Germany, Poland, US

115

7. Broad and Narrow Interpretationa of Philosophy of TechnololY

Czechoslovakia, Netherlands, Spain, US

1/4

8. Europe, America. and TechnololY: Philosophical Penpectivea

Germany. Spain. US

013

9. Democracy in a Technological Society

France, USSR, US

1/3

tire

Total number 01 different countries represented In TOIs. to,: 10. Spanish-Language Philosophy of TecbnolOlY

Chile, Costa Rica, Colombia, CubaGermany, Spain, Mexico. Venezuela, Uruguay, US

Total number or new countries In Yol. IO/total countries in series:

15 7/10

711l

If the countries represented by authors were taken to be either only countries of birth or countries of residence but not both, then the contrasts would be even stronger. Residence only would reduce volumes 1-9 by two and volume 10 by one; country of birth only would reduce volumes 1-9 by one and volume 10 by none. The number of new authors is likewise greater than with any other volume except the first, which provides a baseline. Volume 1 had 23 authors. In volume 2, 14 of 23 authors were new; in volume 3, 15 of

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19 were new; in volume 4, it was 8 of 17; in volume 5, 9 of 19; in volume 6, 8 of 12; in volume 7, 10 of 19; in volume 8, 7 of 12; in volume 9, 6 of 14. In the first instance this demonstrates a very strong commitment on the part of the Society for Philosophy and Technology to draw new persons into the discussion. But in volume 10 the proportion of new authors is 19 out of 22 - the highest ratio since the initiation of the Philosophy and Technology series. By far the greater number of these are also New World authors - who, it could be argued, introduce the newest issues. One final measure of diversity: volume 10 has four women authors. The closest competitors are volumes 1 and 3, with two and three women, respectively. (Volume 7 has no women authors; the remaining volumes have one woman each.) Indeed, the total number of different women contributors to the series in volumes 1-9 is only 6; all four women authors in volume 10 are new to this group. On balance this volume thus clearly brings a large number of new authors and national traditions into the philosophy and technology discussion. In some sense many of these articles may nevertheless strike the sophisticated North American or European reader as naive. Let it be admitted that there may be senses in which some of the reflections - for example, those by Gaos and Zea - have a certain naivete about them, as if they were approaching modern technology through manifestations that are no longer new. But this in no way invalidates them, and may in fact help us recover some of our own primary experiences in the face of postmodern sophistications. By means of the naive qua naive we are often able to recognize and to reflect the realities of our experience in ways more direct than later sophistications. In many ways, the reflections from the Spanish-speaking world collected here reveal more clearly than we might want it to "el desaffo de la tecnologfa" - the challenge of technology. Indeed, in so doing they challenge us to return to our own basic experiences - and thus to rethink technology, stripped of what is too often only a patina of high-tech rhetoric. In many other instances, however, the contributions to this volume are anything but naive. Garda de la Huerta challenges us to consider how technology alters history. Quintanilla puts forth a sophisticated analysis of technological design processes. Sanmartfn vigorously takes on the ethical problems of the new genetics. Mayz Vallenilla provides phenomenological insight into the new instrumentalization of the senses. From the metaphysical and epistemological issues addressed by Sabrovsky, Padilla, and Queralt6 to the ethical-political arguments put forth by Verdugo, Camacho, Ramirez, Dussel, Sanmartfn, and Sutz not to mention the psychological-educational concerns of Garcfa-Merita, Molina, and Pefia Borrero and the historico-philosophical background

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highlighted by Garda Bacca, Medina, Fornet-Betancourt, and Robinett - this collection also emphasizes the need for comprehensive, synthetic philosophies of technology. In so doing, Spanish-speaking studies in philosophy and technology make a contribution to the emerging world dialogue that serves the philosophical needs - and perhaps even the technological needs - of humanity as a whole.

Pennsylvania State University

NOTES 1. This origin has been analyzed at greater length in Carl Mitcham, i, Que es La filosofla de La tecnolog(a? (Barcelona: Anthropos, 1989), Part I. Two revised and

expanded versions of this analysis can be found in Carl Mitcham and Timothy Casey, "Toward an Archeology of the Philosophy of Technology and Relations with Imaginative Literature," in Mark Greenberg and Lance Schachterle, eds., Literature and Technology (Bethlehem, PA: Lehigh University Press, 1992), pp. 31-65 and 307-309; and Carl Mitcham, Thinking through Technology: The Path between Engineering and Philosophy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, forthcoming), Part I. See also Carl Mitcham and Elena Lugo, "El panorama de la filosofia de la tecnologia," in Carl Mitcham and Margarita M. Pena Borrero et al., eds., EI nuevo mundo de Lafilosofla y La tecnolog(a (University Park, PA: STS Press, 1990), pp. 1-9. 2. "Meditaci6n de la tecnica" was first published in a volume entitled Ensimismamiento y alteraci6n (Buenos Aires: Espasa-Calpe, 1939). It appeared subsequently in Jose Ortega y Gasset, Obras completas, vol. 5 (Madrid: Alianza/Revista de Occidente, 1982). It has also been included in the series of Ortega texts edited by Paulino Garagorri, Meditaci6n de La tecnica y otros ensayos sobre ciencia y filosofla (Madrid: Alianza/Revista de Occidente, 1992). 3. See Martin Heidegger, Ciencia y tecnica (Santiago: Editorial Universitaria, 1983). This volume reprints as a prologue an article by Francisco Soler (from Revista de Filosofla, vol. 20 [1982]), an introduction by Jorge Acevedo (who is the main person responsible for this publication), a much revised version of Soler's translation of "Die Frage nach der Technik" (which was first published as "La pregunta por la tecnica, " Revista de Filosofla, vol. 5, no. 1 [1958]), and an uncredited translation of Heidegger's "Wissenschaft und Besinnl!ng." Another Spanish version: "La pregunta por la tecnica, " trans. Adolfo P. Carpio, Epoca de Filosofla, vol. I, no. 1 (1985), pp. 7-29; reprinted, Anthropos, supplement 14: "Tecnologia, ciencia, naturaleza y sociedad" (1989), pp. 617. 4. The most readily available presentation of Flores's thought can be found in Terry Winograd and Fernando Flores, Understanding Computers and Cognition (Norwood, NJ: Ablex, 1987). 5. In this respect it is perhaps also worth noting that the book, Heidegger and Nazism, trans. Paul Burrell and Gabriel R. Ricci (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1989), which is the most sustained attack on Heidegger's relations with the National Socialist Party, was written by Victor Farias, a Chilean scholar exiled in Europe. 6. An English summary of this book can be found in Sergio Silva G., "Notes on the Catholic Church and Technology," Ellul Forum (Religious Studies, University of South Florida), issue no. 5 (June 1990), pp. 11-12. 7. Proceedings from this conference: Kenneth Aman, ed., Ethical Principles for

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Development: Needs, Capacities or Rights (Upper Montclair, NJ: Institute for Critical Thinking, Montclair State, 1991). 8. Quoted from an IDEA information flyer available from Prof. David Crocker, IDEA, Philosophy Department, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO 80523 USA. 9. Preparatory readings for this conference: Paul Abrecht, ed., Faith, Science, and the Future (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1978). Conference proceedings: Faith and Science in an Unjust World, vol. 1: Roger Shinn, ed., Plenary Presentations, vol. 2: Paul Abrecht, ed., Reports and Recommendations (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1980). 10. See Martin Heidegger, EI ser y eltiempo, trans. Jose Gaos (Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Econ6mica, 1951). Note that the Spanish version appeared a full ten years before John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson, trans., Being and Tune (New York: Harper & Row, 1962). Also important is Gaos, Introduccion a nEI Ser y EI Tiempon de Martin Heidegger, 2d edition (Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Economica, 1971), which fIrst appeared as the introduction to Gaos's translation. Interestingly, it was also Gaos who brought to the attention of Spanish readers Bernhard Groethuysen's Origines de I'esprit bourgeois en France (Paris: Gallimard, 1927), with his translation, Laformacion de La conciencia burguesa en Francia durante el siglo XVIII (Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Econ6mica, 1943). This study of the self-made Catholic bourgeois, which Benjamin Nelson (in his introduction to the English version, The Bourgeois: Catholicism vs. Capitalism in 18th Century France, trans. Mary Ilford [New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1968]) says identifIes an existential-social formation overlooked by other social analysts of the birth of technological modernity such as Max Weber, and could well have been entitled, "The Catholic Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism," has obvious implications for Gaos's existential-historical analyses of Mexican experience. 11. Jose Ferrater Mora, Diccionario de filosofta, has gone through six editions, expanding from one to four volumes. The fIrst edition appeared in 1941, and I have not been able to locate a copy to confIrm an entry there on philosophy of technology. But in the 2d edition, 2 vols. (Mexico: Atlante, 1944), there is a one page entry with brief bibliography. By the 4th edition, 2 vols. (Buenos Aires: Sudamericana, 1958), the entry has increased by half and the bibliography tenfold, with the fIrst acknowledgment of English-language work, namely Lewis Mumford's Technics and Civilization (1934, Spanish trans., 1944). In the 5th edition, 2 vols. (Buenos Aires: Sudamericana, 1965), the entry is again slightly larger. In the 6th edition, 4 vols. (Madrid: Alianza, 1979), there are entries not only on "tecnica," but also an equally substantial entry on "trabajo" [work] and numerous mentions and cross-references in entries on science, among other topics. 12. See, for example, the following original and translated works: As early as the 1920s the Enciclopedia universal ilustrada (Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, 1928), vol. 57, includes philosophically sensitive entries on "tecnica" and "tecnicismo." Andre Lalande, VocabuLario tecnico y crftico de Lafilosofta (Buenos Aires: Ateneo, 1953), from French, has entries on "tecnica," "tecnico," and "tecnologfa." Nicola Abbagnano, Diccionario de filosofta (Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Econ6mica, 1963), from Italian, analyzes "tecnica," "tecnicismo," "tecnocracia," and "tecnologfa." Alberto Caturelli, Lafilosofta (Madrid: Gredos, 1966), has a fifteen-page chapter entitled, "La tecnica." Hermann Krings, Hans Michael Baumgartner, Christoph Wild, et al., Conceptos jundamentales de filosofta (Barcelona: Herder, 1979), from German, has a twelve page entry on "tecnica." Julia Didier, Diccionario de filosofta, from French (Mexico: Diana, 1983), has an entry on "tecnica." The Gran Enciclopedia Rialp (Madrid: Rialp, 1984), includes entries on "tecnocracia" and "tecnologia," both with explicit philosophical references, as well as entries on "tecnica industrial" and "industrialismo," among others. The one-volume Enciclopedia de La filosofta (Barcelona: Ediciones B, 1992), adapted from Italian, has entries on "tecnocracia" and "tecnologia."

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13. Leopoldo Zea, Ensayos sobre filosojia en la historia (Mexico: Style, 1948), p. 177. 14. Leopoldo Zea, The Latin-American Mind, trans. James H. Abbott and Lowell Dunham (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1963), p. 77. 15. Ibid. 16. For a more detailed description of the INVESCIT program, see Manuel Medina and Jose Sanmartm, "A New Role for Philosophy and Technology Studies in Spain," Technology in Society, vol. 11, no. 4 (1989), pp. 447-455. 17. Some of the essays in this volume are also available in English in Stephen H. Cutcliffe, Steven L. Goldman, Manuel Medina, and Jose Sanmartfu, eds., New WoridY, New Technologies, New Issues (Bethlehem, PA: Lehigh University Press, 1992). 18. Manuel Medina, "Technology and Scientific Concepts: Mechanics and the Concept of Mass in Archimedes," in Paul T. Durbin, ed., Philosophy and Technology, vol. 8: Europe, America, and Technology: Philosophical Perspectives (Boston: Kluwer, 1991), pp. 141-156. 19. Jose Sanmartm, "Alternatives for Evaluating the Effects of Genetic Engineering on Human Development," in Paul T. Durbin, ed., Philosophy and Technology, vol. 7: Broad and Narrow Interpretations 0/ Philosophy o/Technology (Boston: Kluwer, 1990), pp. 153-166. 20. Despite the importance of this collection, one cannot help but notice its failure to include a number of major Spanish-language philosophers of technology. 21. See, for example, chapter entitled, "Ciencia transustanciadora," in Juan David Garcia Bacca, Curso sistematico de filosofla actual: Filosojia, ciencia, historia, diaLectica, y sus aplicaciones (Caracas: Universidad Central de Venezuela, 1969), pp. 42-51. 22. Ernesto Mayz Vallenilla, Del hombre y su alienaciOn (Caracas: Instituto Nacional de Cultura y Bellas Artes, 1966). 23. Ernesto Mayz Vallenilla, Esbozo de una crftica de la razon tecnica (Caracas: Universidad Simon Bolivar, 1974). See also Mayz Vallenilla, Ratio Technica (Caracas: Monte Avila, 1983). 24. This study is expanded in Emesto Mayz Vallenilla, Fundamentos de la metatecnica (Caracas: Monte Avila, 1990).

PART I FROM CHILE

MARCOS GARCIA DE LA HUERTA I.

TECHNOLOGY AND POLITICS: TOWARD ARTIFICIAL HISTORY?

With any attempt to understand the relationship between technology and politics we tend to think in terms of external effects or impacts. The same usually applies when we deal with the role and historical significance of new inventions. This attitude, however, ignores an internal relationship between technology and politics. Lewis Mumford asserts the existence of just such an inner link between technology and politics when he argues that the megatechnologies of early civilizations are inherently "anti-democratic." These technologies, which were the basis of what are known to us as the "wonders of the ancient world" (pyramids, etc.) replaced the "democratic technologies" of the oldest tribal villages, turning society into a vast "machine." Langdon Winner, following Mumford, asks in deliberately provocative terms, "Do artifacts have politics?" His implicit yes points in the same direction. Taken literally, such a question may seem misguided or meaningless. Here, however, I will endeavor to show that if our answer is negative and we adopt a strictly instrumental conception of technology as a mere means to external ends, this actually impedes a proper understanding of the true scope and meaning of technological constructions or complexes within human reality. TECHNOLOGY, INSTRUMENTALITY, AND SCIENCE

This undoubtedly implies that technology in itself is not to be confused with either instruments or machines, and that it begins to reveal its true significance only as an organizational-instrumental system. That the machine is not the same as the instrument has been shown by, among others, Franz Reuleaux in his Theoretische Kinematik (1875). For Reuleaux the machine, being a system of instruments, creates a new, specific kind of relationship with the body that operates it, and therefore, we might add, with human reality and nature. At the same time, it is in the nature of the artifact in general, whether machine or instrument, to be thought of as "good for (something)," whereas technology as a whole is good for nothing: it is without end or object. As Heidegger puts it, "The essence of technology is not in itself 3 Carl Mileham (ed.), Philosophy of Technology in Spanish Speaking Countries, 3-14 . .01993 Kluwer Academic Publishers.

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something technological." In other words, technology is not the same as effectiveness or productivity or usefulness, and it cannot be approached solely from the functional standpoint. Not even the conception of technology as functional determination of an entity involves thought about the function of functionality itself. Here it may be objected that we are only putting forth a verbal strategy characteristic of philosophy, one designed to get rid of an eminently practical problem such as that of technology and its impact on politics. But surely empirical evidence may be marshalled to the effect that technology has historically imposed conditions on politics, even on ways of thinking in general, just as much as it has had external effects on politics. One need only cite McLuhan, Mumford, or Leroi-Gourhan, among others, in support of this point. As for the philosophical strategy underlying our approach to the question, we may well agree that there is one. Such is, however, the only way to dispel the apparent opacity of the world of artificial objects and to show fully that, despite appearances, this world is not quite so innocent and innocuous as certain analytic conceptions contend conceptions which see in technology only the application of scientific knowledge. Indeed, to try to reduce technical reality to some relation with knowledge, and even to assume that such a link is forged, is also a philosophical strategy. It fails nonetheless to lead to an understanding of the form of the technical constitution of human reality and its significance in public life. The technology and science relationship was first stated very clearly by the Greeks; the classic tradition, however, especially Plato and Aristotle, described the relationship in ways that are no longer sufficient. The Greeks always understood the politeia as a special kind of techne; technology for them - in opposition to the moderns - never came to include the kind of theoretical science ultimately required by politeia. By contrast, the functional or instrumental determination of an entity allows an extension of the technical to spheres initially deemed nontechnical - such as society, politics, even philosophy and history. For thought and action can now be technically determined, that is to say, artificialized and functionalized. Not only can this be attempted; it may even be said that such an attempt has been the rule in modern politics. THE END OF HISTORY AS ARTIFICIALIZATION OF HISTORY In this light the idea of an "end of history" may be reinterpreted in non-Hegelian terms. For Hegel the end comes with the integration or synthesis of all spiritual oppositions and the consequent achievement of

TECHNOLOGY AND POLITICS

5

an absolute or all-encompassing thought. But through modern technology the piecemeal or partial and qualitative making of artifice becomes an indefinite quantitative manufacturing. This replaces the idea of history with the idea of progress, in which technological transformation continues indefinitely without ever leading to definite qualitative change. The phenomenon of progress as a replacement for history may of course be seen as a development of history itself, as a stage of history rather than as a definitive phenomenon. But while artificialization of history proceeds under the form of progress, of techno-productive development, this phenomenon points to an "end of history" or its decline conceived as an "act of freedom. " The artificialization of history thus develops, basically, along two lines: 1. Through the progressive growth of techno-nature, that is, of a quantitative development in the world of human-made objects - but, above all, through the development of techno-organizational ensembles that define the institutional framework of social practice in general and 2. Through the valuation of inventions and the construction of artifice extended to history itself and thus turned into a history of artifacts or artificial history. Anifici was the name given in Renaissance Italy to works of ingenuity, engines, or useful devices that imitate the creations of nature. Organon was used by the Greeks to designate both the organs of the body and the instruments inspired by them or designed to imitate them. Aristotle calls the hand the "organ of organs," in the twofold sense that the hand is the corporal instrument par excellence, the one that builds all other tools, but also as that which inspires tools as copies of manual functions. The spade, the scraper, the jar, are all imitations of possible hand functions. Early modern reflection on technology reproduces this traditional Aristotelian notion, and then extends it to the point at which technology is seen as a prolongation of the whole body and its capabilities. This idea is clearly present before McLuhan in Ernst Kapp's Grundlinien einer Philosophie der Technik (1877), and in Reuleaux's already mentioned Theoretische Kinematik. In the Introduction to his Leviathan (1651) Hobbes writes: "For what is the Bean, but a Spring; and the Nerves, but so many Strings; and the Joints, but so many Wheels, giving motion to the whole Body, such as was intended by the Artificer?" In a similar way, the birth of "social physics" in the 18th century was the result of imitating or extending physical science and its methods to the study of the human. This second movement also contributes to the

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tendency to artificialize history and politics. The advance and value attached to the social sciences in general, including economics, has to a considerable degree determined the modem concept of politics as programmed construction of social reality, in other words, as "development." Comte himself called sociology "social physics." Durkheim recommended treating social phenomena as if they were things. And before the creation of the term "political economy," Adam Smith taught the discipline within the framework of a chair of moral philosophy at the University of Glasgow. FROM NOVA SCIENTIA TO NEW TECHNOLOGY However, if we go back to the beginnings of modem science, the first "nuove scienze" was Machiavelli's physics of power (The Prince, 1512), more than a century earlier than the dialogue of Galileo (1638) which bears that name, and was to be followed a century later by Vico's Scienza nuova (1725), a treatise on history. What is even more astonishing is that neither the science of nature nor of history nor of politics can claim undisputed precedence in the use of the term. The very first Nova scientia (1537) was a treatise on artillery and ballistics by Niccolo Tartaglia. The term "new science" was first used, then, primarily to designate matters of "applied science," as we would say today. In other words, the first new sciences all dealt with matters of an eminently practical and experimental nature; by extension, the term "science" would, as Hans Jonas has argued, eventually come to be given to theoretical questions in a distinctly modem sense. In this regard, it may be recalled that Bacon did not share the confidence of Descartes in the power of "sovereign reason." On the contrary, he advances an instrumental theory of knowledge that is far from Cartesian. The famous formula attributed to him - "knowledge is power" - very properly summarizes this attitude, as seen in the Novum organum (1620), where he presents the process of knowledge according to the model of technical creation. Concepts, aside from their truth, are useful hypothesis, effective instruments, or appropriate experimental projects. Knowledge also requires rules of procedure to reach results; observation of the rules dictated by the method is the formula for success, or effective intervention. Human knowledge and human power meet in one; for where the cause is not known the effect cannot be produced. Nature to be commanded must be obeyed (Novum organum I, iii).

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7

By becoming an obedient follower, reason gains power. The association of knowledge with power is also expressed as follows: Neither the naked hand nor the understanding left to itself can effect much. It is by instruments and helps that the work is done. . .. And as the instruments of the hand either give motion or guide it, so the instruments of the mind supply either suggestions for the understanding or cautions (Novum organum I, ii).

The usual concept of technology fails to take sufficient account of this relation, already stated so clearly by Bacon. The concept of "applied science" in particular implies that technology is a kind of derivative or by-product of knowledge and science, when what Bacon proposes is precisely the reverse - namely, that for knowledge to be applicable, knowledge itself must be instrumental, that is, become a "servant" and "interpreter of nature." The very name of the work leaves no room for other interpretations: Novum organum means "new instrument," not "new science," which was the expression used by Tartaglia, Galileo, and Vico. The issue here is not a negligible one. The general notion of technology as simply materialized power or objectified knowledge, is at the base of any instrumentalist delusion or mediational prejudice, since it assumes an exteriority of the technical in respect to action in general and political action in particular. Indeed, the appearance of objectified power is what first strikes us and conceals the social and political reality of technology. In other words, there is a tendency to reduce instrumental power to the power that the artifact in general, whether instrument or machine, exerts over nature. In our direct sensory relationship with artifacts, this is what we perceive first, through bodily fatigue and possibilities of action on the environment. Technology, however, is also a constituent of social relations and of any other kind of action, including communications, since communication is exercised through "means" or media. Technology as "means of production" further constitutes an element of the productive system. This is true, too, because the social division of work is to a considerable extent a technical division of functions, role sharing, and hierarchical determination. It even conditions social representations for communication and language, which are always conveyed by some "medium." There is no communication and then words, writing, radio, or whatever, just as there is no production without instruments and machines. Technology is as much a structural component of human reality as blood is in cell metabolism or age in an organism. It creates de Jacto a socio-technical order that is also expressed as a technopolitical phenomenon. This does not of course preclude that technology is in its turn to some

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extent constituted by the socio-political. The point here concerns the technical constitution of politics, something equivalent, to a certain extent and on another plane, to the organic constitution of life or the constitution of a state, although it is not "decreed." This means that if the relationship between technology and politics is to be stated from the point of view of a concern for democracy, this should be done at the level of technology itself and not only at a "political" level in the ordinary sense of the word. The instrumental view of technology as a simple means fails precisely to lead to a democratic conception. It tends rather to stress a verticalist, authoritarian form of power, taking for granted the neutrality of technology while underlining only the relation of technology to knowledge. In other words, if technology is but the application of science, it shares with it a minority, even elitist, character. Knowledge, like skills, belongs to the few, and only these few should decide. The ignorant masses have nothing to say on decisions that should be made only by the experts. The foregoing argument is one of the strongest bases of the technocratic conception of power, that is, of the technical legitimation of politics. THE EXPERIENCE OF CHILE In Latin America we have recently experienced almost a caricature of the technical legitimation of power. In Chile, for instance, the overthrow of the constitutional government provided a starting-point for arguments of this nature. The military government claimed to have suppressed politics because politics had destroyed democratic institutions and annihilated all public expression among the civilian population, including social organizations and unions. This" abolition of politics" was not, however, just a trick to avoid public judgment; it was also a way to create a vacuum and impose a new principle of legitimation. Indeed, if parties and political organizations were outlawed, only the military remained, which was by definition the reverse of parties or factions, for it belonged to the entire nation. Who could then object to decisions that would only respond to the highest interest of the nation, the judgment of specialists or experts who loved their country? What technocracy tries to prove, after all, is that politics and politicians are useless and can therefore be dispensed with - or else that politics is illusory, not more than the chatter of a handful of irresponsible people. In brief, like any power, it corrupts. The figment that the military machine is apolitical was for us a trap to legitimize each measure that progressively altered the political and

TECHNOLOGY AND POLITICS

9

institutional framework. Whether it was a question of enacting new labor legislation, privatizing large-scale state-owned companies, or eliminating university courses, everything was justified as a measure of economic-administrative "rationalization" - on the grounds that whatever was reduced or eliminated had come to be "oversized," as the reigning clicM had it. Indeed, if the amount of money in circulation is drastically cut in half, everything does become "oversized."

THE GREEK BACKGROUND From ancient times, however, authoritarianism has found in scientism an ideological support, which it has exploited at will for its own legitimation. In this context, Plato's argument with the sophists regarding the dignity and political role of manual labor is particularly instructive. Neither Protagoras nor Hippias share the scorn that Plato shows toward artisans. On the contrary, Protagoras defines the role of the sophists precisely as a defense of practical knowledge: "When [the young] have escaped from the technical studies [technai) , " he says, some "sophists bring them back against their will and force them again into technical studies, teaching them arithmetic, astronomy, geometry, and music" (protagoras 318d-e). The word "sophist," in fact, was not originally the pejorative term into which Plato turned it. Sophos, wise, was one who practiced any Protagoras' version of the myth of form of sophia, wisdom. Prometheus is equally illuminating. In it Prometheus steals from Hephaestus and Athene and gives to human beings "technical wisdom [entechne sophia] together with fire," so that they can prevail over the other creatures, which can rely for defense on their strength, endurance, speed, etc. "Now, although in this way human beings had acquired the wisdom of daily life, political technique fpolitike techne] they did not possess" (321d). In this interpretation of the myth, the gift of fire to mortals constituted a kind of primordial technology transfer. As a result, Prometheus "stood his trial for theft." But human beings thus furnished with trades were nonetheless lacking in the art of politics, of living together in a city. They were therefore incapable of defending themselves or of waging war; they even fell victim to animals. For Protagoras, as for Plato and Aristotle, politics was a form of techne. Only Protagoras contends that all human beings are qualified to take part in the public life of the polis, whereas Plato and Aristotle exclude the laborers and artisans. Protagoras agrees with Plato that the architect can and should state his views in matters of architecture, just as the sculptor or the painter is the proper person to

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do the same in matters of sculpture or painting. But "when they meet for a consultation on political virtue . . . they naturally allow advice from everyone, since it is held that everyone should partake of this virtue, or else that states cannot be" (323a). Good sense tells us that it is impossible for human beings not to take part in justice, otherwise they would not be human. Such is Protagoras' position. He claims to follow the common view, according to which all human beings share in questions concerning public life, so that they can and should be educated to know what is good and just. "Of this I have given you sufficient demonstration, Socrates," Protagoras concludes, "that your fellow-citizens have good reasons for recognizing both the smith and cobbler as competent to advise on political affairs" (324c). Tradition, however, has instead upheld Plato's view, for even now it is usual to see politics as the occupation of a few and to associate the perfection of the city with the knowledge of these few. It is just that Plato's Republic of philosophers has been replaced by experts or specialists claiming possession of pure and universal knowledge and the right to impose it on society as a whole. Plato himself conceives politeia as techne in a quite modem sense, that is, as adaptation of means to a predetermined end. The examples he gives for political techne are always taken from the artistic or manual crafts, precisely the ones he excludes from politeia, based on recognition of a hierarchy between theoretical knowledge and the technai or operating skills. Only those who can govern themselves may govern others, and these are the sages, the men of theory. Nevertheless, if, as Protagoras says, competence in governing is not the outcome of specific knowledge or ability, but of being involved in decisions or their effects, then it is something completely different from the knowledge of the expert and different too from the episteme theoretikos of the sages. For example, the citizens of a city need only a slight knowledge of nuclear physics to be competent to judge whether they do or do not want a nuclear power plant constructed within it. Neither need one be a bioengineer to judge whether one wants human clones manufactured in a laboratory, or something of that kind. Plato sees Protagoras' thesis as a clear threat to order in the polis and the hierarchies of the Republic, which he conceives as corresponding to hierarchies of knowledge. Aristotle, though both more empirical and democratic, apparently agrees. Is it truly the case that a citizen is a person who has the right to share office in the government, or are the working classes also to be counted citizens? If these persons also are to be counted who have no share in offices, it is not possible for every citizen to possess the citizen's virtue; for the true citizen is the man capable of governing. If on the other hand no one of the working people is a citizen, in what class are the

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various workers to be ranked? ... rrJhe best-ordered state will not make an artisan a citizen. While if even the artisan is a citizen, then what we said to be the citizen's virtue must not be said to belong to every citizen, nor merely be defined as the virtue of a free man, but will only belong to those who are released from menial occupations (Politics III, iii; 1277b-1278a; Rackham trans. from Loeb Classical Library).

But this argument to exclude artisans from judgment is unsatisfactory, particularly if we consider that contemporary technologies are much more threatening than ancient ones, and certainly more hazardous than the participation of artisans as citizens. THE FOREGROUND OF THE SCIENCES OF ADMINISTRATION The ethical and political invalidation of manual laborers in Greek thought is one of the most significant issues for modern political philosophy. It is this which established at an early stage the dominance of theoretical knowledge, which in turn provides the conceptual basis and fundamental inspiration for the modern technocratic legitimation of power - although the "technostructure" (Galbraith) remains its functional and organizational basis. The conception of politics as the practicing form of the sciences of administration is equivalent to characterizing technology as the application of science to dominate nature, and is derived directly therefrom. This idea is not innocent, as was said earlier, because scientism is the theoretical expression of a technocratic conception, the latter being above all a way of exercising power rather than an explicit political theory. For in its properly modern form, what technocracy seeks is to suppress politics. Indeed, in its modern origins technocracy goes back to the political thinking of the 18th century, which conceived political liberty in a radical sense as liberation from politics. This is, after all, the meaning of the idea of the "end of the government of men," and its replacement by the "simple management of things" - in the expression of Saint-Simon, which is later adopted by Engels. In fact, Plato had said something similar: In the well-ordered state most action as such is entirely eliminated and becomes a simple "execution of orders" (Statesman 305d). Plato's conception, however, argued that the public function is incompatible with the technical function, whereas modern technocracy fuses one with the other. Politics is reduced to a technical function, in the sense of practicing previously acquired scientific knowledge. In both cases the political sphere becomes a separate domain, so that it evades democratic regulation and control. Politics, raised to the condition of theory, invalidates citizen participation, or rather disables whoever is not a theorist.

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In the classic form of this invalidating-disabling exclusion, public

virtue is deemed to pertain solely to the citizen who practices the theory, for the knowledge associated with technai remains purely operational.

In the modern form, all those not initiated into expert knowledge are equally excluded, for only specialists can be responsible for decisions of a technical or scientific nature - the government being no longer a political one. In both cases a certain degree of autonomy in the conception of politics is implied: whether politics is to be eliminated, or whether it is to be seen as a techne which only theoria can direct. Classical philosophy validates the governing of a special kind of human being by absolutizing theory in a theoretical argument to the effect that politics is precisely the occupation of this special kind of human being who by nature is inclined to theory. In the modern world a similar role is played by the "expert" as a result of the "rationalization of decision making" in the "scientific" study of politics. Like philosophical theory, scientific knowledge makes the exercise of public office an exclusive activity. The more the field of competence in politics is reduced, the more power becomes centralized, and the more decision making is taken away from the citizens. Technocracy is not only elitist, it is also authoritarian. A non-authoritarian technocracy would be a contradiction in terms. AGAIN, THE EXPERIENCE OF CHILE The specific forms of technocratic authoritarianism that we have known in Latin America have only carried to extremes certain aspects of modern politics which, during the 1960s and 1970s, were already recognizable everywhere, though perhaps in less dangerous forms. These aspects may be summarized in what Hannah Arendt describes as a fundamental distortion of human action, that is, conceiving politics according to terms and principles derived from manufacturing. The tendency to program society, to subject society to plans, values, and ends to some extent extraneous to action itself, is, according to Arendt, characteristic of this reduction of human action to technological production. Needless to say, the most genuine representatives of this counterfeit history are to be found in the countries of the Second and Third World. It is not by chance that they have been the champions of "leaping ahead" and "closing the gap" - in a word, the most vigorous proponents of planned social change and "development." The concept of "development" gathers strength precisely where development is lacking. Simultaneously, the concept assumes an

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empirical model of society that must be imitated, thus giving rise to a feigned, mimetic conception of history. "Development" is feigned history and requires a political fiction that makes the social the object of design and planning, of programmed change and constructed structures. We give the name "history" both to the res gestae, actions in history, and to the narration of such actions. Categorizations of history, insofar as they impose on the res gestae the principle of artificiality or simulation, suppress history. In the language of the social sciences the notion of history has already been removed and replaced. It may even be said that such removal is the very condition of the survival of the social sciences as "sciences." Unless and until each science protects its object from the unforeseeable, that is, from freedom and its incessant siege, its own status and condition is jeopardized. It is not by accident that when technology displays all its power, globally and totally, power is no longer centralized or located but becomes a ubiquitous, diffused, omnipresent reality. Consider, for example, the power present in transnational corporations and international telecommunications networks, through which technology is deployed over the whole planet. Foucault's "microphysics of power" constitutes in a wayan expression of this anonymous deployment and omnipresence. But the microphysics of power presupposes the all embracing presence of a macro-technology which becomes in turn a biosocio-politico-technology. Such is a prospect of the inherent influence of technology on politics and the challenge it poses.

University oj Chile REFERENCES Arendt, Hannah. The Human Condition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958. (See especially chapter 6.) Foucault, Michel. Surveil/er et punir: Naissance de 1a prison. Paris: Gallimard, 1975. Galbraith, John Kenneth. The New Industrial State. 2d revised edition. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1971. Garda de la Huerta, Marcos. Critica de 1a raz6n tecnocratica. Santiago: Universitaria Santiago, 1990. (See especially chapter 14.) Heidegger, Martin. Die Technik und die Kehre. Pfullingen: Neske, 1962. Jonas, Hans. The Phenomenon of Life: Toward a Philosophical Biology. New York: Harper & Row, 1966. (See especially eighth essay.) Kapp, Ernst. Grundlinien einer Philosophie der Technik. Braunschweig: Westermann, 1877. McLuhan, Marshall. Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1964. Leroi-Gourhan, Andre. Evolution et techniques. 2 vols. Paris: Albin Michel, 1943 and 1945.

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Mumford, Lewis. The Myth of the Machine. 2 vols. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1967 and 1970. (See especially vol. 1.) Reuleaux, Franz. Theoretische Kinematik: Grundzuge einer Theorie des Maschinenwesens. Braunschweig: Vieweg, 1875. Winner, Langdon. The Whale and the Reactor: A Searchfor Limits in an Age of High Technology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986. (See especially part I.)

MARCOS GARCiA DE LA HUERTA I.

GLOBALIZATION: HOMOGENIZATION WITH AN INCREASING TECHNOLOGICAL GAP

I. SEVEN THESES ON TECHNOLOGY TRANSFER

Whenever human beings have practiced cannibalism on some regular basis they have been moved to do so not by hunger but by an idea. In our own century there are likewise abundant examples of ethnic groups being obliterated or annihilated in holocausts perpetrated in the name of some idea. As put forward by the oppressors, the idea at issue claims some essential difference between oppressors and victims - although what is in fact always stressed are differences at the level of technological achievements. The origin of human beings is actually able to be explained in a similar way. According to a hypothesis considered plausible by modern anthropology, one prehistoric hominid group overcame all others because of its weapons, and thus became the direct ancestor of homo

sapiens. l

A first issue can thus be formulated in the following thesis:

Thesis 1: Technology transfer follows a rule of survival.

Technology transfer follows a rule or principle of survival. In other words, those who develop more efficient tools, more powerful weapons, become a threat to those who do not possess them. Any kind of innovation, then, produced by and within one group, tends to generate adoptive pressures on other groups with which it is in contact. From this may be derived a second thesis:

Thesis 2: Technology transfer is based on a tendency to emulate efficiency in technological performances. Technology transfer in general derives from a tendency to emulate efficiency and technological performances of some kind, including forms of organization. A distinction might be drawn in this respect between productive instruments and weapons - although any appreciable 15 Carl Mitcham (ed.), Philosophy of Technology in Spanish Spea/dng Countries, 15-38. 01993 Kluwer Academic Publishers.

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difference in any kind of instrumental endowment tends to generate strategic advantages which are virtually equivalent to military supremacy. Metallurgy and agriculture, for instance, permitted urban development, the social division of labor, and manufacture. These processes, in turn, made the constitution of regular armies possible, largely overtaking the archaic military organization of tribal villages. In fact, the greatest states of the ancient world, as well as the precolombian empires of the Americas, would be inconceivable without such basic technological advantages. According to the last thesis, social groups ought to adopt the technologies of their more advanced neighbors. Thus,

Thesis 3: Technology transfer leads to assimilation and convergence. Technology transfer will lead to an assimilation and convergence in technologies. The situation with technology transfer could be compared to a system of interconnected bodies of water. If the water level in one is raised, there will be a corresponding rise in all connected bodies as well. However, experience reveals something quite different. Today, for example, the so-called technological gap is in many cases actually growing, and indeed tends to increase instead of decrease. Therefore thesis three appears to be false - unless there exists some other principle which under certain conditions can be shown to cancel or neutralize it. A number of authors have nevertheless spoken in different ways and from different points of view about the universalization of history, singling out modern technology as the primary causal agent. Thus, for example, Martin Heidegger and Kostas Axelos speak about "planetarism" and "planetarization." Marshall McLuhan maintains that extensions of the techniques of communication, particularly through electric and electronic media, tend to convert the whole earth into a single "global village." Abraham Moles argues that "the whole world tends to become a huge megapolis." Bertrand Russell somewhat earlier postulated the necessity of a world administration, in response to the impending proliferation of modern armaments, especially atomic weapons, which represent in his view the supreme threat. For Russell there existed a crucial choice between a world state and world destruction. 2 It seems to me that the idea of this world unified by and through technology constitutes a new technological myth, a "brave one world, " to paraphrase the title of Aldous Huxley's anti-utopian novel. It is a

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world integrated by social planning and programming rather than by genetic engineering and psychological conditioning. According to thesis three the assimilation and convergence of technological levels over the whole world ought to have been achieved some time ago. But this has not happened, as is well known. If we distinguish a Third World from a First or Second it is precisely on the basis of their different levels of technological development. Paradoxically this difference not only distinguishes "developed" from "developing" or "underdeveloped" worlds, it also brings them together in the sense of establishing a common standard which admits only of differences in levels. Greeks and Romans considered the borders of their own worlds to be absolute barriers separating them from others the barbarians or primitives. They even went so far as to question their essential humanity. Now, by contrast, the "developed" and "underdeveloped" become less and less different, while at the same time becoming more and more unequal. This leads to the formulation of a new thesis:

Thesis 4: Technology homogenization.

transfer is accompanied by

cultural

The tendency to transfer technology to the relatively less developed areas of the world is accompanied by an increasing homogenization of societies, because technology transfer both presupposes and produces a transfer of symbols, that is, of cultural patterns or standards. The statement that borders tend to disappear, that the world is being unified, and that its history is becoming planetarized, can be interpreted as follows. Boundaries between "primitive" and "civilized," first theoretically undermined by structural anthropology, are now equally challenged in practice. Even in its more polite form, as when one refers to "industrialized" and "developing" societies, the distinction changes its meaning. The inhabitants of the latter peripheral areas are just as much eager consumers of technology as are the inhabitants of the productive centers. This is why the productive centers tend to identify us as clients of their progress rather than as barbarians who need to be held at bay. But the consumption of new products only engenders a sort of mirage of progress, an appearance of modernization. It is at once both necessary and insufficient, in that it offers the goal of progress without transmitting either its internal logic or its dynamism. Progress in general tends to generate imbalances. It is by definition destructive of equilibrium, because not only does it upset the physical equilibrium of the world, including an increasingly fragile biological balance, but also the social equilibrium, both as a whole and in its parts.

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It is surprising in this respect that the Renaissance utopias of Thomas More, Francis Bacon, and Thomas Campanella, which have in common a more or less explicit technological component, associate technological advances with greater harmony, peace, and social equilibrium. Perhaps this is an example of the mythical roots of the modern idea of progress, which has been linked since its very beginnings with belief in the idea that humanity is always moving toward a higher stage of culture, knowledge, and morality - and the securing of greater happiness. If different levels of technological development tend to encourage emulation and competition, independent of the competitive character of the productive system, it is thus because something more fundamental than progress is at stake. What is being transferred, indeed, is more than tools, apparatus, equipment, and so on. Hegel hinted that it is not just objects which are made through work, but freedom as well. 3 But if technology is fundamentally a way of thinking, an "unconcealing of being," as Heidegger says,4 then it is the great experiments in social engineering of the 20th century which reveal the most profound expressions of technical rationality. Global planning, shock treatments, the militarization of politics are the main forms assumed by this instrumental rationality. And these can hardly be regarded as advances in freedom, no matter how efficient they might be. It is not by accident that the most dramatic and barbaric experiments in social engineering have almost invariably taken place in the Second and Third World. They are, in a sense, the political expression of that emulative and competitive character of the technological process which has been called the technological "race." Karl Popper maintains that "all social engineering . . . is doomed to remain a Utopian dream. ,,5 This is formally correct, though not true. True utopias are doomed not to remain merely a dream. Popper's judgment is both too olympian and presupposes a scientistic conception of truth. The extension to society of the methods used to dominate nature have become a standard part of our social life, and the negative or undesirable effects of this extension cannot be conjured away simply by pointing out their absurdity. The pragmatism which inspires such effort is not, like that of John Dewey or William James, a theoretical one. Moreover, the power of technology over society and even over thought goes beyond the framework of language or expressed ideologies - although in fact technology exerts an influence over social behavior and decisions similar to that of ideology. Its coercive power is rooted in the emulation of performances and competition, as we have seen, and certainly also in what Popper calls its utopian character - although he does not grant it any credence since, in his view, social technologies do not have a scientific basis.

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What is characteristic of modern technology in this respect is that its coercive force takes on the range of global or universal action. Geographical distance is no longer the obstacle it used to be in relating different societies that had no physical contact with one another. In fact, invasions, migrations, and conquests are no longer the means to extend a culture. Technology is the new means. Diversity between cultures is no longer possible. Technological civilization does not easily tolerate different cultures. When it does not annihilate them entirely, it either gradually dilutes or assimilates them. This means, from another point of view, that those who do not rapidly and continually improve their conditions of production are condemned, by the same global logic, to become a museum curiosity. Technology, in fact, creates an imperative which is satisfied only by itself. It does not exclude marginal nations but brings them to center stage, either by means of some kind of war or famine, or through world-record inflation, debt, or unemployment. Technological progress challenges, if not invalidates, the idea that "history advances on its weakest flank." It confirms, instead, Hegel's concept that the vanguard of history is represented by the dominant nation, to which he attributes all rights and prerogatives. Technological progress contributes to the creation of the most extensive, rapid, and closely interwoven network of commerce, transportation, and communications while it helps create a worldwide system of exchange in which advantages and disadvantages are asymmetrically distributed. The argument of comparative advantage in the international division of labor, originally formulated by the classical liberal theory of economic exchange, is today invested with new meanings. Now it serves to justify the regressive character of the international division of labor, sharpening initial distinctions. When the social division of labor is also a technological division of roles, then differential instrumental endowments reinforce rather than neutralize unequal territorial distributions of wealth and power. The ideology of comparative advantage further means that inequitable distribution of resources becomes a sort of technological rule. The tendency to unequal development, so often observed in comparisons between cities, regions, social sectors - and even in the fields of culture and science - is both confirmed and reinforced by the international progress of technology. It is no surprise, then, that there are some authors who attribute a regressive social character to science and technology, in the sense that they contribute to a polarization of wealth and power. As one author has been so bold to express it: "Let us say frankly that science has brought more harm than good to the great majority of human beings. ,,6

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The preceding can be summarized in the following thesis:

Thesis 5: Technology transfer presupposes constitutive opposition, inequalities, and disequilibrium. Technology transfer and progress in general presuppose constitutive opposition, unequal growth, growing inequalities, disequilibrium, even disintegration. Social engineering only partially mitigates these effects and is, in fact, often an exacerbating agent. It is also assumed that progress itself, in virtue of its limitless character, will reintegrate things, bring them into equilibrium, order them. But we now know that such equalization is impossible. It would require an unsustainable pressure on primary resources and energy reserves. Thus the emulative tendency has a physical limit and a contradictory character: on the one hand there is pressure to emulate and on the other the impossibility of achieving equality. Differential technological development seems to contradict the idea that transfer is founded only on unequal distributions in products or power, or even on the receptivity of a potential addressee, as sufficient conditions. An inequality that is too pronounced, for example, inhibits rather than favors transfer, while a relative parity, by contrast, favors it. The best transfer takes place when there is less trauma, less disruption of preexisting structures, partial or local complementarities notwithstanding. In general, a relatively advanced technology is more synergistic and tends to reach a higher level faster and to favor further innovations. By contrast, a low or very low technological level does not favor connections and interrelationships, and is more resistant, even when the social milieu is very favorable or receptive. Synergy of the computer or the laser, for example, seems to depend to a large extent on the technological system itself, once it has reached the industrial (or should we say "post-industrial") stage. But we should not forget the enormous synergy of the first great invention of the industrial age, the steam engine, which was originally no more than a hydraulic pump to extract water from the depths of coal mines - but ended up transforming the entire system of manufacturing and transportation. 7 Nevertheless, we propose the following thesis:

Thesis 6: Technology transfer does not follow its own internal rule. Technology transfer does not only or always obey a rule of internal progression proper to the technological system. It is also responsive to the life strategies of social groups, to their relative states of

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development, as well as to their political boundaries and their intellectual and moral traditions. According to a certain conception, society is regulated and guided by the requirements of the technological system, which exhibits an autonomous, uncontrollable logic, informing without interference all goals and decisions. This idea was initially formulated by Jacques Ellul, who emphasized the lack of social options in the face of the demands imposed by the whole technological system through each of its distinct branches or subsystems. 8 It is difficult to take up this idea in all its complexity. It invokes a philosophy of history or at least a conception of the development of modern societies, which raises its own special difficulties. For our purposes, however, its attempts to predict the behavior of the technological system as a whole have simply failed. Two decades ago, for instance, Meadows et al. warned that the present era of progress could not go on indefinitely. 9 The argument had and still has a certain validity. It stresses the need to impose a kind of brake on technological development in view of its acceleration over the last two centuries. To continue the current rate, in fact, foreshadows the rapid depletion of some raw materials, energy resources, and nonrenewable goods - including land - which will become increasingly scarce and costly. From this comes the necessity of a program for the limitation of progress, in order to avoid the threat of a final catastrophic end to the era of improving technology which we have known until now. This diagnosis represents a neo-Malthusian theory about the destiny of industrial civilization as a whole. From another point of view, it extends models like those of Domar, for instance, or of Marx concerning the "organic composition" of capital, according to which permanent innovation is a fundamental necessity specific to capitalism. 10 What especially matters now, however, is that the evolution of technology itself seems to contradict the autonomous development taken for granted in the Club of Rome prediction, because the most recent technologies try either to replace or to save raw materials. Various examples can be cited: through miniaturization; by the production of new synthetic substances or the substitution of materials, for instance, in the case of the transistor and the new superconductors; or even by the use of genetic engineering and biotechnology in agriculture. It is more reasonable to think that all these reorientations are directly caused by the need to prevent the negative effects predicted by Meadows et al than to suppose the existence of some hidden feedback mechanism or selfregulation internal to the technological system. The present suspension of the arms race between the superpowers provides perhaps another good example of a possible reorientation in

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technological processes. If there is one field in which the blind mechanism of outbidding one another operates in its purest form, it is in this competition for power in weapons. Changes in the space program after the end of the Apollo mission and the Challenger disaster are equally significant in this regard, because the first announcements of the new directions always originated from the White House rather than from NASA engineers. But we must take the argument a step further. The operational or functional logic of the technological system on its own cannot avoid absurdities or correct excesses. It does not even consider such goals as the preservation of life or improvement in the quality of life. There is no possible moral criterion to be derived from the mechanical or technological point of view. On the contrary, it is possible and necessary to set down some criteria for a biological morality. Moreover, life itself has its own regulations, while the technological system as a whole completely lacks self-regulation. Of course, it has internal coherence, an articulation between its different branches, rules of development, and so on. But nothing guarantees that this internal rationality will not be destructive in a global context. That is why we have to question the attempts to raise social automatism in anyone of its forms to an absolute, metaphysical status. When Malthus assumes that demographic development poses a sort of meta-historical fate, in the sense that it answers only to its own dynamics, he underestimates precisely the creative or corrective possibilities, which in this particular case operate through technology, for exorcising or deferring the threat of a demographic and productive catastrophe. At the same time, there has also been a corresponding overestimation of economic tendencies - not only by Marxism but also in some forms of liberalism - that grants to "economic contradictions" and market forces a meta-political status and invasive character that virtually rules out the possibility of decision making. We might ask, then, if technological determinism in anyone of its different forms has not replaced classical mechanicism, in the sense that it bestows on social automatism a sort of meta-historical rank, substituting a singular part for the social whole (a point to be considered in more detail later). If the state, however, were the one and only corrective agent, the same argument could be reversed. Assuming that the technological system produces global dangers, how can this be avoided if not by a globalization of the corrective agent itself - that is, by a globalization of the power of the state? In my opinion this argument is not the same as the previous one

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because it presupposes that political practice serves only to promote specific objectives. It would have no other function nor capacity than to realize technological goals. But this identification of the goals is only possible if political action is reduced to the state and if this becomes absolute. It is in absolute states, in fact, where power is even technologically legitimized, that is, pretends to exercise a kind of basic power, founded on the so-called sciences of administration, which posit this type of knowledge as the exclusive property of a superior class of "experts. " Technocracy - from the Greek techne and kratos, force or domination - is, in this sense, an essentially elitist phenomenon and represents the domination of one group over the whole of society. It is entirely different from the bureaucratic phenomenon as defined by Max Weber, in the sense that it only affects the state apparatus, whereas bureaucracy is a disease of the whole social body. 11 Technocracy corresponds, then, to an elitist-scientific conception of power. But if it has often assumed pedantic and threatening forms, this is not because of its pretensions to scientific infallibility. Still less is it because of its successes, which have occurred in the realm of the natural sciences. What Ortega y Gasset called "the terrorism of the laboratories" was an infantile narcissistic game in comparison with the arrogance of the sciences of administration, which have protected and served the totalitarian state. 12 All this goes to confirm the preeminence of politics over technological rationality. The latter only becomes absolute in absolute states, where the decision-making process is essentially undemocratic. 13 Consequently, we can put forward a last thesis or hypothesis, which may be formulated as follows:

Thesis 7: Technology transfer does not autonomously determine a social system. The supposedly determining character oftechnological automatism on the social system is neither factual nor scientific. The idea of technical automatism is, on the contrary, a hypothesis about the nature of power. It reduces or nullifies the making of decisions, that is, the political capacity of society. It reproduces the same error, or at least inadequacy, as the classical forms of social mechanism, initially expressed through demographic progression, then through the "economic contradictions" or even the self-regulation of the market as it is conceived by some neoliberals. In all these cases, in fact, corrective or regulative possibilities are denied in the name of a particular form of autonomy, which is supposed to have a meta-political existence.

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Let me conclude the first part of these reflections by returning to the original considerations concerning the undesirable effects of technological progress, with a view now to the introduction of eventual correctives . The principal argument in favor of international corrective action for the tendency toward unequal development does not differ much from the one most often used within societies. That is to say, technological underdevelopment not only acts as a brake on innovation, but also as a source of instability, constituting a challenge to democratic order or peace. Russell's prediction concerning the constitution of a world government, which he saw associated with the proliferation of atomic weapons has not proved quite correct. Nuclear arms also provide a sort of technological guarantee of global peace as we know it. But what the history of the second half of the 20th century reveals is a proliferation of wars, local conflicts, with conventional weapons. Since the end of the Second World War there have been more than a hundred of these limited wars, invariably in the Third World. It would be difficult not to see in this some relationship with the logic of technology transfer and with the issue of the growing technologicaleconomic gap between worlds. The unrestricted operation of this logic indicates, in essence, that expenditure on the replacement of industrial and military equipment follows a similar pattern to that of consumption. In other words, simple purchase or transfer is not enough in itself to reproduce the whole system. It forces a periodic and each time more expensive replacement of equipment which devours surplus, exhausts natural power, and raises indebtedness and disequilibrium. The formation of a gigantic external debt seems to be a corollary of this same logic, a sort of financial expression of the gap. When we said that social automatism does not operate in an unrestricted way, we wanted to say that it ought not to operate in such a way - not only as a moral issue, but also as a postulate of practical reason, based on historical reason. The detection of automatism is the first step toward its own exorcism. But at present we still lack the social and legal means, as well as the political organization, to exercise real democratic control over the undesirable effects of new technologies. My reservations then about a purely moral response to the undesirable effects of innovation is that technology itself is an agent of moral change. It creates a new ethics of efficiency, productivity, and results, which tends to become a dominant morality.

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II. TECHNOLOGICAL DIFFUSION AND MODERNITY In the analysis of the preceding seven theses we have tried to show that the planetary extension of technology and of the modern ideal exhibits a contradictory development that carries with it an inherent difficulty. We have barely touched on the issue of its inherent problematicity - which refers, of course, to the fact that modernization in the Third World has not been the outcome of its own historical and cultural development. Instead, in large part this development has involved the imitation of models derived from the nations of the North Atlantic area, as formalized by the social sciences of the 19th and 20th centuries.

The Inherent Problem of Modernity For most of the world modernization has thus ended up being insufficient, partial, asychronous - or, better said, a failure. But its rational foundations have for a century been the object of radical philosophical critiques, so much so that some authors consider it terminated or completed, even "liquidated, " and that a new "postmodern" age has been initiated. 14 Precisely this constitutes the problematicity of modernity: the ideas and principles that initially sustained it have been eroded and upset, while at the same time they maintain their power. In other words, those ideas are at once wholly anachronistic and completely contemporary. We have admitted also that technology contributes decisively to the planetary extension of the modern ideal, justifying it as the fate of a rational core and at the same time seeing it as a strategic key for any modernization project. That which sociology, economics, and political science have done in order to rationalize or formalize the modernizing process has in view the reproduction of this phenomenon, that is, the eventual transformation of "traditional" societies according to this pattern or archetype. Keep in mind, as well, that in dealing with a global project that encompasses everything from productive forms to science and culture, the modern ideal has diffused worldwide, without major restrictions. By contrast, Christianity encountered major resistance and of course could not achieve the same worldwide extension, in spite of the fact that it was able to leave intact or almost intact the forms of material life of the peoples where it went. This paradox is at the base of the considerations we made earlier with regard to how technology not only contributes decisively, in virtue of

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certain rules of progress, to its proper diffusion or adoption, while at the same time it contributes in itself to defining certain characteristics of the modern paradigm. 15 Of course, the level of technification achieved in different activities, productive sectors, and branches of defense can be considered indicators of the level of modernization achieved. The new methods, artifacts, and weapons are, as well, the most easily and quickly adopted. They do not require a large amount of interpretation since their rationality is objectively demonstrated, tested, and calculated by means of objects. It is frequently because of this as well that a more generally developed group adopts some determinate apparatus or instrument from another less developed group. It is difficult if not impossible to do this with any other cultural creation that is not of a technological character. On the contrary, those who are less developed, can and do adopt everything from morals to gods, although it is technology which is easiest and quickest to assimilate. The adoption of the instrumental does not appear to compromise more substantive and essential aspects. "To modernize" does not have the same meaning as "to colonize," in the way "to evangelize" once signified "to Europeanize." Technology takes over without compulsion and appears "objective" and "neutral." There is no visible political agent, no conscious will that imposes it. It results from structural needs and functional demands. It is adopted "freely," without compulsion. But it is crucial to distinguish the discrete technological object from the system which encloses it. The object may perhaps be "neutral," always responding to human needs, or be the fruit of conscious activity. But that which is valid for the part is not equally valid, necessarily, for the whole. The system of objects may have its own relatively autonomous exigencies, which result in imperatives that get projected into other, indeed; all spheres. Consider, for example, discussions about "the limits of growth" (Meadows et al.), arguments for "zero growth" (Sauvy), and related ideas. 16 In Latin America "zero growth" has already occurred in many cases, and even negative growth in others. But this stagnation has had catastrophic consequences for democratic institutions. Conversely, progress even in its most regressive and excluding forms, development characterized only by macrosocial indicators, has been used to legitimize the most repressive, undemocratic regimes. The present experience of the Eastern European countries might be able to confirm the same idea that there is no stable political system if it impedes or in any way hinders progress. For there seems to be continuity between technological, economic, and political systems. In

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other words, the symbiosis of technology and science with production and industry has invested techno science with cultural meaning and political power.

The Problem of Modernization in Latin America In Latin America, for example, the promise of modernization has been linked since the beginning of this century with a certain loss in the legitimacy and the effectiveness of the ruling oligarchies, and the need to find an answer to the emerging "social issue." This devolved very quickly into a wider questioning of the social structure and the social-political regime. In this way modernization has become in this century an obligatory referent for the right as well as for the left. The former see in it the means to avert the threat of a global alteration of the social regime, while the latter considered a social revolution as a necessary and preliminary condition for modernization. The challenge of progress acquired in this way an increasing urgency and seemed to proceed from political necessity more than from the exigencies of competition and the technological race. Economists were the first to recognize this, but only in a restricted way. During the 1970s "development" was identified with an ensemble of external economic indicators, external indicators which seemed to throw out history and replace it with an abstract, homogeneous temporality on which a score could be inscribed at will. Pedro Morande associates the appearance of this "developmentist" orientation in Latin America with the replacement of European influence after the Second World War. "The consolidation of the North American empire," he writes, "and the expansion of its area of influence over the whole world relegated to a secondary role Latin America's own This in turn produced an reflection and cultural synthesis. ,,17 "intellectual break" with the more substantial concerns of the previous generation of "Latin American nationalists" (he is thinking of Jaime Eyzaguirre, Jose Carlos Mari.ttegui, and Jose Vasconcelos) relative to cultural identity and history. According to Morande, the appearance of this "developmentism" set the stage for subsequent "theories of programmed social change" in which structural functionalism prevailed. This in turn led to future experiments in social engineering. Thus modernization was, according to Morande, no longer viewed as the result of an historical process rooted in its own culture and traditions. "Rather, it can be perceived as a technological option available to all peoples of the earth, always on condition that they themselves have the will to develop and overcome obstacles. ,,18

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This conception of modernization appears as a falsification of history, as an imposed cultural model, deriving from a change in world leadership. Morande adds that this phenomenon of a break with the cultural past, begins to appear as such when developmentism seems to complete its ideologicalpolitical cycle by associating with neoliberalism and with the doctrine of national security. The obvious and systematic violation of human rights at various levels ... has brought to the fore the issue of the ethical limits of the technocratic orientations on social life and the cultural foundations of such orientations. 19

At this point some explanations and qualifications must be made.

Modernization as "Deve[opmentism" in Latin America The developmentist orientation in economic thought during the 1960s was primarily sustained by economists from the Comisi6n Econ6mica para America Latina (CEPAL). This constituted one amongst various tendencies, without occupying a predominant position in any country of the area. In Chile, for instance, during moments of obsessive ideology in politics, the orientation and prescriptions of CEPAL economists were rejected both by the right and by the left. While the former considered certain propositions, such as land reform, to be a hidden threat, the latter equally rejected them as being "reformist." Very different is the situation with neoliberal ideas which inspire policies that are forcefully implemented by military regimes through control of the media and the use of the whole repressive apparatus of the state. This provoked a forced trans nationalization of the economy and an abrupt fragmentation of society. A sequence can certainly be constructed between the conception of development emerging in the 1960s and more recent practices. But any such sequence would have to be extended further back, perhaps even to the very emergence of the Latin American republics, which were also politically born with the idea of realizing an external model or ideal. But the mere questioning of one's identity and culture is insufficient for facing the urgencies of modernization which arise after the economic crisis of the 1930s and the "oligarchic domination crisis" which occurred even earlier. After the Second World War the problem of modernization became more acute because of anew, unfavorable period in the international trade of raw materials resources. An alternative to Morande's hypothesis could be put forward simply by maintaining that the decisive break occurred with the interruption of the democratic regimes rather than with the "intellectual break" produced by the developmentists in relation to the earlier nationalists.

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This does not deny the importance of what Morande calls the "identity crisis" and the "moral crisis, " but it does underline that these phenomena are not comprehensible by making an epoche from politics and trying to explain them just through intellectual evolution or the internal development of the social sciences. Morande maintains that cultural identity is a problem relating to survival itself . . . [and] affects one of the deepest cores [of society]: values. The universalism of modernization reaches precisely to this core.20

But this suggests that this identity is already known and that it is incompatible with "universal values." Only by insisting that some submission of history and culture to certain values constituted outside the political realm could one argue that modernization is a historical falsification of "cultural identity." One can agree with Morande that "the principle of formal rationality" inherent to modernity is not compatible with the so-called "traditional societies" and their cultural particularities, which involve substantive contents and not just the functionality of a structure. Nevertheless, pluralism, democracy, and freedom also belong to "formal rationality." Not only change and innovation are functionalities of progress. When Morande says that "modernization among us [in Latin America], as in Europe, was first a cultural rather than a structural challenge, ,,21 this underestimates structural needs. Developmentism is also a fact of culture that has to have, like any other modernizing tendency, a structural and historical basis or substrate. Thus, as we have tried to show, the adoption of technologies responds to the requirements of the technological system, and is not mere desire. Modernization cannot be considered only a result of purely "systematic theorizations of social thought" originating in Europe and North America. Morande's criticism of developmentism initially suggests that it is oriented toward a search for correctives, with a view toward a new modernizing proposal, one with greater historical content and more deeply rooted in its own tradition and culture. But this expectation is soon disappointed, because the thesis he proposes leads to a rejection of modernity. On all modernizing projects he places an abstract condition: their submission to cultural values. One can agree with him that "the concept of culture is totalizing" insofar as it "defines the character of values." But this is true only when there is no exclusion of any cultural facts, claiming they do not belong to history. Otherwise the concept of culture would certainly not be totalizing. When Morande speaks of "culture" he is referring mainly to religion.

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He claims that religiosity is a privileged ground of the "founding cultural synthesis of Latin America produced in the 16th and 17th centuries, which zealously preserves the diversity and interrelations of the Indian, Negro, and European stratas. "n This synthesis will show through and permeate all other orders of the culture and daily life. Thus he thinks that "to revalorize popular religiosity is to revalorize the past itself as well as historical continuity. ,,23 Even allowing for this interpretation, however, the issue now is modern syncretism, not the original syncretism. And regarding this point, Morande's position does not seem satisfactory. Since he views modernity from a religious perspective, that is, as synonymous with secularization, he has to consider it in itself as an essential negation of the founding cultural synthesis. There is, according to Morande, a basic incompatibility between the values of modernity and of religiosity, which is what constitutes "the fundamental problem that lies behind the efforts to develop the Third World and the North-South conflict. ,,24 Morande suggests that Latin America sociology should open up as a new perspective a "cultural synthesis that is different as well as opposed" to the synthesis of Enlightenment modernity. This would be based on the revalorization that popular religiosity has experienced (especially through the theology of liberation - although his own efforts are oriented in another direction). Along with Octavio Paz, he argues that the Latin American Enlightenment has proved false or nonexistent, and that consequently modernization has also been insufficient or a failure. 25 This different "and opposed" orientation ought also and above all to revalorize sacrifice. "The revalorization of popular religiosity is for us the revalorization of the problematic of sacrifice. ,,26 Does this imply, perhaps, that the ignoring of historical conditions is what makes modernization as we have known it possible? And that the study of history and cultural identity will lead to a rejection of the sociological patterns of modernization in the terms that have been put forth in our century?

Modernization beyond Latin America To lag behind in modernization is not only a private problem of Latin American societies. There were, and still are even in Europe itself, certain regional and national pockets apparently immune to modernity. At the same time there are countries devastated by the war which, in spite of (or perhaps because of) this destruction, began a forced Such provide rebuilding of their infrastructure and industries. impressive counter illustrations of the constructive power of Western rationality. Japan is one of the most amazing cases in point, which

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achieved modernization without a Descartes or a Bacon or even an Enlightenment. It began simply with its rich craft tradition and in half a century achieved world leadership. This may be no example to follow, especially when modernization means also death and destruction of native communities, but it illustrates the fact that modernization also consists in a certain capacity to forget - that is, the ability to innovate. This does not mean that it is possible to ignore the relation of culture to the modernizing process. On the contrary, because culture is not a special "sector" nor a particular "structure" within a system, its role is not limited to being a "super" structure within a system of structures. All sectorist or structural conceptions of society tend to underestimate the meaning of culture, to consider it an epiphenomenon, a scab or halo on the surface of social life. This is why Louis Althusser, for instance, following the inspiration of Antonio Gramsci, has to resort to psychoanalysis in order to vindicate "ideology." The Marxist architecture of "base" and "superstructure" is evidently unsatisfactory in this regard. 27 With reference to this topic, the psychoanalytic representation of the mental system relies on the metaphor of composite or successive "layers," like geological strata, with the unconscious as the deepest and most archaic level. Its conception of psychic dynamism reasserts the importance of representations through the "charge" of "libidinal energy" retained in them. This conception attains, in fact, a more adequate setting for cultural phenomena. For example, different kinds of family or sexual relationships in their various expressions - patriarchialism, "machismo," authoritarianism, and caesarism - show through and permeate all social relations. So that if religion informs or conditions those family or sexual relations, it is no less true that religion is at the same time determined and permeated by them. In the same way one can consider phenomena such as women's liberation, the struggle against apartheid, etc., as stages of social liberation in the sense that the degree of the oppression of women or ethnic minorities alters, reproduces, and reinforces at the same time, in its particular sphere, an oppression that is exercised in a parallel manner in the sphere of labor relations. And consequently the overcoming of alienation is not just at play in the field of production and labor. This means that modernization is not just a "sociological paradigm," that the social forms identified as "modem" are just one empirical manifestation of a more complex phenomenon engaging all human activity. Therefore, it cannot entirely be constructed according to some building plan, that is, beginning with some foundation that serves as the architectural base of the structure, whether this "base" might be

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economic, technological, demographic, etc. Demography is mentioned because, usually, in the countries on our continent frequently a third of the population lives in the capital and nearly half is concentrated in two or three large cities. How can we speak of modernization, then, when the areas involved are three, four, or even ten times larger than the average European country, with a much lower population density? To think that modernization consists "basically" in technification would be to reproduce the same mistake. Modernity is not really a specific dimension of society nor a function of a particular structure. It is instead a way of being in society that presupposes development and technification, but which at the same time demands as constituents freedom, justice, equality - that is, democratization. By contrast, when modernization is conceived simply as a change of structures along the lines of the architectural model then it seems to call for precisely the same rules and principles as the production of artificial objects. If the architectural model is supplemented with its correlate, the mechanical model, it is possible to think like Archimedes, "Give me a place to stand and I will move the world." But with such models and metaphors there is a high coefficient of fiction regarding society, as well as the artificialization of politics, because action remains imprisoned beforehand within the optimization of existing social relations. Just as in the fabricating process, the means-end relation organizes the whole. In this case, one already knows in advance "what for." Modernization becomes like a "product," and it is precisely in the sphere of production where Machiavelli's formula "the end justifies the means" is always at work. The fundamental postulate of all developmentism, whether economic or technological, is that the sphere of work is where the global order is to be defined. Thus the most oppressive and tyrannical regimes are very careful to keep the productive sphere intact, while suppressing all political activity not exercised by the state. The same monopolization of power occurs in totalitarian regimes which do interfere with productive forms. From this one can deduce that it is precisely the political sphere that is and must be privileged or protected, because it is only this which permits no disassociation of "values" and the creation of a common world. On the contrary, any absolutization of a determinate end, any prejudgment about the meaning of history, as well as any affirmation of predetermined values in themselves tends to protect special actors and to justify a particular domination. Such conceptions merge with the pretension to construct society, in the sense that they also annihilate

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history and eliminate uncertainty. If there is to be history, the end must be defined through consensus developed in a network of collective relations. It cannot be defined positively by a theory nor put forth dictatorially by the state. In this sense it is revealing that the state has been characterized in liberalism as a "policeman" and in Marxism as a "machine" - as an agent of repression or war machine which, moreover, easily becomes as obsolete as the stone axe or the spinning wheel. Just as all order that is spontaneous, automatic, or determined by structures is reifying, every effort to "realize values" is equally another non-consensual construction. It presupposes an epoche from the plurality of actors - in short, an epoche from politics. It is not by accident that neoconservative conceptions grant either the moral or the economic orders (but not politics) the status of a privileged or protected position. We have in mind the early Gerald Dworkin and John Rawls on the one side, Milton Friedman and Friedrich von Hayek on the other. In consequence, the real political dimension of society tends to be left out, or conceived according to the model of technology-fabrication, or perhaps along the lines of mercantile demand. Latin American military regimes provide a vivid example of the same strategy. They declare politics empty in the name of "scientific" government - of the "simple administration of things," as Saint-Simon called it. The "doctrine" of national security fills the gap left by the absence of morals and consensual or democratic legitimacy. III. FINAL CONSIDERAnONS What we called the "inherent problematicity" of modernity refers to the fact that at least since Nietzsche there has existed a radical critique of modern rationality which has demonstrated the complementarity and complicity of reason with power and domination. With this, criticism has destroyed its illusion of purity and at the same time deprived knowledge of its claim to universality. Nietzsche especially introduced the effort to expose and denounce this phenomenon which has become familiar to us, mainly because the discourse of science has become closely associated with power, to the point that it has become invested with a direct political significance. But to denounce modern rationality as exclusively concerned with domination more than with truth and knowledge implies that the "age of reason," as the modern age has been called, has been divested of its legitimacy and fundamental truth. Modernity walks blind. A deep split

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has occurred between modern principles and Western society. There is a fundamental positivity as well as a fundamental provisionality in every modernizing effort because modernity has become devoid of meaning. Philosophy has considered modernity founded in the subject, that is, has recognized in thinking its principle, admitting thereby that all responsibility, all initiative, creation, or human work of any kind has in the individual subject its ultimate principle, foundation, and meaning. Heidegger, for example, says that Western history has now begun to enter into the completion of that period we call the modern, which is defmed by man becoming the measure of and means to beings. Man is what founds all beings, i.e., in modern terms, the foundation of all objectification and representation, the subjectum. 1B

For the philosophical reflexive representation of modernity, this consideration of the subject as origin and principle is correct. It is also correct to associate the birth of modernity with the emergence of the new science, and to read in this the epistemological or methodological implications that philosophy of science commonly does. But just as the historical meaning of science never appears in a theory of methods or in a pure epistemology, neither does the discourse of the subject ever arrive at a conception of the historical meaning of modernity, which is never reduced to the founding idea which separates "modern times" from the immediate past. Who said that philosophy should express an epochal time? Hegel, of course. He even thought that ideas create or renew the world. Nevertheless, Hegel did not consider that philosophers should always or necessarily be the agents who enunciate or promote the presence of ideas in the world. If retrospectively Descartes and Bacon are taken as the initial philosophical expressions of modernity, or the Enlightenment as its moment of maturity, the Hegelian posterity, on the contrary, does not recognize itself any more in the positive form of modernity. This alienation of philosophy with respect to the modern world parallels the birth of the social sciences. They will progressively define an archetype or positive paradigm of modernity, whereas philosophy continues its own critical way without diminishing in any way the autonomy and dynamism of modern society. Heidegger expresses this alienation of philosophy from modernity in an interview with Richard Wisser. When asked "Do you see a social mission for philosophy?" Heidegger replies in the negative. "If this question is to be answered, one must first ask 'What is society?' while thinking how contemporary society is the absolutization of modern subjectivity, and that a philosophy which has overcome the position of

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subjectivity, is not able to join in the conversation. ,,29 That is, sociologized modernity breaks the link within the philosophical tradition, so that it becomes impossible to understand modernization as concerned with truth and meaning. Critical philosophy, and in general philosophy since the Enlightenment, does not have a meaning comparable to that of Enlightenment rationalism, which did contribute directly and decisively to the transformation of the feudal monarchic world. On the contrary, the post-Enlightenment continues living on the ideas of the 18th century, and all the radicalism of later criticism has never achieved a similar historical role. It has been unable to overcome modernity. What is called "post-modernity" is this failure itself, because it has nothing to do with the emergence of the new age called modernity, three centuries before. The only transformation modernity recognizes consists in the maximization and internal development of the same principles of the Enlightenment which have already been eroded by criticism. In the Wisser interview, Heidegger continues: The question about the demand for a transfonnation of the world leads to a frequently quoted proposition of Karl Marx . . .: "The philosophers have only interpreted the world; now the task is to transfonn it." By quoting these propositions and adhering to them, one overlooks how a world transfonnation presupposes a change in world representation and that world representation can only be achieved through a sufficient interpretation of the world. 30

In other words, philosophy, including Marx, supposes that the transformation of the world is never just a quantitative matter, but assumes that a change in its representation and interpretation is always required. A new cultural synthesis would necessarily suppose the emergence of a new "philosophy." It was nevertheless Marx who assigned to the development of productive forces a unique and central role, one never before considered by philosophy. Such development would be the indispensable condition for any foundational action by the historical subject (the proletariat). He did not think, though, that productive development would produce on its own, spontaneously, through what we call "progress," a new synthesis constituting the ultimate content of historical change. There is an inherent and insurmountable difficulty for any conception of progress which regards it as a spontaneous development. That is, to attribute to technological productive development the capacity to produce at the same time a meaning for the whole is an illusion. Against the idea of a synthesis or spontaneous global ordering, Franz Hinkelammert makes a claim for the "transcendental non-feasibility" of such an ordering. He shows that partial disorder is inherent to any

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partial order because it is at once necessary for the parts to strive for their own ends while there is no necessity for them to strive for the global end. 3! This rule of non-facticity is equally valid for the market order which is supposed to produce automatically an optimal distribution of resources - or for the "economic contradiction" which is supposed to produce a classless society through the action of the proletariat. It is also valid for technological progress as conceived by Ernst Bloch, where multiplication in productivity is supposed to surpass, on its own, the present society founded on work, provoking a qualitative change in history. 32 In all these cases an analogous error can be detected. Social and institutional bodies of any kind never carry out on their own a desideratum; in the best of cases they may "negate the negation," that is, they eliminate a determinate disease. For instance, the market order prevents economic absolutism of the state, and the state corrects the inevitable disorder produced by commercial automatism or technological progress, and so on. Each particular order will thus be complementary to others, on the condition that its complementarity can be articulated by historical reason. All "spontaneous order" is ahistorical, for on its own it can just generate an x, and this can only be resolved by utopia. In other words, the structure presupposes the possibility of its being superseded; it is in itself transcendence. But in each case it faces determinate problems and it does not achieve a positive state which definitely cancels out the negative. The identification of a desideratum with the functionality of a structure is the negation of history. 33 By way of conclusion, then, what has been said above poses an important question. For, on the one hand, modern politics abrogates the fulfillment of ends and values, which assimilates it to the same instrumental rationality as the technological manufacturing process. On the other hand, it is not through progress itself that human beings realize superior ends such as justice, liberty, equality, etc. Thus, if there must be no renunciation of superior values, then a new conception of political action should be defined, one which ought neither reify values nor submit itself to constituted ends beyond its own sphere. But at the same time it should not dissociate the private from the public sphere. Philosophy, without claiming any hegemony over politics, would have precisely the task of defining the mode of being of such action. - Translated by Tony Gould and Carl Mitcham

University of Chile

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NOTES 1. Regarding anthropological issues related to prehistoric technology, one principal source is the works of Andre Leroi-Gourhan. Among the most significant of these works are Evolution et techniques, vol. 1: L 'Homme et la matiere (Paris: Albin Michel, 1943 and 1971), vol. 2: Milieu et techniques (paris: Albin Michel, 1945 and 1973); and Le Geste et la parole (paris: Albin Michel, 1964-1965). 2. See, e.g., Kostas Axelos, Vers la Pensee planetaire (Paris: Minuit, 1964); Marshall McLuhan with Quentin Fiore and Jerome Agel, War and Peace in the Global Village (New York: Bantam, 1968); Abraham Moles, Sociodynamique de la culture (Paris: Mouton, 1967); and Bertrand Russell, The Impact of Science on Society (London: Allen & Unwin, 1952). 3. G. W. F. Hegel, Phenomenologie des Geistes (1807), N, A: the famous "Lordship and Bondage" section. 4. Martin Heidegger, Die Technik und die Kehre (Pfullingen: Neske, 1962). 5. Karl Popper, The Poverty of Historicism (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1957), p. 47. 6. See, e.g., C. Cooper, in Problems of Science Policy (Paris: OECD, 1968). 7. See, e.g., E. J. Hobsbawm, The Age of Revolutions (London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1962), especially chapter 2. 8. Jacques Ellul, La Technique ou l'enjeu du siecle (Paris: A. Colin, 1954), and Le Systeme technicien (Paris: Calmann-Levy, 1977). See also Helmut Schelsky, Der Mensch in der wissenschaftliche Zivilisation (Cologne: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1961). 9. Donella H. Meadows, Dennis L. Meadows, Jergen Randers, and William W. Behrens III, The Limits to Growth: A Report for the Club of Rome's Project on the Predicament of Mankind (New York: Universe Books, 1972). 10. Evsey D. Domar, Essays in the Theory of&onomic Growth (New York: Oxford University Press, 1957). 11. See Max Weber, Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1920). See also Weber's "The Essentials of Bureaucratic Organization: An Ideal Type Construction" and "The Presuppositions and Causes of Bureaucracy," in Robert K. Merton et al., eds., Reader in Bureaucracy (Glencoe, IL: Free Press, 1952). 12. See Jose Ortega y Gasset, "l,Por que se vuelve a la ftlosoffa?" in Obras completas, vol. 4 (1929-1933), p. 98; and lWJat Is Philosophy? trans. Mildred Adams (New York: W.W. Norton, 1960), p. 46. 13. This point is treated in greater detail in Marcos Garda de la Huerta, Critica de la razan tecnocratica (Santiago: Editorial Universitaria, 1990). 14. "Mon argument est que Ie projet moderne (de realisation de l'universalite) n'a pas ete abandonne ni oublie, mais detruit, 'liquid6'." Jean Fran~ois Lyotard, Le Postmoderne explique aux enfants: Correspondence 1982-1985 (Paris: Galilee, 1986), p.2. 15. According to Habermas, the social science understanding of the paradigm of modernity can be summarized as follows: "The concept of modernization refers to a bundle of processes that are cumulative and mutually reinforcing: to the formation of capital and the mobilization of resources; to the development of the forces of production and the increase in productivity of labor; to the establishment of centralized political power and the formation of national identities; to the proliferation of rights of political participation, of urban forms of life, and of formal schooling; to the secularization of values and norms; and so on." Jiirgen Habermas, The Political Discourse of Modernity, trans. Frederick Lawrence (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1987), p. 2. 16. See, e.g., Meadows et al., cited above, note 9, and Alfred Sauvy, Croissance zero? (Paris: Calmann-Levy, 1973).

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17. Pedro Morande, Cultura y modernizacion en America Latina (Santiago: Universidad Cat6lica de Chile, 1984), p. 17. 18. Ibid., p. 18. 19. Ibid., p. 19. 20. Ibid., p. 122. 21. Ibid., p. 17. 22. Ibid., p. 129. 23. Ibid., p. 130. 24. Ibid., p. 122. 25.0ctavio Paz, Postdata (Mexico: Siglo XXI, 1971). See also Paz, Corriente allerna (Mexico: Siglo XXI, 1982); ElogrofiLantropico (Barcelona: Seix Barral, 1983); and Tiempo nubLando (Barcelona: Seix Barral, 1983). 26. Morande, Cullura y modernizacion, p. 142. 27. See Louis Althusser, "Ideologie et appariels ideologiques de l'Etat," La Pensee, issue no. 151 (May-June 1970), pp. 3-38. 28. Martin Heidegger, Nietzsche (Pfullingen: Neske, 1961), vol. 2, p. 61. The English translation by Frank A. Capuzzi in Martin Heidegger, Nietzsche, vol. 4: Nihilism, ed. David Farrell Krell (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1982), p. 28, has been revised to more closely reflect the German original. 29. Richard Wisser, ed., Martin Heidegger im Gespriich (Munich: Karl Alber, 1970), p.68. 30. Ibid., pp. 68-69. 31. "The key to this introduction of conscience is the concept of the transcendental non-facticity of spontaneous order that causes us to set up the problem of human liberation in terms of the survival of a structure that always is an expression of negativity." Franz Hinkelammert, Ideolog£as del desarrollo y diaLectica de La historia (Santiago: Universidad Cat6lica de Chile, 1970), p. 289. 32. Ibid., p. 288. 33. Ibid., p. 293.

EDUARDO SABROVSKY J.

THINKING MACHINES AND THE CRISIS OF MODERN REASON INTRODUCTION The advent of computers and "telematic" networks - paradigms of the wave of modernization we are witnessing at the close of the century - has renewed questions concerning the possibilities and risks associated with technology. The basic question is whether these fin de siecle technologies - as could be argued on the basis of the classical diagnosis of critical theory - are mere elements in the infinite repertory of ruses of a modern rationality that has now become merely instrumental or whether, on the contrary, such a characterization has become too narrow. In the second instance, it might be necessary to move toward a wider concept of rationality, perhaps along lines suggested by Habermas's "communicative rationality." In setting limits to the realm of instrumental rationality, such a concept could facilitate both its criticism and its containment and, moreover, enable the recognition of certain non-instrumental aspects that may be present in the same technological practices. Even more radically, we might come to recognize a global overcoming of modern rationalism, paradoxically emerging from the heart of its most overwhelming success, contemporary high technology. In its present state, will technology bring new energies to the "unfinished project of modernity" (Habermas) or precipitate its conclusion? And if the latter is the case, what is the meaning of this closure? To the extent that reason provides the paradigm for the relation between the animal rationale of modernity and the natural, social, and psychic worlds, such questions transcend merely academic discussion. They point toward the multiple signs of epochal change presently accumulating in our culture, and indicated by various signifiers - to cite just a few: postmodernism, postindustrial society, the society of information or of knowledge - all of which propose to name this elusive phenomenon. This paper intends to re-open philosophical discussion of the danger and saving power inherent in contemporary technology. Its originality, if any, will consist in its capacity to bring together two commonly separated traditions of thought: on the one side, critical theory, within which the concept of instrumental rationality, as a paradoxical 39 Carl Mitcham (ed.), Philosophy of Technology in Spanish Speaking Countries, 39-60. Kluwer Academic Publishers.

41 1993

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culmination of the Enlightenment, has been developed, and, on the other, a tradition related to cognitivism and its critique, which in presenting the problem of thinking machines (Le., research in artificial intelligence) for philosophical discussion, provides a means for updating the concept of instrumental rationality. The theses we wish to propose are as follows: 1. Research programs into artificial intelligence (AI) and cognitive science, with their aim of reducing natural language and the practices of everyday life to sets offormal rules, represent the culmination of the hegemony of instrumental rationality over human reason - manifested in concrete terms in the computer or universal machine. No stratum of

reason is exempt from falling, via its translation into programs for the universal machine, into the vortex of instrumental reason.

2. If cognitivism and AI have perfected the conquest of reason by instrumental rationality, how can a philosophical critique of AI still be possible? Where might a ground for it be found that is uncontaminated by the virus of instrumental rationality?! Confronted by this classical question of critical theory, and following certain paths offered by phenomenology, one can discern, at the very core of contemporary technology, the possibility for non-instrumental, communicative relations, whose unconcealment would coincide, in some way necessarily, with the consummation of the hegemony of technology under the guise of the universal machine. These forms, having their

roots in the Hlifeworld, Hare ontologically anterior to rationality and, thus, in principle beyond the scope of critical rationalism and its paradoxes; the ground they offerfor a critique of instrumental rationality is no longer naked reason but a lifeworld reinvigorated by technology itself. More precisely, with supporting evidence from the fields of management and computer science, we intend to discern, within the technologies of communications and telematic networks, the emergence of a communicative means to deal with complexity - communicative coordination - distinct in principle from instrumental rationality, as well as a certain possibility for the reintroduction of technology into the sphere of the lifeworld. INSTRUMENTAL RATIONALITY AND THE "LIFEWORLD" The concept of instrumental reason was developed by thinkers of the

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Frankfurt School, following Max Weber's disenchanted diagnosis of modernity. For these scholars, reason, by virtue of its immanent dynamic, ends by being conquered from within by a subjective rationality (its paradigmatic exponent being found in the technoscience of the modern world), which, in a paradoxical way, undermines the very basis of critical theory and reduces all praxis to the carrying out of merely individual aims. According to Habermas, whose reconstruction of the genesis of the concept of instrumental reason we are, to a large extent, following here, 2 the historical pessimism in which the critical tradition of the Frankfurt School culminated was nothing other than the result of structural paradoxes, endemic to the Cartesian framework that governs philosophic discourse within modernity, which arise as soon as any consideration of historico-social praxis is undertaken. This Cartesian framework consists in a certain "philosophy of consciousness," which gives ontological priority to the subject and to its relations with the world, mediated by mental representations. Within this philosophy there are two alternatives which invariably appear from the outset of any consideration of praxis. In the first, praxis is understood to be an alienation of the subject, which gets lost in a natural and social world that remains ever foreign, and with which the subject can only establish relations of a strategicinstrumental character (means vs. ends). In the second, praxis is interpreted, from a dialectic point of view, as a historical process whose goal is the complete rationalization of culture and nature, the reconciliation of the subject with the objective world until the advent of the "ethical totality" envisioned by Hegel and secularized by Marx. It is only in the second of these philosophical views - whose historical exponents have been Hegel, Marx, Lukacs, and, most recently, the thinkers of the Frankfurt School - that a place still remains for a super instrumental and substantive concept of reason capable, as Kant wanted, of taking on the superior interests of humanity. Instead, with the supremacy of instrumental rationality - a supremacy not only factual but, according to Weber, consubstantial with the processes of differentiation and formation of the cultures of specialists that characterize the modern world - an unbridgeable abyss opens between the individual and the world, in such a way that any normative content remains confined to the privacy of the ordinary life of individuals, or rather, makes itself exclusively present in extraordinary experiences. This is the case with Adorno's "mimesis," a form of recognition of otherness beyond argumentative language and ordinary experience. It is also the case with the "recollective thinking" of Heidegger who, by another route, but nevertheless confronting the

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questions posed by the philosophy of consciousness, arrived at similar conclusions in his reflection on technology - that is, technology as Gestell, as an "enframing" that presides over and exhausts the entire field of relations of modern humanity with the world. 3 In Husserlian terminology, which Habermas has again employed in his attempt to revise critical theory, the apparently uncontrollable rise of instrumental rationality is driven by the ever increasing complexity and differentiation of the contemporary "lifeworld. ,,4 Ordinary language, as the symbolic correlate of the lifeworld, is too burdensome and too risky a means for coordinating action in such a complex environment. It is evident that consensuses reached through argument, beyond constituting, as Habermas would have it, a telos inherent to language, are in fact fragile, for they may, from moment to moment, be broken by disagreement. For this reason, says Habermas, "at a certain level of complexity ordinary language has to be disencumbered by the sorts of special languages that Talcott Parsons studied in connection with the example of money. ,,5 Around these languages, pulled from the lifeworld, subsystems are established, such as the market and the apparatus of state bureaucracy. These operate under the rule of a functional rationality that is uniquely concerned with maintaining systemic equilibria, with total disregard for normative considerations. The dissolution of traditional worlds of experience, essential to the rise of modernity, has brought with it a progressively greater formalization of reason that continually breaks its ties with common sense. These ties were still present in the pure forms of Kant, which, as his notion of "pure intuition" suggests, elevate contents belonging to the spatio-temporal world of common sense to a transcendental plane, thereby forming the conceptual bridge required for a priori judgments - a class sui generis of necessary and universal propositions, endowed with substantive content. However, from the point of view of logical positivism - a celebration of the triumph of instrumental reason built on the formalism of contemporary science - the only remaining structure of necessity is formal logic. Yet the tautologies and contradictions oflogic are inherently without content, empty; empirically unverifiable and unfalsifiable, they lack meaning. Propositions endowed with meaning are, at the same time, purely contingent, and reduce themselves to a logico-syntactic combination of simple elements: atoms of a logico-transcendental nature. So, as Habermas says, here language "shrinks and converts itself merely into a means through which information is delivered. ,,6

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INSTRUMENTAL RATIONALITY AND THE UNIVERSAL MACHINE The propositions of formal languages are susceptible to being generated algorithmically and, according to the well-known results of Church and Turing, can thus be represented in programs for a universal or "Turing machine. " In this way it is possible to discern, in the figure of the universal machine, and in that of its empirical approximation, the digital computer, the purified form of instrumental reason, the principle around which the multiplicity of pre-computational technological and scientific practices are unified. The unification of instrumental reason under a single principle makes possible the eventual unification of all technologies around digital electronic technology, which we are in fact currently witnessing. At the same time, this provides the intellectual foundation for a unified treatment of multiple domains (mind, society, living organisms, business conglomerates and organizations, etc.) as information systems - a treatment which actually characterizes the approach of the cognitive sciences. 7 Thus, as we stated at the beginning, the contemporary debate concerning the claims of artificial intelligence (AI) research may supply the raw material necessary for a new discussion of the issue of instrumental rationality. From the outset, let us establish that it is not the properties of a certain superobject (the mind) that are at stake in this debate, but instead the hegemonic claims of instrumental reason, and the possibility of critiquing or overcoming them. With the idea of a "universal machine" capable of emulating any mechanism, the British mathematician Alan Turing formalized the principles of instrumental reason and turned the linguistic reductionism of the logical positivists into a specific program for technological research. In a famous article published in 1950 in Mind, Turing wrote In considering the functions of the mind or the brain we find certain operations which we can explain in purely mechanical terms. This, we say, does not correspond to the real mind: it is a sort of skin which we must strip off if we are to find the real mind. But then in what remains we find a further skin to be stripped off, and so on. Proceeding in this way do we ever come to the "real" mind, or do we eventually come to the skin which has nothing in it?8

Obviously, Turing's answer to this question was affirmative. There is no residue in the "real mind" which refuses to be reduced to "purely mechanical terms." And even though this process of reduction might experience difficulties due to the state of technology, or even if the possibility should exist that it might never be accomplished in totality, such remains the goal, the untouchable telos, that gives meaning to the

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research program that rises from it. The explicit formulation of a research program in AI dates to the decade of the fifties. In 1958, two of its founders, Allen Newell and Herbert Simon, announced that, "Intuition, insight, and learning are no longer exclusive possessions of human beings: an~ large high-speed computer can be programmed to exhibit them also." This was not the first such claim nor the last. But in spite of such promises, which have been periodically reformulated and eagerly taken up by the mass media, the fact is that the entire AI research program has failed repeatedly to fulfill its own expectations in the direction indicated by Turing. For example, in two of the areas of greatest importance, cognitive simulation and computer modelling of natural language, "expert systems" have been developed as well as the possibility of using "dialects" of natural language to interact with equipment within well defined limits. But to date little has been achieved that can justify the assumed goal of mechanically reproducing the behavior of the human intellect. The disequilibrium between expectations and achievements in this area has, in fact, given rise to an intense academic debate concerning the entire AI research program. Clearly, the debate does not aim to question the usefulness of the tools that have been developed through such research but instead the discourse within which they have been articulated. To undertake an examination of the present state of philosophic discussion concerning these topics, we will use one of the more recent publications in the field as our conceptual bridge. This is a paper read by John Searle in March 1990 entitled "Is the Brain a Digital Computer?"IO JOHN SEARLE'S CRITIQUE OF COGNITIVISM Searle returned to the theme of AI ten years after his famous "Chinese room" argument. ll In that work, basing himself on a distinction between syntax and semantics, Searle had refuted what he now calls "AI in a strong sense," demonstrating that mental states cannot be reduced to computer programs. But now he goes on to confront a more basic question, what he terms the "cognitivist" thesis, which supposes that the brain is or might be a Turing universal machine or digital computer. 12 The argument Searle uses to refute this thesis, or more exactly to expose its lack of meaning, as he himself claims, is based on a strong distinction between syntax and causality or, more generally, between syntactical and intrinsic relations among the elements of a system. Syntactical relations as opposed to causal relations can only exist as

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interpretations dependent upon an observer. The omission of this difference, or the cognitivist's intent to substitute causal for syntactical explanations, would be equivalent, Searle says, to the surreptitious introduction into the theory of a "homunculus" reminiscent of the dwarves or little children hidden inside circus machines. "The really deep problem," says Searle, referring to cognitivism, "is that syntax is essentially an observer relative notion . . . not intrinsic to the system at all. ,,13 Furthermore, he continues, "It follows that you could not discover that the brain or anything else was intrinsically a digital computer, although you could assign a computational interpretation to it as you could to anything else. ,,14 He concludes by saying, The brain, as far as its intrinsic operations are concerned, does no infonnation processing. It is a specific biological organ and its specific neurobiological processes cause specific fonns of intentionality. In the brain, intrinsically, there are neurobiological processes and sometimes they cause consciousness. But that is the end of the story.u

Is this, however, really the end? The radical distinction posited between syntaxi and causality permits Searle to formulate a critique of cognitivism while at the same time saving the causal theory of the mind (only sketched here) to which he is partial. 16 For our part, we propose to demonstrate that the distinction between causal and syntactical relations is not so radical as Searle suggests, and that it is therefore unable to do the work he assigns it. This lends plausibility to our own hypothesis, in the sense that the cognitivist approach does constitute the principle which unifies the whole field of modern science and technology under the principle of instrumental rationality. Let us first note that insofar as the subjectum, the Cartesian ego in any of its manifestations, provides the metaphysical substratum for the philosophical discourse of modernity, Searle's so-called "homunculus fallacy" is not entirely confined to cognitivism. More specifically, at least beginning with Kant, philosophy assumes that pure forms which give coherence to experience (e.g., the paradigm of causality) point to a subject, a certain transcendental homunculus whose presence is even discernible in minimalist versions of transcendentalism such as Strawson's. Given this, Searle's barrier between causality and syntaxi becomes at least fuzzy. But beyond this objection it also becomes clear that the attempt to radicalize the distinction actually leads to a paradoxical conclusion. In effect, if, as Searle maintains, nothing "is intrinsically a digital computer," it follows that not even a digital computer can "intrinsically" be a digital computer. That is, the type of syntactical representation of the state of a computer which high level programming languages

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provide, in contrast to its representation in terms of electronic physics, would be extrinsic, and in some way deficient. This conclusion, however, is rendered false by the actual development of computer technology, which, in fact, has been made possible by the establishment of a hierarchy of representational domains - from that of the physical machine to high level languages - each covering different entities. Only in the lowest levels (Le., the computational hardware) do the entities in question possess a physical nature. In the upper levels there are only objects and relations of a syntactic-formal character, of the kind "move information A from B to C." Moreover, the hierarchy among these representational domains is not arbitrary. Paralleling the advance of instrumental rationality, this hierarchy has its foundation in the progressive integration of technique into macro-organizations, whose ruling principles are of a formal, or systemic-abstract nature. Searle's methodological individualism evident in his causal theory of the mind 17 - is blind to this development, and this same blindness prevents him from seeing that the machines which figure in the debate concerning AI are not, in the final analysis, hard but soft. They are not isolated computers, but rationally administered organizations, that is to say, those vast social machines Max Weber's "living machine" 18 - in which modern societies find their culmination. It is the hegemony of this machinery, its possibilities and its limitations, which are at the heart of the question regarding thinking machines. Searle's attempt to oppose one of its singular moments to the entire history of the development of instrumental rationality the one characterized by the supremacy of causal relations - is bound to fail. Moreover, the difficulties and the paradoxes inherent in the attempt actually make this history all the more evident. Through it, knowledge and the capacity for action have become integrated into organizational complexes, with their highest levels of command expressed in formal languages. At the same time, causal knowledge is pushed to the periphery. 19 ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE: A RADICAL CRITIQUE If it is not possible to isolate cognitivism from the global system of science, or if that distinction is not able to provide sufficient basis to avoid the absorption without remainder of everything human into the mechanical - in other words, if cognitivism is not merely an unnatural growth of reason but its unforgiving mirror - then the critique of AI must go further, to the very foundation of instrumental rationality

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considered as the culmination of modern rationalism. The American philosopher Hubert Dreyfus, a key figure in the hermeneutic turn in contemporary philosophy, has developed just such a radical posture. For him, cognitivism and the AI research program in general do nothing more than deepen the original gesture of the logos, characterized - in the terminology of Ryle, which Dreyfus adopts - by the attempt to translate the "knowing how" inherent in our everyday practices into explicit knowledge, i.e., into a "knowing that. ,,20 In the final analysis, what this leads to is the attempt to reduce natural language and praxis to sets of formal rules, characteristic of AI. In his critique of AI, Dreyfus has made use of certain theoretical resources present in the thought of Heidegger or, more precisely, in his particular reading of Being and TIme, which allow him to interpret Heidegger's Being in terms of the shared everyday skills, discriminations, and practices into which we are socialized [and which] provide the conditions necessary for people to pick out objects, to understand themselves as subjects, and generally, to make sense of the world and their lives. . .. Heidegger calls this the nonexplicitable background ... "the understanding of being" [or, simply, being].21

Here we may note the affinity between Dreyfus's "Being" and Habermas's concept of the "lifeworld." For Habermas, Communicative action takes place within a lifeworld that remains at the backs of participants in communication. It is present to them only in the prereflective form of taken-for-granted background assumptions and naively mastered skills. 22

Of course, the proposed affinity does not ignore the profound differences that exist between Dreyfus's and Habermas's overall philosophical objectives. Yet, beyond these, the connection that may be established between their ideas - a topic whose full development is beyond the scope of this paper - will permit us to interpret Dreyfus's objection to AI in terms of the arguments of critical theory reconstructed by Habermas, that is, as a radical critique of instrumental rationality which, by being grounded in a lifeworld revived by technological development itself, should be able to do without the rationalist presuppositions that tend to encumber Habermas's thought. We will continue developing these ideas in greater detail. For Dreyfus/Heidegger, the separation between subject and object, between positive data and value judgments, is only a secondary moment of Dasein, our "being-in-the-world." First, we exist in a continuum of actions indiscernibly embedded in our language. We do not relate ourselves to the world as subjects who in any way confront it. The world appears to us instead in a position of immediacy, which Heidegger

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expresses using the image of Zuhandenheit ("availableness"), that evokes the idea of manipulability. The subject-object opposition rises whenever there is a breakdown in the flow of actions. At this moment, a distance is established, expressed in the image of Vorhandenheit, "occurrentness"; only then are there subject, object, representations, decisions, etc. 23 The classic Heideggerian example is that of hammering. For one who is hammering, it is as though the hammer does not have a separate existence. It belongs to the background of things that are available (Zuhandenheit), and only presents itself as a hammer when some break in the continuum, or some distancing from the background occurs (Vorhandenheit). Only when the hammer breaks, or when it is lost, or it damages the wood (or if you need to hammer a nail and you cannot find the hammer) - only then does its "hammerness" emerge. As observers, we can speak about the hammer and reflect on its properties, but for the committed user, who is involved without interruption in hammering, the hammer does not exist as a separate entity. The primacy of action, executed within the background conditions in which we are always immersed, and which, accordingly, cannot be made totally explicit, makes it impossible to translate human behavior and language into formal rules. This by itself is enough to doom the goals of AI. The obstacle here is clearly not supernatural, but arises from our very natures as social and historical beings, situated within a horizon of practices and traditions. 24 Now the ontological priority of Dasein with respect to the Cartesian subject has a correspondence in an analogous relation of precedence which Heidegger discerns between objects, that is, mere things, and what he suggestively calls "equipment" (Zeug) , referring in this way to the network of entities which we encounter in our concerned interactions in the world. In Heidegger's own words: "We shall call those entities which we encounter in concern 'equipment . . .'." And he adds: "[T]he less we just stare at the hammer-thing, and the more we seize hold of it and use it, the more primordial does our relationship to it become, and the more unveiledly is it encountered as that which it is - as equipment. ,,25 Further on in the same text Heidegger refers to the equipmental nexus of things, for example, the nexus of things as they surround us here, stands in view; but not for the contemplator, as though we were sitting here in order to describe the things . . .. The view in which the equipmental nexus stands at fIrst, completely unobtrusive and unthought, is the view and sight of practical circumspection, of our practical everyday orientation.26

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TECHNOLOGY AND THE LIFEWORLD Both the examples and the terminology used by Heidegger suggest that techne would originally be an integral part of the lifeworld and, even more so, that it would constitute its basic contexture. This equipmental contexture would at the same time constitute the condition of possibility for the ontological priority of being-in-the-world, above the rational reconstructions which characterize logos: the Dasein as user of equipment would be ontologically anterior to the Cartesian subject and its cogitations. Nevertheless, there is an objection to this thesis that places in question the entire deconstruction of rationalism extracted by Dreyfus from Heidegger, as well as the radical critique of AI which is its subproduct. The processes of modernization are, in effect, characterized by a displacement of traditional and pre-modern technai, by a supplantation or subordination to rationally planned technological complexes. In this way, these technai - ascribed, according to Heidegger, to the category of poiesis and, through that, to the revelation of aletheia or truth come to have no more than a residual existence. Moreover, the equipmental network which subsumes them and gives them sense tends to be transformed into the avant-garde of the colonization perpetrated by instrumental rationality into the lifeworld. 27 In this fashion, the processes of modernization could insert the objectifying logos into the very heart of the lifeworld. With this the ontological primacy of the Dasein over the Cartesian subject claimed by Dreyfus/Heidegger could be taken over. Its claim would be nothing more than an expression of nostalgia for a pre-modern, enchanted world, whose residual presence might still be sensed at the level of domestic techniques and practices (e.g., hammering, manipulating objects) which constitute the paradigmatic examples exhibited in support of their position. And in fact, when Dreyfus faces this objection - the challenge of instrumental rationality, understood in terms of "mental intentionality" as opposed to Dasein's "primordial intentionality,,28 - his defense appeals, first explicitly, and then in a more circuitous way, to a kind of regressive utopia. There are two main arguments that Dreyfus raises against this challenge. The first one appeals directly to the idea of "a simplified culture ... an earthly paradise ... in which members' skills mesh with the world so well that no one ever need do anything deliberately or entertain explicit plans and goals. ,,29 The second one recognizes that, In our world subjects often need to relate to objects by way of deliberate action involving desires and goals, with their conditions of satisfaction. But ... all thematic intentionality must take place on a background of transparent coping. In order even to

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act deliberately we must orient ourselves in a familiar world. 30

This familiar world is organized in terms of Heideggerian "towardwhichs" and "for-the-sake-of-whichs," "both non-intentionalistic terms, " referring the first one to "the end points we use in making sense of a flow of directed activity," and the second calling attention "to the way activity makes long term sense. ,,31 Dreyfus explains: "[O]ne is socialized into some of the for-the-sake-of-whichs available in one's culture. ,,32 And he adds for-the-sake-of-whichs need not be intentional at all. I pick my most basic lifeorganizing interpretations by socialization, not by choosing them. 33

In this way, appealing finally to the traditions into which we are socialized, Dreyfus manages to make room for teleological action, while avoiding concessions to representational intentionality. Nevertheless, his argument is insufficient, given that it neglects the principal issue, that is, precisely the capacity of the processes of modernization to dissolve such traditional nuclei of the "familiar world" to which his defense appeals. In the end, his failure to take note of this demonstrates that what is in question is not one or another form of intentionality - and in this sense, Dreyfus's position may be biased, even if only in a negative sense, by the question of intentionality - but instead the advent and development of rationality as an historical event, and not as a mere "traditional epistemological account" which the philosopher can replace at will. Understood in this way, the response to the objection would only be satisfactory if it were to appeal to immanent tendencies in this same historical development. 34 Let us recapitulate. Dreyfus, basing himself on Heidegger, offers a radical interpretation of the failures experienced by the AI research program, establishing an internal and ontological limit to the possibilities of a rational reconstruction of social practices and techniques. Nevertheless, facing the challenge of teleological action - the nucleus of instrumental rationality - he tries to find refuge in tradition. But this refuge is inherently fragile, given that - at least according to Weber's understanding of modernity, which Dreyfus does not confront - instrumental rationality is characterized precisely by its capacity to dissolve traditional enclaves of meaning. So the door is again left open for the indefinite progress of instrumental rationality, even including the dissolution within it of those techniques which are associated with the lifeworld, as well as for the full realization of the AI research project. How can we overcome this objection? Certainly not by appealing to traditional practices, which are, as we have seen, always vulnerable to the corrosive power of Weberian ratio. Rather, possibly, we must turn

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to emerging practices. In what follows we intend to sketch out an interpretation of certain elements that come from the field of management and computer science as indicators of a possible overcoming of the hegemony of instrumental rationality, arising from the very consummation of its dominion and of the emergence of a new principle - postmodern, post-Weberian - for the management of complexity: the communicative coordination of action. In the measure that this coordination is based on natural language and intersubjective recognition, we will be talking about a restitution of technology to the lifeworld. COMMUNICATIVE COORDINATION VERSUS INSTRUMENTAL RATIONALITY The clearest instance of this phenomenon that can be mentioned in this context is the global crisis of bureaucracies. Not limited to the political arena, the crisis extends to the economic sphere as well. Large conglomerates, with their sophisticated tools for planning and rational decision-making, appear to be losing ground to smaller organizations capable of coping better with a turbulent environment and accelerating technological change. The phenomenon tends to be interpreted as a triumph of the market. But the substitution of one systemic mechanism for another does not seem to warrant this idea, and invites us to reconsider meta-systemic factors that might be finding expression through the market, beyond the neo-liberal interpretation which has become commonplace. A recent book by Peter Drucker, the "founding father" of contemporary management science, asks us to say "adios" to a large number of received economic and political notions of modernity. 35 In particular, on evidence coming as much from the economy itself as from the mathematics of complexity, Drucker shows the non-viability of a unified economic theory, and, more generally, of any attempt to predict the behavior of complex systems based on mathematical models, regardless of the power and sophistication of the conceptual or computational tools that may be available. In his interpretation of the limits which confront the development of expert systems, Dreyfus has elaborated a theory of learning in which rule-following is confined to the lower levels of the scale that leads to professional expertise. 36 In contrast to the apprentice, who is guided by them, experts act "a-rationally" in such a way that "when things are proceeding normally, experts don't solve Nroblems and don't make decisions, they do what normally works." And should difficulties

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present themselves, they do not fall back to analytic rationality. Instead, they enter into what Dreyfus calls "deliberation," characterized by its holistic apprehension of complex situational configurations - as in the case of the chess master assessing the chessboard in the middle of a game - which is the result of lived experience and is impressed into corporal memory. In this way, Dreyfus shows how modem professional work itself involves a certain mobilization of resources that belong to the lifeworld. The limits of formal models in the management of complexity actually deprive instrumental rationality of the engine which drives its expansion. Either complexity continues to impose itself in an increasingly uncontrollable manner, leading to chaos,38 or another principle for the management of complexity will appear: communicative coordination. Starting from the ideas of Dreyfus, Fernando Flores has proposed a new communicational, linguistic paradigm for management sciences. 39 Flores has examined the insufficiencies of the rationalist paradigm in management science expressed in "decision theory" in which the core of the manager's activity consists in rational selection, through the use of mathematical algorithms, of optimum alternatives from among a group of possibilities which in some way appear as given. For Flores, decision theory suffers from a severe blindness to the real activity of managers and of office work in general. "In actuality, secretaries are much more important than any computer equipment in ordinary usage," and it is there that "the black box of the art of management makes its appearance. ,,40 However, from the Heideggerian perspective of Flores, this black box loses its opacity. What managers do during the greater part of their time is hold conversations. The linguistic character of management is neither a defect, nor a minor weakness, nor a waste of time which ought to be minimized in favor of the aura of scientific seriousness that surrounds "decision-making." On the contrary, the linguistic character of management is inherent or "ontological" in Flores's Heideggerian lexicon. The story of what has happened to the theory of inventories further illustrates the displacement of formal models in favor of communicative coordination. In effect, the optimization of inventories through the use of sophisticated mathematical models represents one of the successes that consolidated the rise of the then-incipient discipline of operations research in the 1950s, up to and including its transformation into a scientific paradigm for the theory and practice of management science. Today, however, with "just-in-time" methods, the models for optimization of inventories have become obsolete. Communicative coordination with suppliers - a meta-instrumental principle - is sufficient to maintain inventories at a minimum level.

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Recently Peter Keen, professor of management sciences at Harvard, published a book which announced the advent of what he called "justin-time-everything, " thereby implicitly extending the validity of communicative coordination to practically all areas of organizational activity.41 Similarly, Management in the Nineties, a huge research project carried out at MIT, recognizes the tendency - which the technological platform of computer networks makes possible - for the proliferation and increase in importance of the so-called "weak links," that is, the informal web of interactions within organizations.42 Such weak links constitute the lifeworld of organizations. In this way - and the phenomenon of horizontal task-oriented work groups replacing organizational pyramids seems to point in a similar direction - the telematic technological platform appears to strengthen organizational lifeworlds, simultaneously giving them a central role in the execution of organizational objectives. In other words, communicative coordination, made possible by the technologies of information and communication - i.e. telematic networks - may restore natural language to its role in the coordination of action, and in this way harbors a possibility for a reinsertion of technology into the lifeworld. CONCLUSION: FROM A DANGER TO A SAVING POWER IN TECHNOLOGY We have seen that an affinity exists between "communicative coordination, " whose emergence has been observed in the very consummation of the hegemony of instrumental rationality, and Habermas's "communicative rationality," made current in the latter's efforts to revise critical theory. Such an affinity supports our hypothesis of the existence of a certain democratic potential at the core of contemporary technology. Now Habermas's larger conception of communicative action, within which this attempt is inscribed, has its foundation in the notion of the "rational reconstruction" of communicative practices. Through these reconstructions, claims to a universal validity that exceed the merely cognitive dimension (which are carried, even if unconsciously, by participants in communicative interaction) are made evident, as well as the resulting tendency toward consensus formally contained in "speech acts. ,,43 But the radical critique of AI which, following Dreyfus, has been developed here, does not leave room for a distinction between instrumental and communicative rationality - the latter endowed with a substantial, normative content - such as Habermas wishes to

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establish. For Dreyfus, in fact, the rational reconstruction of practices constitutes the operation par excellence of instrumental reason. In this way Habermas's heroic attempt to liberate logos from the stigma of instrumentality, confining it to a single function of language, seems doomed to failure, as the consequence of being itself founded in instrumental rationality. Of course, we have also seen the difficulties which burden Dreyfus's position. In the face of the antinomy which seems to emerge here - the nostalgic return to tradition vs. the obstinate affirmation of instrumental modernity44 - our purpose, at least for the present, is limited to showing how, even under the prism of that radical critique of modernity which characterizes Heidegger's thought (as well as that of Dreyfus), the moderate sort of techno-optimism we are proposing may still hold. For Heidegger, indeed, an extratechnical logos, an "outside" of technology that could serve as a basis for its critique and for its humanization, does not exist. Technology, on the contrary, represents the destiny of our age, providing modernity as such with its constitutive and poetic discourse - the peculiar cone of light and shadow which illuminates into presence the modern dominion of calculable and available entities, while at the same time veiling its condition of possibility, Being. The impotence that would affect critical rationalism before technology does not, however, signify subjugation nor flight into an uncontaminated world outside of history. 45 It calls instead for what Heidegger named Geiassenheit, a "comportment toward technology which expresses 'yes' and at the same time 'no'. ,,46 And, as we have seen, to the degree that the roots of technology are in some way planted in the lifeworld - in Heidegger's Being - the energies that the dialectic discernment implied in Gelassenheit require could also originate from it. A certain play between presencing and concealment is common to all historical modes of the manifestation of Being; the forgetting of Being that it implies - its regression into the background beyond the reach of determining thought - enables the immersion into the ontic sphere necessary for the accomplishment of everyday tasks. Nevertheless, the forgetting that reigns in the era of the universal dominion of technology is more radical. A forgetting of the second order takes hold of human beings so that they become "functionaries of technology," forgetting even this forgetting. This consummate forgetting, from another point of view, results from a parallel consummation of metaphysics. In this closure metaphysics does not fade into the void, but its primary operation - "the project of assigning a single and definitive name to Being"47 - collapses over the world of ordinary practices; it transmutes itself in an enlightened furor, into the challenging (Herausjordern) unconcealing that is technology, in the crystallization of Being under the

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label of "enframing" (Gestell). But with this, what does fade out is metaphysics as an explicit discourse, and with it all vestige of the concealment that metaphysics is. It is because of this that, for Heidegger, "when destining reigns in the mode of Enframing, it is the supreme danger." And he adds, "Thus the challenging Enframing ... conceals revealing itself and with it that wherein unconcealment, i.e. truth, comes to pass. ,,48 Moreover, Enframing disguises even this, its disguising, just as the forgetting of something forgets itself and is drawn away in the wake of forgetful oblivion. The coming-to-pass of oblivion not only lets fall from remembrance into concealment; but that falling itself falls simultaneously from remembrance into concealment, which itself also falls away in that falling.·9

Nevertheless, "Where danger is, grows the saving power alSO." The advent of salvation cannot but come from the very breast of technology, from its essence, from Being itself in the final analysis. Thus what is called for is a Kehre, a turning, lacking mediation. We are well aware that what is offered here may be a highly unorthodox reading of Heidegger's late thought on technology. But our main concern must be not with developing "correct" interpretations (which, in any case, are open to philosophical discussion), but to follow the signs of a certain turning in the process of Weberian rationalization, which may be opening the possibility for recovering the role of natural language at the vortex of the social apparatus for the coordination of action. Heidegger was a radical critic of modern technology (though he was far from being a "pessimist"); thinking through some of his categories seems a good argumentative strategy for establishing our own, more positive version of Heidegger's turning. How is this possible? In the first place, because nothing can be accidental in the history of Being. In this the danger is nothing other than Being itself, and the consummate forgetting still is, although in an oblique and paradoxical way, a historical modality for the unconcealment of Being .. More precisely, the turning is an event which must rise from the consummation of the concealment which technology is. That consummation could harbor in itself the possibility that concealment, as concealment, comes to presence in the same way that a photographic negative - Heidegger himself used the image in one of his courses permits, in the very lack of it, an intuition of the presence of light.so Even more precisely, when the danger is as the danger, then the trapping that is the way Being itself entraps its truth with oblivion comes expressly to pass. When this entrapping-with-oblivion does come expressly to pass, then oblivion as such turns in and abides. Thus rescued through this abiding from falling away out of remembrance, it is no longer oblivion.'l

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The consummation of metaphysics in the age of technology, in modernity, is made manifest in the figure of the universal machine. 52 But in this way, it transforms itself into a public affair, capable of transcending philosophic thought. The logos descends from its pedestal and under the prosaic form of computer software, moves on to constitute yet one more resource of the "standing reserve" (Bestand) , a resource whose possibilities and limitations should then become visible. Certainly, this descent can be read as a deepening of the imposition of technology, and to be sure this is one of the possibilities it harbors. Nevertheless, as we have established, instrumental rationality, which appears to be the direct beneficiary of the global discrediting of reason, is experiencing its own crisis. This would seem to indicate that the very process of Weberian modernization, with all its ominous consequences - the same that have been brought to light as much by the tradition of critical theory as in the thought of Heidegger - may be reaching an internal limit. Simultaneously, casting its shadow beyond the profile of the universal machine, a revaluation of elements that belong to the lifeworld is manifested - elements that are, consequently, associated, beyond mere fixation to the ontic, with the primal truth of Being, i.e., with natural language, with the practices and traditions by which we are socialized (organizational cultures), and with common sense as the nontransparentable background, which at the same time enables the explicit coordination of action. Certainly, we do not intend to reduce Heidegger's Kehre or turning to this phenomenon. But from the perspective of the emergence of the saving power in technology, the rise of a postmodern, post-rational principle for the management of complexity - of the human being as "manager of technology" as opposed to the "functionary" Heidegger knew - cannot, by any means, be considered with indifference. 53

Latin American Institute of Transnational Studies NOTES 1. We might add at this point that our insistence throughout this paper on the question concerning the basis of critical thought is not merely the result of an overzealous academic rigor, but rather intends to discern those conditions which critique requires to make itself effective (presuming that any remain) - in other words, to question what forces might be present in the historico-social scene in which a philosophical critique might find support, and make itself true in a substantive sense. More precisely, with reference to Lewis Mumford's distinction in "Authoritarian and Democratic Technics" (Technology and Culture, vol. 5, no. 1 [Winter 1964], pp. 18), our research means to isolate certain energies of a democratic character, paradoxically emerging from the kernel of contemporary authoritarian technology.

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2. See Jiirgen Habermas, The Theory of Communicative Action, trans. Thomas McCarthy (Boston: Beacon Press, 1984), part I, pp. 339-399. 3. For a brief discussion of the use of "enframing" as the English translation of Heidegger's Gestell, see the introduction in Martin Heidegger, The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays, trans. William Lovitt (New York: Harper & Row, 1977), p. 19, n. 17. 4. For a discussion concerning the concept of the "lifeworld," see Habermas, Theory of Communicative Action, part II, chapter 6. 5. Jiirgen Habermas, The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity, trans. Frederick Lawrence (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1987), p. 350. Similar ideas are expressed in Habermas, Theory of Communicative Action, part I, pp. 340-342. 6. Jiirgen Habermas, Pensamiento postmetajisico, trans. Manuel Jimenez Redondo (Madrid: Taurus, 1989), p. 76. 7. See Francisco J. Varela, Connaftre: Les Sciences cognitives (Paris: Seuil, 1989). Beyond presenting a synthesis of the current paradigm in the cognitive sciences, Varela proposes an alternative point of view, in certain ways similar to the one discussed at the end of this paper, which the author calls "enaction." 8. A. M. Turing, "Computing Machinery and Intelligence," Mind, vol. 59, whole no. 236 (1950), p. 25. 9. Herbert A. Simon and Allen Newell, "Heuristic Problem Solving: The Next Advance in Operations Research," Operations Research, vol. 6, no. 1 (JanuaryFebruary, 1958), pp. 1-10. 10. "Is the Brain a Digital Computer?" Presidential Address delivered before the Sixty-Fourth Annual Pacific Division Meeting of the American Philosophical Association, Los Angeles, California, March 30, 1990 (APA Proceedings, vol. 64, no. 3 [November 1990), pp. 21-37). 11. John Searle, "Minds, Brains, and Programs," Behavioral and Brain Sciences, vol. 3, no. 3 (1980), pp. 417-424. 12. To distinguish this basic cognitivist position from "AI in a strong sense" Searle says: "Granted that there is more to the mind than the syntactical operations of the digital computer; nonetheless, it might be the case that mental states are at least computational states and mental processes are computational processes operating over the formal structure of these mental states. This, in fact, seems to me the position taken by a fairly large number of people" (Searle, "Is the Brain a Digital Computer?," p. 22). 13. Ibid., p. 27. 14. Ibid., p. 35. 15. Ibid., p. 36. 16. For this, see John Searle, Minds, Brains, and Science (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984), pp. 13-27. We observe in passing that the type of causation Searle attributes to the brain is that in which a "superficial feature" (in this case, consciousness) "is both caused by the behavior of micro-elements, and at the same time is realized in the system that is made up of the micro-elements." Searle adds, "Those are exactly the relationships that are exhibited by the relation of mind to brain." The model for this type of causality, as it becomes manifest in the examples Searle cites, are physical macroproperties such as the states of the aggregation of matter (liquidity, solidity, etc.). However, it should be noted that in these cases it is possible to establish with mathematical precision the relation that exists between the macroproperty in question and any particular statistical property of the micro elements (e.g., the average energy of molecules). For this reason, in the measure that Searle is not able to give us something like the equation of the mind in terms of neurologic elements and processes, his theory can be said to rest on mere analogy. 17. See previous note. 18. Max Weber, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft (Berlin: 1919).

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19. With regard to this displacement (i.e., the mutation of the relations of causality into information reports within the natural sciences), we are reminded of a suggestive passage in Heidegger: "Hence physics, in all its retreating from the representation turned only toward objects that has alone been standard until recently, will never be able to renounce this one thing: that nature reports itself in some way or other that is identifiable through calculation and that it remains orderable as a system of information. It seems as though causality were shrinking into a reporting - a reporting challenging forth of standing-reserves (Bestand) that must be guaranteed either simultaneously or in sequence" ("The Question Concerning Technology," in The Question Concerning Technology, p. 23). 20. See Gilbert Ryle, The Concept ofMind (London: Hutchinson's Universal Library, 1949), chapter 2. 21. Hubert L. Dreyfus, Being in the World: A Commentary on Heidegger's "Being and Time, " Division I (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1991), p. 4. The [mal addition in brackets comes from an early, unpublished version (1986) of Dreyfus's commentary. The fact that this version has been circulating for several years, and that it has not been rejected in any way by its author, gives validity to our use of it, to emphasize or clarify certain points. Dreyfus's reading of Heidegger is suggestive, not only for its potential richness in terms of a critique of AI, but also because it sets out the theme of technology at the very center of Heideggerian thought, further permitting us to see in the question concerning technology a connecting thread between Being and Time and the later works of Heidegger which explicitly deal with technology. 22. Habermas, Theory of Communicative Action, part II, p. 335. 23. For Dreyfus's non-standard translation of Zuhandenheit and Vorhandenheit, see Dreyfus, Being in the World, p. xi. 24. For an explicit application of these ideas to the critique of AI, see Hubert Dreyfus, lWtat Computers Can't Do: A Critique ofArtificial Reason (New York: Harper & Row, 1972; 2d edition, revised, 1979). See also Hubert Dreyfus and Stuart Dreyfus with Tom Athanasiou, Mind over Machine: The Power of Human Intuition and Expertise in the Era of the Computer (New York: Free Press, 1986). 25. Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson (New York: Harper & Row, 1962 [1927]), p. 97 [68]; cited in Dreyfus, Being in the World, p. 62. 26. Martin Heidegger, The Basic Problems of Phenomenology, trans. Albert Hofstadter (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1982), p. 163; cited in Dreyfus, Being in the World, p. 66. 27. In his article "Between Techne and Technology: The Ambiguous Place of Equipment in Being and Time" (Tulane Studies in Philosophy, vol. 32 [1984], pp. 2335), Dreyfus explores and radicalizes this idea. Starting from the type of relation with nature implicit in the "equipmentality" of Being and Time (as a source of prime materials and not as physis) and the type of global totality which equipmental contexture supposes, Dreyfus concludes that equipmentality is merely an intermediate stage somewhere between traditional techne and modern technology, and that therefore Being and Time does nothing more than prepare for the consummation of technological nihilism. In this manner, the distance between the Cartesian subject and Heidegger's Dasein shortens, and there is little else but to conclude (despite the fact that Dreyfus does not discuss this) that the ontology of Dasein no longer offers a basis from which to criticize AI. This is not the place for us to comment further on such a twist in Dreyfus's thought (which, in any case, is anterior to the publication of his commentary on Being and Time as well as Mind over Machine - works which nevertheless still base their critique of AI on this ontology). Let us say, however, that the distinction between techne and modem technology in our context is constructed on the basis of the social device for the coordination of action - ordinary language and traditional practices on

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the side of technai, systemic-instrumental rationality and formal languages on the side of modem technology. In this way we may be able to associate the "equipmentality" of Being and Time with pre-modem techniques, at the same time leaving open the possibility of its reapparition in a post-modem technology to the extent that, as we shall see later, communicative coordination of action replaces systemic-instrumental rationality. 28. In the unpublished 1986 version of his commentary, Dreyfus puts the objection, which he attributes to Searle, in this very straightforward way: "I do not tum the doorknob unless I want to get into my office, or have some other desire or intention, Searle would argue. This is a serious argument which, if successful, would make primordial intentionality and mental intentionality equiprimordial, since each would require the other. So the question must be faced: How can one organize one's day without intentional states such as plans and goals?" (pp. 51-52). 29. Dreyfus, Being in the World, p. 85. 30. Ibid. 31. Ibid., pp. 94 and 95. 32. Ibid., p. 95. 33. Ibid., p. 96. 34. In Dreyfus's behalf let us add that he gives a third argument in defense of his position. Indeed, facing the cognitivist, contemporary version of the philosophical claim to reduce know-how to know-that, he points out the failure of AI to build expert systems which can do as well as human experts. "Thus," he says, "the work on expert systems supports Heidegger's claim that the facts and rules 'discovered' in the detached attitude do not capture the skills manifest in circumspective coping" (Dreyfus, Being in the World, p. 86). But of course, philosophical discourses are not validated on the ground of empirical evidence, especially when they are used to provide, as in Dreyfus's case, an interpretation of this same evidence. Dreyfus recognizes this. "All this," he adds, "does not prove that mental states need not be involved in everyday activity, but it does shift the burden of the proof to those who want to give priority to mental representations, since they are now in the ... rather typical philosophical position of claiming that in order for their theories to be true, our way of being must be totally different from what it appears to be" (Dreyfus, Being in the World, pp. 86-87). But these philosophers are not alone in this uncomfortable position. As our preceding analysis of Dreyfus's two main arguments shows, a counterintuitive, utopian postulate - the "earthly paradise" in which consciousness would be reduced to a "kind of disease" (Dreyfus, Being in the World, chapter 4, n. 11) - also underlies his position. What this shows is that, in the final analysis, both Dreyfus and his intentionalistic adversaries fail to grasp the installation of modem instrumental rationality as a historical event, which cannot be contested in the field of intentionality, whether "mental" or "primordial." 35. Peter Drucker, The New Realities in Government and Politics. in Economics and Business. in Society and World View (New York: Harper & Row, 1989). 36. See "Five Steps from Novice to Expert," Dreyfus, Mind over Machine, pp. 1651. 37. Ibid., pp. 36 and 30-31. 38. This may be a basis for contemporary interest in chaos theory. 39. Terry Winograd and Fernando Flores, Understanding Computers and Cognition: A New Foundationfor Design (Norwood, NJ: Ablex, 1986). 40. Fernando Flores and C. Bell, "A New Understanding of Managerial Work Improves System Design," Computer Technology Review (Fall 1984), pp. 179-183. 41. Peter G. Keen, Shaping the Future: Business Design through Information Technology (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Business School, 1991). 42. Although at the present time the entire report has not appeared in print, a summary of the results has been published by Ernst and Young, under the title The

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Landmark MIT Study: Management in the Nineties. 43. For the role of rational reconstruction in Habermas's theory of communicative action, see "What Is Universal Pragmatics," in Communication and the Evolution of Society, trans. Thomas McCarthy (Boston: Beacon Press, 1979), pp. 1-68, especially the section, "A Remark on the Procedure of Rational Reconstruction," in which Habermas alludes to the same distinction of Ryle between "knowing how" and "knowing that" utilized by Dreyfus. 44. We do not exclude, however, the possibility that Habermas's thought may offer us a way, if not to solve this antinomy, at least to explore it in depth. We are referring, for instance, to the Habermasian dialectics between lifeworld and systemic rationality which fmds its expression in the concept of a "rationalized lifeworld." We are also referring to the distinction between the world-opening function of language vis-a-vis its intra-worldly functions, submitted to universal validity claims - the ontological gap between meaning and validity - and to the mediation between these poles which seems to characterize critical and philosophical discourse. In the fmal analysis, the specific nature of modernity, from a Habermasian perspective, could consist in the possibility of a practice of Enlightenment, of a Bildung which would progressively dissolve these antinomies. 45. "The flight into tradition, out of a combination of humility and presumption, can bring about nothing in itself other than self-deception and blindness in relation to the historical moment" (Martin Heidegger, "The Age of the World Picture," in The Question Concerning Technology, p. 136). 46. Martin Heidegger, Discourse on Thinking, trans. John M. Anderson and E. Hans Freund (New York: Harper & Row, 1966), p. 54. 47. M. Haar, "Le Tournant de la detresse ou: comment l'epoque de la technique peutelle fmir?," Cahier d Z'HernelHeidegger, ed. M. Haar (1983), p. 340. 48. Heidegger, "The Question Concerning Technology," pp. 26-27. 49. Heidegger, "The Turning," in The Question Concerning Technology, p. 46. 50. The image is that of Gestell as a photographic negative of Ereignis. For a commentary on this concept, see J. Taminaux, "L'Essence vrai de la technologie," Cahier de l'HernelHeidegger, pp. 263-284. 51. Heidegger, "The Turning," p. 43. 52. See the famous interview of Heidegger in Der Spiegel, no. 23 (1976): "S: 'And what now occupies the place of philosophy?' H: 'Cybernetics'." 53. This paper is part of the research project "Tecnologfa Telematica y Racionalidad Comunicativa," fmanced by Fondo Nacional de Desarrollo Cientffico y Tecnol6gico, Santiago de Chile (Fondecyt, Project 91-115). A first version, in Spanish, was read at the II Congreso Interamericano de Filosoffa y Tecnologia, Centro de Filosoffa e Historia de la Ciencia y la Tecnologfa, Universidad de Puerto Rico en Mayagiiez. I am very grateful to Claudia Rousseau, Ph.D., who put her best efforts into this translation.

CARLOS VERDUGO S.

ETHICS, SCIENCE, AND TECHNOLOGY

That human knowledge is a double-edged sword is a very old idea. In Plato's Republic we find Socrates formulating the question, "Is it not true that he who knows how to guard against disease is also most able to infect with it and escape detection?" (333e).· This is one of the first expressions of the problem concerning the moral responsibility of people who possess some kind of knowledge or expertise. Actually, the Greeks not only revealed the close relationship between ethics and applied knowledge, but they also tried to solve that problem by requiring that students of medicine follow the Hippocratic Oath. 1 It is important to note that the discussion about moral responsibility was primarily related at that time to what is called "applied knowledge" (or technology) and not to "pure knowledge" (or science), the latter of which was assumed to be concerned only about the search for truth. Today we are facing a totally different situation. Scientific knowledge has changed dramatically in character, and is growing so extensively and rapidly that practically every new item of pure knowledge becomes potentially applicable, so that no scientist or researcher can avoid the moral responsibility of meditating on the possible consequences of scientific investigation. At present, the computer and biological revolutions, exemplified by developments in artificial intelligence and molecular genetics and their potential applications, have led many people, including some scientists and engineers, to talk about the need to place limitations on certain areas of research and on the use of some particular types of knowledge. More than ever before in human history knowledge has become a tremendous power that can be used for the benefit or detriment of human beings. In this sense, few people would deny, in principle, that we need to establish some regulations on scientific activities, including both pure and applied research. After all, if knowledge is power, it cannot enjoy unlimited freedom. But limitations and regulations must be based on ethical considerations. NEUTRALITY OF SCIENCE, CULPABILITY OF TECHNOLOGY There are, of course, many active and highly trained scientists as well as some technocrats who reject the idea that the search for knowledge 61 Carl Mitcham (ed.), Philosophy o/Technology in Spanish Speaking Countries, 61-67. 4)1993 KJuwer Academic Publishers.

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and its possible applications should be limited by ethical or normative constraints. Their rejection is based on the idea that science rests upon a strictly objective approach to the study, description, and interpretation of the universe, including not only nature but human beings and human societies. Because science is objective, they say, science is value-free and should ignore any kind of value judgments. In other words, science is neutral; only the use to which it is put can be good or evil. We have to discriminate between physics itself and the effects of its use. Closely connected to this view is the claim that science, as long as it limits itself to the description of the laws of nature, has no moral or ethical quality. The thesis that pure science or basic scientific research is value-free or morally neutral has also been strongly defended by some contemporary philosophers, most notable among them, Mario Bunge. According to Bunge, the ultimate goal of basic or pure science is the search for truth. Basic scientists only seek knowledge or truth for its own sake. The natural scientist wants to flOd new laws of nature, and the social scientist wishes to describe and explain society. Basic scientists, in sum, wish to understand reality, not to dominate: they are after knowledge, not power. 1

Bunge thus argues that, from the point of view of its goals, basic science is innocent, does not raise moral problems, is immune to ethical criticism. "[B]asic scientists have no opportunities for doing harm, except through simulation, theft, or sloth - and even so the damage they do is limited. ,,) But, as Bunge points out, the situation of applied science and modern technology is quite different. Applied scientists, since they seek truth that has practical potential, have plenty of opportunities for mischief. And because technology is a very powerful instrument for the transformation of reality, it also can be put to good or evil use. In sum, basic science is innocent, for it seeks only knowledge of what there is, was, or may be. [But] applied science and technology can be either good or evil, according to whether they promote life or . . . on the contrary, endanger it. 4

It is important to recognize that according to Bunge ethical

considerations are involved when something can be done for or against the well being or life of human beings. Any complete assessment of Bunge's claims would need to include both empirical and logical considerations. With regard to empirical considerations, for instance, the idea that by "simulation, theft, or sloth" scientists can only do limited damage would need to be weighed against

the amount of social power and influence they have over the budget

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allocations in many governments, and the ways they direct funds toward large-scale research projects that might otherwise go, for instance, to public health care. With regard to logical distinctions, that between scientific or research method and scientific or research techniques, which has been fashioned by contemporary philosophers of science, is especially relevant. As Ernest Nagel and Richard Rudner have pointed out, scientific method is "a procedure of applying logical canons for testing claims to knowledge. lIS Thus the methodology of a scientific discipline is a matter of its logic or justification; "the method of a science is, indeed, the rationale on which it bases its acceptance or rejection of hypotheses or theories. ,,6 In contrast are "scientific techniques," meaning certain procedures and instruments used in scientific research - for example, the technique of measuring the length of light waves by means of a spectroscope, the use of the telescope in astronomy, etc. Of course, various scientific disciplines can employ different techniques of investigation, and unlike the scientific method these scientific techniques undergo constant change and development. Thus, as I will argue, the acquisition of pure knowledge or truth might require certain procedures or scientific techniques which, in fact, could endanger life or human welfare. This means that basic science, even on Bunge's terms, is not morally neutral or innocent after all. But the aim of this paper is not just to analyze the thesis of the neutrality of science. Its goal is, rather, to show, on the one hand, how the view that there is a complete divorce between value or ethical considerations and scientific knowledge can be used as a political weapon in order to avoid criticism and, on the other hand, to show that any political use of that alleged divorce is untenable and should be rejected. THE CHILEAN CASE The idea that there is no relationship between value considerations and science, especially ethical values, has been used in some Latin American countries with non-democratic governments as a basis for rejecting criticism made against certain policies adopted by these regimes. Thus in Chile, for instance, the military government and some supporting newspapers have in the past dismissed criticisms of economic policies made by religious or political groups on the ground that these policies are based on scientific knowledge belonging to the field of economics. Therefore, the government claimed, ethical or value judgments are out of place, and are irrelevant for judging which policies should be selected in order to overcome certain problems.

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Those arguing in this way assumed that questions such as "How can inflation be controlled?" or "How can we improve the economic condition of a country?" are strictly scientific or technological in character. In order to answer them we need only to appeal to the scientific knowledge provided by economics, or simply apply such knowledge in the solution of these problems. In other words, unless religious and political leaders are experts or trained in economics so that their criticisms are made qua economists, their views should simply be dismissed in the same way as scientists qua scientists have no expertise or authority for criticizing religious beliefs about the moral value of some religious practices. I think that this approach is wrong and is based mainly on a basic failure to appreciate certain important features of two different but related kinds of questions: (1) Questions concerning the truth or falsity, acceptance or rejection, of some scientific hypotheses, including questions about what types of scientific techniques or procedures are suitable for empirically testing these hypotheses, and (2) Questions about what types of procedures can be selected in order to solve different certain kinds of practical problems, for instance, economic ones. In other words, there are two kinds of decisions here, each of which could in different ways be claimed to be scientific. The first is actually what might more properly be called scientific; the second is more properly technological. But in order to state my arguments and criticisms in a clear way it is useful to examine some very important working distinctions. THE POSITIVE-NORMATIVE DISTINCTION One of the best-known distinctions made by contemporary philosophers, specially those belonging to the analytical movement, establishes that we have to separate statements describing how things are, were, or will be, from statements about how things should be. On the one side, we are told, there are descriptive statements which are factual, which deal with what is, exists, or happens, which belong to the so called "positive realm." On the other side are statements dealing with what ought to be or indicating value preferences, which therefore belong to a totally different realm, the "normative realm." Following from this distinction is the claim that any disagreement about the truth or falsity of descriptive or positive statements can be settled, in principle, by empirical procedures such as observations,

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experiments, etc. Disagreements concerning any type of normative assertions, by contrast, cannot be solved by empirical evidence. The following quotation from an introductory text on economics illustrates clearly how widely used and accepted is the positive-normative distinction: The statement "It is impossible to break: up atoms" is a positive statement that can quite defInitely be (and of course has been) refuted by empirical observations, while the statement "Scientists ought not to break up atoms" is a normative statement that involves ethical judgments. The questions "What government policies will reduce unemployment?" and "What policies will prevent inflation?" are positive ones, while the question "Ought we to be more concerned about unemployment than about inflation?" is a normative one. ,,7

This quotation rests on the assumption that there are questions belonging to two different realms; and, therefore, that it is necessary to accept or to acknowledge that questions such as "How can we reduce inflation?" can be answered without appealing to any kind of normative or value considerations. Nevertheless, as I hope to show, value judgments cannot be avoided when scientists have to make a decision whether or not to use certain research techniques, as well as when they have to choose one procedure among others equally effective to test some given hypothesis. 8 ETHICS AND THE SEARCH FOR OR SELECTION OF RESEARCH TECHNIQUES Let us imagine that a physicist tries to answer the question, "Is it possible to break up atoms?" According to the positive-normative distinction, some people would claim that this question clearly belongs to the positive realm because we are just trying to determine whether the hypothesis "Atoms can be broken up" is true or false, and, obviously, no value considerations are needed in order to answer this kind of question. In addition, similar questions such as "What scientific techniques or procedures can be used to test the hypothesis that atoms are able to be broken up?" should also be included in the positive realm because an empirical connection holds between physical conditions F and result G. For the sake of argument let us assume not only that our physicist finds out that if some uranium atoms are hit by certain particles it is physically possible to produce results that can be described as "atoms breaking up," but also that there is a very high probability that this experiment would cause a chain reaction which could lead to the deaths of millions of human beings. Would we then be willing to accept the

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claim that the scientific decision whether or not to use that scientific technique in order to determine the truth of the hypothesis "Atoms can be broken up" should be made solely on scientific considerations? I think the answer has to be in the negative. In this case, the decision whether or not to use a suitable experimental procedure would require extra-scientific considerations such as ethical judgments about the rights of other people to live. Clearly there are instances in which the pursuit of pure science must be guided by ethical concerns. It is also important to recognize that the example of nuclear experimentation is not as extreme or exceptional as one might initially think. The number of people who have been harmed by nuclear experimentation is actually quite large. 9 Moreover, with the transition from "little science" to "big science" all kinds of scientific experiments have potentially large-scale effects. In the social sciences the need to experiment on human subjects further emphasizes the point at issue. And, finally, as already mentioned, one of the secondary effects of any scientific experiment, especially large-scale experiments, is the diverting of social resources from alternative investments. THE ROLE OF ETHICS IN THE SELECTION OF MEANS FOR SOLVING SOCIO-ECONOMIC PROBLEMS In light of the above discussion let us examine again the quotation found in the introductory book on economics. According to that textbook, questions such as "What economic policies will reduce inflation?" are positive questions, i.e., questions that can be answered by people trained in economics independent of any value judgments. In fact, however, economists claim that there are at least two scientific answers to this question: (a) Inflation can be reduced if the government reduces expenditures (for example, by reducing government jobs). (b) Inflation can be reduced by diminishing the buying power of the population (for instance, by lowering salaries). There is no question but that both answers belong to the positive realm insofar as the truth of (a) and (b) depends solely on some empirical facts concerning economic processes and certain relationships among them. But it is also true that any decision about which of these two equally effective and scientifically adequate answers should be implemented cannot be based on scientific knowledge alone. This follows from the view that science can give us only reliable information about some phenomena and alternative courses of action and, also, knowledge concerning the probable consequences of such alternatives.

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But the responsibility of choosing one course instead of the other, together with the consequences we want to accept, involves value judgments - for example, socio-ethical ones - that science cannot provide or justify. In this case, we know that both answers (a) and (b) have different social consequences. The first leads to unemployment, the second to salary reductions. But then any citizen or religious group can criticize the technological decision to solve the problem of inflation using one scientific truth rather than the other. It is perfectly legitimate, for instance, to criticize the decision to utilize the scientific truth that reducing government jobs lowers inflation because of the consequences that, for example, follow for the workers and their families. We thus have to conclude that the decision to apply a policy based on either of these two scientifically adequate answers to a so-called positive question cannot be based exclusively on scientific or purely technological considerations and, much less, be justified by appealing to some very dubious scientific-technological obligation. 10

University of Valparaiso NOTES 1. For a more extensive discussion on this point, see Karl Popper, "The Moral Responsibility of the Scientist," Akten des XlV. Internationalen Kongresses jUr Philosophie, vol. 6 (Vienna: Herder, 1971), pp. 489-496. 2. Mario Bunge, "Basic Science Is Innocent; Applied Science and Technology Can Be Guilty," in Daniel O. Dahlstrom, ed., Nature and Scientific Method (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1991), p. 96. 3. Bunge, Ibid., p. 97. 4. Bunge, Ibid., p. 104. 5. Ernest Nagel, "Science and the Humanities," in Brand Blanshard, ed., Education in the Age of Science (New York: Basic Books, 1960), p. 192. The emphasis is Nagel's. 6. Richard Rudner, Philosophy of Social Science (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: PrenticeHall, 1966), p. 5. The emphasis is Rudner's. 7. Richard G. Lipsey and Peter O. Steiner, Economics, 7th edition (New York: Harper & Row, 1984), p. 19. 8. For one of the most important arguments in support of the claim that scientific methodology implies value judgments, see Richard Rudner, "The Scientist qua Scientist Makes Value Judgments," in B. Brody, ed., Readings in the Philosophy of Science (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1970), pp. 540-546. I am very indebted to Rudner's ideas about the relationship between value judgments and scientific practices. 9. See, e.g., Catherine Caufield, Multiple Exposures: Chronicles of the Radiation Age (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989). 10. The author is grateful to Carl Mitcham for his invaluable and constant support, and for suggestions that led to substantial improvements of this paper in both content and English style.

PART II FROM COSTA RICA

LUIS A. CAMACHO NARANJO

CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE PHILOSOPHY OF TECHNOLOGY IN COSTA RICA

1. CONSTANTINO LAs CARIS AND THE ORIGINS Most contemporary philosophical activity in Costa Rica, from an institutional standpoint, bears the influence of the work of Constantino Lascaris Comneno (1923-1979). Although it is difficult to pinpoint the extent to which his ideas and activities laid down the foundations for what is done in each specific field in Costa Rica today, it is obvious that his tireless efforts gave the Costa Rican philosophical scene a scope and depth that it did not have previously, in spite of earlier work by philosophers of the caliber of Roberto Brenes Mesen (1874-1947) and Moises Vincenzi (1895-1963).1 Constantino Lascaris was born in Spain, and earned his doctorate from the University of Madrid in 1945. That same year he was appointed associate professor of the history of philosophy at Madrid, a post he held until 1955. During this period he was also an assistant in the Spanish Council for Scientific Research. He arrived in Costa Rica in 1957 at a time when the Universidad de Costa Rica (UCR) was embarking on an ambitious plan to unify the different schools and faculties, which had until then remained isolated from one another. An important part of such a reform consisted in the creation of the School of General Studies, for which several highly qualified foreign teachers were hired. It was in association with this effort that Lascaris arrived in Costa Rica that year. Lascaris immediately threw himself into the intellectual life of Costa Rica and over the next decade published a series of books that have become foundational for philosophical discussion in Central America: Teor(a de los estudios generales (1958), Concepto de filosofta y teor(a de los metodos del pensamiento (1959), Fundamentos defilosofta (1961), and Desarrollo de las ideas filos6ficas en Costa Rica (1964). The theme of this last book was enlarged with the publication of Historia de las ideas en Centroamerica (1970). It was on the basis of this considerable achievement that he became one of the founders of the Department of Philosophy at UCR, and its director for several periods beginning in 1969. In 1957 he had been the founder and first president of the Asociaci6n Costarricense de Filosoffa 71 Carl Mitcham (ed.), Philosophy of Technology in Spanish Speaking Countries, 71-80. 01993 Kluwer Academic Publishers.

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(Costa Rican Philosophical Association). He also founded the Revista de Filosofla de la Universidad de Costa Rica, today one of the oldest

philosophical journals in the whole of Latin America and the Spanishspeaking world. Graduate studies in philosophy at UCR were also initiated in the 1970s as a result of his efforts. In 1973 he established the Instituto de Estudios Centroamericanos (Institute for Central American Studies), and in 1975 the Instituto de Teorfa de la Tecnica (Institute for the Philosophy of Technology) at the Universidad Nacional (UNA) in Heredia, after creating several courses on this subject at UCR since 1974. 2 The Instituto de Teorfa de la Tecnica began to publish in 1974 what was probably the first journal in the world dedicated to the philosophy oftechnology. Edited by Lascaris, seven issues of Prometeo: Cuadernos de Teor(a de la Tecnica appeared between 1974 and 1978 and published a wide variety of authors and articles on theoretical analyses of technology. The first issue (December 1974) was devoted to the Marconi (1874-1937) Centenary and included articles on the life and work of the inventor of radio as well as some general reflections on technology. Issue number 2 (December 1975) is slightly more representative and includes the following: Ana Zulay Soto, "Tecnicas del jade precolombino costarricense" (pp. 5-19), on Costa Rican jade; Lino Viccarioli, "Sobre las unidades de medida en Costa Rica" (pp. 2027), on measuring standards in Costa Rica; Eduardo Saxe Fernandez, "Antecedentes y consecuencias de la ciencia y la tecnica galileanas" (pp. 29-50), on Galileo's science and technology; Miguel Gutierrez S., "Tecnica, ideologfa y construcci6n econ6mica" (pp. 53-59); Rosibel Morera A., "Homo faber, homo ludens" (pp. 60-68); a translation from Leucippus (pp. 71-88) by Lascaris; Gunther Anders, "Tesis para la Era At6mica" (pp. 89-107), translated by Eduardo Saxe Fernandez; and a chronicle of activities of the Instituto de Teorfa de la Tecnica (110127).

Prometeo eventually became a collection of works published by UNA but centered on education and not technology. The fact that Lascaris was also the author of numerous and frequently polemical short pieces published in such local newspapers as La Naci6n, as well as a very popular TV commentator, made him a well-known

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figure throughout the country. In this way he became one of those rare individuals who are at the same time quoted in scholarly works and well known and loved by the masses. Lc1scaris could not enter a restaurant or other public facility anywhere in the country without being immediately recognized and greeted with genuine affection. As the author of many books, 3 Lc1scaris left in his writings and recordings a concern for the subject of techniques and technology that has blossomed and diversified in the country during the years after his sudden and much lamented departure. At the Fifth Central American Congress of Philosophy, held at UCR on May 3-8, 1989, for instance, a roundtable was held devoted to Lc1scaris's thought, in commemoration of the tenth anniversary of his death. The huge number of people who attended the event was an indication of the continuing interest in Lc1scaris's ideas. The diversification can be seen in the boom experienced in his adopted country in several related disciplines such as the history of techniques and technology, the ethics of technology, and the philosophy of technology. 2. THE HERITAGE OF LASCARIS Consideration of Lc1scaris's heritage may begin with institutions. Today there exists in Costa Rica, in addition to the Costa Rican Philosophical Association, the Asociaci6n Costarricense de Historia y Filosoffa de la Ciencia y de la Tecnologfa (ACOHIFICI or Costa Rican Association for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology). It was founded in 1983, and is a member of the Sociedad Latinoamericana de Historia de la Ciencia y de la Tecnologfa (SLHCT or Latin American Society of History of Science and Technology), with headquarters in Mexico City and many international connections. Four Central American conferences on the history of science and technology have been organized by ACOHIFICI (1985, 1987, 1989, and 1991), all of them at UCR.4 At the same time, the Costa Rican Philosophical Association itself organized the Fifth Central American Congress of Philosophy, held at UCR in May 1989, where a large number of the papers dealt with the philosophy of technology. Neither is it accidental that it was in Costa Rica, in 1987, where the International Development Ethics Association (IDEA) was founded, with the participation of philosophers from the United States, Yugoslavia, Costa Rica, and Scotland. The first IDEA international conference took place in Costa Rica at UCR, also in 1987. We should also mention that in Costa Rica a group of teachers and

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students work intensively in logic and epistemology, gathered around what is called the UCR Logic Group. In light of all of this there is no doubt that Costa Rica is, in the words of SUNY-Buffalo professor J. J. Gracia, the center of philosophical activity in Central America. 5 Let us mention as well individuals and their works. It is through individuals that concern for the philosophy and history of science and technology moved from courses and seminars in the Department of Philosophy at UCR to the Institute for the Study of Technology at UNA and the Department of Social Studies at the Instituto Tecnol6gico de Costa Rica (ITCR). The History of Technology course at UCR includes an anthology published in 1976 with texts from Plutarch, Virgil, Ortega y Gasset, Ralph Linton, John Steinbeck, Wilhelm Dilthey, Georges Gusdorf, and Niels Bohr. 6 The previous year witnessed the founding of the UNA Institute, with the help of several UCR professors: Rose Marie Karpinski, Roberto Murillo, Lino Viccarioli, and Giulianna Viccarioli. All have become important public figures. Lino Viccarioli was already one of the founders of the Costa Rican Atomic Energy Commission; his daughter, Giulianna, a physicist by profession, subsequently came to be associated with research in genetic epistemology in connection with Piaget's institute in Geneva. Rose Marie Karpinski, elected congresswoman in 1986, was the President of the Legislative Assembly in 1987, and Roberto Murillo became the President of the Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones CientCficas y Tecnol6gicas (CONICIT or National Council for Scientific and Technological Research) from 1987 to 1989. At the UNA Institute, history of science and technology seminars were offered to regular university students and to high school teachers as part of a program of continuing education. These activities gave rise later on to a career in the teaching of technology in high schools; currently this program is oriented toward the training of computer teachers. ITCR also attracts interested individuals. For many years Guillermo Coronado, who studied history of science at the University of Indiana, has been the main promoter of this discipline and of the history of technology in his courses both at UCR and ITCR. These themes have been picked up by the Cartago Circle, one of the oldest study groups in the country, which gathers once a week in the city of that name. Long sessions of the circle have been devoted to discussing the ethical aspects of technology. In a country as small as Costa Rica one finds the same persons in different places. We have seen another member and founder of the Cartago Circle, Roberto Murillo, as professor both at UCR and UNA, and as president of CONICIT.

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By way of summary, one can distinguish the following three stages in the development of the philosophy of technology in Costa Rica:

Remote antecedents (1957-1975): This period runs from the creation of the Department of Philosophy (1957) and of the Revista de Filosofta at UCR, as well as the Costa Rican Philosophical Association, until the beginning of the history of technology courses and the creation of the Institute at UNA in 1975. Period ofprogressive specialization (1976-1983): During these years important contributions are made to the development of the history of technology in Costa Rica: CONICIT begins to operate in 1974, papers on the subject begin to appear, and a Second Central American Introductory Course on Scientific and Technological Policies and Planning takes place in Costa Rica in 1976. This course, sponsored by the Organization of American States and organized by the Argentinean ECLA (Estudios sobre la Ciencia en Latinoamt!rica) Institute, is held at UCR. Period of disciplinary institutionalization (1983-present): The Ministry for Science and Technology is founded in 1986; in 1987, the National Science and Technology Program is promUlgated by the government, and in the same year the National Science and Technology System is created; in 1983 ACOHIFICI is founded, and IDEA in 1987. Several conferences in these years are devoted to history and philosophy of science and technology, and finally in 1988 all concerned institutions and individuals engage in a national discussion on the occasion of the drafting of a new program for the scientific and technological development of the country. 3. RESULTS: PHILOSOPHY OF TECHNOLOGY IN COSTA RICA We have mentioned institutions and persons. Let us turn now to philosophical results by going back to the Second Central American Introductory Course on Scientific and Technological Policies and Planning (1976). The organizers of this course had the good idea of inviting several people not directly connected with policy-making and planning, but who were somehow interested in the topics, among them some philosophers of science. The end result was a renewed interest in the relation between science and technology, and of both with socioeconomic development. When we try to locate a recent historical event

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with which we may relate the national interest in the discussion of philosophical aspects of science and technology, and the connection of both with underdevelopment, many lines tend to converge on that introductory course. At the same time, Hugo Padilla's article, "Los objetos tecnol6gicos: Su base gnoseoI6gica," had a great influence among philosophers in the country and quickly became a necessary reference point in all papers written on the subject.7 Padilla uses general systems theory to relate basic science, applied science, technological theory, design, technological action, technological objects and processes, "soft" technology and the fulfillment of a desired function in a single scheme. At a time and place where Ortega y Gasset's Meditaci6n de la tecnica (1939) was quoted as the last word - and almost the only one - on the subject, and where several of Heidegger's texts were used without analysis, this short piece by a Mexican philosopher was a welcome breath of fresh air, with its great conceptual clarity and wealth of Any survey of Costa Rican valuable theoretical suggestions. contributions to what we may call philosophy of technology in the broad sense finds Padilla's paper quoted again and again. Even today, after the publication of papers as useful for the clarification of this matter as George Wise's "Science and Technology, ,,8 the simple scheme found in Padilla's article continues to be used in courses and lectures. One of the most important tasks of the philosophy of technology is clarification of the basic concepts related to the reality with which it deals. Such an analysis presupposes other tasks. In Costa Rica, the discussion of basic concepts has moved in at least three directions: toward analysis of the relation between technology and development, toward the ethics of technology, and toward the historical relationship between science and technology. The first has been a frequent topic in my own writings. As to the second, it is the topic of many writings by Edgar Roy Ramirez. (Relevant bibliographies for both authors are provided at the end of this paper.) The third topic has been dealt with by several of us, including Guillermo Coronado. As to those periodicals in which the majority of papers have appeared, four are the most important: VCR's Revista de Filosofia, ITCR's Tecnolog(a en Marcha and Comunicaci6n, and the now defunct Desarrollo, published for a while by ACOHIFICI. A special double issue of Revista, issue nos. 63-64 (1988), contains abstracts of all the articles published since the first issue in 1957.

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4. APPLICATION: SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY POLICY IN COSTA RICA With regard to the issue of technology and development, the drafting in 1988 of a new program for the scientific and technological development of Costa Rica offered an excellent opportunity to employ all the concepts and ideas accumulated in previous discussions. In the writing of such a program there was direct participation, requested by congressman Javier Solis, of philosophers of science and technology. A team supplied by VCR advised Solis, who introduced the proposed bill and has kept alive a national debate on the subject. The introduction of an alternative bill by the Ministry of Science and Technology in 1989 has broadened the debate, which came to a close when the Legislative Assembly decided the matter in 1990 and approved a law which included aspects of both drafts. The program fostered by philosophers begins with a series of definitions of such terms as science, technology, and development. Its main idea is that socioeconomic development must be thought of in connection with the improvement of the individuals who manage to develop their own capabilities, for which science and technology are necessary at least to the extent that they play an important role in the satisfaction of basic needs - among which the need to know is to be given paramount importance. The idea that science is only an input in production is emphatically rejected; even more dangerous is the belief, now fashionable because of the pressure to repay foreign debt, that science is only a tool to improve the quality of products that can be exported to international markets. The notion that development is measured in terms of gross national product is likewise rejected, as is the oft-repeated idea that development in a country amounts to repetition of a process that has already taken place in the economic structure of other countries. Science and technology represent a complex system within which all actors are to be held morally accountable. Autonomous technology is rejected in theory (through an analysis of "technicism" or "technocratism") and in practice, by way of intense participation in debates leading to technological policies. Finally, the relation between technology and cultures has become an important topic of discussion. The homogenizing tendency of technology must be counterbalanced by the diversifying forces of culture, an idea to be found in most Costa Rican authors who write on these matters. Both technology and culture must be ecologically conscious, and a rich philosophy of technology will find its necessary complement in an equally rich philosophy of ecology. Encouraging

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philosophical reflection on ecology is a task that remains to be undertaken in Costa Rica.

University of Costa Rica NOTES 1. See Constantino Uscaris, Historia de las ideas en Costa Rica (San Jose: Editorial Costa Rica, 1975), pp. 276-282, for Brenes Mesen. A complete bibliography of Mesen's works can be found in a dissertation by Maria Eugenia Dengo, En el pensamiento de Roberto Brenes Mesen (Universidad de Costa Rica, 1959). See also Uscaris, Historia, pp. 283-292, for Vincenzi's ideas and works. 2. The Universidad de Costa Rica (UCR) and the Universidad Nacional (UNA) are two of three state supported universities. UCR is the older (founded 1843, refounded 1940) and larger (28,000 students); it is also more oriented toward the center politically. UNA is younger (founded 1973), smaller (12,000 students), and originally leftistoriented, although it has recently moved toward the center. 3. A large Uscaris bibliography can be found in Revista de Filosofia de la Universidad de Costa Rica, issue nos. 49-50 (1981). It is not complete, though, and must be used in conjunction with the third edition of Desarrollo de las ideas filos6ficas en Costa Rica (San Jose: Editorial Studium, 1983). 4. The proceedings of the first congress were published in a special issue of the Revista de Filosofia, issue no. 59. The proceedings of the second appeared as a volume under the title, Historia de la ciencia y la tecnolog{a: Avance de una disciplina, published by the Technological Institute of Costa Rica (1989). Another volume, published also by the ITCR, will include the proceedings of the third congress. 5. J. J. Gracia, E. Rabossi, E. Villanueva, and M. Dascal, El analisisfilos6fico en America Latina (Mexico: Fondo de Cultural Economica, 1985), p. 472. 6. Constantino Uscaris, ed., Textos para la historia de la tecnica (Ciudad Universitaria Rodrigo Facio: Universidad de Costa Rica, 1976). 7. This article is included in Filosofta y ciencia en nuestros d{as (Mexico: Grijalbo, 1976). 8. George Wise, "Science and Technology," Osiris, 2d series, vol. 1 (1985), pp. 229-246.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Luis A. Camacho Naranjo (1978), "Mastering Science and Technology as a Life-orDeath Problem for the Third World" (paper submitted to the XVI World Congress of Philosophy, Dusseldorf, 1978). In Spanish: "EI dominio de la ciencia y la tecnologia como problema de vida 0 muerte para el tercer mundo," Tecnolog{a en Marcha (Instituto Tecnologico de Costa Rica), vol. 2, no. 3, pp. 191-194. - - - (1980), "Tranferencia de tecnologia y desarrollo: Analisis de un espejismo," Comunicaci6n (Instituto Tecnologico de Costa Rica), vol. 1, no. 4, pp. 23-27. - - - (1982), "El problema de la relacion entre ciencia, tecnologia y desarrollo desde el punto de vista de los derechos humanos" (paper submitted to the X Interamerican Congress of Philosophy, Tallahassee, 1981), Revista de Filosofta de la Universidad de Costa Rica, vol. 20, issue no. 52, pp. 165-169.

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- - - (1983a), "Desarrollo y cultura: Enfoques y desenfoques," Revista de Filosofia de la Universidad de Costa Rica, vol. 22, issue nos. 55-56, pp. 31-38. - - - (1983b), Conocimiento y poder (co-author) (San Jose: Editorial Nueva Decada). pp. 124. - - - (1984), "Algunas consideraciones fIlos6ficas sobre la relaci6n entre ciencia, tecnologfa y desarrollo," Desarrollo (Asociaci6n Costarricense de Historia y Filosofia de la Ciencia and the Asociaci6n Costarricense de Estudios en Ciencia, Technologfa, Planificaci6n y Politica), issue no. 1 (November), pp. 8-9. - - - (1985a), "Cuando se habla de ciencia, tecnologfa y desarrollo, ide que se esta hablando?" Tecnologia en Marcha (Instituto Tecno16gico de Costa Rica), vol. 7, no. 4, pp. 3-6. - - - (1985b), "Influencia de la tecnologfa en los valores," in Edgar Roy Ramirez, ed., Ciencia, responsabi/idad y valores (Cartago: Editorial Tecno16gica de Costa Rica), pp. 55-78. In English: "Technology and Values," in Olinto Pegoraro and George McLean, eds., The Social Context and Values (Washington: Council for Research in Values and Philosophy and the University Press of America, 1988), pp. 125-139. - - - (1986a), "Desarrollo y tecnologfa," in Cicio de Conferencias sobre Ciencia y Tecnologfa (San Jose: CONICIT), segunda parte, pp. 1-7. - - - (1987), "Compulsive Technology: Algunas dudas sobre la revoluci6n de la computaci6n y la asf llamada 'inteligencia artificial'," Desarrollo, issue no. 5 (August), pp. 87-93. - - - (1988a), "iEn que sentido puede ser 'adecuada' una politica cientlficotecno16gica?" in JII Congreso Latinoamericano sobre PoUticas Cienc(ficas y Tecno16gicas (San Jose: CONICIT), part one, pp. 1-12. - - - (1988b), "Etica y ciencia," in Aqua Vitae (San Jose: SNAA), pp. 1-16. - - - (1989), "Modelos y metaforas en la explicaci6n de la relaci6n entre ciencia y tecnologia," in Angel Ruiz, ed., Historia de la ciencia y la tecnolog(a (Cartago: Editorial Tecnol6gica de Costa Rica), pp. 15-22. - - - (1990), "Ciencia, tecnologia y desarrollo: Algunos modelos de relaci6n," in Carl Mitcham and Margarita Pena, eds., EI nuevo mundo de la filosofia y la tecnologia (University Park, PA: STS Press), pp. 90-96. - - - (1991a), "Some Comments on Peter Penz's 'The Priority of Basic Needs'," in Kenneth Aman, ed., Ethical Principlesfor Development: Needs, Capacities or Rights, Proceedings of the International Development Ethics Association (IDEA) Montclair Conference (Upper Montclair, NJ: Institute for Critical Thinking, Montclair State, 1991), pp. 74-79. - - - (1991b), "l,De d6nde viene y ad6nde va la fllosoffa de la tecnologia?" Revista Latinoamericana de Filosofia, vol. 17, no. 1 (Fall 1991), pp. 55-67. - - - (1992), "Professional Regulations and Technological Innovations in Costa Rica," Perspectives on the Professions (Illinois Institute of Technology), vol. II, no. 1 (August), pp. 9-10. - - - (forthcoming), Ciencia y tecnologia en el subdesarrollo (Cartago: Editorial Tecnol6gica de Costa Rica). pp. 213. Edgar Roy Ramirez Briceno (1983), with Mario Alfaro, eds., Etica, ciencia y tecnologia (Cartago: Editorial Tecnol6gica de Costa Rica). pp. 137. - - - , ed. (1985), Ciencia, responsabi/idady valores (Cartago: Editorial Tecnol6gica de Costa Rica). pp. 92. - - - (1987), La responsabilidad itica en ciencia y tecnolog(a (Cartago: Editorial Tecnol6gica de Costa Rica). pp. 102. - - - (1988), "Etica y tecnologfa," Comunicaci6n (Instituto Tecno16gico de Costa Rica), vol. 3, no. 2, pp. 47-49. - - - (1990), "EI 'argumento' tecnol6gico, la tecnologia perniciosa y la etica," in

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Carl Mitcham and Margarita Peiia, eds., El nuevo mundo de fa fiwsofta y fa tecnowg(a (University Park, PA: STS Press), pp. 205-212. - - (1991), "Some Third World Comments on First World Development Theory," in Kenneth Aman, ed., Ethical Principles for Devewpment: Needs, Capacities or Rights, Proceedings of the International Development Ethics Association (IDEA) Montclair Conference (Upper Montclair, NJ: Institute for Critical Thinking, Montclair State, 1991), pp. 225-227. - - - (1991), "Necesitamos una etica tecnol6gica transcultural," Revista de fa COPPPAL [Comite de Partidos Politicos Permanentes de America Latina], vol. 1, no. 5 (September-October), pp. 17-26. - - - (1992), "Profession, Costa Rica, and the World Beyond," Perspectives on the Professions (Illinois Institute of Technology), vol. II, no. 1 (August), pp. 8-9.

LUIS A. CAMACHO NARANJO

SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY, AND DEVELOPMENT: SOME MODELS OF THEIR RELATIONSHIP

INTRODUCTION: ORIGINS OF THE DISCUSSION A clarification of the concept of development, and of its relation to technology, is of more than purely academic interest. Technology is conceived as the necessary step from underdevelopment to development, 1 as the indicator of the general situation of a country, or as the necessary condition for human life as such. According to Robert Solow, in a 1956 paper for which he was awarded the 1987 Nobel Prize in Economics, the rate of technolorical progress determines the growth of an industrialized country. Consequently, given the importance that the study of technology has acquired, it is not surprising that since 1976 technology has entered the philosophical scene as a topic for discussion in the congresses devoted to philosophy of science, 3 and that in general the present trend is toward establishing models of the relation between science, technology, and development. Several factors have influenced this trend. One is a tendency to consider science as an input of production - at least since the 1960s as a consequence, among other things, of United Nations policies. 4 Another is the shift toward social history in studies of history of science,s as well as the ongoing move in the philosophy of science toward an ever widenin~ consideration of the factors that influence the development of science. In the analysis of the science-technology-development relation one finds, of course, a practical problem of great importance to underdeveloped countries - that of the public financing of research. If we want to promote the type of scientific-technological activity which goes hand in hand with the type of country we consider developed, and if for this aim public institutions are created in the style of the national councils for research which began to operate in Latin American in the early 1970s, basic questions arise. Toward which enterprise should public financing be directed? Toward basic science, toward applied science, toward technology, or (an alternative seldom taken into consideration) toward traditional native techniques? 81 Carl Mitcham (ed.), Philosophy of Technology in Spanish SpeaJdng Countries, 81-87. °1993 Kluwer Academic Publishers.

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THE ASSEMBLY-LINE MODEL AND THE SCIENCE-TECHNOLOGY RELATIONSHIP In the 1960s it was held that socio-economic development was a linear consequence of the application of technology, and that technology was but applied science. It was then believed that if a certain percentage of the gross national product was devoted to scientific research then technological progress would automatically follow and with it socioeconomic development. Even today it is easy to find examples of this way of thinking, and official documents of countries like Costa Rica often justify the public investment in scientific investigation on the grounds that this ultimately supports technological development. 7 George Wise has labeled this way of thinking the "assembly line model," and quotes the historian of science John Beer as the first person to systematize this approach in order to criticize it.8 The assembly line model includes the following beliefs: that technology is only applied science, that the rate of conversion of science and technology is in direct proportion to the money spent, and that since we know how to install the factories for scientific-technological invention - the interval between discovery and invention is quickly diminishing. Another element which completes this viewpoint - one not mentioned by either Beer or Wise - is the idea that at last we have discovered what the essence of scientific method is, so that the whole problem of production of knowledge is reduced to the mastery and application of the method of science. This model is very attractive because of its simplicity, and because of the fact that all elements often seem to be at hand. There is money for scientific research, for the application of science to the solution of practical problems, for the move from invention to innovation by way of application of products and processes to the productive apparatus, to increase the gross national product and the betterment of the per capita income of individuals. The problem is that the model is not only simple, but also simplistic. If the assembly line model were correct, development would be quite easy. It would consist, above all, in increasing the percentage of GNP devoted to scientific research, and in creating, after that, the mechanisms for the transfer of the products of applied science to the productive apparatus of the country. In practice things do not work this way. Money invested in research may be lost, for example, because the results of research may turn out to be inapplicable, or because a researcher (enticed by higher salaries) decides to join the brain drain, or for a lack of mechanisms to apply the results of research to the productive apparatus, even though applied science may be successful in

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creating practical objects and processes. But even when the famous "ceteris paribus" clause is invoked there remain missing factors. These are, above all, of a historical character. The first has to do with the diadic relation science-technology. There is no historical ground for thinking that technology is only applied science, nor even to believe that there is a "normal" entrance to technology in applied science; such an entrance would look pretty abnormal from a historical point of view. Nor is it possible to establish a one-to-one relation between each technological invention and some scientific idea - either previous, simultaneous, or posterior to the invention. 9 That technology is not applied science is easy to see in history. There is no previous science of which Watt's steam engine can be said to be an application. Other examples abound and point to the fact that many technological inventions - even those so important that they are able to give a name to an epoch - were not preceded by corresponding science. Parenthetically, one might argue that, although there is no preceding science, there certainly is one after the invention, so that at any rate some kind of relation between science and technology can be sustained. This is true in many cases, and in the case of the steam engine an after-the-invention relation can certainly be identified. But of course this is not what the theory of technology as applied science defends. In the science-technology relation technology does not base itself on an established science which might be found in scientific institutions or pursued by its practitioners. There seems to exist, on the contrary, a double institutionality: science with its institutions, and technology with its. When practitioners of technology look for a theoretical grounding for their activity, often they look for it in engineering, but the relations between the two lines of intellectual activity and corresponding institutions are more complex than they first appear, even to the point that a duplication of activities and institutions seems often to be the case. At the same time, one cannot avoid the issue by simply denying the existence of any relation between science and technology. The complexity shown by history may be due, on the one hand, to the fact that science and technology coexist in tension and, on the other, because both are related to other factors of an economic, political, and ideological nature. In the case of underdeveloped countries the existence of some kind of science-technology relation could be investigated in more than one area. A very important possibility, one little taken into consideration by scientific-technological development planners, is that of native crafts and techniques. A familiarity with such techniques, which are sometimes

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highly sophisticated, can be very helpful for solving complex problems of production. At any rate, once a solution to such a practical problem is achieved, this know-how should become available at any time in the future. As Papa Blanco says, obsolescence is not a technological necessity but an economic reality. 10 THE ASSEMBLY-LINE MODEL AND THE SCIENCE-TECHNOLOGY-DEVELOPMENT RELATIONSHIP If the science-technology diadic relation is difficult to analyze, the matter becomes even more complicated when we move on to the triad science-technology-development. The idea that there is a linear relation may be due to the historical fact that modem science, technology as we know it today, and the socio-economic phenomenon of industrialization have taken place in the same geographical locales. Doubtless the three elements are somehow related to each other - as well as to other economic, political, and ideological factors. It is thus easy to proceed to a simplification according to which the industrialized countries today are the developed countries and this development is only the third stage in a succession that begins with science and continues on through technology. The reduction of science to an input in production makes easier the identification of applied science with technology, since we can understand by technology the knowledge that makes possible the fabrication, use, and maintenance of objects and apparatuses. But this ignores a very important aspect of science, that is, the knowledge of nature and of society devoid of any possible application. It is this theoretical knowledge which makes possible a panoramic vision that the mere fabrication and use of objects cannot achieve. Such theoretical knowledge, especially in the social sciences, is particularly important in underdeveloped countries, but there it is too easily cast aside in favor of short-term returns on research projects. Sometimes the role of science is conceived in an even more narrow way, almost as some kind of quality control and improvement of export products. Then scientific research is seen as the means to improve a country's competitive position in international markets, so that hard currency thus obtained can be used to repay foreign debt. In any case, it seems more promising to begin reflection on this triadic relation with an analysis of the notion of development. For the sake of simplicity, let us begin by seeing the situation from the perspective of individual countries. First of all, it is obvious that science, and even technology, are not sufficient conditions for

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development. Advanced science and technology can be had without having development. Let us suppose that science policies of a country seek an improvement in teaching and research in astronomy, and that the country is geared toward the production of telescopes and other equipment needed for such a purpose. Suppose further that most people in such a country enjoy astronomy, and that great progress is made in astronomical theory and observations. We may even suppose that the best equipment of this kind is made there. We would then say that the country has a lot of science and technology, but we would not say that it is a developed country ipso facto. There is no contradiction in imagining that the country lacks drinkable water, good roads, good nutrition, and so on. By contrast, if we conceive of development as synonymous with high gross national product, then it is clear that science in a particular country is neither a sufficient nor a necessary condition to achieve it. The country, for example, could find great quantities of a highly priced commodity which could become the source of huge amounts of cash. With it the government might purchase science and technology, and could even begin to plan a diversified economy by the application of the newly acquired science and technology. But the fact remains that within such a country it is not necessary to create scientific-technological institutions in order to get what is usually called development. One could argue, of course, that at a historical and global level science and technology have been necessary conditions for development conceived as a determinate level of gross national product. But the planning of science and technology today is done on a country by country basis and, at least in some less developed countries, a situation like the one previously described might well obtain. TOWARD A NEW CONCEPT OF DEVELOPMENT The preceding considerations point toward the need for a more adequate conception of development. In several articles Jerome Segal, a scholar at the Center for Philosophy and Public Policy of the University of Maryland, has posed with great clarity the paradox arising from the fact that everybody talks about development but nobody seems to know what it is. ll An identification between development and gross national product could lead us to the not very comforting idea that a country could be developed even though the basic needs of the majority of the population were not met - even though most of the population lived in ignorance, or even though the increase in the gross national product might be due to drug trafficking.

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If our insistence is on the satisfaction of basic needs, then we must include among these the need to know, which gives rise to theoretical science. Also, popular participation in decision-making processes seems to be a basic need; otherwise we would have happy slaves but not free agents. It is obvious that the satisfaction of basic needs, with the need to know and popular participation among them, can be obtained without very sophisticated technology. It is obvious that the majority of underdeveloped countries, with their present growth rate, will never attain the level of gross national product of the wealthiest countries today. If we take into account how the mass media have promoted the lifestyle of the rich allover the planet, and that such a lifestyle has become the aspiration of the masses everywhere, one could reasonably conclude that for the vast majority of human beings living at this moment the kind of material existence we associate with the term "development" is only a failed aspiration, a frustrated desire. Hence we must pose anew the relation between science, technology, and development as a function of the kind of development we aim to achieve. If it is a matter of merely increasing the gross national product no matter what, without paying attention to the consequences of the measures undertaken, then the role of science will be reduced to that of a mere subordinate element of production. This will deprive us of the possibility of understanding natural and social reality, which has hitherto been the most typical function of science. It is also possible that such an approach will deprive us of the possibility of understanding the phenomenon known as underdevelopment, and in this way our ability to solve the serious problems associated with this phenomenon will be impaired. A more mature conception of development leads to the qualitative aspects of the life of the individual within society. Instead of defending limitless growth, the emphasis should rest on the attainment of goals defined as the actualization of potentialities of individuals, different potentialities according to different people, but all of them contributing to the greater wealth of society in harmony with nature. In this sense an increase in the gross national product achieved by the irreversible destruction of nature, or of individuals as persons, should not be considered development. Paraphrasing the title of an article by the Costa Rican philosopher Roberto Murillo, we may summarize everything said so far by saying that what is needed is a more developed notion of development. 12

University of Costa Rica

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NOTES 1. See, e.g., Wassily Leontieff, "The Structure of Development," Scientific American, vol. 209, no. 3 (September 1963), pp. 148-154 and 159-166. 2. Robert Solow, "A Contribution to the Theory of Economic Growth," Quarterly Journal of Economics, vol. 70 (1956), pp. 65-94. 3. In that year's congress of the Philosophy of Science Association there was for the fIrst time a session devoted to philosophy of technology, with contributions from Paul T. Durbin, Mario Bunge, Edwin T. Layton, Jr., Max Black, and Ronald N. Giere. See volume 2 of Frederick Suppe and Peter D. Asquith, eds., PSA 1976 (East Lansing, Michigan: Philosophy of Science Association, 1977). 4. A good exposition of this way of thinking may be found in Developpement par la science, published by UNESCO in Paris in 1969. I have used the Spanish version Desarrollo por la ciencia (Madrid: Ministerio de Educaci6n y Ciencia, 1970). The preface and the introduction, by Jacques Spaey, are specially revealing. 5. Thomas S. Kuhn, in the inaugural presentation at the XVII International Congress of History of Science, held at Berkeley in 1985, gave a detailed account of how history of science has moved from a consideration of the internal aspects of classical science to a study of institutional and social aspects. He took as evidence the topics of the papers submitted to the most recent history of science congresses. 6. See, for instance, the work of Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962); Norwood Russell Hanson, Patterns of Discovery (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1965); and Paul K. Feyerabend, Against Method (Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science, vol. 4, 1970). 7. See, for example, the introduction to the Costa Rican National Program of Science and Technology 1986-1999 (San Jose: LitografIa e Imprenta Lil, 1987). 8. George Wise, "Science and Technology," Osiris, 2d series, vol. 1 (1985), pp. 229-246. 9. Wise (p. 232) mentions the results of research undertaken by three economists, John Jewkes, David Sawers, and Richard Stillerman, published under the title, The Sources of 1nvention (London: Macmillan, 1963), where 61 important inventions are identifIed in which no connection with basic science is to be found. 10. Francisco Papa Blanco, Tecnolog(a y desarrollo (Costa Rica: Editorial Tecnol6gica, 1979), p. 17. 11. Jerome Segal, "Income and Development," Report from the Center for Philosophy and Public Policy (University of Maryland), vol. 5, no. 4 (Fall 1985), pp. 9-12. See also Segal's IDlat1s Development?, Working Paper DN-1 (College Park, MD: Center for Philosophy and Public Policy, University of Maryland, 1986). 12. Roberto Murillo, "Hacia una noci6n desarrollada de desarrollo," Revista de Filosojia de la Universidad de Costa Rica, vol. 12, issue no. 35 (1974), pp. 164-169.

EDGAR ROY RAMfREZ BRICENO

ETHICS, PERNICIOUS TECHNOLOGY, AND THE "TECHNOLOGICAL ARGUMENT"

Thanks to our discontent with the way certain things work or with the way certain human beings including ourselves behave, we try to do something to modify these workings and human behavior. It is possible to maintain that there can be no justification for such efforts either because we judge that things are just and precisely the way they ought to be or because we treat what we suffer, like the pain of lost love, as caused by something that in the end would fail to satisfy us anyway. But if either situation occurs, it surely will not be because our judgment is i"eproachable, but because it has been damaged and the exercise of rationality weakened. - Jose Ferrater MoraI

One would have to have been fathered by a "military spirit" to understand the difference between Hiroshima and Nagasaki, on the one hand, and Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen on the other. The usual reasoning is this: the one case is simply combat, the other butchery. But the plain truth is: in both cases those involved are nonparticipants, defenseless old people, women and children, whose annihilation is supposed to achieve some political-military end.

- Max Bom2

1.

Ethics encompasses beliefs about preferable conduct, attitudes that contribute to this, norms and rules that orient or guide, and theories that analyze, examine, deepen, criticize, and justify these beliefs, attitudes, and norms. An ethical theory is, therefore, a rational endeavor directed toward practical activity conducive to preferred conduct. Ethics is referred to in the context of an activity dependent on liberty or responsibility, in the context of conduct guided by values - conduct which, in its turn, is submitted to rational discussion. From this perspective, ethics is not limited to a mere description of human behavior, but pronounces value judgments on it. Such judgments are founded on the best knowledge available at the time and on the most developed capacity for action. In other words, the realization of properly human action is not opaque to rationality.

89 Carl Mitcham (ed.), Philosophy of Technology in Spanish Spealdng Countries, 89-98. °1993 Kluwer Academic Publishers.

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2. Rationality is a conquest. In some sense, we decide to be rational, we want to be rational, we learn to be rational. In short, rationality is not something given. On the contrary, it is a voluntary product that is individually and socially constructed. Thus rationality is not and should not be converted into an end in itself. It is subordinate to grasping truths and to the obtaining of greater depths in our knowledge. We judge rationality to be important because we appreciate the truth and the greater reach of our beliefs. When we certify certain determinate beliefs as irrational, that is, as beliefs without foundation, contrary to the best development of our knowledge, we not only describe but, at the same time, we evaluate such beliefs. We reject them, we repudiate them. In a similar way, to say that a belief is rational - when it is - we describe it and also evaluate it. We accept or recommend it. The evaluation comes from the preference for rationality over irrationality. To construct rationality, it is obvious that certain conditions are necessary. As defined by Mihailo Markovic, these include the openness of a society toward the rest of the world, a general atmosphere of political and cultural tolerance, the free flow of information (which includes freedom of selfexpression, of discussion, of travel, of studying any scientifically interesting problem), . . . a social climate that favors a critical spirit and especially anti-authoritative attitudes. 3

This is a clear affirmation that rationality is a conquest. But it is not necessary to insist that the conditions that make it possible also construct it. Degrees of concrete conditions interact in special ways with degrees of the realization of rationality.

3. The opposite situation occurs when error and intolerance take on the security of a well-worn path - without deviation, without change. This then favors a created past, invented from some present achievement that one wants to maintain and a future that one attempts to ward off. All past time was better because now it is no threat, no challenge, because it is far away and diffuse. This is part of our nostalgia for the golden age, for lost paradises. The weight of tradition converts this into an unalterable rule, that something is respected merely for being a thing of the past. Reason is

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disfigured into rationalization, into concealment, and is bureaucratized with ritual. The design of new ways, defensible in the light of a reason that knows fallibility and scrutinizes unrealized possibilities, is one of the modes in which to confront the concealment, the intolerance, the hostility toward the modernization of thought, conviviality, and action. According to Whitehead the function of reason is to promote the art of life, and from this ethical point of view we are interested in the most extensive well-being of all persons involved. Therefore, whatever course of action is in opposition to well-being is ethically inferior to one that does not act in opposition to it.

4. On our continent - in Central and South America - there are many who live at the margins of what is human. Fundamental goals such as feeding all people, educating them, treating their illnesses and providing them with meaningful jobs, have not been met. It is clear that to live in a manner that is truly human requires a minimum level of wellbeing, the satisfaction of basic needs. In light of such a situation, certain decisive questions arise: What type of science - and, above all, what type of technology - will make the satisfaction of these needs possible for the whole population? What is development? Development of what and toward what? What political, economic, and cultural changes are conducive to superior forms of existence and conviviality? 5.

To continue, consider the case of pernicious technology - an example through which it is possible to re-conceive ethics as conscience and to say that some things ought not be permitted to occur or to continue to occur to human beings. Pernicious technology is technology conceived, planned, and produced to cause harm. The existence of such technology is a fatal argument against the believers and defenders of the ethical neutrality of technology. Pernicious technology includes what can be called the technologies of violence which, in turn, subdivides into the technologies of destruction (war, mutilation, defoliation) and technologies of torture - to which the Americas have made grand contributions. Another example of pernicious technology is the technology for manipulating

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consumers - not to mention voters. It is in fact increasingly difficult to distinguish between advertising and a political campaign. It is as if both are trying to sell a product a commercial or political product. It also happens that those who plan and execute both advertising and political campaigns are more or less one and the same. The relation between technologies of manipulation and technologies of waste or planned misuse is clear. What is included in a technology of waste? The production of unnecessary things, the production of trash - which, of course, the consumer pays for! - and the production of various disposable products. Here also there develops an ominous relation: the passage from disposable products to disposable people. Finally, although no less important, we find another example of pernicious technology in what can be called poisonous technology. This is the production of pesticides, medicines, and chemicals which, once their impact on the human and non-human environment is known, are exported to countries that do not have to reckon with consumer protection groups, that do not have access to adequate scientific and technological information, that do not have a community of scientists and technologists who assume the responsibilities invested in them by virtue of their special knowledge - and to countries that are devoid of courageous politicians. Here we have a case for exercising rationality and ethical responsibility. The scientific-technological community - though not it alone - cannot, must not remain indifferent before such forms of destruction, before such forms of what Henry Shue calls "transnational transgressions. ,,4 Why? Because of the impoverization of human possibility that such transgressions bring and to avoid having our countries continue as technological waste dumps.

6. A certain convergence is taking place with regard to some central aspects of ethical responsibility in science and in technology. One concerns the consensus that it is necessary to disclose in advance as much as might be known about the risks or dangers of certain unfolding technologies, to discover the causes of such situations, and to plan possible corrective actions. In Latin America, scientists and technologists cannot and should not occupy themselves only with their own work. Why? Because it is necessary to create conditions that will make scientific-technological investigation possible and that will also make possible a more

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conscientious evaluation of knowledge and its importance in lucid action. This requires avoiding the indiscriminate consumption of knowledge produced by others. There is no doubt that one needs intelligence and decisiveness to combat the dominant "culture," to create alternative forms of practice in science and technology, and to produce options for conviviality. An ethical proposal of this kind is provided by Miguel Quintanilla: New ways of facilitating scientific investigation and understanding will have to be invented that are not compromised by exploitation, by lies and antidemocratic manipulation of technological potential and scientific rationality. And it is the job of philosophers to attend to this dimension of our civilization.'

7. Another such decisive activity consists in dismantling what, with mild philosophical humor, can be called the "technological argument" - the argument that tends to turn technology itself into an ideological construct. What are the presuppositions or propositions of this technological argument? Among the principal ones to be identified are the following: -

-

-

Technology is within the reach of all those who desire it. Backwardness is measured by lack of technology. There is a direct relation between technology and development. Development is an obligation. The more technology the better, and the latest model is always the best. To oppose certain aspects of technology is to oppose progress, is a form of regression (as if "technological development" were inevitable and had to occur as it has occurred or, which is the same thing, that nothing can be done in the face of it). Technology is intrinsically good or, in the worst case, is neutral. There is no pernicious technology. A country with advanced technology is the best country imaginable. It is better that such countries should exist rather than not exist. Therefore every effort should be put into bringing such countries into existence. The paradigm countries to be imitated are "the four tigers of Asia": Hong Kong, Taiwan, South Korea, and Singapore. There are no poor, destroyed, or devastated countries - only countries in various stages of development. Given that there are rational machines, the human being is an

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affective machine. - God is a magnificent computer, the most perfect of all possible or imaginable computers, and its plan is the best of all possible programs. In our countries it is, of course, necessary to create technologies in order to tackle many of our problems. Otherwise, for example, how would it be possible to use the resources of a tropical country without actually creating more human and non-human poverty than was alleviated? But what is needed is sufficient clarity so that we adopt not just any technology that is available to deal with such problems - or any technology that is made available to us by a corporation from another country because it makes money for that corporation - but what can modestly be termed "adequate" technologies.

8. The concept of an adequate technology obviously develops the ideas of "intermediate" and "appropriate" technologies, as argued for by E. F. Schumacher. 6 It is also a related to the larger alternative technology movement that has exercised some influence in both the developed and developing countries. 7 But intermediate simply stresses that which is in between the undeveloped and the developed, and appropriate is often commonly thought of as that which truly stimulates (rather than fails at stimulating) development. Alternative technologies make the issue of technological choice sound like a kind of free-will decisionism, cut loose from all concrete historical circumstances. The term adequate, by contrast, emphasizes more clearly the need to make choices relevant or adequate to certain criteria. Thus it is appropriate to ask, Adequate in what sense? A technology may be said to be adequate if - it is user and environmental friendly, that is, non-damaging and, it is hoped, enhancing to both the human and the non-human; - it helps to generate new springs of work; - its consumption of energy, especially oil, is low; - using it does not require the payment of great sums of money for patents and royalties; - it really is transferred to the country in which it is used; - it is not large scale and is easy to repair; - it does not increase external debt; - it sensibly uses renewable resources;

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- it stimulates the confidence and creative capacities of our peoples; - it serves to resolve our problems and contributes to independence; and - it is utilized to obtain a higher quality of life and, in our cases, to contribute along with other factors to development with scarce resources. Because it is sometimes helpful to understand by means of contrast, it is also reasonable to ask, When is a technology not adequate or when is it inadequate? A technology can be said to be inadequate when - it is not ecologically sensitive, produces unacceptable levels or risks of contamination, squanders primary resources and especially nonrenewable resources, and is destructive of the countryside; - it is difficult to repair, a complication that increases through contractual obligations to employ" specialists" and through high prices on spare parts; - it is not adapted to cultural conditions - as when its adoption requires the utilization of foreign technical jargon and brings with it a tendency to undervalue independent creative capacities; and - it increases technological dependency by means of contracts that evaluate knowledge and the region involved simply in terms of the costs incurred by the sellers of the technology. Obviously neither the positive nor the negative criteria are mutually exclusive. They point, in sometimes overlapping and redundant ways, to a view of technology beyond the technological argument. To apply these criteria it is necessary that there arise honorable and responsible technologists, with loyalty to values such as the well-being of the majority - one that does not sacrifice any person - and to the quality of life and the quality of the society. They should understand how knowledge gives power and how the exercise of power involves responsibility. Thus it is necessary not to give in to the technological argument with its criteria for development and progress - criteria which currently measure and define what is or can be for the individual as well as society. 9.

Everything said up to now brings us to a point of reflection on development. In the words of F. Mir6 Quesada:

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Development and underdevelopment can never be considered globally. It makes no sense to afftrm, for example, that a town which has unjustly assaulted others and sUbjugated them is more developed because of its military triumph. It could be such in an economic or technological sense, but on the contrary from the ethical point of view or that of human conviviality it can be irreversibly underdeveloped.'

Perhaps because of this it would be preferable to call certain countries industrialized countries instead of developed countries. The history of those destroyed is still fresh and, in a great number of cases, in progress. Certain authors - for example, Cornelius Castoriadis and Jerome Segal9 - think that a country is not developed simply because it produces many goods (this is growth), but rather because it permits or makes possible societal development. In its tum, a society is developed when it permits its individual citizens to develop. What is decisive, then, is the development of individuals, and this has to do with the satisfaction of basic needs and increases in the quality of life. Development therefore yields the ideas of potentiality, nature, and maturity. In this sense it is possible to see underdevelopment as a negation of human potential. For this reason, too, it is necessary to affirm that development is for the human being, not the human being for development. Part of the ethical fallout from the preceding is constant vigilance, so that forms of oppression do not supplant forms of liberty, so that pseudo-commercial culture and the consumption of fantasies do not supplant superior culture, so that diverse forms of contamination do not take the place of progress, so that superstition does not overtake rationality, so that economic imbalances do not replace justice, nor fear supplant peace.

10. Ethical or moral dialogue is indispensable in looking for a deeper lucidity in collective decisions, in the clarification of needs and desires, and in the eradication of fears. To deal with the problem of technology, clarity is the crucial necessity. But what is the objective of such clarity? To lead to a fuller life - one that embraces compassion, respect, tolerance, independence, good health, justice, work, personal and communal security - or, in short, well-being. The search is for more humanistic conditions, more integrity, and more generosity. "What is truly important is not to live but rather to live well" (Socrates).10 "We can live and we can live well. But we feel the urge of the trend upwards: we still look toward the better life" (A. N. Whitehead).ll

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Similar qualities have weight in bringing us to full knowledge and in bringing our capability into action. 11.

Finally, it is possible to question ourselves with regard to the ethical responsibility of the scientist and technologist. "The mere fact of being competent in a certain field confers on the possessor of that competence, whether it be of a cognitive or of an operative kind, a social responsibility which can in certain circumstances be extremely farreaching in its scope" (Jean Ladriere).12 Underlined in our argument is the idea that a humanism without science and technology is ineffectual, and that science and technology without humanism are dangerous. It is thus necessary to redefine needs in such a way that they serve the society in the totality of its concrete persons and, at the same time, make necessary the creation of an ethics that guides means and reaches valuable ends. The valuable or the good is what contributes to a greater deployment of those human potentialities that carry life forward. The invaluable or the bad is precisely the opposite, that which negates or strangles life and paralyzes human creativity. At the very base, it deals with fundamental preferences or values: those which promote life, liberty, equality, knowledge, and human as well as non-human well being. The valuable or the good constituted by a conjunction of preferences that is superior to another which promotes the opposite. As Kai Nielsen has summarized this perspective, As our knowledge of [humanity] develops and as our superstitions ... diminish, it is reasonable to expect that moral deliberation will enable us to achieve a greater understanding of and agreement about those attitudes and styles of behavior that are taken to be desirable or admirable. 13

- Translated by Ana Mitcham and Carl Mitcham

University of Costa Rica and Technological Institute of Costa Rica

NOTES 1. Jose Ferrater Mora, De La materia a La razon (Madrid: Alianza, 1979), p. 155. 2. Albert Einstein, Hedwig and Max Born, Briejwechsel: 1916-1955, kommentiert von Max Born (Munich: Nymphenburger, 1969), p. 274. The English translation in The Born-Einstein Letters: Correspondence between Albert Einstein and Max and

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Hedwig Bornfrom 1916 to 1955, with Commentaries by Max Born, trans. Irene Born (New York: Walker, 1971), p. 205, is defective. 3. Cited by David Crocker, Praxis and Democratic Socialism: The Critical Theory ofMarkoviC and Stojanovic (Atlantic City, NJ: Humanities Press, 1983), p. 17, note 44. 4. Henry Shue, "Transnational Transgressions," in Tom Regan, ed., Just Business: New Essays in Business Ethics (New York: Random House, 1984), pp. 271-284. 5. Miguel A. Quintanilla, A favor de la razon (Madrid: Taurus, 1981), p. 17. 6. E. F. Schumacher, Small Is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered (New York: Harper & Row, 1973). 7. For a good although somewhat dated overview inspired by the work of Ivan Illich, who has lived for many years in Latin America and whose concept of "conviviality" has already been alluded to, see Valentina Borremans, Guide to Convivial Tools, Library Journal Special Report no. 13 (New York: Bowker, 1979). 8. F. Mir6 Quesada, "Filosoffa y la creaci6n intelectual," Cultura y creacion intelectual en America Latina (Mexico: Siglo XXI, 1984), p. 265. 9. See, e.g., Cornelius Castoriadis, "Reflexions sur Ie 'developpement' et la 'rationalitt'," Esprit (May 1979), p. 919; and Jerome Segal, "Income and Development," Report from the Center for Philosophy and Public Policy (University of Maryland), vol. 5, no. 4 (Fall 1985), pp. 9-12. 10. Plato, Crito 48b. 11. Alfred North Whitehead, The Function of Reason (Boston: Beacon, 1958; first published 1929), p. 81. 12. Jean Ladriere, The Challenge Presented to Cultures by Science and Technology (Paris: UNESCO, 1977), p. 112. 13. Kai Nielsen, "Ethics, Problems of," in Paul Edwards, ed., Encyclopedia of Philosophy (New York: Macmillan, 1972), vol. 3, p. 132.

PART III FROM MEXICO

ENRIQUE nUSSEL

TECHNOLOGY AND BASIC NEEDS: PROPOSAL FOR A DEBATE ON FUNDAMENTAL CRITERIA

1. TECHNOLOGY AND THE FORCES OF PRODUCTION The critical account put forth here does not rest on any doubt about or underestimation of the role of technology in the progress of humanity. At the same time its role in advancing the forces of production for the benefit of humanity may have been perverted from its fundamental universality and placed in the service of a power struggle against the human majority. Human beings have modified nature to satisfy their needs. In this modification they early on created technical means to enhance productivity. It is in this ambit of the means of the forces of production that technics have evolved to a high technological level within industrial capitalism. Productivity itself has undertaken a new qualitative leap since implementation of the so-called "scientific-technological revolution. " For this reason contemporary humanity cannot avoid confirming the irreplaceable value of technology in the development of the forces of production, and with this development attempt to satisfy the basic needs of all humanity. Without technology it would be impossible to plan for the fulfillment of such fundamental human needs, which are the inalienable rights of human beings because of their inherent dignity. If we demonstrate the complexity of the problem and the inevitable contradictions that confront us, it is in no way to diminish the importance of technology but rather to indicate, justly, that in order for technology to serve humanity and not a system that exploits humanity, it is necessary to take into account many concrete historical and structural factors that are not in themselves technological. An abstract consideration of technology, in its intrinsic rationality as itself a productive force, can be unrealistic if it does not take into account the total concrete history in which technology is found and from which it derives its meaning. 101 Carl Mitcham (ed.), Philosophy of Technology in Spanish Speaking Countries, 101-109. °1993 Kluwer Academic Publishers.

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2. THREE SOCIAL CONTEXTS OF TECHNOLOGY The history of technology has not been without its ups and downs. There have been periods of great creativity, of stagnation, and even regression. What is certain is that since the eighteenth century technological progress within the framework of capitalism has been overwhelming. In the central capitalist countries (United States, Europe, and Japan), where technological advances manifest themselves primarily in the leading sectors (such as electronics, chemistry, energy), science is used more and more as a privileged means, aspiring to a productivity and control of processes never before dreamed of. Science thus increases in instrumental connection with technology; technology is not a mere application of science. Instead this technological connection responds to the needs of management and control, obligatorily bringing into the debate over technology issues of global economic coordination, security, and militarism. It is a known fact that an extremely high percentage of scientists and technologists work on jobs that are directly related to military production. International capitalism is currently undergoing a crisis, perhaps the most profound in its history. Attention must be paid to how capitalism confronts this crisis and what it means in the field of science and technology. In relation to this, what we see happening in capitalist countries is the question of technology confronting concrete problems that are not those of humanity as a whole but are specifically capitalistic, and which can be reduced to three: - The issue of the exhaustion of non-renewable resources because of continual growth. - Ecological preservation, which is threatened by the development of capitalism itself. - The requirements for new technology in the process of the internationalization of production, and in the productive processes demanded by worldwide capitalist accumulation with its tight bonds to the demands of global control. In this case technology is a necessary means within the capitalist system directly tied to greater income-yield capacity. We find countries which develop in a socialist ambit in a very different situation. The adaptation of technology, in the Cuban process for example, was preceded by a revolutionary change in economic and political structures. In contrast to those countries dependent on a capitalist system, in Cuba the whole work force is simultaneously committed to the priorities of creating a technology adequate for development and a technology that plays a role in satisfying the basic

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needs of the whole population - objectives that capitalist dependency has not been able to reach. It is only now, after economic and political transformation, that it is completely justifiable to give technology a high priority. The revolutionary global project, in the heart of which technology plays a role, is oriented toward humanity and its full realization. By contrast, in the capitalist dependent countries, such as the rest of Latin America as well as greater parts of Africa and Asia, the issue of technology already has a different meaning that is framed by a different situation. In this case the fundamental technological issues are the following: - What kind of technological development would satisfy the basic needs of the whole population? - Is technological development or a change in economic and political structure the highest priority for the fulfillment of basic needs? Or, from another angle, the issues that come strongly to the fore are these: - What impact does technical progress and "continuous technological change" in the dominant powers have on the economic systems of dependent countries, including, among others, the ecological destruction of cleared land and the alarming figures of unemployment and underemployment? - What do technologies and sponsors of development contribute to the support of social transformation in favor of the majority? 3. AN OVERVIEW OF TECHNOLOGICAL EVOLUTION IN LATIN AMERICA The current situation of technology in our countries is historically dependent on the various phases of their incorporation into the worldwide capitalist system. In the last decades of the nineteenth century, some Latin American countries (such as Argentina, Chile, Brazil, Mexico) began to experience the initial phases of manufacturing production, but only in a framework dominated by "development toward the outside." It is only since the crisis of capitalism between the two wars, and especially since 1929, that the creation of governments responsible to the partial hegemony of a national bourgeoisie permitted the awakening of certain technologies that were always dependent but nevertheless partially controlled by a project of national capitalism - or at least pretended to be so controlled. At the end of World War II, a developmentist attitude emerged in the dependent countries that consisted essentially of the supposed

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necessity of counting on capitalist aid and foreign technology, principally North American, to make development possible. From this option, firmly in force during the 196Os, the developmentism of Frondizi, Betancourt, the Christian Democrats, etc., defined the technology of the central capitalist countries as a privileged means of development. Thus was born the myth of technologism. The ideology of a universal technology gained a foothold in the capitalist dependent countries in which the transnationals began their rapid expansion. The technological issue considered on an abstract level - as if it were valid for the whole world - forms the basis of the ideology which, with the best of intentions and without a bad conscience, becomes a privileged means for the domination of capitalism over dependent countries. The "universality" of the technology of transnationals conceals a mechanism that must be examined. 4. THE REAL AMBIT OF TECHNOLOGICAL OPTIONS Technologically embodied wealth constitutes the substance beneath the style of accumulation that has characterized the majority of our capitalist dependent countries during the last decades. This style was defended by the ideologies of the dominant classes, which permitted the generation of a "modern" economic subsector that has as its nucleus transnational corporations. This pattern of accumulation reinforced the dependency of our economies, and generated a circle of production, distribution, and conspicuous consumption - nourished almost exclusively by the expropriation of surpluses, and a growing regressive distribution of income that puts majorities at the margins of basic necessities for living a dignified life. In other words, more than being just an incomplete "transfer" of technical progress, what has happened is the appropriation of this progress by and for the benefit of the privileged sectors and of the reigning power. This process develops through the functional logic of the worldwide capitalist market. On the basis of this logic the criteria for the selection of technologies are not arbitrarily determined. The fact of wanting to apply intermediate or traditional technologies does not mean that they can be applied. Capitalist entrepreneurs make decisions concerning the application of technologies, although their decisions are firmly conditioned. When making a technological decision, they apply a conditioned norm: incomeyield capacity. The entrepreneurs cannot decide on the application of one technology when another promises higher income yield. From this point of view the most adequate technology is necessarily the most

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income producing. Income-yield capacity is an institutionalized norm incorporated into the functioning of the capitalist market itself. This norm is objective and obligatory, and the very competition for capital imposes it and admits the application of other criteria only within very narrow limits. Therefore the selection of technologies in keeping with the norm of income-yield capacity is not an issue that depends on the good or bad faith of entrepreneurs. Within the framework of competition for capital, the corporation - no matter how large it is - cannot survive unless it adheres to this fundamental norm in the functioning of a capitalist market. Therefore this situation also marks the limits of possible political action on the part of the bourgeois state. State action cannot influence the technical process above and beyond the framework imposed by the central institutionalized norm, the income-yield capacity of capital. From this it follows that in a greater or lesser degree, the current technological process is that which most strictly corresponds to the criterion of income-yield capacity. If this is true, it can be determined as well that the technological process is susceptible to reorientation only to the extent that the criterion of income-yield capacity is susceptible. 5. THE DIFFERENT LANGUAGES OF BASIC NEEDS In spite of the unavoidable persistence of income-yield capacity as the base of capitalist logic, references to basic human needs have become obligatory in discussions about technology. Technological discourse is structured, for the most part, around promises concerning the satisfaction of basic human needs. At the same time, the most pressing problems of the majority of humanity are problems related to the failure to satisfy these basic needs. But in this field word and concept are notoriously different. So it becomes urgent to distinguish between the logic of certain technologies and their illusory projects and those that attempt to increase, in realistic terms, the rights of oppressed peoples. The ideological language of technology defines basic needs as beginning with subsistence (the consumption of foods to live), and gradually adds other minimum conditions, to better life and make it more bearable or more "humane," thus enlarging subsistence to include health, housing, education. This hierarchical order - beginning with food and not with jobs for all - serves ideologically to conceal the question of whether there will or will not be employment for all. It simultaneously permits the setting

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up of this basic promise: "We are in a position to create food possibilities so that all can survive (at least through their productive years)." Thus it is only a fundamentally providential view that would seek to put aside or de-hierarchize the problem of human dignity dignity that can only be effectively satisfied beginning with the right to work. Under this conception, the satisfaction of basic needs seems like a generous concession and not like afundamental right that can and should be organically structured through participation and the exercise of a power fundamentally located in a real right of the people. It is important to denounce the limitations in the satisfaction of basic needs that this discourse before-hand presumes acceptable, beginning with its inverted scale of priorities, with its emphasis on minimum subsistence on through subsidies given to those who are not offered the possibility of employment. The language of the people of the dependent nations is structured beginning with the right to work, which sees the human as a productive, creative, and dignified being. The rights to food and to shelter, equally fundamental, derive from and are shaped by the right to dignified work. Welfare is only exceptionally and supplementarily accepted - never as a normal proposition restricted to mere sustenance. This language refers to the fundamental rights to life and not to mere subsistence or mere reproduction of work forces, and includes in these basic rights all that which is implied in the fundamental right to human life: health, education, peace, security. It defines liberty beginning with justice, that is, with the fundamental premise of being a worker with the right to enjoyable work, dignified housing, attention in the areas of health and education - and all this in social rather than individual terms. This block of fundamental rights that is set up with work serving a mediating function in relation to all other rights, is not an ahistorical and disconnected group of abstract rights. On the contrary, it is a concrete program of priorities that serves as a source of the criteria needed to define a corresponding strategy of development and a new vision of society. Therefore this perspective considers that more basic than human needs are fundamental human rights whose lack of fulfillment goes much further than a lamentable accident of the malfunctioning of the economy. In conclusion, the inability of the developmental projects to satisfy these basic needs, the conscious perception of these as fundamental rights, the clear vision in respect to the growing failure to satisfy these needs and the consequent violation of these rights, implies a political

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and not only a technical vision of the projects or solution plans proposed, in the international arena as well as in the national. The discussion of specific technological options must be framed by the criteria and priorities that derive, first, from the correct ordering of basic needs understood as fundamental rights, which are: work, food, shelter, health, education, etc., and not food and shelter without work. Second, the discussion of specific technological options must include appreciation of the real meaning of the break implied in this focus in relation to the ideological view of technology. 6. BASIC NEEDS AND THE TECHNOLOGICAL PROJECT The current forms of absorption and utilization of the technological process, as determined by the existent conditions of power control, are incompatible with satisfaction of the basic needs of the worldwide population: work, food, and shelter. The task is to transform the technological complex so that each human being can, through work, assure himself or herself of a dignified life compatible with the developmental level of the existent forces of production in his or her own context. Achieving this task involves the application of criteria for technological selection that assure a configuration of the technological complex oriented toward the satisfaction of basic needs. Such a configuration assumes, in tum, for the Latin American countries, a combination of leading-edge technologies, second-hand technologies, intermediate technologies, and traditional technologies. However, this satisfaction of basic needs constitutes a criterion that is in conflict with the criterion of income-yield capacity. Therefore, the need to reorient the technological process in a direction different from the current one necessarily means that we must talk of the demand to substitute for the criterion of income-yield capacity the criterion of the satisfaction of basic needs right at the level of the management of the complex of the economic process. It consequently implies reference to a substitution for economic relations of a new kind in the capitalist market. From this derives the demand for another way of development that must be recognized from our perspective; it involves, as a nonpostponable priority, the needs of the majority of the population. This requires profound changes in the content of a technology tied to the production of massive wealth, involving the reorientation of the production of capital wealth to increase efficiency in the productive processes that correspond to such wealth. These demands imply the need to produce actions that tend to

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establish the bases of power necessary for this new type of economic management. It would be a sin of naivete to put forth the above-mentioned issues without certain declarations from the beginning. A project of this nature requires profound changes in the structures of power that permit the state to make its own the task of technological research; and the assignment of resources that the established alternative demands is a condition sine qua non for this to be viable. After all is said, we firmly adhere to the vision of a just society, participative and viable (realizable). Our conviction concerning the requirements for such viability extends further than mere consideration of physical and technological resources. In this we include as well those social and political conditions capable of securing this viability which tend to satisfy fundamental rights and demands for human dignity. POSTSCRIPT 1992 The preceding is the translation of a text prepared for a meeting on technology in the Third World held in Oaxtepec, Mexico, in early 1979. This meeting in tum was preparatory for the World Council of Churches conference, "Faith, Science, and the Future," held at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in July 1979. It was included as an appendix to my Filosofia de la produccion (1984). Let me take this opportunity, following the collapse of the Soviet empire (1988-1991) and the ensuing triumphalist reaffirmations of capitalist theory and practice, to reconsider some of its theses. The collapse of the Soviet Union and the collapse of real socialism in Eastern Europe - but not in the Third World - leave a lot unclear about the technological issue. I think that in the 1960s the Soviet Union had begun to feel the effects of a system that attempted "total planning" (Katorovich) - which is as impossible as "perfect competiton" (F. Hayek) - and of the nonacceptance since 1921 (the New Economic Plan) of some competition as a necessary moment in the market. In effect, competition is a mechanism that transfers value from one capital formation, area, or nation to another capital formation, area, or nation. In this manner, the one that has better productivity (technology) creates products with less value that are therefore in the end less expensive. In this way, in the market, it can destroy its competitors. With the disappearance of capital formations with low productivity, obsolete technology also disappears. The Soviet economy did not have this possibility. In a bureaucratic regime it is the high ranking employee who makes the decision to

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employ new technology. But what bureaucratic advantage can such an employee gain by implementing a new technology? If it turns out to be adequate, the merit will be given to others of a higher rank; if it is inadequate he will be criticized for having proposed it. In this way a bureaucratic system does not risk technological innovation. The collapse of real socialism in the Soviet Union and in Eastern Europe leaves unclear, then, the technological issue, but it in no way destroys the possibility and necessity of the best planning possible, using the strategic criteria so necessary in the Third World, in the peripheral world of the South, that have been outlined here. -Translated by Ana Mitcham, James A. Lynch, and Carl Mitcham

National Autonomous University of Mexico

JOSE GAOS

ON TECHNIQUE

A professor of philosophy requested to write an article for a journal published by a polytechnic institute feels an irresistible temptation to write about technique. I Especially if he thinks that philosophy does not have or ought not to have for its object - as is commonly believed, not without reason, given what has traditionally been taught about philosophy - the strange or esoteric, the most abstruse, what is most remote from concrete realities or is farthest removed from life, but that philosophy has or ought to have for its object what is the most concrete for the philosopher himself, including even that radical object the philosopher himself. Philosophy should be a conscious examination of its own roots, from which could then spring all the stalks or trunks, branches, flowers, and fruits desired. One of the characteristics most evident, most general, and most penetrating in "our" life - without necessarily discussing and concluding here whether or not it is the only one - is undoubtedly the invasion and domination of life by "modern technique, " its "technification" through this technique. Discovered by reason two decades ago, philosophizing about technique has already produced in the last ten years a whole new philosophical discipline, formally manifest as such in sections so titled in philosophical encyclopedias, and technique has expressly and repeatedly occupied some of the best philosophers of our day such as Ortega and Heidegger, who have struggled memorably with this theme. This is to name only two who are undoubtedly the most eminent in the Hispanic world and, perhaps, the most influential beyond its boundaries. It is also understandable that the author of this article, following the example of his principal teacher2 (who was many years older than the German thinker), on his own account and at hIS own risk, has been reflecting on technique for a long time - even before the course, "The Metaphysics of Our Life," given in 1942 in the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, the second part of which was devoted to "technocracy" or to the imperialism of technique in our life. What follows will be a relatively brief and proportionally dense summary of one part of that course. That it has not been published until now preserves the relative novelty to which any article can or ought to aspire. And the author imagines that what was said more than fifteen years ago has some interest now, as it did then.

111 Carl Mileham (ed.), Philosophy of Technology in Spanish Speaking Countries, 111-120. °1993 KJuwer Academic Publishers.

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The author thinks that interest in philosophy in general and its special philosophical ideas rests on what people generally think or on what is called the "exchange of ideas," which naturally and in the end come to be appreciated because of their own intellectual worth, though perhaps not only because of this. The word "t~nica" [English "technique"] is of ancient origin. As such, it is no more than a slight phonetic and graphic modification of a Greek word translated into Latin as ars, from which is derived the Spanish arte [English "art"]. Technique and art thus appear identified in antiquity. The divergence that has grown up between them cannot conceal their common origin. Thus the works of technique as of art are fundamentally products of homo jaber, of the animal fabricator of utensils, instruments, weapons, ornaments, more or less aesthetically. The thing thus also appears to be ancient. But it has become common to talk about "modem technique," with the intention more or less consciously but always explicitly, of distinguishing" our" technique from everything that could have been called technique in previous times. Yet already in classical antiquity there was already technique, and techniques, and perhaps in a volume much larger than what is commonly believed: Greek surgery and Roman engineering may be two good examples. But our technique has to be differentiated from technique in all previous ages because the techniques of previous ages could not have a relation with modem science, for the simple reason that in these ages modem science did not exist. In ages prior to ours there also existed science, and sciences, and even perhaps in quantities much larger than what is commonly thought. But there never occurred what has been occurring since the beginning of the modem period of universal history, increasing to the point that today there exists an international organization for the experimental and exact (in the mathematical sense) research into nature in all areas - the material, macroscopic and microscopic, the living, also macroscopic and microscopic, and especially the human as such, individual and collective. The relations between modem science and technique are very complex. At first glance, it seems that technique is grounded in science. In a deeper sense, perhaps science comes from the same source as technique, that is, a peculiar yearning for power and dominion, not only over nature - non-human nature - but also over fellow human beings, whatever previously may have been the ends-and-means relations between these two domains. And perhaps also there were relations between such yearning and the "manipulation" of "matter," with a primacy of touch over sight in classical Greek culture. But this article is not going to deal primarily with relations between modem science and technique; only with the relations between modem technique and our

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life - the life of each of us, each reader of this article and its author. We could talk about a "technification" of our life in quantitative and qualitative terms, and also about a "technocracy" in the sense of the imperialism of technique in our life. In order to see if not to prove the quantitative extent of technification in our life compared with life in previous ages within our own Western culture, perhaps it is sufficient to take a quick glance at each one of us and at our concentric "circumstances, ,,3 the house, the street . . . ,4 maintaining within the field of the imagination the historical figures of the men of other ages with their circumstances. On our body, glasses, in frames or contacts, dentures (not to mention cases and things even more pathological and made even less public), wrist watches; on our clothes, zippers; in our pockets, pens, mechanical pencils .... In our house, electric lights, telephone, radio, television, stereo, refrigerator, heaters, elevator. . . . In the street, automobiles, metros, traffic lights. . ., In places of recreation: the cinema. . .. In stores, escalators, food dispensers. . .. In offices, typewriters, calculators. . .. In factories, machines as innumerable as they are unnamable by the common man. On land, on sea, in the air, in outer space: locomotives, ships, airplanes, artificial satellites ... atomic bombs .... Most of the named technical artifacts - a new unification, nominal and more, between art and technique - belong to the domain of "physical" technique. But there are biological, chemical, psychological, sociological, economic and other techniques that have made the imperialism of technique in our life into the imperialism that it really and truly is. We have taken a quick look at the technical artifacts we wear in or on our body. How about if we start noticing the technical artifacts that serve our soul or that are served by it, from the techniques of publicity and propaganda, economics and politics, those that reach us, let us say, through the radio, to the techniques of intellectual work in scientific research? However, it is significant that the technical artifacts that most strongly and deeply impress the masses of humanity in our days - to the extent that the masses are able to comprehend a three-dimensional reality - are the products of physical technique: vehicles and weapons, and especially vehicles. Vehicles are not only artifacts for transporting human beings, although those certainly carry the name, if not exclusively. Vehicles are all artifacts for transporting anything that human beings are interested in transporting, in bringing near or sending away: their voice on the telephone, images on television, destruction and death with weapons, movement for its own sake, speed for its own sake (as in factory assembly lines). It is significant, the primacy of vehicles in the impression made by those technical artifacts on the human masses.

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Because it is more than probable that the techniques that most radically and decisively change human life, or human beings themselves, are the biological and psychological techniques that have already begun to operate on the very sources of life and on the personal intimacies of souls. If, in spite of this, the already mentioned vehicles undoubtedly have primacy, it is because they have special meaning within the technification of our life. And this special meaning leads us to realize that we have already crossed from the quantitative to the qualitative aspects of technification. Vehicles are for moving or for motion itself. Classical philosophy recognized movement [or change] as the most obvious phenomenon, the most general and problematic in the sensible world. At a fundamental level it has been argued that the origin and matrix of all Western philosophy, Greek philosophy, was a series of attempts to solve certain problems concerning change: What are its types? Can substance or matter change? Does motion include being and non-being? Is the relation between them rational or not? Does movement require a motor different from the motion itself? . .. It is at least probable that the presentation of such problems stemmed from the "living" of certain characteristic movements specially interesting to human beings: the downfall of states that had risen to heights of power and wealth; the fleeting aspects of youth, of maturity, of the prime years of individual life; the perishability of all this .... Modern science, or at least modern physics, arose when Galileo expressly rejected the resolution of such problems concerning the nature or essence of movement and its causes, in order to focus exclusively on how local motion or transportation occurs between points in material space. This restriction, which made movement or change synonymous with transportation, resulted at the same time in an enormous amplification of knowledge about how such motion occurs and about all its consequences: not only physics and modern physical techniques but the other sciences and techniques that are founded on them. The issue turns out to be one of the meaning of this restriction and amplification - beginning with the previously mentioned fact of the primacy of the vehicles that impress the masses because of the place they have in human life. Now speed is an important aspect of local motion, and it contains two contrasting possibilities: acceleration and deceleration. Here modern man, the man primarily of physical technique and science, is faced with two possibilities, acceleration and deceleration. Is it possible to choose between them? If so, which one will be chosen? In order to understand the meaning of this question, perhaps it is necessary to start with the historical fact that modem man already

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decided in favor of acceleration, with each era becoming more accelerated in everything: in vehicular transportation in industrial production. . . . But, in fact, has this not been unavoidable? Could man have chosen deceleration? Is it possible for human life under the sign of deceleration to have meaning? The question cannot be satisfactorily answered in the negative until some imaginative novelist presents us with the spectacle of human life under the sign of deceleration: a life in which human beings take rides on vehicles in order to go slower than on foot; a life in which, for example, the passions return like prolonged slow-motion movies; in which lovers arrive at their appointments saying not "I'm sorry I've come so late and that we can only be together such a short time, so that we must hurry" but "How good that we have to wait so long, how good that extra time for everything will be so slow in coming." How unfortunate it is that, with the recent proliferation of science fiction (or pseudo-science fiction, of high or low literary quality), those philosophical stories of the eighteenth century are not cultivated today. How unfortunate is the loss of the last two journeys of Gulliver's Travels - to the country of those accelerated to death and to the country of the decelerated ones. These are not stories for children, but philosophical stories - unless one thinks that "philosophy is a prolongation of childishness." Perhaps one day they will be recovered. 5 "Time waits for no one. ,,6 Time moves forward and its march is irreversible. Well, there really are phenomena of essential urgency, for example, surgical operations, medical emergencies, the putting out of fires, the rescuing of the shipwrecked. And is the intensification of world production in order to remedy scarcity, world poverty, not an emergency? Without a doubt. But, to think about it, there are undoubtedly phenomena of deceleration that are not exclusively or even appropriately thought of as delays but as decelerations for their own sake, from the setting out to talk or walk more slowly to the work slowdowns of employees and industrial workers. The issue would be then to explore the possibilities of deceleration - within its unsurpassable limits, although it might begin only with the theoretical intention of understanding better, by contrast, the phenomena of a culture of acceleration - its meaning, its possibilities, and also its limits. The fact is that modern man, whether by force or not, opted for acceleration, and this fact - the radical fact of the quality of the technification of our life, with all its consequences, or this technification itself in its qualitative disposition, in its already effective reality, the possibilities of its meaning and perhaps its non-meaning - is that toward

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which we ought to direct our attention. Human life has two dimensions: one that stretches out from the human being toward that which gives a being independence of itself; another that passes into human being itself. Perhaps this is what the Greek philosophers meant by poiesis and praxis, respectively. In any case, these two dimensions are what life is, as, respectively, the life of homo faber and homo viator, life as production and life as journey. Homo faber has become homo economicus, which brings about relations between physical technique and economic technique. The acceleration of production depends on the acceleration of movement transmitted vehicularly. Vehicles, in the expanded sense already indicated, have in industrial production a literally fundamental place that corresponds in this sector of human life to what they have in the totality of life. And life as production has brought forth the revolution of the current world economy with its paradoxes, not to say absurdities. Production as the ultimate end or goal of the whole economic process, in place of production for consumption or distribution. Maximum diversification of products, the mass production line. Production creating needs to consume. Surplus production, growing indefinitely in variety and volume, ending in saturation, universal welfare. But at the same time there are major inequalities in the distribution of national wealth among citizens and the distribution of global wealth among different countries; the stockpiling of surpluses of production by one country in order not to damage others that produce the same products; the destruction of goods in order to maintain their prices. . .. The economy of production, is it not in danger of losing its meaning if not making meaningless the economy as a whole? . . . Man is an entity itinerant between birth and death - from a past long before the birth of contemporary individuals and toward a future that will not only historically go beyond the death of contemporary individuals but which can also, at least to some extent, indefinitely prolong each individual after his death. Man is what he does, and everything that man does, all that he is, has the character of process, of advance. All human specialization or specification is specialization or specification of something human in a more general sense, in the double sense of extension and comprehension. The poetry of professional poets, the music of professional musicians, the madness of the professionally crazy (which it is perhaps not superfluous to point out are not the psychiatrists but the madmen in insane asylums) are specializations or specifications of the little of the poet, of the musician, and of the madman in all of us. Analogously, from time immemorial there have been travelers, and more recently that inferior superspecialization of the traveler that is the tourist, because human life is,

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in its essential constitution, dynamic travel, because homo is viator. Now the essence of travel is defined in turn by the goal and the route, by the end or the road - if you want, through their ultimate unity. It is even possible for travel to be vagabondage, the conversion of the road itself into a continuously renewed end. Here we find our life - of transportation and speed progressively impelled, accelerated, overflowing. In the huge cities people expend a disproportionate amount of their working time simply transporting themselves from one place to another, from home to work. "Disproportionate" in the economic sense exemplified by the professor who rides a bus for an hour in order to teach a one-hour class. The development of "communications facilities" includes, as is often proudly said, inter- and intraurban, national and international levels, also increasingly multiplying the number of people transported some place as fast as possible, to be left there as short a time as possible or immediately transported as fast as possible some place else where they stay as short a time as possible, and so forth. People nowadays may do more things than before during the same periods of time, but the things also last shorter periods - and are less meaningful in the end because among the essential human modes of temporality is the function of length, duration, slowness, deepening profundity. In an instant an emotion can break out, but this is not possible for a passion, which needs years to collect volume and penetrate an entire life. But let us imagine the advancing acceleration of our life toward its highest point. What would the image of such a life be? A dehumanized entity fiercely grasping a steering wheel, pressing the pedal to the floor with its atrophied feet, in a vehicle that circles Earth or travels through interplanetary space, without a goal, with a velocity such that it would not be possible to "stay on the track" - like a moon, a lunatic lunar body losing its orbit. At the point at which goals and roads have become annihilated through the vertigo of transportation from one place to another and the disconnected transformation of the perception of the trajectory, human life has undoubtedly lost its meaning and abandoned the "man" of such being. How, why does man "run" his life in such a direction? What ineluctable cause or eludable motive did modern man have to opt for the kinetic possibility of acceleration? In becoming conscious of certain differences between spiritual and material activities, one thinks about the increasing materialism of modern man, along with other characteristics such as increasing irreligiousness. Perhaps to have proposed the acceleration in his material activities as his profitable perfection is motivated by an immoral, even pathological, historical development of materialist needs

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or appetites, at the cost of spiritual ones. But if, because of this motive or better reasons, he is able to propose such acceleration as perfection, the activities of the spirit appear to be more fruitfully carried out with calmness, in repose. It was mentioned before that time is required for a passion to come to its fullness, in itself and in the life of the subject. But the passions traditionally had a bad reputation as a target of religious or philosophical moralists. Intellectual activities received a more favorable reception but philosophical meditation and scientific investigation appear to require the great patience of what has been called the genius, even in those cases where the philosopher or investigator is not exactly a genius. But is it not true that scientific researchers themselves are in a continuous rush to solve not only the problem of cancer but the problems of atomic physics, not only those of the peaceful uses of atomic energy but also, and persistently, that of constructing a clean atomic bomb, that is, one that permits the continuous construction, perfection, and stockpiling of atomic bombs? . . . Be that as it may, there appears to be a deeper answer to the questions of this part of our discussion. The one who is in a hurry and hurries himself, hurries and makes himself hurry because he fears he does not have time to do what he wants to do. Hurrying is an accusation of a struggle between the purpose of an action and a temporal limitation. The time of human life is finite. In this phrase human life is understood as individual. But the entire time of human life in the historical sense, the life of the human species or genus, is also finite. And human ambition, individual and collective, is infinite. If this refers to the yearning for power, for domination of man over nature and fellow men, then man has to be in a hurry, has to rush to complete, to consumate such dominion, such power, not only before the individual possessed of such a yearning finishes his individual life, but also, perhaps above all, before all fellow men have died, before Man and Nature have disappeared. In the depths of modern technique, a struggle between temporal finitude and the "essential" infinitude of man is unleashed, and this seems to define modern man as an entity different from all other entities - different from the lowest of subhumans, with pure temporal and essential finitude, to the highest of the superhumans, God, with pure essential and temporal infinitude. Is it possible finally to draw out, from the revelation of the radical meaning of modern technique, some practical or poetic technical conclusion? Do we need amplification of time or reduction of ambition? An exchange of material ambitions for spiritual benefit? A reversal of all values?

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We probably cannot draw such conclusions yet, before having examined not only physical technique but also those techniques that operate directly on and in some cases are derived from the living and the human biological, psychological, sociological .... Nor can we draw such conclusions before having investigated the essential relation between the temporal finitude and the infinitude of man. For the author of this article, this essential relation defines man alone among all entities; human life alone lives for goods or bads, or from the perspective of good and bad or from the human as good or evil. It is possible that man lives his effective temporal finitude as the greatest evil and his essential aspirations to infinitude as the highest good .... But these themes, already mentioned earlier, must be deferred for another occasion. This article may come to a close with an observation from the author. It might be concluded that this article is an expression of a romantic and reactionary attitude, of one who is a laudator temporis acti and one who condemns both the present and the future. Because the advance of history has consisted of the accelerated growth of human life, would the deceleration of human life both physically and mentally not involve turning toward the past? But this would be a premature conclusion. The author of this article has also written: "All proposals in history for returning to the past make meaningless the march of history itself. But then, what proof of the meaning of this return could be offered by its proponents - except that they are far ahead in this march?" What is the case is that the Zeitkritik, as the Germans would say, is a complicated thing. 7 - Translated by Leopoldo Molina P. and Carl Mitcham NOTES [1. This paper was first published in Acta Politecnica Mexicana, vol. 1, no. 1 (JulyAugust 1959).] [2. Gaos was a student of Jose Ortega y Gasset.] [3. Gaos is obviously alluding to Ortega's existential description of what it is to be human: "I am myself and my circumstances" - first developed in Meditations on Quixote (1914).] [4. The ellipses in the text are the author's, perhaps reflecting the fact that he was abbreviating portions of his original course outline.] [5. Gaos alludes to the fact that most people know only the first two of Gulliver's travels, because these are the ones regularly adapted to children's books. The third, including a visit to a flying island, is a satire on modem science. In the fourth, the society of the Houyhnhnms is so "slowed down," as it were, that these truly rational creatures speak only about what is, never about the changeable, and do not even have

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the technique of writing.] [6. The Spanish is· a common saying: "La vida es una faena que se nace hacia delante. "] [7. The translation is from "Sobre la tecnica," in J6se Gaos, De antropologfa e historiografta (Xalapa: Universidad Veracruzana, 1967), pp. 199-214.]

HUGO PADILLA

TECHNOLOGICAL OBJECTS AND THEIR EPISTEMOLOGICAL BASE

1. INTRODUCTION It is often said that the contemporary world is greatly influenced by science. From the most obvious point of view, this influence is manifested in the products of technology. The contemporary world presents the phenomenon of a growing population of technological objects. These objects are artifically produced in two ways: through the non-natural creation of objects similar to natural ones - the industrial chemical synthesis of a natural substance, for example - or through the non-natural creation of non-natural objects - an airplane or locomotive, for example. It is a fact that since antiquity human beings have produced or created objects. That is, human beings have not been satisfied with having mere natural objects, born and created in a natural manner. The creation or artificial production of these objects, if we discard accidental and chance manipulation, is presumably based on some kind of intention and on some degree of acquired knowledge - not on inherited instinct, as with the nest building of birds. The degree of knowledge influences the production of the object. It influences production in at least two fundamental ways: either making its production possible or increasing the efficaciousness of the object itself. The demographic explosion of technological objects - leading, in the case of alienated production, to overpopulation - and the overwhelming role that these play in the modern world makes trivially obvious the influence of science, that is, of science as a degree of knowledge which makes possible the creation or the increased efficaciousness of said objects. Science, as a network of propositions subject to proof or disproof and elaborated in a methodological manner, has been the object of special interest. The abundant work done in the present century and before as well - in the philosophy of science, the theory of science, establishes this. In neither quantity nor quality can the same be said with regard to technology. Aside from commercialistic and economistic concerns with technology, little can be found that seriously contributes

121 Carl Mitcham (ed.), Philosophy of Technology in Spanish Speaking Countries, 121-131. °1993 Kluwer Academic Publishers.

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to its theoretical analysis. To undertake such an analysis is a major task. In this work we will limit ourselves to pointing out some characteristics of the connection between the stratum of knowledge and the stratum of artificial objects produced on that basis. 2. THE STRUCTURE OF TECHNOLOGY Technology is sometimes understood only as applied science, a notion which implies a certain disdain for basic science (emphasizing specialized knowledge), sometimes only as a model (plan, project, design, patent), sometimes only as skill in assembly (construction, fabrication, action), sometimes only as skill of operation (managing, operating - soft technology), sometimes only as an object (instrument, machine, equipment, thing, situation). Each of these conceptions of technology is partial. The total phenomenon of technology implies the sum of the previous moments, not simply in an additive but in an ordered manner, with vector relations between the elements. If we apply a systems perspective we obtain the indicated relational diagram (see figure, below) between the elements, including the element of science, using the following symbols: BS: basic science; AS: applied science; IT: technological theory; TM(P): technological model (project); TA: technological action; ST: soft technology; TO(S): technological object (situation); DFo: obtaining of desired function.

Total Phenomenon of Technology BS

ST

TECHNOLOGICAL OBJECTS AND EPISTEMOLOGICAL BASE 123

Each element is, in tum, a subsystem. The inputs and outputs are simplified, but they highlight the vertebral relations that go from the stratum of knowledge to the function which the object fulftlls. The element IT internally is a conjunction or set of relations which presupposes being able to bring it about, through what we call technological research. IT is the product (static perspective) of the process (dynamic perspective) of research. The same goes for BS and AS. In the absence of ST there is no output DFo• Within IT there has to appear what we could call the desired function in a conceptual state DFc. For example, in a mechanical problem, if it is desired that an object in motion not be horizontally displaced, it will be necessary to include within the internal framework of IT the condition EFx

=0

for some axis. Many other conditions could also be specified. From a formal point of view the structure of technology, as presented, can be expressed as a graph, that is, as an ordered pair (E, K), constituted by a finite set of elements, E, and a binary relation K C ExE From a static perspective, the structure lacks feedback (the static perspective will connect with the problem of the explanation of technological objects). In this case, the properties of the relation K are (a) reflexivity, (b) transitivity, and (c) asymmetry. From a dynamic perspective (changing or refining IT; changing or improving DFo, etc., which along with other aspects can represent what we might call evolution or technological progress), the structure includes feedback and, therefore, the properties of the relation K are reduced to (a) reflexivity and (b) transitivity. We have said that the elements of the structure can be considered subsystems. The subsystem IT does not include feedback, nor do BS and AS. All these subsystems are deductive constructions. The inductive aspect can appear in the research process, in the setting up of the internal elements of such subsystems - but this is another problem, understandable in itself, which refers to a dynamic perspective, not to the product of such a process. By contrast, in TM(P) and TO(S) feedback can appear, and in TA necessarily will appear. With the entrance of ST the problem of managing the functions is created, not necessarily but as something which is in fact convenient. If this possibility is taken up, feedback ([ST, TO(S)], [TO(S) , DFJ, [DFo , ST]} is created within the relationship K, but does not make impossible

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the static approach. All the above means that the formal properties of the total structure of technology are not always the same as those of its elements, considered as subsystems. It is clear that from this point of view the elements of the diagram that express the total structure of technology are taken as nodes, without considering that internally they are in tum composed of elements. Therefore, the relation K does not necessarily have the properties that the relations between the elements have, if these are considered as subsystems and no longer as simple nodes. 3. BASIC SCIENCE AND APPLIED SCIENCE There are two ways to view the relation (or lack thereof) between basic science and applied science. The first takes applied science as derivative from basic science, because the former introduces specific considerations in the latter. In this sense, for example, the texts of analytical mechanics for engineers (technologists) are presented as based on classical Newtonian mechanics. The second view takes applied science as an autonomous field, having weak interactions with basic science requiring abundant efforts to set up or manage tabular correlations of variables, determinations of tendencies or behavior, and results that yield empirical generalizations. These two tendencies are reflected even in positions and policies concerning education. It is clear that basic science (in the form of theory) is not equally available in all fields. But it is unfortunate that when basic science is available policies insist on promoting the processes of generalization. Disagreements aside, we see applied science as a transition toward the specific, a guidepost in the path toward specificity. As J. O. Wisdom says, The application of Newtonian mechanics to resisting media is applied science; if the medium is highly specific ... we move into technology .... [A]pplied science, though a step on the way to do something, is itself an extension of understanding. Applied science has sometimes been described as concerned with doing, which seems to me to be wrong in linking it with technology rather than with (pure) science. I

By its very nature, empirical science (which we will call science based on generalizations) cannot be anything but applied science, since it does not include theoretical laws and generalizations valid for a variety of media and circumstances. There is also reason to think of applied science, whether it arises from a deep theoretical stratum or is obtained from a base of generalizations, as more related to the goal of increasing the knowledge which determines basic science than to technology. Although applied science makes technology possible, it neither determines nor implies technology. To know better and more

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specifically does not necessarily include making. The inverse is not true. To make better and more specifically does require a greater knowledge and more determination. With the appearance of TT, the input knowledge - which until now has been considered only as science, whether basic or applied - ought to be further distinguished. The knowledge input may well be common sense knowledge, even when supported by extensive experience. This was the case with the fabrication of artifacts before the modern period, and to some extent thereafter, insofar as no change is made in ,the kind of knowlege input - that is, if there is no substitution of scientific knowledge for common sense knowledge. When the input is common sense knowledge, it does not matter how much it is accepted or how extensive it is, the resulting product can be, even in the best case, no more than a technical object, never a technological object. The history of technics must not be confused with the history of technologies. The first began in antiquity, the second relatively recently, where its possibility is conditioned by modern science. In a strict and even quantifiable sense, technology does not become overwhelmingly present until the nineteenth century. The emphasis on geometry is ancient, with Platonic roots. Grosseteste (De line is) and Roger Bacon (Opus majus) insisted on its usefulness in making, but the case of geometry is an exception. Other instances (such as that of the lever, the principle of Archimedes, etc.) are anticipatory swallows but do not the summer of technology make. Nevertheless, to want to distinguish is not the same as wanting to devalue. The history of technics overlaps with the history of technology. At certain moments there are objects of both species, parts of them being technical objects and parts being technological objects. There are technical objects that become technological objects with a change in the theoretical inputs from common sense knowledge inputs to scientific knowledge inputs. There are technological objects whose appearance would have been held up without the previous existence of the corresponding technical objects. But there are objects whose appearance, from the beginning and in a definitive way, would not have been possible without the creation and development of modern science. We will now also distinguish between applied science that comes from basic scientific theory, ASl , and applied empirical science, AS c ' a product of empirical generalizations. Given that is the same as

BS -+ AS

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we can substitute the first for the second, adding that it is possible to assume that the transition is brought about through the introduction of determinate parameters in the formulas of BS. Excluding the case in which the input to TI would be common sense knowledge, thus fabricating technical but not technological products, we have the following pure situations: BS

AS..

~

~

TI

TI

But in fact the knowledge base of technological theories is almost always more complex, and presupposes combinations of the simple cases. Most TO(S) are fabricated with knowledge inputs, in their respective theories, that are not only more complex from the point of view of the types of knowledge, but also in regard to such types arising from diverse scientific areas - exhibiting the multidisciplinary character of technological theories. 4. INPUTS OF COMPLEX KNOWLEDGE By simple combination of the types of knowledge already indicated, and including them whether or not they appear as inputs in the corresponding technological theories, we have 1)

2) 3) 4) 5) 6) 7) 8)

BS -BS BS -BS BS -BS BS -BS

AS t AS t -AS t -AS t AS t AS t -AS t -AS t

AS.. AS.. AS.. AS.. -AS.. -AS.. -AS.. -AS..

Cases 5, 6, and 7 yield technological theories which we call scientific technological theories, TI.; cases 1, 2, and 3 yield mixed technological theories, TIm; and case 4, empirical technological theories, TI..; case 8 is impossible with respect to scientific knowledge as a contributor to theory. Corresponding to each type of technological theory there will be types of models (plans, projects, formulas, tables, etc.) resulting as outputs: M., Mm , or M... As a general rule the model of an object or technological situation is a sum of a finite number of partial models. In

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the same way, the comprehensive technological theory that makes possible the comprehensive model of the object is a sum of partial theories. On occasion the diverse elements or parts 'IT of a comprehensive theory TIc are in fact produced without being a function of some particular or special comprehensive theory TIc (the theory of transistors, for example, is produced independently of that which forms part of the TIc of the comprehensive model of radio reception; the theory of binary displacement in the algebra of circuits is produced independently of its bistable elements being able to be transistors). That is to say, a comprehensive technological theory TIc is always a union of partial technological theories TIp, but not any union of partial theories yields a comprehensive teclinological theory. Nevertheless, from the point of view of theory, it makes no difference that the theory of a clutch is prior to the theory of a generator. Therefore, from the point of view of theory, a comprehensive technological theory TIc can be expressed simply as

without more restriction than what is imposed by the final production of TO(S), effectively presupposing only those TIpis that could be pertinent to TIc' The presupposition of pertinence SImply gives form to the rejection of any set of TI. as able to yield a totally coherent technological theory. It is rather in the layers of the model where one can see with greater clarity this presupposition of pertinence, that is, one can see that some TIpis with their corresponding partial models T .M(p) enter to form part of a comprehensive model T)1(P), and others (fo not. The comprehensive model, in contrast to the total theory, is not representable by n

TcM(P) = lJTpjM(p) j=l

but rather by an ordered n-tuple formed by a finite set of partial models with at least two relations: one, R, functional, and another, S, referring to spatial or temporal positions

The relation R always appears necessary. Some interpretations of S may be necessary, but others, mainly related to space, result adventitiously.

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In relation with the latter, consider industrial design which has to do more with aesthetics or with comercialization than with the intrinsic role of technology. 2 It is curious but true that the intervention of partial theories is decided at the level of design, not at the level of the corresponding theories. The multidisciplinary character of technological theories may be based on TTp' so that different areas of scientific knowledge are involved. (For example, in the bank of a highway on a curve to avoid having the cars leave the curve, and for specific values of r [radius of the curve], and v [velocity of the car], d [distance between the tires], and g = 9.8 meters/sec2, involved among others are geometry, algebra, mechanics BS mechanics, AS, of mechanics, ASo of mechanisms.) In other cases the multiplidiciplinary character arises from the intervention of various TTpis within one TTc' 5. DISTINCT TYPES OF TECHNOLOGICAL OBJECTS Why, if there are distinctions between entities in general, and distinctions between special objects (for example, the classifications chemical and biological), and distinctions between sub-elements of objects (for example, between subatomic particles) - why is it not possible to distinguish between technological objects? Clearly this does not deal only with applying whatever criterion, but rather with trying to understand the distinct types of technological objects on a systematic basis. It is possible that the development and perfection of a focus similar to that used in this work will provide this systematic criterion. The inputs of scientific knowledge BS, AS" AS o which appear in different TTr.,s, and consequently in the TpM(P)s that compose a TcM(P), certainly innuence the types of objects, since these inputs are the knowledge base of (a) the material, (b) the function, (c) the form, and (d) the production, of the object itself. The role of common sense knowledge would have to be taken into account again in order to be able to explain the existence of certain technical-technological hybrids. Many objects that are commonly considered to be clearly technological (say, for example, a television set) may contain technical parts (let us say, the cabinet). During the moment of the production of an object it is possible to work on equipment or machines that are clearly technological instruments, with the material also being technological, while the conception of the object could still be based only on common sense knowledge (this is the case, for example, with plastic injector molding in which objects may be produced that are from a certain perspective quite simple). In this case scientific knowledge only influences the

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moment of action TA but not the model of the object itself (function, form). These are objects technically conceived and technologically produced. Compound technological objects (which are the majority) admit of an axiomatic treatment similar to that offered by Mario Bunge for compound things and the notion of a part. 3 In the case of compound technological objects, it would be necessary to pay close attention to the function served by the parts in relation to the function of the whole object, as well as the rational plan for its assembly/hook-up (logic, operations, rational theory of action). 6. EXPLANATION OF TECHNOLOGICAL OBJECTS Not only is it possible to offer explanations for recurring outcomes, for unvarying regularities and statistical regularities. It also is possible to offer them for individual outcomes. How does one explain TO(S)? Frequently, when faced with a technological object, people ask for an explanation. Frequently also, one responds: "This is something which is used for ... ," as in Heidegger's analysis of utilities. There is a reason for this. It deals with the classical functional explanation which, as Nagel says, "takes the form of indicating one or more functions (or even dysfunctions) that a unit performs in maintaining or realizing certain traits of a system to which the unit belongs, or of stating the instrumental role an action plays in bringing about some goal. ,,4 This type of explanation appears, for example, in biology. In regard to technology, it is pertinent in explaining the function of a part in relation to a TO(S), the function of a TO(S) in relation to a technological complex. But in every case, a TO(S) is explained, or a part thereof, only by considering its output DFo. The explanation is incomplete. TO(S) is an element of a system of relationships. In technology, there is "knowledge of a thing or field of thinps, having been made according to a plan - having been constructed." This implies other aspects of technological explanation. TO(S) can also be explained by exhibiting how it works, how it is manipulated, or how it is put into functional operation. When this happens, it shows how an input ST produces the output FDo. It can also be explained in relation to how it was assembled or actually constructed, that is, in relation to the input TA. It can be explained in relation to how it was based on scientific knowledge K., that is, in relation to the path UK.,IT], [IT, TM(P)]}. That is, the complete explanation of TO(S) would be given, symbolizing the previous path by A., as (EJTO(S)

=df

(A., TA, ST, DFJ

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Every explanation of a technological object will be theoretically incomplete if it does not have in it this element AI. It is not enough to know how a technological object is constructed, how it operates, and what functions it performs. It is necessary to know why it was constructed, why it operates the way it does, and why it performs the functions that it does. None of this is possible without the element A. in the explanation. To know a technological object without knowing the theory that made it possible is to know it only in a superficial manner. 7. CONCLUSIONS i) The phenomenon of technology in the modern world is not theoretically understandable through partial perspectives. It is neccessary to investigate its internal structure, from the presuppositions of science to the functions the objects perform. The latter must be connected also to the social context, although not expressed in the work, in which the TO(S)s are produced. ii) The utilization of scientific knowledge defines technological elements as opposed to mere technics. Within this technological knowledge, AS! (theoretical) is preferable to ASe (empirical). iii) The first step toward establishing a technological ontology is to try to develop a technological taxonomy. iv) The problem of explaining technological objects points toward the need for theory and science. v) In general, there is no philosophy of technology parallel to what has developed as the philosophy of science. 6 - Translated by Ana Mitcham and Carl Mitcham

National Autonomous University of Mexico NOTES 1. J. O. Wisdom, "The Need for Corroboration: Comments on Agassi's Paper,"

Technology and Culture, vol. 7, no. 3 (Summer 1966), pp. 367-370. 2. See Pablo Tedeschi, La genesis de las fonnas y el diseiio industrial (Buenos Aires:

Eudeba, 1966). 3. See Mario Bunge, "Metaphysics and Science," General Systems, vol. 19 (1974), pp. 15-18. 4. Ernest Nagel, 17le Structure of Science (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1961), pp.23-24. 5. Juan David Garcia Bacca, Elementos de filosofia de las ciencias (Caracas: Universidad Central de Venezuela, 1967), p. 138. [6. Translated from Hugo Padilla, "Los objetos tecnol6gicos: Su base gnoseol6gica," in Lafilosofia y La ciencia en nuestros d{as (Mexico: Editorial Grijalbo, 1976), pp. 157-

TECHNOLOGICAL OBJECTS AND EPISTEMOLOGICAL BASE 131 169. The translation of this text was greatly assisted by Luis Camacho, and some small errors and ambiguities in the original Spanish were corrected by Hugo Padilla, who also carefully reviewed the translation. The translators express their thanks to both Camacho and Padilla.]

LEOPOLDO ZEA

SATELLITES AND OUR MORALITY

Are we facing a new dimension of the human? Is technology, in expanding the possibilities of man, going to create a new horizon of values? Will our morality, our strongly old-fashioned morality, remain static while man is given the possibility of realizing worlds which one can almost not venture to dream? These and many other questions face us as a result of the scientific discoveries of the last few years or, better still, the last few months.' Hardly twelve years have passed [in 1958] since the moment when the whole world trembled before one of the most fantastic discoveries, one of the greatest deeds realized by man in his effort to dominate nature: the discovery and use of atomic energy. Man entered a new age, which would from then on be called the atomic age. But how did man enter into this age that should have filled all of humanity with pride? Everyone remembers. We all remember that terrible date - August 5, 1945 - as an ominous date in human history. We did not enter into the atomic age with the happiness of a man who has overcome an obstacle, but with shame and terror. On August 5, 1945, man demonstrated his capacity not for creation, but for destruction. An energy, a tremendous energy which, underestimated within the possibilities that man had established for it, was transformed by human hands into a powerful instrument of destruction. That which this force had not done for man in thousands of years, it was doing now under the direction of man himself. Hiroshima on that day, and Nagasaki on the ninth day of the same month, signaled the entrance of humanity into the atomic age. Thousands and thousands of years had passed since the age when human beings, almost naked, used clubs or stone axes to defend themselves and attack others within a primitive morality of warfare. Nevertheless, in spite of the many thousands of years that have passed, and in spite of the many technological changes that have occurred between that age and ours, human morality has not greatly changed. Humans have abandoned the club and stone only to utilize instruments more and more effective for defense and attack, but still with their static morality. The atomic bombs that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki were, in human hands, nothing else but the sticks and stones in the hands of our Stone Age ancestors. Nothing has changed, everything has remained the same; or perhaps only the justification has changed, the moral justification that primordial humanity did not search for. Far

133 Carl Mitcham (ed.), Philosophy of Technology in Spanish Speaking Countries, 133-141. °1993 Kluwer Academic Publishers.

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from the injustice of this act being pointed out, far from its being repudiated, it was justified as an act necessary for the good of humanity. The destruction of a part of humanity was necessary for the good of humanity in the abstract, even though this abstract, in this instance, would be embodied in a determined people, in a determined society, and in a determined group of men with equally limited interests. In this way, atomic energy, far from serving all of humanity, served only a part of it and was an instrument of natural dominion that man used against man. Atomic energy did not serve human happiness, nor did the stone transformed into the war axe, the steel into sword, lead into bullets, or Icarus's wings into terrible instruments for bombing. Nevertheless, this past year, 1957, the fourth of October gave birth to a new hope that usually only very special circumstances offer. On October 4, 1957, the world received the news that a new star had appeared in the heavens. A miniature star, small in size but great in hopes. A miniature star whose greatness consisted in that it had been made by man. In this particular case it was made by a man from a specific country, Russia, but it very well could have been made, as it would be made later, by North Americans or even Frenchmen, Englishmen, Indians, or any other group of men. A work, purely and simply, by men and for men. Men only circumstantially distinct from other men, different from each one of us only as each one of us is circumstantially different from others, but no more and no less. In the end, man could escape from a world each day smaller and more disputed. A new horizon opened to humanity with the launching of this first artificial satellite and with the others that would be sent later. Man was about to satisfy his dreamed ambitions. His ambitions could now stretch on because man had now the entire universe as horizon of maximum possibility. What was about to follow? Would man feel more powerful than ever, or, on the contrary, would he now become aware of, as he had not become aware of ever before, his little worth in spite of the greatness of his ever-expanding ambitions? Nothing could be affirmed at that moment. What is certain is only that October 4, 1957, reminded us of another October, October 12, 1492, when other men with other small instruments had dared to fight against nature and had just overcome it. In that far-off month of October, 1492, man's horizon of possibilities was enlarged also. The encounter with America put an end to a series of blockades and hindrances. Humanity grew up and with it its inner possibilities. Everything became relative: morality, customs, and the like, yet everything also seemed to be at man's reach, at any individual's reach. The old world, already very limited for the new man who had made the discovery of new horizons, had been broken. Among other things, the

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new man abandoned the idea of reaching for a sky that was always at the reach of his hand but controlled by an extraneous will not of his own, and committed himself to the task of becoming master of a world that was expanding before his eyes. Happiness was no longer something pertaining to some extraterrestrial world, it was now something possible to be achieved by man, something within the reach of his possibilities. Thus this October 4, 1957, reminds us of that October 12, 1492. The world as a site of opened possibilities for man is again growing. A new horizon has opened to these possibilities whose character has become almost infinite. In this occasion these possibilities have transcended the limits of the earth, of an earth already too small for human needs and ambitions. Heaven - that heaven which was put inside parentheses by modern man, by the positivist man, zealous for material conquest - is now an object of new and serious attention. The sky is already within man's reach, within the reach of his material, positivist ambitions. The sky, and with it the infinite worlds that are spread throughout it, already are within his reach. Toward the conquering of those worlds and their wealth man has now focused all his efforts. The first thing done was to jump beyond the orbit of terrestrial attraction; afterwards it would come to conquering that small world, the nearest to us, the moon; later on Mars, Jupiter, Mercury, conquering all and everything that could possibly be conquered, by the present generation or by those to come. So it was that the earth, in its entirety, was conquered and dominated, beginning with Columbus's fantastic encounter with the Americas. But here we should stop and ask ourselves if we, from a moral point of view, are mature enough to face the possibilities that satellites have opened up for us? Are our ambitions, so far limited by the limited size of the earth, going to transform themselves, and with them our morality? Or are we going to continue living within the framework of our primitive moral perspective, that one focused on self-defense and attack? The encounter with the Americas, along with the rest of the world, far from joining the Western explorers in a great enterprise to the benefit of all, on the contrary divided and made them dispute the dominion of the new lands and their inhabitants with the same cruelty with which our ancestors had fought among each other for the possession of a cave, an instrument for hunting, or a piece of bloody meat. The world to which Columbus's encounter gave birth very soon became small and insufficient for containing Westerners' ambitions. They ended in killing each other, like our ancestors the troglodytes, for the possession of the world, though using more effective instruments of destruction. The highest expressions of these conflicts are the last two GustIy called) World Wars, which have left two great colossal powers ready to exterminate each other for the possession of the round world

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encountered by Columbus which already has become quite small for their great ambitions. Nevertheless, the new situation that has opened the possibility for the launching of artificial satellites as a means for the conquest of the skies could well be precisely what could fulfill those ambitions that were not fulfilled by the discovery of the circularity of the earth. In the present situation, man's joint effort, his collaboration with fellow men in this one task, could be a common aim that by necessity should transform our morality. The infinite range of possibilities that are opened to humanity should leave all men satisfied, and as a result they should no longer sustain that primitive moral attitude of self-defense and attack. In the new era the attack would be aimed against something alien to humanity, and the defense would also be against something alien that could endanger our common humanity. Such is the theme that we repeatedly find in those fantastic stories and movies which have given voice to the idea of the displacement of man onto planes transcending terrestrial limitations . The infinite size of space and the possibility of an equally infinite conquest would give man a new horizon in human relationships. This task, if it were to be realized, would be the work of all humanity and not just one small group. The petty differences among capitalists and communists, imperialists and colonialists, natives and foreigners, blacks and whites, and so on, would have to disappear in the face of a labor that had to be realized within the scope of a wide collaboration involving all mankind. Others, our fellow men, would no longer be seen as enemies, but as collaborators in an extraordinary task, a task common to all humanity. A task that, if realized, would transcend the traditional differences that up to now have separated men. The human desire to conquer, as limitless as it might be, would have at its disposal a world equally infinite in possibilities. Escaping from the limitations of our terrestrial orbit would also mean being free from the limitations of a morality also made to fit the size of this orbit. We would need the imagination of a Jules Verne or an Aldous Huxley in the area of morality in order to be able to highlight, shape, or draw that which would be the expression of morality within this infinite range of possibilities. What would have to disappear is the crux of differences among men - limitation. The base of all disagreements resides in the existence of limitations in the range of man's possibilities. For this reason, Francis I of France, with his customary cynicism, could declare (regarding differences with the emperor Charles V of Germany that had impoverished Western Europe): "We do not have many differences. Charles and I fight because we are in agreement. We both want the same thing: the

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dominion of Europe. " Nothing more, nothing less. The world was already too small for men's ambitions, for men who wanted to have everything at the reach of their hands. But what would happen if there were not one single world but many worlds, an infinite number of worlds which would be at the disposal of all ambitions, no matter how limitless they might be? Such are the possibilities that satellites open. Satellites made by men, these small artificial moons, have broken or can break the Gordian knot of men's disagreements among themselves, the base of their ancestral differences and struggles. But has man attained a stature equal to these possibilities? Or, on the contrary, does human morality still continue as static as it was in the past? Will man be able to understand the reach of and possibilities opened by these recent marvelous discoveries of his prodigious mind? Will his morality, like his satellites, surpass the atmosphere of his terrestrial relationships and ambitions? Or, on the contrary, are these satellites nothing more than another instrument in the service of man's limited terrestrial ambitions? Can man be interested in anything other than the dominion of this barbarically-disputed earth and of his fellow man? Satellites, instead of having clarified the horizon of man's possibilities, have complicated it even more. Man does not think in terms of his universal possibilities but only in terms of his terrestrial ambitions. The happiness that was produced by the launching of the first artificial satellite was modified by predictions of possible misuses of future satellites. Once again many people talk about them as instruments of death put at the service of some men's ambitions at the expense of others. Satellites, stars created by man, are transformed into instruments whose worth does not go beyond the worth that in the past the club or stone had for troglodyte man. That is, they are, as always, simple instruments for setting limits to human ambitions, for achieving or supporting conquests that do not go beyond the limits of this disputed earth, with all its flora, fauna, and men. Once again, that fear and selfishness that seemingly never abandon the work of man are making themselves felt. Indeed, not only politicians but also men of science have characterized the first satellites (and with them their own limited dreams of grandeur) as "celestial spies" or "absolute weapons," that is to say, as instruments of terrestrial dominion over poor mortal fellows who, by fate, happen to inhabit this earth. In other words, these satellites have become not instruments for the conquest of the skies, at the service of all men, but instruments for the dominion of man by man. Celestial spies, absolute weapons, even more terrible than the most terrible atomic weapon; instruments of destruction with which half of

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humanity could impose slavery on the other half. Once again one witnesses the same preoccupation with destruction that was embodied, for our stone age ancestors, in the club or primitive axe, in the invention of very small stars that could eradicate those men that could block other men's rather small human ambitions. Instruments to kill or enslave man, nothing more, nothing less. Stars in the hands of men whose ambitions, from a moral point of view, do not extend farther than their limited eyes can see or their minds can take in. In other words, these are stars put at the service of a kind of men whose morality has not surpassed the narrow limits imposed on them by a world already too small for their ambitions. Stars in the hands of men who, having escaped from their physical limitations, still have not been able to transcend the morality that created them. Looking at the matter from a moral point of view, this kind of man still continues to be preoccupied by his eagerness to place his own interests ahead of the interests of his fellows or companions. Blinded by his ambitions he cannot go beyond his limited interests; he still continues moving within the tiny orbit of his terrestrial ambitions, no matter how big he conceives them to be. Power, glory, wealth for some men at the cost of other men's power, glory, and wealth. These men still need to rob others of some of their limited goods in order that the other's poverty attests to their own wealth; to make others suffer so that they may be witnesses to their power; and to kill so that others may recognize their glory. All of this happens, ironically, at a moment when circumstances have opened to man possibilities of power, glory, and wealth of which he had never before dreamed. Because of this he still is busy planning dominion over his companions instead of looking for ways of joining them in a common effort to plan dominion over worlds never before imagined. Many, too many, are the signs of man's limitations in the face of his own possibilities. During the same period in which the first artificial satellite began its orbit, Professor Fred Singer of the University of Maryland in the United States, made a proposal. 2 (I am not sure it was a serious affirmation or only an Anglo-Saxon joke.) He proposed that both the United States and the USSR decide their control over the world, if not over the cosmos, by bombing the moon. The country that could make the deepest craters in the moon - craters which could be given names "in order to perpetuate the names of presidents, prime ministers and party secretaries" - would control the world. Something quite sportsmanlike, but which leads to aims that do not reach beyond the ambitions of Francis I of France and Charles V in the seventeenth century - ambitions that could have been cleared up in one of those tournaments that so much delighted Francis I. Moons, suns, and stars

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as simple targets put at the service of men in order for them to solve their limited terrestrial ambitions! The nation that hit the best targets and could destroy more stars and suns would necessarily have to be the strongest, and therefore the nation to which other nations would have to surrender. Once again the efficacy of the club and axe appear as instruments to decide the dominion of men over each other and not of men over the surrounding world. Man, lord of the universe, at the expense of others, controlling other men and not permitting them to exist as equals or as people with whom to collaborate. And, as a product of all of this, no collaborating or common task, but instead absurd proposals for an absurd allotment of the moons, the stars, the suns, that have not been conquered yet. The meaningless discussion of the right of nations to possess some determined sidereal spaces, the sovereignty of some at the expense of others; frontiers and parallels that should not be transgressed within a universe become again very small. Sidereal charts, codes, effective distribution of the universe in the same way that the earth is distributed. Interplanetary spacecraft violating the sovereignty of a nation on Mars or the moon as a pretext for men, on this long-suffering earth, to kill each other with the best weapons at their disposal. Entire armies of men fighting in Korea, in India, in Tanganyika, France, Paraguay, or wherever, to take vengeance on the transgressing of some border in the Milky Way. What can we do on the moon? Or what should we do in those worlds? Observe, spy, and prepare the destruction of moral beings that inhabit this earth? The real moon has not yet been reached, and already man has conceived artificial moons that can serve as bases for bombing. Indeed, news reports inform us that very soon one of the most aggressive countries in the world is proposing to launch a "still moon," one that will stay fixed in the course of day and night. A motionless moon for what purpose? For inspiring the future poets or for children to know a new man on the moon? No. This moon would be a magnificent station for radio and television transmission. Very good indeed! Always the practical sense of contemporary man! And yet, there is something more: this artificial moon would have a more powerful utility: "It would be relatively easy," one of the theoretical marshals of these useful moons said, "to aim a ballistic projectile from this spatial platform at any fixed target on the surface of the earth." Already the moons, suns, and stars are no longer considered sportsmanlike targets; now the earth itself is the preferred target. It will permit the best man to be its owner - if someone survives, of course. What this means is that man has not transcended his old morality of self-destruction. Man, this man of flesh and bones, remains an eternal target for man. "The wolf-man in man," as the great cynic

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an eternal target for man. "The wolf-man in man," as the great cynic Thomas Hobbes called him. 3 This is the utility, the only thing that matters in a world thought of as a testament to the triumph of the best. Conquering worlds that are not human worlds is meaningless unless it can serve to make man's will for dominion over other men be felt. Man still cannot renounce sadism and masochism as an expression of good fellowship! Human competition thus continues in the skies - a competition that has no goal other than that of our troglodyte ancestors, the dominance of one man over other men, of one social group over another social group, of one nation over another nation. Not the dominance over the multitude of worlds that could be reached by men. Thus, once more, what is lacking is a common task, a human interrelationship that could permit man to be more successful in his fight against nature. This fight has a secondary character. It is a useless fight, this domination over others, alien to what is most important to man. The race continues so that we will know who has the best weapons to destroy others. Already one of the statesmen of the modern world, oldfashioned in his morality, grieved for the time lost because his country was found to have fallen behind. Not lost time with regard to the conquest of other worlds, moons and stars, but something useless, characteristic of despotic nations. An instrument of propaganda, like the pyramids. What interests the most contemporary men is the conquest of the earth no matter who would be the winner. "I believe," declared John Foster Dulles, "that whenever the Soviets achieve something spectacular, they see its primary benefit as lowering us in public opinion. ,,4 In his opinion, the conquest of the moon or some planet has no utility other than that of propaganda. Propaganda to subject one people to dominance by others. This appears to be the only important thing in the space race between North Americans and the Soviets. The people who are the winners in outer space would also apparently be winners here on earth. The success of one always at the expense of another; never the possibility that all men could join in efforts to search for common aims. If we consider the physical possibilities that have been opened by technology, are we witnessing a new dimension of what we call human? Do artificial satellites represent the beginning of a new epoch in the moral sphere? Unfortunately, not for now. There has not been a single step in that direction, nor is there likely to be one. Man still continues with his small ambitions and fears. Man still continues being an enemy of man. Technology continues to be an instrument, more perfect everyday, for the dominion of man over his fellows. The possibility of domination of the universe continues, in his hands, to be the same as

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atomic energy, gun powder, steel, or rocks: all are equally instruments to arm or destroy. Man's possibilities are great, but his ambitions continue to be limited. He still finds no better witness for his power and glory than that other men be passive targets for them. Power over the rest, glory at the cost of the rest. Other men always as instruments for the recognition of that power and that glory - what a humanly limited goal. Perhaps what man is lacking is that great witness of past glories: God or the gods! That is to say religion, the kind of religion that gave man's products a character that reached beyond any human dimension. Nowadays God or gods are nothing more than the expression of man's limited humanity, puppets of his ambitions. Man is still possessed by what modernity calls immanentism. Man is still locked within himself, self-limited, without the capacity for recognizing in his companions the greatness he hopes they recognize in him. Will it always be the same? Perhaps not, but this already brings in a world of hope (something, incidentally, equally human). But we are still at the very beginning of a new stage in the dominion of man over nature. A stage that in progressing, in bearing its first great fruits, could perhaps change the scope of human morality. Man still does not live in that world of worlds full of possibilities; this is still a dream that may be realized in the near future (if man does not commit suicide beforehand), perhaps then offering us the realization of a new utopia. A utopia hardly visualized by the best men of yesterday and today. Until then we leave these reflections as a simple example of our human limitations. - Translated by Leopoldo Molina, Carl Mitcham, and James A. Lynch

National Autonomous University of Mexico NOTES [1. This essay, written in 1958, was included in Zea's La cultura y el hombre de nuestros dias (Mexico: Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico, 1959), pp. 109135. Reprinted, with slight revisions, Caracas: Instituto Pedagogico, 1975, pp. 8598.] [2. See, e.g, Fred Singer, as quoted in "Free Zone Urged in Outer Space: U.S. A Astronautical Delegate Bids U.N. Declare Moon an Independent Area," New York Tunes (October 10, 1957), p. 20, col. 1.] [3. See Thomas Hobbes's reference in De cive (1646), Epistle Dedicatory, near beginning, to homo homini lupus.] [4. See, e.g., John Foster Dulles, as quoted in "Reply to Moscow: Secretary, Answering Khrushchev, Favors a Limited Parley,· New York Tunes (October 9, 1957), p. 1, col. 1.]

PART IV FROM SPAIN

MARtA LUISA GARCfA-MERITA

TECHNOLOGY AND HUMAN NATURE

We are currently faced with an almost uncontrolled acceleration in the expansion of various technologies. This enormous expansion influences human beings in different ways. Technology can modify existing capabilities, create new ones, and even eliminate abilities that existed previously. Technology thus has numerous repercussions on human nature. But technology also grows out of human nature. For centuries human beings have tried to construct a comfortable habitat by eliminating all hardships imposed by nature. In this way, human beings try to "mold" nature. Since we lack hair to protect ourselves from cold weather, we invent clothing. Since we do not have claws or fangs to defend ourselves, we invent weapons. Since we are not naturally equipped to walk long distances, the strength of other animals has been used. In addition, human beings learned to dominate different natural phenomena - and invented fire. Human beings have benefitted from both the use of means that already exist and the transformation of such means through the manipulation of physical laws that govern the natural phenomena. Today technological devices are found in all human environments at work (to make it less harsh or more routine), at home (to avoid

unnecessary labor), in various surroundings (to protect human beings from hostile conditions such as heat and cold). Technology has contributed to reducing distances and, therefore, transformed our conceptions of time and space. We have also been successful in overcoming problems related to our own bodies, thanks to medicine and bioengineering. On the one hand, then, it seems obvious that our society is engaged in sustained technological improvement. On the other, we gradually become more and more dependent on these improvements, which thus to some extent chain and even enslave us - as if we were addicts. Moreover, although nuclear weapons no longer seem the threat they once did, we continue to pollute the earth and alter the environment in ways that threaten our very existence. The technological world we have created is far from being a wholly comfortable place. It might even be described as at times hostile, alienating, and murderous. 145 Carl Mileham (ed.), Philosophy a/Technology in Spanish Speaking Cauntries, 145-151. 01993 Kluwer Academic Publishers.

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TECHNIFIED NATURE Numerous authors have pointed out how the context in which we live is now the product of technology. It is difficult to tell which things are really "natural," since many technical layers have gradually become sedimented in our lifeworld (Roqueplo, 1983). The food we eat, the appliances we use every day, our homes, the trees in our gardens and fields, even the water we drink, are either technical objects (hamburgers, coffee makers, buildings, hybrid plants, cars, planes, washing machines, central heating systems, etc.) or the result of manufacturing processes in which different technologies take part (nitrates for vegetables, water treatment plants, insecticides for fruit, etc.). Technologies have transformed ancient scientists - who, at most, once aimed to sculpt nature - into beings who manipulate and modify the most hidden and powerful cosmic forces, not only of matter and energy but also of life. The development of genetic engineering, for example, has encouraged the manipulation and modification of cytogenetic messages. Even the physical nature of the human being is thus becoming a conscious product of technology. In addition, the knowledge associated with different technical objects is gradually expanding and becoming far more complicated. As a result, some technologies originally conceived to help human beings have turned out to include misunderstood forces and influences. Technologies set up conditions and demands that are difficult to meet, but upon which we are increasingly dependent. At the same time, there is a widening gap between effects produced by the utilization of technical objects and the understanding of the processes that generate such effects. Witness the impact of our CFC refrigerants on stratospheric ozone. This imbalance causes us to have difficulty in "owning" or "possessing" the very objects and processes we construct. Paradoxically, those objects created to provide autonomy and to release human beings from their natural weaknesses are now making them dependent on specialists who have the ability to design, manufacture, operate, manage, or repair them. Many objects become things "unknown" to us. Indeed, as Langdon Winner (1977) argues, individuals know less and less about the total technological complex of objects that influence their lives. We all know how to use telephones, refrigerators, television sets, or air-conditioning systems - but very few of us know how to repair them. And how many people can cope with normal health problems without having to fall back upon modern medical specializations? The technification of nature creates a new dimension of social responsibility for scientists and engineers - a responsibility they cannot

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escape with appeals to the neutrality of science and technology. Consider only the issue of social implications. It is becoming increasingly obvious that technology not only has social effects, but actually constitutes in itself a social relationship (Ibanez, 1988). The effects of technology can characterize the most important features of the societies that adapt them (Levy, 1978). Sanmartin (1988) even argues that modern science and technology are completely transforming human nature. Here, however, it is sufficient simply to note that at the very least technology has a strong impact on human nature. TECHNOLOGY AND HUMAN NATURE When considering relationships between technology and human nature there are several positions that can be argued. Some authors maintain that we should not be afraid of technological progress, since it ultimately depends on human beings. According to Tobar-Arbulu, for instance, The idea of a mythical technology that cannot be controlled by human beings is not feasible. There are powerful interests that may lead to an unethical use of science and technology in business or as a means of neo-colonialism. But this is another issue (Tobar-Arbulu, 1988, p. 119).

Other authors warn of the dangers involved in technological evolution and call for more ethical behavior from scientists and engineers in the fields of nuclear engineering, biomedicine, environmental engineering, etc. - even in some instances demanding voluntary limitations on technological power. Along this line, Hottois points out the possible implications of modern biotechnologies: Consider the manipulations of procreation. Their intention is always therapeutic and thus humanistic. Nevertheless, they constitute a true mutation of the species about which it is impossible to foresee the consequences: if the human being eventually becomes a "technogene" (engendered technologically) this will affect not only the existential condition of individuals but even more the nature itself of our species (Hottois, 1987, p. 283).

In a similar way, Sanmartfn (1987 and 1988) warns of the risks involved in the use of genetic and microelectronic technologies, and Mitcham (1988) insists on the urgent need for more ethical professional attitudes in the use of high technologies. Finally, Ibanez (1988) warns that new technologies are the most powerful mechanisms of social control that presently exist, since they increase social imbalance, accelerate change, and promote dialectics between dependence and autonomy. One of the most controversial and paradigmatic aspects of the

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relationship between technology and human nature may be that concerned with the development of computers. As is well known, microelectronic breakthroughs, programming improvements, and advances in artificial intelligence have transformed computers into incredible devices. Electronic machines in many cases are able to work faster and do jobs more efficiently than any human beings. Computers are thus replacing thousands of workers in companies and factories, and thereby threatening employment. But unemployment is not the only problem. Those who are employed to work with computers often suffer from the resultant working conditions. On the one hand, the relationship a human being establishes with a computer can have specific effects, such as promoting a submissive behavior (Elejabarrieta, 1987), that can in tum influence interpersonal relationships. Relationships may be even more damaged if the incipient videotext system becomes a normal feature of every household, so that work is done without leaving the home - which will obviously alter family and organizational relationships. In addition, as Munduate points out, "In the next fifteen years, nearly half of the work force will have to change jobs" (Munduate, 1985, p. 409). This implies an organizational and individual restructuring process that can result in a qualitative change of inter-group and inter-individual relationships. On the other hand, the routine and monotony involved in robotized work can also seriously damage physical and psychological health. Human beings do not work only in order to meet biological demands. They work for certain clients or markets, and so gain access to representations of things instead of the things themselves. Contemporary human beings are gradually becoming more detached from their work, less and less taking an active role in it. Everyday technology likewise tends to isolate individuals and promote loneliness. For instance, the telephone discourages us from actually meeting people, television undermines family conversation, automatic cash dispensers make human contact with bank clerks unnecessary, and so on. All such technological devices tum us into individuals without interactions - undermining culture, which is basically social. The group dimension and the interaction among the members of groups are essential for culture. Such interactions exist less and less in the technological era (Ellul, 1987). The retirement problem is also critical. A decline in the job market has led to a reduction in retirement age at the same time that the life span is increasing. In the past, a person was considered old at seventy; people retired at seventy. But most human beings did not live that long, since the mean life expectancy until 1940 was only fifty-five years. Today retirement takes place some five to ten years earlier, whereas the average life span is now above seventy. Retired people thus have

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increased amounts of time on their hands, which sometimes makes them feel like "outsiders" to social reality - even guilty of being alive, a burden for their families and society in general. Detachment from professional life (among unemployed youth as well as the retired) goes beyond the mere suspension of a certain activity. It implies the adoption of new roles, the restructuring of social and family spheres. It also alters personal economy and constitutes a shift from work interests to leisure ones. But, paradoxically, leisured individuals are also cut off from family and friends, and left to solve problems on their own, immersed in an indifferent urban crowd. In such a situation the members of the new technological world often resort to the creation of artificial support groups in forms varying from youth gangs to retirement dating clubs. EFFECTS ON THE HUMAN PSYCHE Human beings are thus faced with a complex and contradictory constellation of loneliness, isolation, lack of time, too much time, monotony, physical exhaustion, and an enormous dependence on technological devices. All such circumstances provoke anxiety and uncertainty, and fail to provide human beings with the liberation promised by modem technology. The psychic impact appears in different ways: increases in psychological disorders and the appearance of new diseases. Increases in psychological disorders in all developed countries during the last decades is well documented. Incidences of depression, neuroses (particularly anxiety neuroses), and other psychiatric symptoms exhibit almost exponential growth. Some authors have also detected a qualitative change in such disorders. For instance, Gonzalez Seara (1977) thinks that "life exhaustion" is one of the distinctive illnesses of the technological era. This life exhaustion is even found among children: infantile depression rates, together with other psychopathological disorders, have risen enormously. Other authors, such as Groen (1977), have observed a significant increase in depression syndromes, and a subsequent rise in suicide rates, along with increases in deviant behaviors or psychopathologies, psychosomatic disorders, and drug addiction. Human beings try to avoid "existential distress" in two ways: actively, by transforming life into a constant championship of productive efficiency; and passively, through cultivation of a primitivism in which rock music and slam dancing, the TV, video games, and drugs all play roles (Rojo, 1988). Both approaches constitute a sustained effort at adaptation, again increasing stress.

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In the first way, that of efficiency, there arise the two pathologies of "over-effort" and "over-specialization." But too much work and responsibility lead to depression (Rojo, 1984). Depression rises. Like all types of continuous stress, the fatigue produced by extra effort can provoke the appearance of psychosomatic disease (irritable bowel syndrome, duodenal ulcer, heart attack), and greater susceptibility to colds or flu. Over-specialization further implies the loss of creativity. A subject is only involved in things already known. Over-specialized individuals are limited to their own discipline, with their thinking spectrum and room for imagination correspondingly reduced. In the second way, the primacy of visual and auditory stimulation that is not accompanied by the content of reading or personal conversation produces a hyper-functioning in the right brain hemisphere and a distortion in the left (Bogen et al., 1972). This easily leads to drug addiction, which can terminate in schizomorphic psychosis. Such effects are commonly associated with psychotropic drugs, amphetamines, and alcohol (Rojo, 1984). Drug addiction and psychopathologies can also be responsible for deviate behaviors that lead to absurd and aggressive crimes. Other factors also contribute - social anomie, urban sprawl, and so on. All such psychological traits can be associated with "technological progress. " Consequently, it can be argued that although technology dominates nature and frees human beings from many weaknesses, it also creates a special culture, a unique "second nature" (as Aristotle would call it). This new technologized nature - in both its non-human and human aspects - calls for increased attention and investigation. One final comment. While human beings concentrate on trying to solve problems related to possible planetary extinctions as a result of the nuclear threat or global climate change, we may overlook other matters such as dehumanization, which although not as violent or dramatic, are perhaps equally pervasive and just as real. Remember the words of Zarathustra: "Look! Here is the last Man. "

University of Valencia REFERENCES Bogen, J. E., R. DeZure, W. D. Tenhouten, and J. F. Marsh (1972). "The Other Side of the Brain, N. The AlP Ratio," Bulletin of the Los Angeles Neurological Societies, vol. 37, no. 2 (April), pp. 49-61. Parts I-III are in vol. 34 (1969). Elejabarrieta, F. (1987). "Nuevas tecnologfas y participaci6n social," course at the Universidad Popular, Zaragoza, 1985-1986. Ellul, Jacques (1987). "Peut-il exister une 'culture technicienne'?," Revue Internationale

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de Philosophie, issue no. 161, pp. 216-233. Gonzalez Seara, L. (1975). El cansancio de la vida, fenOmeno de nuestro tiempo. Madrid: Karpos. Groen, J. J. (1977). "Trahajo, stress y enfennedad," in A. Kagan, ed., Trabajoy stress. Madrid: Karpos. Hottois, Gilbert (1987). "Humanisme et evolutionisme dans 1a philosophie de 1a technique," Revue Internationale de Philosophie, issue no. 161, pp. 278-295. Ibanez, T. (1988). "Las nuevas tecnologfas: Un fen6meno social en 1a encrucijada del poder y del saber," paper from the Secondo Congreso Nacional de Psicologfa Social, Alicante, 6-8 April. Levy, J. M. (1978). 'Confesar 1a ignorancia, revindicar la duda," El Viejo Topo, issue no. 131, pp. 54-55. Mitcham, Carl (1988). "Etica profesional en las altas tecnologias," paper presented at the Instituto de Investigaciones sobre Ciencia y Tecnologia (INVESCIT), Valencia, 9 November. Munduate, L. (1985). "Nuevas tecnologias y stress," paper from the Primer Congreso Nacional de Psicologia Social, Granada, 3-7 September. Rojo, M. (1984). Lecciones de psiquialrfa. Valencia: Promolibro. Rojo, M. (1988). "Peculiaridades de la crisis actual y sus implicaciones en los trastornos psiquicos," paper presented in honor of Professor Ram6n Rey Ardid, University of Zaragoza. Roqueplo, Philippe (1983). Penser la technique: Pour une democratie concrete. Paris: Seuil. Sanmartin, Jose (1987). Los nuevos redentores: Rejlexiones sobre la ingenerfa genetica, la sociobiologfa y el mundo feliz que nos prometen. Barcelona: Anthropos. Sanmartin, Jose (1988). "Reflexiones en torno a la cuestionable primacia de 10 te6rico, o semblanza del cachivache," Arbor, issue no. 507 (March), pp. 29-46. Tobar-Arbulu, Jose F. (1988). "Tecnologia: Hacia un nuevo juramento hipocflltico," Arbor, issue no. 507 (March), pp. 107-130. Wmner, Langdon (1977). Autonomous Technology: Technics-out-ofControl as a Theme in PolilicalThought. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

MANUEL MEDINA

PHILOSOPHY, TECHNOLOGY, AND SOCIETY

Unlike science, technology has been overlooked in the philosophical tradition as a major area for reflection and systematic study; indeed, with significant exceptions, it has been ignored. Even the philosophy of science has rarely concerned itself with technology, being generally more concerned with the theoretical results of scientific research. The traditional philosophical neglect of technology is due, among other things, to a series of dogmas latent in the philosophical tradition in general and in the philosophy of science in particular. This fundamental dogma affirms the primacy of theoretical knowledge as the authentic, rational knowledge with which science has been identified since its beginnings. Recent philosophy of technology represents a radical shift in this discriminatory attitude of traditional philosophy toward technics. The fundamental theoretical presuppositions upon which is based the supposed hegemony of theory over technics - which is not just epistemological but also methodological, ethical, and political - are already to be found in ancient Greek philosophy. As a result of its initial development, in which Plato and Aristotle articulated different meanings for episteme and techne, philosophy and technics followed divergent paths that rarely overlapped. The meaning of the two which is characteristic of contemporary philosophy of technology is of quite a different sort from the original confrontation. Ancient philosophy of science and technology rested on a fundamental theorist's mystification which was used to justify the presumed superiority of the theoretical tradition. In the reductionist principles of their theory of knowledge, philosophers established a basis for discriminating against traditional pre-theoretical forms of practical knowledge. From this epistemological doctrine - according to which our experience of the world is reduced to sensations which contrast with assertive judgments that represent the only real knowledge consequences of the greatest importance were derived. First and foremost, the human individual was conceived as a passive subject separated from the environment. Practical knowledge was reduced to mere subjective sensations, and predicative knowledge was crowned as the primary form of learning. As far as it represented some sort of knowledge, technics was reduced to mere concepts judged by predicative knowledge, while science was seen as passive contemplation and

153 Carl Mitcham (ed.), Phiwsophy o/Techn%gy in Spanish Speaking Countries, 153-166. 01993 KJuwer Academic Publishers. - -

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theoretical representation. In fact both were identified with the theoretical version of themselves. Lastly, philosophy did not hesitate to identify the theoretical tradition with "reason" itself, obviously downgrading the practical tradition in a definitive way. Nevertheless, practical knowledge and social interactions, primary results of the active relationships between human beings and their environments, constitute the real foundations of both technology and science, as recent social studies of science and technology have showed. Nevertheless, the theoretical mystique continues to function in the realm of philosophy. It has led to the practical identification of modern science with theoretical knowledge and to its analytic philosophical treatment in terms of discourse and propositional logic, in which conceptual, logical, and formal questions prevail. The theoretical conceptions that have led philosophy of science to an academic deadlock threaten to do the same in analytical currents in the philosophy of technology. The philosophical mystification of science and technology goes back to an old debate between theory-centered philosophy and the practical tradition of technai. This confrontation represents a political struggle against craft technics and the democratic political forms that arose in ancient Greek society as a result of their dominance. This constitutes the original and paradigmatic confrontation between philosophy, technology, and society. THE MYTH OF THEORY While the scientific tradition was arising in ancient Greece from the fecund interaction between the practical tradition of early techniques and the new theoretical tradition, Greek philosophy was beginning the mystification of theory. To do that the philosophers had to deny, in all ways, the fundamental importance of the technai in human knowledge and culture. Just as theorizing about geometry led the way in scientific theorizing, the Eleatic school had the definitive word about what would become the leading philosophical variant of the theoretical tradition. The techne dialektike or technique of discussion, by which the conflicts in the assemblies and in the public trials were resolved, took on great political importance with the introduction of Greek democracy. The Eleatic philosophers gave this technique a twist that emphasized monologue. In the new mode of theoretical discourse, the argument did not revolve around the many familiar realities of tradition and practical experience, but rather around abstractions. The arguments were based on the logical interrelationship between abstract concepts, which permitted one to make

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successive connections of statements based on general principles or their negation, until one reached the desired conclusion. Such arguments were given as proofs which demonstrated the truth of the assertion in question and made its acceptance obligatory. I According to the doctrine of these philosophers, true knowledge was only accessible by means of the theoretical discourse they had just invented and which they never tired of praising as "reason" in contrast with the ignorance and incompetence of traditional practical knowledge. Nevertheless, from the outset, the theoretical program had to deal with serious problems. Philosophical theorizing led to paradoxes and all kinds of absurd and counterintuitive consequences, without that leading to any concessions in its claims to hegemony. 2 The absurd results, in practical terms, of Eleatic theorizing made clear their inability to theorize about complex practical domains. In spite of this (or perhaps precisely because of it) philosophers put forth a radical solution: the absolute autarchy of theoretical discourse. Theorizability became the criterion for reality, as the frequent use of the indirect proof by reductio ad absurdum shows. What escapes philosophical theorizing did not involve true knowledge, and thus, in the final analysis, did not exist. 3 The principles of conceptualization and theoretical systematization, presented as the principles of reason, go on to govern the world of nature and the cosmos. In reality, we were made to believe that theory alone represents true knowledge, despite what the common sense of the practical tradition tells us. True knowledge would thus consist of the "simple" principles and concepts used by the philosophers to formulate their theories, theories empty of specifics, but with pretensions to universal validity. The original theoretical mystification not only disconnected theory from any practical knowledge but actually denied that practical knowledge was knowledge at all. To do so, it contrasted the simplicity and the uniformity of theory with the complexity of specific representations of knowledge "born of multiple experience. " To assist them in their ardous task of presenting ungraspable theoretical entities and their supporting properties as real, the philosophers fell back on two creations which, from their very beginnings, have basked in the glow of an almost mythical halo: the "truth," and theoretical "demonstration." In the practical tradition, the existence of objects and the effectiveness of procedures is immediately obvious on putting a technique into practice. The theorist's doctrine, by contrast, attempts to force a general acceptance of its concepts and principles by means of their demonstration as true, that is, as the consequence of a theoretical monologue in which the concepts are supposed to speak for themselves

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and in which the discourse itself decides about reality. Since the truth binds us all, according to this doctrine, once this has been accepted as true, its general acceptance is obligatory. Faced with the general tolerance of the practical tradition, in which a multiplicity of sub-traditions and cultures are perfectly acceptable, the theorist's tradition aspired to become the only valid tradition or a monolithic culture. As if that were not enough, the primacy of theory was presented as the victory of reason over superstition and ignorance. The philosophical theoretical tradition was presented as a demystifying movement, and in fact is called "enlightenment" by its present followers. Nevertheless, those who criticized as naive the ancient myths and poems which put forward the cosmologies and the wisdom of the practical culture were the very same ones who created new intellectual divinities and theoretical myths.4 The paradigm theoretical myth is undoubtedly the Platonic myth of the cave. In it we fmd the characteristic philosophic inversion expressed in masterly fashion: theory is represented by the world of light although in reality it should correspond to that of shadows and fictions. THE PHILOSOPHY OF THEORY AND TECHNIQUE The early philosophical doctrine was too problematic and rudimentary to sweep the theoretical tradition to victory. In particular the most important theoretical developments, those in the field of geometry, required more adequate foundations. With Plato and Aristotle, the systematic theory of theory came to be the core of the philosophical tradition and formed the nucleus of classical philosophy. The main question here was the justification of already developed geometric theories, and the principal problems revolved around the nature of theoretical, geometrical entities, of the relations between the "ideal" objects of theoretical geometry and those of practical geometry, and especially of the possibility of theoretical geometry itself. In general terms, the questions raised concerned how to maintain a philosophical duality between the theoretical world and the practical world, what relationship existed between the two, and how one was to reach the world of theoretical objects, presumably the more important of the two. The theory of theoretical geometry led to the first philosophy of science and technology, which, in tum, generated systematic philosophy of knowledge. The corresponding questions about epistemology in general dealt with the possibility of theoretical knowledge (of which philosophy considered itself the highest expression), its relation to practical knowledge, and the justification of the epistemological primacy

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of theory. The systematic treatment of these questions was based on theoretical constructions of language, truth, and proof which left their permanent, determinant mark not just on the philosophical tradition but on the whole of European culture. According to philosophy, all knowledge which deserves the name, unlike mere sensations, involves a judgment. In other words, knowledge equals predicative knowledge which is expressed in either true or false assertions. s Theoretical knowledge is symbolic, propositional knowledge involving abstract concepts. The theorist's interest has nothing to do with practical knowledge. In the Aristotelian contraposition of the geometer's research and the carpenter's work with respect to the right angle, the former is "a witness of the truth," in other words, a theoros. However, the theory does not involve merely knowing something true, such as doxa, a simple belief or opinion which may constitute true but contingent knowledge. Theoretical assertions are, by definition, true, necessary, and immutable. Theoretical truth is approached in two ways. The first, characteristic of geometers, is by means of logical proof, thus obtaining demonstrative theoretical knowledge within the framework of an axiomatic systematization of theories. The second, in the case ofundemonstratable first principles, is not discursive but depends on direct intellectual intuition of theoretical objects such as the ideal forms in geometry. Thus theoretical objects, philosophically isolated from their practical origins, were converted into the exclusive and proper objects of immediate theoretical study. This formed the highest faculty of the philosophers and set them far above carpenters and geometers. The primacy of theory ends up as the primacy of the philosophical class. The theorist's characterization of knowledge automatically disqualified the practical tradition of the technai. For philosophy, know-how which at bottom involves no judgment is reduced to mere sensation, and "sensory experience," purely subjective, is not actually a form of knowledge at all. Despite this, epistemology could not absolutely disqualify all knowledge from the practical tradition and had to establish a hierarchy of the technai according to an alleged grading system of greater or lesser theoretical content. A techne could be considered knowledge insofar as it involved predicative content, represented by true. assertions. Such knowledge, however, ultimately belonged to the realm of the doxa and could never aspire to the category of actual theoretical knowledge. In the theorist's version, techne is somehow only a rudimentary and weak form of theoretical knowledge. 6 In the end, as one of its most lasting achievements, the first philosophy of science and technique managed to consolidate and systematize the theorist's mystification of the genesis of

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science with an idea that science had not arisen from theorizing about original techniques; rather, technique was seen as a rudimentary form of the more important theoretical knowledge. The philosophical disqualification of techne was more than merely epistemological. It also involved changes of value. Contrasting the research activity of the carpenter and of the geometer concerning the right angle, Aristotle defined the former as interested in the utility of the form as a means for the accomplishment of his work. By contrast, the theorist investigates "what it is or what kind of thing it is." His disinterested activity is an end in itself and forms part of the ideal of the contemplative life, the bios theoretikos. It hardly needs to be pointed out that this latter form was seen as infinitely superior, ethically speaking. PHILOSOPHY, TECHNOLOGY, AND POLITICS IN ANTIQUITY In Greece during the sixth and fifth centuries BCE, craftsmen and merchants became the most active class of the ancient polis. During previous ages craftsmen had become slowly institutionalized and separated from the agrarian world and its myths. The demiurgoi who already enjoyed considerable prestige - since their activity was linked with the practice of magic - became technitai with important social status. Along with the making and selling of craft products, navigation experienced a similar rise in importance. The navy not only helped increase the economic power of craftsmen and businessmen, it also increased their military and political importance. The fleet, manned by citizens who owned neither land nor arms, became the basis of Greek military power, a counterweight to the traditional military preponderance of aristocratic horsemen and hoplite or armed small land holders. This reordering of economic and military power gave rise to a new political configuration that aimed to establish an eqUilibrium between the aristocratic landowner and the urban classes of craftsmen and merchants. In this way, democratic constitutions, new forms of life and new political ideas, were put forth under the impetus of craft technai and commerce. But in Greek democracy there is an on-going conflict between oligarchs and democrats in both the struggle for power and in political theory. On both sides there are active participants associated with the emergence of the theoretical tradition. It is in Ionia that a proto-theoretical tradition emerges which can be clearly distinguished from later philosophical developments by its positive orientation toward technai and democracy. In fact, before it

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became identified with theoretical knowledge, sophia originally meant mastery of techniques. 7 The first theorists - Thales, Anaximander, and Anaximenes - are known for their multiple interests and technical abilities. Although they belonged to aristocratic families, they were practical men who dedicated themselves to commerce, took part in political affairs, and did not identify with the oligarchy. In their treatises they inaugurated a secular interpretation of the world that moved away from traditional agrarian myths. Ionian cosmology is to a great extent a craftsman's cosmology. In it the incipient theoretical conceptualization of technical processes is extrapolated to the cosmic realm beyond human reach. The fantastic and superhuman interpretations of ancient cosmologies are reformulated in terms of practical experience belonging to technai. Thus, for instance, it is with fire (that is, with the main instrument of transformation techniques such as metallurgy, pottery, and alchemy) that Anaximander introduces into cosmology explanations framed in terms of thermic processes such as fusion, evaporation, condensation, and rarefaction. The work of Anaximander is also important because it clearly reveals the political content of these first theoretical cosmologies. Like the ancient cosmological myths, theoretical cosmologies exhibit a legitimation of a political character. The cosmos is a reflection of a desired juridical order which, in turn, is legitimated as part of a global socio-natural order. Thus, just as the democratic constitution of the polis searches for an equilibrium between different social classes, and in the assembly opposing political parties appear as equals (isonomia), so in the cosmos diverse elements, that are the origin of all things by means of multiple transformations, have equal power. In the case of any alteration in cosmic harmony - originally represented by the apeiron which is not anyone element but includes them all indifferently - the equilibrium has to be re-establish ed, "because," as Anaximander says, "there is a mutual payment of pain and retribution for injustice, according to the disposition of time. " The positive treatment of technai in this earlier theoretical tradition is usually accompanied by a defense of democratic ideas in politics. But this is far from a standard political attitude. After the Ionian prototheorists comes an anti-technical turn with the theoretical tradition of philosophy, which seems determined to put down craft tecniques. As we have seen, Eleatic philosophy is opposed to the practical tradition of technai and accuses it of being deceptive. The negative political attitude toward the technai is made more explicit in later classic philosophy. Plato no longer limits himself to epistemological disqualification; he also warns of the moral and political dangers inherent in technical innovations. In the same way he criticizes

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the ways of life, well-being, and opulence brought about by progress in technai, which he considers unsuitable for the education of the young. 8 The political intention is made even more obvious when he criticizes the vigorous development of the navy and proposes legislation to impede technical innovation and the practice of technai by free citizens. According to Plato, the exercise of techniques is to be strictly regulated and, along with commerce, confined to foreigners and slaves. That is, techniques and commerce are to be the work of individuals with neither rights nor opportunities to participate in politics. Moreover, the basic Platonic objective of politically disenfranchising technai - and opposing democracy - is self-evident in the confrontation of Plato with the Sophists regarding the nature of politics. The position of the Sophists with respect to technai is completely opposed to that of Plato. For Protagoras, technical knowledge, which he characterizes as "wisdom or knowledge useful for life," is the foundation of human culture. The Sophists made technai an object of systematic reflection. They can be described as having developed the first general theory of technique founded in craft activities. They mistrusted the theoretical representation of knowledge (for example, the theoretical objects in geometry) and their conception of knowledge was fundamentally practical. From this comes their relativistic conception of truth as related to the culture and the technical capabilities and achievements proper to each particular sOciety.9 Their positive attitude toward technai corresponds to a clearly democratic politics. In this Protagoras follows the Ionian tradition and Anaxagoras, who says that "humans are the most intelligent of all living things due to the fact that they have hands." They were both counselors to Pericles and took an interest in political questions in support of Athenian democracy. According to Protagoras, Athenians are doing the right thing "when they accept the opinion of the blacksmith or the shoemaker on political issues or when they believe that [political] virtue can be acquired or taught." Furthermore, "When it comes to deliberating on the subject of political virtue, which deals with justice and good sense, it is natural that everyone be allowed to speak, convinced as they are that they ought to participate in that capacity, since otherwise there would be no cities." The Sophists undertook what could be called a campaign of political literacy which was vital for the functioning of democracy and made philosophers extremely uneasy. Their objective was the training of citizens in that political techne whose general mastery was necesary to assure the democratic government of the cities. to Therefore all citizens were capable of political competency and the final political decisions did not have to be the monopoly of "experts," but were a concern for

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democratic deliberation. 11 Obviously, in putting forth politics as a techne that may be learned just like other technai, the Sophists are questioning the exclusive exercise of politics by the traditional dominating classes. Their teachings undermine the legitimacy of the oligarchical political order. This is the main reason why Plato attacks them and attempts to reconstruct legitimacy in a different conception of politics. According to the Platonic doctrine which is opposed to the political program of Protagoras, the capacity to take part in political life is not based on practical knowledge whose apprenticeship can be generalized, but on theoretical knowledge. 12 Plato reduces the question of the moral qualification to participate in politics to a theoretical know-that. This theoretical knowledge deals ultimately with the "good in itself' which, as the source of all legislation, ought to be the object of the dialectical (that is, philosophical-theoretical) knowledge proper to the rulers of the Republic. 13 Based upon the Platonic vision, in which the characteristic virtue of the dominant class is theoretical knowledge, there arises the political primacy of theory and the political disqualification of technai. Political wisdom gets projected into a region of superior knowledge unattainable by craftsmen and merchants (who are forced to work with their hands to live) and is only accessible to a restricted group who enjoy leisure. From the incompatibility between theoretical and technical mastery, an incompatibility between political and technical functions is constructed. In addition to this, the advantage of the division of labor in the domain of technai is highly praised as an argument to justify specialization in politics. With this Plato wants to restore the autonomy of a political universe that favors aristocracy, to which he himself belongs, and to theoretically undermine democracy. 14 Aristotle transforms this theoriocratic doctrine into a systematic theory. The Aristotelian position with regard to technitai and their political participation in democracy does not differ much from that of Plato. According to Aristotle, "It seems evident that in the city ... citizens should not live the life of craftsmen or merchants for this kind of life lacks nobility and is contrary to virtue . . . since for the formation of virtue and for the political activities leisure is indispensable. " On this basis, he comes to the conclusion that "craftsmen should not be considered citizens because they do not possess the virtue characteristic of citizens" and "the good man, the politician, and the good citizen should not learn the work typical of that class of subordinates. ,,15 According to Aristotelian philosophy, the productive activity

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characteristic of craft technai does not involve knowledge as such. The craftsman limits himself to reproducing in a routine and servile way a form that has been imposed upon him. This form represents an idea beyond the technical domain. The craftsman is incapable of creating or modifying it. As a matter of fact, he cannot even know anything about it because his activity is a-theoretical. The only one with access to the form is the theoretician who, as user, determines the form that the craftsman, at his service, ought to reproduce. Thus technique is subject, even in practice, to theory, and its virtue and function is to obey. The supposed political hegemony of theory rests not only on epistemological theories but also on cosmological mystifications disguised as conceptions and theories of nature and its relations with technique. Craft techniques (as opposed to agricultural techniques, which Aristotle considers the most virtuous of the technai) are radically counterposed to nature. According to Aristotelian theory, the object produced by the artisan is not a natural product and everything produced by craft techniques is therefore less real than natural objects. l The contrast between theoria and techne, and between techne and phusis or nature, is parallel to that between the productive activity of the artisans (or poiesis) and the non-productive activity characteristic of the leisure classes such as verbal activities and consumption. (Aristotle calls this praxis.) Praxis is presented as the activity of the free man who is a user and produces nothing. It goes without saying that these theoretical and political activities characteristic of Aristotle's domain of praxis systematically exclude, as "servile," the practical activities of the craft professions. For Aristotle those involved with the domain of the productive techniques are disqualified from partaking in the political domain. Political deliberation is a matter of theoretical discourse for which the craftsmen are both epistemologically and practically incapacitated. Theoretical political knowledge concerning the Good for Man constitutes, in Aristotle's philosophy, the indispensable foundation for all political activity. In brief, the free political man is defined as a theoretical animal. PHILOSOPHY AND TECHNOCRACY In Aristotle's sophisticated system, this epistemological and cosmological disqualification leads to ethical and political incapacitation. The political content of the philosophical theories of knowledge, of nature, and of politics, is clearly manifested as the legitimation of nondemocratic political orders. As one of its most enduring achievements, classic Greek philosophy established the first theoretical foundations of

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technocratic models. Although the original philosophical theories had very little possibility of ever being carried out - owing to the idiosyncracies of philosophers and to the reality of political life - their theoretical constructions and ideas remained as a source of inspiration throughout the history of political thought. With the new conception of science put forth beginning in the seventeenth century, a modern version of theoretical aristocracy arises - that is, technocracy. In Francis Bacon's New Atlantis we already find the first vision of a technocratic society. The government of the country is, in the hands of the wise, assembled in Solomon's House. In the Baconian model, as in the Platonic version, political power is assigned to the minority who possess wisdom. However, scientific knowledge is no longer the result of the theoretical contemplation of Justice or the Good; it is the result of experimental research. In his Novum Organum Bacon argues against the ancient conception of science as a purely theoretical, interpretative, and speculative science, and in favor of a new science, fundamentally practical and directed toward invention and anticipation. Bacon believes that "knowledge is power. " This power is nothing other than the power of nature which the scientist has appropriated for himself by force. In the modern period the radical theoretical tradition is gradually relegated to the ambit of traditional philosophy. The practical mastery of nature, that is, technical efficacy, presents itself as one of the principal characteristics of the new conception of science. However, no matter how much need there is to acknowledge the differences between ancient and modern conceptions of science, theoretical-aristocratic and technocratic legitimations of politics follow the same course. Both are based on the political privileges which a minority's superior knowledge bestows on experts. In antiquity political qualification was rooted in political theory; in modernity it is in practical technological capacities. The philosophical relegation or subordination of technology, and of practical knowledge in general, within the theoretical hierarchy of knowledge, has had major academic, pedagogic, cultural, and sociopolitical consequences. The primacy given to theory by the early philosophers left traditional practical knowledge outside the scope of authentic learning; wisdom was identified with theoretical understanding. In this way, knowledge became an elitist enterprise. In the world of modern science the philosophical distinction between pure science, characterized as basically theoretical, and applied science or technology, has served to legitimize the demands of scientific research for complete independence and autonomy relative to society, together with an exemption of the scientists from responsibility for the negative social consequences of their research.

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The pretension of scientific neutrality has served to legitimize certain forms of research as the highest expression of rationality, attaining results that imply great vital risks. More surprising are philosophical attempts to extend neutrality to technology as well. There is no doubt, however, that the most important consequences of the theorist's mystification are to be seen in an unfortunate philosophical combination that integrates the identification of science with theoretical rationality, and the identification of technology with practical rationality, with the presumed neutrality of both. It is by this path that analytical philosophy manages to justify science and technology - and, consequently, technocratic administration - as a result of a suprademocratic exercise of pure rationality. Nonetheless, the standard interpretations of science and technology developed by philosophy are not only too simplistic to account for contemporary science and technology; they are also in conflict with actual historical development, as recent historical and social studies of science and technology have clearly brought to light. If philosophy has a part to play in the resolution of the problems posed by current technoscientific developments, it needs a post-theoretical turn. As a first step towards a post-theoretical philosophy, we need a profound review of the preconceptions of science and technology relative to society, in order to overcome any radical contraposition. It is time for a constructive philosophy of science and technology which can provide the philosophical foundations for understanding them as social constructions. The absolutist reign of the theoretical tradition in European culture has, since its invention by classic Greek philosophers, remained unchanged by political and doctrinal revolutions. Its technocratic version still awaits a philosophical revolution that, with the same goal as the ancient Sophists, tries to make possible a creative and truly democratic social participation in the assessment and management of science and technology.

University of Barcelona NOTES 1. In the Eleatic argumentations the principles and rules of classical logic (like the "excluded middle") were formed, as well as the characteristically theoretical manner of proof, the indirect method of reductio ad absurdum. The Eleatic philosophy hatched the germ of theorist's mystification which was to battle the practical tradition of the technai. 2. There was, for example, an inevitable collision with the practical tradition, which led to a confrontation with the theorists' concept of knowledge but also with cosmological, ethical, and political conceptions. In the field of medicine the first treatise

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in the Hippocratic Collection, entitled A.bout A.ncient Medicine, bears witness to one such confrontation. The author enters into dispute with those philosophers who saw themselves as amateur doctors, whose theories "had as much to do with medicine as with painting." The objections of the defender of the medical techne stress that practical medicine cannot be expressed in abstract concepts divorced from practice. The principles of theoretical medicine are useless for specific diagnosis and therapy and thus do not prepare one for the activity of curing patients. In fact, medicine was one of the areas where theorizing had negative results. Another front where the battle visibly raged was in the controversy between the theorists and the Sophists. These latter, defenders of a practical form of knowledge and culture, considered the theoretical discourse of philosophers as pure fantasy and seriously questioned the reality of theoretical objects. The attacks of philosophers against the Sophists document the campaign to discredit the practical tradition. 3. The program of theoretical absolutism was based upon the fatal distinction between a "true world" and a "real world" and the corresponding two ways of getting at them: the "way of truth" and the "way of opinion." According to philosophers the "true world" was simple and coherent, could be described in a uniform fashion, and was open only to "reason." That is, the authentic world was one that could be conceptualized by means of abstract concepts and derived from theoretical general principles within the framework of consistent theories. 4. Thus we have Xenophanes making fun of the gods of different cultures while at the same time seriously glorifying a god with cerebral hypertrophy, created in his own image and likeness: the supreme Theoros. As they brought the sacred into their theorists' tradition, the philosophers not only designed a god which incarnated pure theoretical activity, with no contamination from the world of practical knowledge, but also created their own myths. 5. Such judgments are possible thanks to the symbolic objects that come with experience, once we have transcended the multiplicity of objects of sensation. 6. Ancient philosophy gave more and more stress to the distinction between technique and theoretical knowledge, with which science was identified. This contrast runs parallel to the contraposition between the objectivity, certainty, and necessity of reason, and the subjectivity, uncertainty, and contingency of sensorial experience. 7. In ancient Ionia there apparently existed a greater appreciation of the technical activities of craftsmen than in Attica. Their craftsmen were called cheinnas, which conveys the idea of mastery, whereas in Attica the term was banausos, which refers to the dirty work of craftsmen who use fire. 8. With all this Plato contrasts and defends the traditional forms of agrarian life typical of the aristocratic regime. While agriculture is considered noble and of a sacred character, techne is declared servile, and the work of craftsmen is ethically deprecated. 9. The well-known statement of Protagoras that "man is the measure of all things, of those which exist inasmuch as they exist and of those which do not exist inasmuch as they do not exist," can be understood as meaning that practical human creativity, along with its technical and social achievements, is the content of culture. 10. For the Sophists, the fact that there was a division of labor in craft technai did not imply specialization in political techne, nor was it an obstacle to equal participation in political activities. For them, political technique, in contrast with all other techniques, did not constitute specialized knowledge, since, as is explained in Protagoras' version of the myth of Prometheus, "everyone participates, because cities could not exist if only a few took part, as is the case with other technai. " 11. In fact, the qualification to participate in democratic political life presupposed only an apprenticeship in political techne, which was precisely what the Sophists offered. The issue was not involvement with theory but a practical training available to all. 12. Socrates intends to demonstrate this to Protagoras when he argues that "everything

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is episteme, whether it be justice, good sense, or bravery." That is to say, just as according to Plato - "to know what is and what is not to be feared is bravery" (1), so too justice and good sense, which are indispensable political virtues, consist of theoretical knowledge. 13. This dialectical knowledge, on which the education of future leaders is based, is precisely the specialty of philosophers. In consequence, their mission is to educate the political class. Yet the philosophers not only ought to train the rulers, they also ought to e<:ucate them in their "image and likeness." In the end, then, it is the class of philosophers who ought to exercise power as the trustees of theoretical wisdom. Obviously what Plato puts over against the democratic regime is a theoriocracy. 14. Plato's theoriocracy is not restricted to doctrinal speculation, and his political models are typically theoriocratic projects. Neither was the Academy simply a center of doctrines and theoriocratic projects. It was also a center for anti-democratic political action. Plato's interventions as the political adviser of Dionysius II of Syracuse, a city where democracy had been defeated but where his plans also failed, are well known. His disciples repeatedly tried to put into practice his theoriocratic models, in the name of which they did not shy away from going to war or from involvement in intrigues and political assassination. By way of warning, the short-lived government of the philosophers led to a harsh tyranny. 15. Aristotle's political ideas arise from complex constructions and theoretical mystifications related to knowledge, nature, and technical and political activities. The exaltation of theoretical elaborations as the ideal of knowledge is the background music against which ancient philosophy put into play epistemological mystification, whose fundamental dogma consists in the primacy of theory as authentic and rational knowledge. Based on his theoretical constructions about language, truth, and proof (which will influence not only philosophical tradition but the entire European culture), Aristotle contructs the epistemological theory of theoretical knowledge, its relation to technical knowing, and the primacy of the theoretical. 16. Aristotle's conceptions of nature are fundamentally based on theoretical extrapolations from techniques characteristic of agriculture (the mainstay of the power of the aristocratic landowner), to which Aristotle as well as Plato attributes a preeminence of place above the craft techniques that form the basis of urban democracy.

RAM6N QUERALT6 MORENO

DOES TECHNOLOGY "CONSTRUCT" SCIENTIFIC REALITY?

The question of the objectivity of knowledge and, especially in the modem age, of the objectivity of scientific knowledge, is a recurrent issue in the history of philosophy and of science. Contemporary philosophical discussions again raise this issue by emphasizing the epistemological influence of technological means in scientific research. The technological procedures upon which theoretical physics and cosmology depend give rise to charges of reductionism or epistemological naivete. According to such arguments, science rests on a technological reduction that leads in practice to a peculiar "construction" of scientific objects. As a consequence, questions are raised about the true limits of scientific objectivity and the general validity of science. For example, contemporary elementary particle theory, which is necessarily formulated in very abstract mathematical terms as a result of the fundamental presuppositions of this kind of research, is also strongly influenced by the use of technologies that modify situations of natural stability for many microphysical "objects." In light of this situation, analysis leads directly to the question of whether the intensive and progressive technologization of scientific research constitutes a valid means for acquiring objective knowledge or constitutes on the contrary simply a reductionist, instrumental construction of reality. It is easy to observe a certain antithesis here. On the one hand, much contemporary scientific research is actually unthinkable without intensive technologization, which seems to imply reductionism. On the other, it is impossible to deny the results derived from scientific research by such means, which seems to imply realism. This opposition suggests the possibility of resolution through some higher level epistemological synthesis or integration of the two perspectives. 1. To begin, it is necessary to situate scientific knowledge within the domain of human knowledge, and to determine its specific character, in order to elucidate the epistemological function of technological instrumentation. The plural forms of human knowledge throughout history can be explained by the necessary diversity of human cognitive responses to the world. This reveals different interests - hermeneutical

167 Carl Mitcham (ed.), Philcsophy of Technolcgy in Spanish Speaking Countries, 167-172. °1993 Kluwer Academic Publishers.

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and epistemological - depending on the circumstances in which human beings find themselves. It also involves the progressive emergence in human history of different frames of objectivity, different epistemological perspectives, which are initially defined by their specific aims, both theoretical and pragmatic. These frames lead to the constitution of methodological principles according to those aims and, finally, to the elaboration of theories and results about the objects defined by a corresponding frame of objectivity. In this general cognitive process the basic question, "What is the object?" constitutes a regulative ideal, in the Kantian sense. Observe that historically the problem of the "truth" of the object was a goal to be only progressively attained. This is for two reasons. One is the intrinsic limits of human understanding. The other is the existential situation of the knowing subject, which determines many of the specific aims of the frame of objectivity. Thus human knowledge must be conceived as a practical and theoretical unity, that is to say, as a kind of action necessarily conducted under the guidance of both interests, theoretical and pragmatic. But an important element lacking in this description, one which is quite relevant to the issue, is, namely, the ethical factor or the formulation of anthropological criteria for subsequent applications of results within a given frame of objectivity. The source of this weakness is the rupture between scientific knowledge and ethics that is a basic feature of modernity, as exemplified by the division between pure and practical reason in Kant. Undoubtedly this is one of the most serious weaknesses of modern science, because in practice it ignores an essential feature of human thought - the ethical level of the act of knowing considered by itself, that is, the ethical character as a matter of fact in human knowledge. Nevertheless this problem is peripheral to what follows, because of the epistemological perspective of the present argument.· If we now apply such epistemological reflections to scientific knowledge, we obtain the following constitutive aims of this kind of knowing. From an historical point of view, the pragmatic aim is that of the effective domination of nature for general human benefit - that is, the use (and abuse) of natural resources in order to satisfy human necessities. The theoretical aim is to consider nature as a whole, in other words, to elaborate the unity of nature as its most general object. Both aims are closely related, because the theoretical construction of the unity of nature enlarges the pragmatic aim, namely, the effective power over the totality of physical reality. With a greater level of theoretical unity, we obtain a greater extension in the use of our technical applications, which in turn is able to enlarge our theoretical

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unity. Notice then the dialectic or feed-back relationship between the two aims. But during this whole process the regulative ideal of the search for truth will always be present, since without true though partial knowledge the fulfillment of either aim, theoretical or pragmatic, would be impossible.

2. In accordance with the above analysis, the frame of objectivity in the case of scientific knowledge must select the features of the object in which it is specifically interested and, as a result, establish a relevant methodology. Thus Galileo, for instance, asserts that he will not deal with general questions about essences or substances, but will only analyze "some features" of the object. 2 The chosen features are those that can also be mathematically described and, at the same time, experimentally tested, even if only indirectly, that is, by means of measuring instruments. It is precisely at this moment that the question of technology is introduced. From the very beginning, then, scientific selection implies a methodological contribution of technological instruments. In this way, technology appears as an unavoidable ingredient of the scientific frame of objectivity - either the wide use of simple technology, as initially, or the intensive use of a complex technology, as today. The key point is that technology becomes a condition of the possibility of effective realization of the frame of objectivity created by scientific knowledge. But all scientific instrumentation must be used, from beginning to end, within the regulative ideal of a search for the truth of an object. It is then possible to argue that the presence of the technological factor in the scientific process is a natural consequence of the specific features of the proper frame of scientific objectivity, in accordance with that specific definition of the scientific task derived from its fundamental aims. From an historical perspective the subsequent evolution of this situation is well known. Clearly the technological factor has increased, as the presence of technology has become an increasingly profound condition for the constitution of a scientific object - or rather, for physical reality to be investigated by scientific research. The crucial point, however, is that such an evolution has always been carried out within the limits of the scientific frame of objectivity itself, that is to say, without the creation of a new frame of reference that could modify either the aims, cognitive interests, or the specific methodology of modern natural science. Thus it is reasonable to argue that the technological factor turns into an actual condition of the possibility of scientific cognitive processes.

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Accordingly, the picture of physical reality is epistemologically conditioned by technology as an unavoidable characteristic of the scientific task. Technology becomes a relevant instrument determining physical objects when applying the scientifc frame of objectivity to reality.

3. But it is now possible to return to the basic question: Is the final result of this process a reductionist "construction" of scientific reality? To formulate this question properly it is necessary again to highlight those basic features of human knowledge already analyzed. Knowing indeed reduces reality to those aspects to which attention is directed. This kind of reduction, however, does not mean at all that human knowledge has to be "reductionist" in a negative sense. In any cognitive process, human reason necessarily delimits reality by focusing on those features that are most relevant to the fulfillment of its specific aims. This is for two strongly connected reasons. On the one hand, there are the intrinsic limitations of human understanding, which implies its cumulative character. On the other, there is the basic fact that the human is situated within the world, is a "being-in-the-world , " so that knowing is conditioned by the limits of this world. In general terms, the relationship between the human being and the world is responsible for the selection of features that human reason will investigate. Human knowledge is conditioned by its necessities physical, psychological, and spiritual - within the world. For this reason, knowledge has an unavoidable plurality of forms, mediated by specific interests. Even the most general and universal types of human knowledge - for instance, philosophical knowledge - are influenced by the effects of this anthropological relationship. As a result, knowing objectivity is not an absolute or unconditioned objectivity. Such would only be possible with an infinite understanding, which simultaneously embraced every possible epistemic perspective. On the contrary, human objectivity is always relative to the cognitive frame within which it is constituted. But this does not imply complete epistemological relativism. Every frame of objectivity works, at least implicitly, within some form of the regulative ideal of the search for truth. That is, if human reason conditionally establishes an epistemological perspective or frame of objectivity, this happens because the knowing subject produces from itself the transcendental regulative conditions of valid knowledge within that frame. One of these conditions is the regulative ideal of truth. Hence, in the scientific process, as far as it is correctly constituted, a

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partial truth about its objects can be attained. Of course, this will not be an "absolute" truth, but one relative to the characteristics of the object that are selected when that scientific frame is constituted. In this sense, the above reduction of reality is not a specific feature of scientific knowledge, but a necessary quality of every knowing process. From this point of view, it is not correct to call scientific knowledge "reductionist," and certainly not "technologically" reductionist, because the technological factor is simply a necessary means for the constitution of the scientific object. Reductionism exists only when we take scientific knowledge as absolute knowledge, that is, as the only possible or correct knowledge - reducing every frame of objectivity to a scientific frame, and in so doing, rejecting any other cognitive endeavor. Obviously such an attitude refuses to admit the richness of reason above all, its capacity for adaptation and creativity. In fact, the real task is to know and to use each frame of objectivity within the limits of its epistemological conditions. Many charges against scientific knowledge - including the one that technology constructs scientific reality - originate as criticisms of some absolutist claims on the part of science. Scientific knowledge has often been taken as the "definitive" paradigm of knowledge, ignoring how it is conditioned by its aims and its specific way of selecting the features of reality to be investigated, thereby giving rise to various forms of scientism. At the same time, the necessary reference to truth in science has often been devalued. This is the consequence of the reductionist thesis, which leads in turn to the idea that the results of science are not significant for the development of other frames of objectivity. Both the claim of scientism and the charge of reductionism are mistakes; scientific results possess a reference to truth; they partially discover how an object functions, and in a certain sense "what the object is," from a special point of view. In this way the contribution of science is quite relevant for the completion of any other knowing process. Moreover, in the case of scientific knowledge, it is important to observe that there exist specific methods for controlling and testing results. Control of scientific objectivity is realized by a set of means which appraise its content, and by on-going criticism within the scientific community. Nevertheless, the content of scientific truth is never unconditioned, but is influenced by methodology and the aims and interests that have helped to constitute the scientific frame of objectivity. As for the technological factor, as long as it is necessarily integrated with the scientific frame, it is truly required by the proper rationality of such a frame. Technology is a specific ingredient of scientific objectivity.

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This situation is crucial for analyzing some general philosophical problems derived from science, such as the scientific picture of the world or the quest for the nature of matter. Perhaps one could argue that such an issue is not scientific but philosophical. But the different philosophical treatments for elucidating it cannot ignore scientific results, because these undoubtedly possess their respective content of truths.

4. To conclude, the strong presence of the technological factor in the process of acquiring scientific knowledge has to be considered a condition of the possibility for this kind of knowledge. Faced with the alternative raised at the beginning of this paper between realism and epistemological constructionism, it is necessary to affirm a synthesis in which the validity of each aspect is recognized. In fact, the critical problem can be resolved by showing that it was the isolating of scientific knowledge from its real conditions, that is to say, from the conditions of scientific praxis, that gave rise to the formulation of the thesis of constructionism in the first place. On the one hand, it seems obvious that, in some sense, the concept of reality is constructed, because it is the result of a knowing process conditioned by a selection of aims. But, on the other, this does not keep it from being true knowledge, because both the regulative ideal of truth and the methodological self-control of scientific processes assure, within their limits, the content of truth. Finally, the important technological influence in scientific processes is no more than another stage in the progressive definition of the conditions of the possibility of scientific knowledge. From such a perspective, we can also begin to understand the relevance of technology for the ethical aspect of scientific knowledge. But this problem exceeds the "temporary conditions of the possibility" of the present paper.

University of Seville NOTES 1. For a clarification of this ethical level of human thought, see Ram6n Queralt6, "Human Creativity as an Ethical Aspect of Scientific Knowledge," Archives de l']nstitut International des Sciences Theoretiques, whole no. 28, Actes du Colloque de I' Academie Internationale de Philosophie des Sciences (Brussels: Ciaco, 1987), pp. 205 ff. 2. In Italian, "alcune affezioni." See Galileo Galilei. Opere. Edizione Nazionale (Florence: Barbara, 1929-1939), vol. 5, p. 187.

MIGUEL ANGEL QUINTANILLA

THE DESIGN AND EVALUATION OF TECHNOLOGIES: SOME CONCEPTUAL ISSUES

Technical change is brought about by the modification or combination of previously available techniques or by new inventions and technical discoveries. These can result from non-systematic trial and error or from systematic programs of research and technological development. In either case, there are two kinds of intellectual operations in the processes of technical discovery: design and evaluation. Both can be carried out in a rational, systematic, and scientific way, or in an empirical and intuitive (though not necessarily irrational) way. What characterizes industrial technologies and contemporary sciencebased technologies is that their development is brought about by means of systematic programs in search of new techniques, and that in their design and evaluation scientific knowledge and rational procedures are employed. This paper deals with conceptual problems that arise in the design and evaluation of technologies.) Our principal reference will be sciencebased technologies, and our objective is to analyze the conceptual structure of the operations of technological design, the meaning of the notions of efficiency and control, and the notion of technological progress. We are therefore dealing with the epistemology and axiology of technics, 2 assuming ontological ideas about the structure of technical systems developed elsewhere. 3 To begin with, we must note that the creation of new technical systems involves two separate moments: the conception of the system and its implementation or execution. Here we are interested only in the first moment, which is of a conceptual or intellectual nature - similar, in that, to other intellectual activities such as the discovery and evaluation of a scientific theory or of a new natural phenomenon. Precisely this analogy - between the conceptual operations involved in technological change and those involved in scientific change indicates a useful path for reflection. The basis of the analogy is that both cases deal with intellectual operations that lead to the discovery of new things and to their rational evaluation. The difference is that in the case of scientific discovery what we seek are theories and facts, whereas 173 Carl Mitcham (ed.), Philosophy of Technology in Spanish Spea/dng Countries, 173-195. Kluwer Academic Publishers.

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in the case of technical discovery what we seek are artifacts. Scientific theories and facts are tested according to criteria that we hope will allow us to advance in our knowledge of reality, whereas we evaluate technological designs in accordance with criteria that we hope will allow us to advance in the control of reality. At the same time, scientific knowledge can be utilized to design technologies, and technologies can be utilized in the experimental control and evaluation of scientific theories. 1. THE "LOGIC" OF TECHNOLOGICAL DESIGN

We use the expression "logic of design" in an informal sense, somewhat in the same way that the expression "logic of scientific discovery" is used. It refers to an analysis of the formal aspects present in design operations or in discovery, not to the intention of constructing a system of rules similar to those of deductive logic, which might allow us automatically to solve any design problem. The phrase "theory of design" could also be used, but in this case it might connote an empirical theory that would study the psychological processes taking place in the mind or brain of the designer. "Logic of design" is situated in a prior zone of analyzing of conceptual structures through formal methods. For Herbert A. Simon (1969), a leading proponent of the formal analysis and scientific study of design operations, to design is the same thing as to devise "courses of action aimed at changing existing situations into preferred ones" (p. 55). Designing is thus equivalent to conceiving a plan of action (Broncano, 1988). Nevertheless, in common language we distinguish between designing a new object, such as a machine or a house, and conceiving the plan of action to be followed in order to bring it about (Bunge, 1985). Designing an object naturally restricts the set of actions necessary and possible to carry out in order for it to be constructed from a given situation, but not in any singleminded manner. In terms of our definition of technique, 4 we would say that the objective of design is to conceive a technique, while the formulation of a plan of action is equivalent to specifying a particular carrying out of that technique (to design the execution of a technical system). Furthermore, a plan of action always refers to a succession of intentional actions, whereas the designing of an artifact also refers to the unintentional actions or processes involved in its material components. It would thus be more appropriate to define the operation of design in these terms: to design is to conceive an intentional system of actions capable of efficiently transforming concrete objects in order to achieve an objective that is considered valuable. Design is, precisely, to

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conceive a technical system. 5 Thus designing requires carrying out the following operations: to determine the objective of the system, the components (including the agents), and the structure (the composition of actions and interactions that lead to the desired objective). We usually think of the operations engineers carry out when they prepare a design as those referring exclusively to physical structures (to the material subsystem), because we take for granted that both the objective and most of the restrictions that condition the design are given beforehand, and might be described as imposed on engineers from outside. But although this schema may serve to account for specific projects that propose to apply a given technique to a concrete situation, it cannot account for the general process of technical design. In technical design, although obvious restrictions exist (of costs, materials, available scientific knowledge, and of technical elements susceptible to integration in a new system), in principle all of them are the object of reconsideration throughout the entire design process. Objectives may be modified as a result of the discovery of interesting new possibilities, materials can change if others are discovered that are more suitable, and even the restrictions of economic cost may vary as a result of the process of technical innovation itself. This complex and highly specific character of technical design operations does not prevent us from being able to clarify much of its structure, by considering these operations as a particular case of a much broader type of intellectual tasks - that of problem solving. We can characterize a problem as a situation that does not fit into our expectations. There are two large categories of problems: conceptual and practical. Conceptual problems arise when a certain maladjustment in our conceptual structures comes about as a result of a gap or void in some part of our conceptual system. Conceptual problems can refer both to our formal or logical-mathematical knowledge and to our knowledge of the real world and our system of values. The solution to a conceptual problem consists in reconstructing the adjustment of our conceptual structures, recomposing them, or incorporating new elements. Examples of conceptual problem solving are the proofs of theorems in mathematics, the explanation of facts in empirical sciences, and the reform of juridical and moral systems. Practical problems arise when a maladjustment is produced between our realizable desires and reality itself. The maladjustment can consist of the existence of a real situation that contradicts our desires or the absence of a real situation to satisfy them. In both cases the solution consists in adapting reality to our desires. Most practical problems in daily life can be solved by using the repertory of skills and tools already

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at our disposal. In some cases, however, we need to acquire new skills or invent new tools, something we do by trial and error, or by developing a systematic plan to search for a solution. When this plan is guided by efficiency criteria, we say that the solution sought is a technical one. Any practical problem can be represented as a conceptual problem in which our own actions form part of reality, so that the representation we make of them is one component of a conceptual structure. This explains the general interest in the analysis of conceptual problem solving. Consider first the case of scientific explanation. 2. THE MODEL OF SCIENTIFIC EXPLANATION The scientific explanation of a fact consists of deducing the statement that describes the fact from a more general theory or hypothesis. We can represent it schematically as a deductive inference of the following type: Explanans

T

C .... p

C Explanandum P

Theory Hypothesis Circumstantial facts Phenomenon to be explained

The two conditions necessary in order for circumstances C to be able to explain the phenomenon P are as follows: (1) the effect P is produced under circumstances C, and (2) the hypothesis that connects C with P (C....P) must be deducible from some well established theory (Bunge, 1982; and Quintanilla, 1976). When scientists face the task of explaining a new fact, they have, on the one hand, a set of theories relevant to the case and, on the other, a set of statements describing circumstances in which the fact is produced. The problem consists of finding a hypothesis that can be a consequence of some theory and will permit the identification of circumstances responsible for the production of the fact. To do this, various hypotheses will have to be verified by experimentally varying circumstances. A researcher may even be forced to invent a new theoretical framework if existing theories do not square with confirmed facts. The final result will be a recomposition of the conceptual structure in such a way that the fact or phenomenon that is explained can appropriately fit into the whole. We can conceive the whole setting in which the intellectual activity of the researcher is produced as a conceptual context with a series of elements (predicates, names, relationships, law statements, etc.) that

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allow the description of facts and the construction of theories. A researcher's task is to discover paths that enable one to infer descriptions of facts based on the laws and descriptions of other facts. To do so, the basic instruments are the rules of deductive logic - those rules indicating the possible pathways or the basic structure of the whole conceptual network. Scientific discoveries are, in fact, always discoveries of a deductive proof, whether we are dealing with the inference of new facts based on already known premises (theories and hypotheses), or whether we are dealing with the invention of new premises (new theories and hypotheses) that allow us to infer, in a way which is simpler and more fruitful, both old and new facts. The fundamental difference between the conceptual context relevant to the analysis of scientific discovery and a context suitable for the analysis of technical discovery is that the latter involves the representation of the possible intentional actions concerning concrete objects. We will call this type of conceptual context an operational or pragmatic context. 7 Along with theories and representations of facts, of laws and properties of reality, there are representations of intentional actions that can transform reality - or, if preferred, representations of operations. The introduction of operations in a conceptual context does not alter the basic logical structure of the context. We can represent an operation as a law in reference to the behavior of a complex system made up of an object and the agent of operation. 8 The problem of technical design consists of discovering, in the operational context, systems of actions that allow us to link initial situations with desirable objectives in a way similar to that in which, in a conceptual context, the problem lies in linking facts through theoretical structures. This enables us to use the same type of formal instruments for the analysis of design that we use in the analysis of scientific discovery (Quintanilla, 1980 and 1984). There is, however, an important difference between conceptual contexts and operational contexts that must be recognized from the beginning. Operational contexts have a property of plasticity that conceptual contexts lack. In order to explain a fact, in a conceptual context, we have to select a set of statements that describe some of the circumstances in which the fact is produced, and a set of hypotheses and theories that allow us to deduce the statement that describes the fact in question. It is assumed that the selection of one circumstance or another or the use of certain premises in the explanans does not affect the real situation. The real circumstances in which the fact is produced remain constant while we select them, and the laws of nature do not change simply because we decide to introduce one legal statement or another in an explanation. But in an operational context, the selection of an

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operation generally implies the alteration of the original situation, and thus leads to a certain recomposition of the whole range of possibilities. A context is like a network of mine tunnels that the researcher follows in all directions, trying to find the paths joining one point to another. But a designer, besides following already open tunnels, occasionally digs new ones that sometimes create new paths while leaving the rest of the network intact. At other times the new tunnel produces a cave-in that alters the whole structure of the mine, obliging one to change plans and recompose tasks in a new context. 3. MODELS OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE Artificial intelligence (AI) studies constitute a field of technological research. The objective here is to design technical systems capable of solving problems in an intelligent way - that is, in a way similar to that in which suitably capable human subjects might solve the same type of problem. This has led AI theorists to analyze the processes typical of intelligent behavior in an area somewhere between psychology and formal analysis. 9 One pioneering investigation that contributed to the development of AI theory was the study of the systems of rules for the deduction of theorems in logic and mathematics. In principle, these are twofold. One is the heuristic approach, which tries to reproduce the intellectual processes that we do in fact use in mathematical reasoning. Another is the algorithmic approach, whose objective is to establish a transformation system of logical-mathematical symbols that enable us "mechanically" to obtain an effective proof of a theorem whenever possible. One of the earliest results of such studies was precisely the discovery of procedures for representation of the formal structure of any intellectual process aimed at seeking a solution to a problem. Here we shall use the structure of a "production system" (Nilsson, 1982), a typical structure in research on AI, as the model of an operational context, in which the logic of the design evolves. A production system is made up of three elements: a data base, a system of rules for production or transformation, and a system of control which can be characterized as a "strategy." The data base contains all relevant information for describing the "world" to which the system is applied, including those states of the world that can be established as goals to be achieved. In the system of rules are all the transformation operations that can be carried out on the data. In the system of control are the strategies or ways of applying those rules in order to obtain a particular result. Take a concrete case. A production system for playing chess will be

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made up of a data base with the characteristics of the various chess pieces, their positions on the board, etc. A system of rules indicates the movements that can be made by each piece. A set of strategies tells us how to proceed in applying the rules m order to maximize possibilities for winning the game. Various strategies have been designed to solve this type of problem. One of them is the General Problem Solver or GPS (Newell and Simon, 1983). This is a "heuristic" strategy that attempts to imitate an intuitive way of reasoning when faced with a problem. The basic idea that guides the GPS is the principle of the reduction of differences. We can explain the role of this principle with a simple example (adapted from Raphael, 1984). Suppose our data base is made up of three objects: a table, a glass, and two adjoining rooms. The possible situations are given by the properties of these objects, consisting of the fact that the glass mayor may not be on the table, and both the table and the glass may be in either of the two rooms. Initial situation

Final situation

(a) The glass is on the table

(a') The glass is on the floor

(b) The glass is in room A

(b') The glass is in room B

(c) The table is in room A

(c') The table is in room B

The operations permitted by the rules of transformation consist of moving the glass from the table to the floor of the same room and vice versa, as well as moving the table from one room to the other. Suppose that, as an initial situation, the glass is on the table in room A, and the goal is to have the glass on the floor in room B. The method of differences consists of comparing the initial situation with the final one, of seeing how the two situations differ, and looking in the system of rules for those that can eliminate those differences. To be effective, however, it must be kept in mind that application of a rule may eliminate one difference while preventing others from being eliminated. (Remember the plasticity of operational contexts.) The system of rules allows the direct elimination of differences a-a' and c-c'; but if we apply the rules in this order we cannot eliminate the difference b-b'. Nevertheless, if we first apply the rule that allows us to move the table (with the glass on it) from room A to B, then we can

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apply the other rule that allows us to move the glass from the table to the floor, thus obtaining the desired result. In the area of the automatic demonstration of theorems (Loveland, 1978; and Robinson, 1979) results were spectacular and prompt. Problems can be represented in terms of production systems. In the data base are those statements that make up the premises and the conclusion of the theorem. The rules of production or transformation are rules of logical inference. The problem consists of designing a strategy that allows us to move from the premises to the conclusion by applying the rules of inference. The objective of the first researchers in this field was to find an automatic procedure for the application of the rules (a procedure that could be applied mechanically, not heuristically) and one that would guarantee, in all those cases where it was possible, that the system would construct an effective proof of the theorem. The basis of these systems resides in reducing the rules of logical inference to rules of transformation of formulas, and designing a system of control (a strategy) that will guide the transformation of formulas to the conclusion of the inference. The interest of these systems for AI is due above all to its theoretical transcendence. Any problem posed in a production system can be understood as a problem of automatic demonstration of theorems, so that any strategy applicable to the automatic demonstration can be applied, in principle, to any other system (Garcfa Noriega, 1987). Indeed, in a production system we can make the specific rules of a system become part of the data base, like legal statements that restrict the set of properties and states of the "world." Thus solving a problem is equivalent to demonstrating that, in this world or data base, the theorem or statement that describes the final situation is the one that is demonstrable. In the previous example, the data base would include not only statements that described the initial and final situations, but also operations and "laws" referring to the operations "move a glass" and "move a table," as well as other laws that are implicit in the example, such as the idea that if a table is moved with a glass on it, this glass continues to be on the table although the table is in a different place. The problem lies in demonstrating that the statement that describes the final situation is deducible from the laws in the data base in conjunction with the statement that describes the initial situation. Apart from the theoretical interest, the possibility of considering any problem-solving task as a demonstration of theorems has also come to be of great practical importance in AI investigations by allowing the use of techniques and methods of mathematical logic in the development of programming languages and systems of production. One example of the

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first type is the PROLOG language (from PROgramLOGic) that makes it possible to formulate data or information bases in terms of statements in predicate logic (Campbell, 1984; and Berk, 1985). An example of the second type is the STRIPS program (Stanford Research Institute Problem Solver), which combines techniques for the automatic demonstration of theorems with heuristic strategies based on the elimination of differences (Fikes and Nilsson, 1971). The problem of the plasticity of operational contexts, or the "frame" problem as it is known in AI, has also been approached in different ways.10 STRIPS provides one solution by formulating operational rules in such a way that in each case the effects of an operation are specified, indicating both the new formulas that must be introduced into the data base and those that must be eliminated. For example, the operation of "moving an object from point x to point y" is defined by specifying the circumstances in which it can be applied (that the object must be at point x) as well as the formulas that must be eliminated from the data base when it is applied (that the object is at point x) and those which must be added (that the object is at point y). Moreover, research is being done on non-standard logic systems that will, undoubtedly, enable us to move forward on the comprehension of properties that are shown by conceptual contexts to undergo structure changes (McCarthy, 1980; and McDermott and Doyle, 1980). For present purposes, models of AI are particularly important. A production system is a good model of an operational context, and the design of a technical system can be understood as equivalent to the definition of a strategy for effectively applying a system of rules for problem solving. In an important way, then, the formal structure of technological design is clarified by the fact that in a system of this type any problem may be posed as equivalent to the demonstration of a theorem starting from premises that describe the initial situation, possible actions, and the operational "laws" or rules. 4. INVENTIONS AND PROJECTS The result of a technological design can be an invention or a project. The greater part of an engineer's activity consists of designing projects. The realization of a project consists of designing a concrete technical system to solve a specific practical problem. To do so, an adequate combination of available techniques is used. In the AI model, we can put the designing of a project on the same level as the application of a particular strategy for solving a concrete problem within the framework of a particular, previously defined production system. The real situation, however, is somewhat more complex. Usually the

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engineer who faces the task of designing, for example, a project to construct a bridge with certain characteristics, does not have only one directly applicable strategy, but rather a whole repertory of partial technical solutions and possible strategies, which can be combined according to the parameters of the project. The originality of a project (that which justifies its being "signed" by its author, like a work of intellectual creation) lies precisely in the concrete selection of possibilities the project maker chooses. Originality and creativity in the designing of technical projects are the point of contact between technology and art. Just as in a work of art, in the designing of a project an important role is played not only by criteria of technical efficiency, but also by criteria of aesthetic taste and the project maker's own style. Projects of creative architects carry the marks of their personalities, which enables us to identify each project as distinctively by some architect. Furthermore, the originality of a project usually affects the very formulation of the objective of the project itself. The design of a building with particular functional characteristics (a hospital, for example) can be made in the standard fashion and applied to any situation where such functional characteristics are required. But to design the building in such a way that it also adapts to the landscape in which it is to be constructed, or to the habits of the population it is going to serve, or to the predominant architectural cultural traditions of the location, are specifications added to the project whose implementation will demand a greater degree of originality. In fact, the evaluation we make of a project that fulfills such specifications has an aesthetic component similar to that which is found in the evaluation we make of a unique individual work of art. Thus it is possible for a project to be original and creative even though it is not necessarily anything novel from a strictly technical point of view. In contrast, an invention is a design that requires technical novelty - that is, involves the discovery of a new technique. This novelty may affect the components, results, or the structure of the technique. The most radical inventions are those that affect all parts of a technique, as occurred with the steam engine, the electric motor, the electric light bulb, the photographic camera, the airplane, the telephone, radio, television, the transistor, and the digital computer. Such inventions are artifacts that have new properties, that use components never before used for equivalent functions, and whose structure is therefore utterly original. In the AI model a radical invention is equivalent to the design of a whole new production system, with an original data base, its own system of operational rules, and a strategy specifically defined for this system.

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Nevertheless, an invention need not be quite so radical. The modification of previously known techniques and their combination into more complex techniques is perhaps the most important source of novelty in the history of techniques. Usually the degree of novelty an invention implies depends on the use of properties and processes of physical components that had not been used until then for the same purposes. Consider the example of the steam engine. Thomas Newcomen's steam engines at the beginning of the eighteenth century were considered "atmospheric machines" because the power stroke of the piston came from atmospheric pressure pushing it into a partial vacuum created by the condensation of steam in a cylinder. James Watt achieved a notable improvement in the efficiency of this machine by means of a separate steam condenser (1765). Then later he used steam pressure for the power stroke and improved the machine with numerous inventions, among them, the introduction of the centrifugal controller for speed regulation (1787).11 What was original about the Newcomen engine was that it enabled heat to be transformed into mechanical movement. Since that original discovery numerous inventions have made the machine more versatile, more efficient, more rapid, and more reliable. But the most radical invention was the first design that applied the steam produced in a boiler to a piston, moving it along a cylinder and allowing the piston then to recover its original position in such a way that a continuous cycle was produced in its movement. By analogy with the history of science, we could say that great inventions inaugurate a new technological paradigm. Beginning with this paradigm, a whole new set of creative possibilities is opened up. New problems arise whose solutions require technical innovations. But at the same time new possibilities are offered for solving old problems. Unlike the originality of a project, the originality of an invention does not have much to do with criteria of aesthetic value. What we recognize as being original in an invention is not its capacity to achieve a particular objective in a concrete situation, but rather the novelty of the results that are obtained and the efficiency with which those results are achieved. The objective of a technical invention is not to solve a concrete problem, but rather to initiate a procedure that will lead to the solving of a whole new kind of problem that can cover innumerable concrete situations. The criteria that we use to evaluate an invention are simply the criteria of evaluation characteristic of technique. 5. TECHNOLOGICAL EVALUATION A technological design can be evaluated from two points of view:

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internal and external. We refer to internal evaluation when the criteria take into consideration only factors related to efficiency. We refer to external evaluation when the criteria relate to the usefulness or value the design has for the user or society as a whole. Both types of evaluation take part in technological development, and the criteria that are in fact commonly used to evaluate a technological design are a mixture of internal and external. It might even be questioned whether it makes sense in practice to separate these types of evaluation. Any technological design must be made within a frame of restrictions imposed by usefulness criteria, and any evaluation as to the usefulness of a technique involves its responding to a certain level of efficiency. In any case, growing interest in the external evaluation of technologies in contemporary society and the interdependence of internal and external criteria justify their differentiation and conceptual clarification. Here we will deal only with internal evaluation. 12 The kind of evaluation to which we refer when we speak of internal evaluation of technological designs is, to state it simply, what interests a technologist or engineer. Assuming the usefulness of the objective that an engineer hopes to achieve with a design, the factors taken into consideration refer to feasibility, efficiency, and reliability. Of all these criteria, the most important and at the same time the least precise is that of efficiency. The feasibility or realizability of a design is the prior condition that is required in order for it to be taken into consideration. From a strictly technological point of view, the conditions of realizability can be of two types: material and operational. A design is materially realizable if it does not contradict known natural laws. A design is operationally realizable if, for its implementation, the necessary skills and knowledge are available. We could also speak of scientific (equivalent to material), technological (equivalent to operational), and industrial feasibility. Industrial feasibility, however, refers to external criteria of evaluation (economic profitability, among others). An important part of technological research consists precisely in making ideas that we believe are physically realizable also operationally realizable. For example, the research program for the control of fusion energy is physically realizable, and the idea of the project is to increase our knowledge of physical processes so as to make it possible to confine the plasma in operational conditions, and to discover systems for taking advantage of the energy produced with an adequate performance. Not just any realizable design is technically valuable. In order for it to be so, it must also be efficient. The notion of efficiency is, however, rather ambiguous. It is only precise in the thermodynamic sense. But the criterion of thermodynamic efficiency, despite the importance it has

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acquired as a consequence of the energy crisis, is not the only one relevant to technological design. For example, the energy consumption of present day personal computers is so negligible that it would be irrelevant to evaluate the efficiency of a computer in terms of energy consumption - although in earlier days considerations of this type were very important in evaluating the technology of the transistor (Braun and MacDonald, 1984). They are still important in electronic circuit integration, but more because of the problem of heat energy and its impact on performance than because of energy efficiency itself. The notion of performance or productivity of an action, as we have defined it,13 makes it possible to generalize a certain measure of efficiency to any property of a system by comparing the magnitude or importance of the cause with the magnitude or importance of the effect in relation to any sort of variable. But this does not allow us to evaluate the efficiency of a system in overall terms (taking all pertinent variables into account). One way of solving the problem is to replace the efficiency valuation with a cost-benefit valuation. In such a case we would understand technological efficiency in terms of economic rationality (Maattessich, 1978). An action is rational if it uses the most suitable means to reach the desired goal, which in economic terms means that it maximizes results and minimizes costs. In order to apply this procedure we need to define a utility function applicable to each of the components or variables relevant to the evaluation of a technology. The criteria of economic rationality would coincide with the performance criteria applied to each variable separately and would enable us to calculate the overall performance of the system in terms of that utility function. The most obvious way of doing this, though not the only way, is to use the market prices for each of the components and actions that make up the system. Nevertheless, the reduction of the notion of technological efficiency to economic rationality is equivalent to substituting an internal evaluation criterion for another criterion of external evaluation, and this conceals the peculiarities of technological rationality. Let us then try another way to analyze the concept of efficiency. 6. EFFICIENCY AND CONTROL The general goal of technique is to increase our ability to control reality, somewhat in the same way that the goal of scientific research is to increase our knowledge of reality. It is worth developing this intuitive idea, because from this idea it is possible to give precise content to the technological concept of efficiency and to clarify the

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content of notions such as technological progress and technological rationality. In everyday language we use the word "control" with a double meaning: to direct or govern a process (traffic control), and to oversee or check a property (quality control). In technical language the notion of control is used mainly in the first sense, although it does include components of the second. A thermostat, for example, is a control device for temperature; it ensures that the temperature does not go beyond certain limits, and when this happens, it sets in motion processes that guide the temperature back to some programmed level (Vazquez, 1988). We can define the general notion of the control of a process in the following terms: System S controls process P in a system SI, if P depends on the action of S on SI, and P stays within the fixed limits of variability. Consequently, we consider system SI controlled by another system, S, if S controls at least one process in S'.14 The control of a process can vary in strictness or laxity, depending on the level of "spontaneous" variability permitted. And the control of one system by another can vary in extension, depending on the number of variables in the system that are affected by the control. The control action need not be intentional. Vito Volterra's equations define a system of population control for two animal species in the same ecological niche. Foxes and rabbits can multiply or reduce their population within certain defined limits as a result of their mutual interdependence. Nor is it necessary, in principle, for the intervention in the process to be reiterated. In some cases one sole action can be enough to set a process in motion with very restricted variability limits. For example, the trajectory of a powerful long-range artillery shell is controlled by the artilleryman at the moment it is fired by fixing the angle of the barrel. In other cases, successive interventions are required to correct variations in the process. For example, to correct the trajectory of a remotecontrol missile it is necessary to introduce an indefinite number of correction responses throughout its flight path. The artificial control of a process is a particular case in which the control action is intentional and its aim is precisely to manage to keep the process within certain limits. The same is true, mutatis mutandis, for the artificial control of the overall behavior of a system. In this sense it can be understood that the function of any technical system is to control a part of reality in such a way that its behavior remains within the limits that are compatible with the objectives of the system.

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The degree of artificial control of a particular system depends on three factors: the level of tolerance of variability compatible with the objectives of the system, the number of variables to be controlled, and the degree of correspondence between the objectives of the control action and the results actually obtained. But it is plausible to think that all three are interdependent. The stricter the limits of tolerable variability and the more numerous the variables controlled, the more guarantee there is that effective control will be possible. It is easier to redirect the trajectory of a missile after a minor deflection than when much broader deflections are tolerated. It is more effective for a security system of a nuclear plant to be based on multiple and redundant controls than on only one control on one sole variable. And in general the effective realization of an objective of a technique is more likely to be achieved the more it depends on artificially controlled processes and the less it depends on natural processes. We can characterize the notion of technological efficiency in terms of the third factor that defines the degree of control. A technical system increases in efficiency as there is an increase in correspondence between the objectives and the effective results of the system. Indeed, when we evaluate an action or a system of actions from the point of view of technical efficiency, what interests us is the degree to which the results of the action coincide with the objectives we are intentionally pursuing by carrying it on. And the reason that this is the predominant criterion in the internal evaluation of a technology is that efficiency, understood in this sense, is an indicator of the degree of artificial or intentional control that enables us to produce the technology in question. This notion of technological efficiency is independent of any utility function, but at the same time it enables us to account for other common interpretations that we give to the concept of efficiency. Indeed, as a condition for an action to be considered as an intentional one, it is required that the agent believe that the objective 0 of the action will be included in the results R actually obtained. The inclusion of both 0 and R is justified because both the objectives and the results of an action can be characterized in terms of sets of values of the variable of the state of the system on which the action is exerted. A measure of the correspondence of two sets could fulfill one of the following conditions: if the sets are coextensive, the correspondence is maximum; if they have nothing in common, it is minimum; in the other cases, the value of correspondence must reflect the proportion of the elements that they actually have in common with respect to all the elements that both contain. These conditions are stipulated in the following formula:

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E(A)

=

10 n RI 10 URI

where E(A) represents the efficiency of an action or system of actions A with the objective 0 and result R, and the numerator and denominator of the formula represent the absolute numerical values of the designated sets of intersection and union. The range of the function is the interval [0,1]; its value is 0 when the objectives and results of the action have nothing in common, and 1 when they fully coincide. Intuitively, we consider that an action is inefficient not only when it does not achieve the anticipated objectives, but also when it achieves them by squandering resources. This is the sense that we give to the conception of technical efficiency as the adapting of means to ends, or "instrumental" rationality. Part of this idea is included in the proposed definition. Indeed, one of the indicators that we have for knowing whether a squandering of resources has been produced in an action or system of actions is the number of results (changes of state of properties), that are superfluous (not required for the objectives of the action) and this factor is included in our formula. The measure is also compatible with the concept of thermodynamic efficiency. What this actually measures is the waste of energy in the performance of a mechanical task, and is a particular case of the measure that we propose. In particular, the maximum technological efficiency of an engine (no superfluous results and therefore zero waste of energy in the form of heat) would imply total thermodynamic efficiency. Since the latter is impossible according to the second law of thermodynamics, so is the former. The notion of efficiency is the basis for the definition of other internal criteria of evaluation, particularly those of effectiveness and reliability. A technique is effective if it really achieves the objectives for which it has been designed, that is, in our formula, if 0 n R = O. A technique is reliable if its efficiency is stable (if it does not significantly vary over time). 7. TECHNOLOGICAL PROGRESS The pessimistic ideologist may think that it is absurd to talk of technological progress. Each new technique that is applied to solve some type of problem engenders at least as many new problems as it solves, and to imagine that any of us would be happier living in the Paleolithic Age is within the reach of any human mind because free imagination allows us to place television sets in stone age caves. The

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truth is, however, that in the evolution of technics, as in so many other aspects of culture and civilization, it is possible to observe lines of progress in an obvious sense, independent of whether we can evaluate such progress as positive or negative from a moral perspective. Indeed, if there is anything that can be affirmed in the history of technics it is that through technics, human beings have come more and more to control parcels of reality and to do so in a more rigorous and complete manner. The most fundamental philosophical question that is posed by technological progress is not the question of its moral goodness or badness, but rather the understanding of its mechanisms and the causes that explain the form of technological evolution and the meaning it has. And the thesis that we defend in this respect is that technological progress is a consequence of the use of efficiency criteria in the evaluation of technologies and is, therefore, a phenomenon that can be understood in terms of factors internal to technology itself. This leads, then, to an understanding of the rational and therefore the relative meaning of progress. One of the consequences of this way of phrasing the question is that a completely perfect technology (the "hypermachine") is recognized as an irrational myth. There are two aspects of technological progress: the appearance of new techniques that permit us to control new sectors of reality, and the improvement in the efficiency of these techniques, which enables us to better control the sector of reality to which each one of them is applied. Both aspects of technical growth or progress depend on the same criterion of technological rationality or efficiency of action. Certainly humanity could adopt a different attitude and, instead of trying to modify and control the surrounding world, try to adapt human wishes to reality. But as soon as someone poses the objective of the transformation of reality so that reality is adapted to human wishes, one has taken a definitive step toward placing oneself in the vortex of technological development, from which it is not possible to escape without abandoning this intention (something which, in a historical situation such as ours, would be equivalent to suicide). The desire to survive, to obtain food and protection from the natural environment, is the origin of the first utensils and technical works. Improvement in the efficiency of tools made of bones was responsible for the first attempts to use materials for technical applications, and the attempt to control variations in temperature was responsible for the first techniques of the control of a natural process, i.e., of fire. In general, the technologist who wishes to improve the efficiency of a device has two ways of doing so: by trying to control more variables and more relevant processes, and by attempting a stricter control of such

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processes. The result in both cases is extension of the technique, increase in the complexity of the design, and intensification of intentional intervention. The use and synthesis of new materials, the standardization of components in mechanical technologies to facilitate their integration, the substitution of artificial processes for natural processes in biological technologies, and the refining of systems for the management of technologies are all results of these two strategies for the maximization of efficiency. One of the consequences of this dynamics of technological development is that as the extension or intensification of technics increases, so does their versatility and, consequently, the possibilities for the integration of technical systems and the level of complexity of new techniques. The introductIon of robots with articulated arms for manipulating objects is a good example of how the efficiency and versatility of a technique can increase, multiplying interventions in processes and designing devices that take care of controlling more primary processes. As a simple example, take the following diagram: Unarllculaled arm

ArUcululed arm

It shows a non-articulated mechanical arm A and an articulated robot arm B in which the task of the robot arm is to move its effector B' in a straight line parallel to a specified plane, so that the movement is equivalent to that of mechanical arm A controlled by a driving wheel. The difference is that the movement of the mechanical arm is rigid. It always makes the same movement through the same trajectory. But the robot arm is flexible. It can follow different trajectories and easily reach an infinite number of different points on a plane. Moreover, Ule mechanical device cannot compensate for losses of efficiency from friction and wear or decreased reliability. 'Ole robot, by contrast, can correct its own deviations and inefficiencies.

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The principle on which the action of the robot is based is the division of the process (following a trajectory) into multiple sub-processes (segments of trajectory) and the strict control of each. The dividing of the trajectory into small uniform segments allows for greater control of each and for greater ease in the eventual adaptation of the whole system to different trajectories. Now there are two ways of constructing a robot with an articulated arm: by using ordinary electric motors to move the articulations, or by using step-motors, whenever the specifications of the robot make this possible. A robot that uses ordinary electric motors needs to incorporate mechanisms for detecting positions and for braking movements for each arm. What is needed is a control system that can make continual corrections in order to compensate for maladjustments caused by the inertial movement produced in the arms, and to send instructions to start or stop, and so on. The control system for an articulated robot arm will follow this scheme: (1) the division of the trajectory into segments as small as is appropriate; (2) for each segment, the sending to the motor of each articulation instruction; (3) processing of signals from the sensors for the position of the respective articulations, and the calculation of the angular displacement of each; (4) if this displacement has reached the prearranged limit for the segment of the trajectory, the sending of instructions to brake and block the motors; (5) checking of the value of the sensor for the position of the effector, and if it has deviated from the norm, correcting the position by sending new signals to the appropriate articulating motors; (6) repetition of the process for the next segment of the trajectory. The peculiarity of a robot with articulated arms lies in the division of a movement into small segments and the control of each. Its difficulties arise from the need to control the continual rotary movement of the electric motors. The introduction of step-motors extends the principle of the division of tasks to the actual functioning of the motors, thus simplifying the whole process. A step-motor is an electric motor that acts on short impulses of direct current. Each impulse generates a small angular displacement of its shaft, which is blocked by the mechanism of the motor itself until it receives a new impulse. The incorporation of step-motors into the articulations of a robot simplifies the control of its movements in an obvious way. The division of the task to be done into segments is determined beforehand by the magnitude of the angular displacement produced by each impulse, in such a way that the only thing that the control system of a robot has to do is to calculate the angles of the two

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arms for each accessible point of the trajectory, and to send the corresponding number of impulses to each motor. There is no need for sensors for the position of the sections of the articulated arm, and the braking and blocking mechanisms are already incorporated into the structure of the motors. This example of the articulated robot arm can be used as a metaphor for what happens in technological development. Efficiency increases as control increases, and this is achieved by increasing the number of interventions in the processes and in the depth to which intervention has taken place, which leads to greater versatility, integration capacity, and technical complexity. From this perspective, it could be said that technological progress follows an inexorable direction toward the total control of reality and that, guided by the sole criterion of efficiency, the technological ideal could be characterized as the achievement of the complete machine or the hypermachine, as we call it, to give some color to the idea. Indeed, let us imagine that all real processes are made up of elementary segments, and that we manage to design technical systems capable of totally controlling each of the segments or elementary events possible in the universe. We call the technical device that results from the integration of all these the hypermachine. The existence of the hypermachine would apparently mean the attainment of total technical efficiency. Its potential use would be to achieve whatever goals it set for itself, and only the goals it set for itself. The problem of the hypermachine is that it is impossible. It exists only in certain literary works, in theology books that defend divine omnipotence, and in the frightened minds of those who prefer to mistrust technology rather than to understand it. There are obvious arguments to prove the impossibility of the hypermachine. First, natural processes are not usually discrete but continuous. In order to control reality we parcel it into discrete segments that we try to control, but in principle there is no finite limit to the segmentation of reality. 15 Second, increase in control and efficiency is based on the increase of our knowledge, and we know from logic that our knowledge is inevitably incomplete. Third, total efficiency implies complete thermodynamic efficiency, which is impossible. The idea of total control, the hypermachine, is thus an irrational myth - and is not only unnecessary for understanding the meaning of technological progress but is in fact incompatible with it. Progress can be measured by the proximity to a goal or by the distance covered from a beginning point. The idea of progress applied to any aspect of human life is always of the second type, although prejudices that are deeply rooted in our culture continually lead us to the

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illusion of conceiving ultimate goals for humanity. For example, we can have concrete knowledge of truths, but not absolute truth itself (Quintanilla, 1982). With regard to morality, surely we are less and less bad with time, although we cannot be absolutely good. In art, we enjoy things that are more and more beautiful, yet absolute beauty, were we able to conceive it, would surely bore us. And in technics, we want to control reality more and more, yet we do not wish to control ourselves and lose our freedom. Technological progress is, then, cumulative - not theological. It is a consequence of the search for efficiency in our actions and thus for the maintaining of a rational attitude. And it has a specific character and value which need not coincide with moral value. But the internal criteria, based on efficiency, and the objective of control of reality, are not the only criteria we use to evaluate technology. We also use external, social, moral, or political valuations - or those of an economic nature. On these also depends the concrete way in which technical change is produced. - Translated by Susan Frisbie and Belen Garcia

University of Salamanca NOTES 1. This paper is adapted from Quintanilla (1989), chapter 5, "Disei'io y evaluaci6n de tecnologias," pp. 89-109. 2. We use the word "technics" with a generic meaning and "technology" with a specific one. Technologies are that subclass of technics that are based on scientific knowledge and rational methods of evaluation. 3. See Quintanilla (1989), chapter 3, "Fundamentos de la ontologia de 1a tecnica, " pp.49-69. 4. A technique is an intentional system of actions, capable of efficiently transforming concrete objects in order to achieve an objective that is considered to be valuable. See Quintanilla (1989), chapter 2, "Caracterizaci6n de la tecnica," p. 34. 5. There are, of course, other meanings for the word "design." Artistic design consists of the conception of a concrete object with aesthetic value, and what is termed "industrial design" is the application of the criteria of artistic design to industrial products. 6. We take the notion of conceptual context from Bunge (1974), vol. I, chapter 5. 7. Quintanilla (1988) and Broncano (1988) use the term "set of pragmatic possibilities" to refer to the set of possible states of a system that are, besides, potentially desirable for a subject. It is obvious that the set of pragmatic possibilities is determined by the operational context. 8. In the terminology of Bunge (1982), this is a nomo-pragmatic statement. 9. Boden (1984), Raphael (1984), Cuena el al. (1985), and Mompfu Poblet (1987) provide comprehensive information on the most relevant research and problems in the area of artificial intelligence.

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10. Nilsson (1982) and Shoham (1988) offer a general interpretation of the frame problem, relating it to the specific problems of reasoning about the future. 11. See Dickinson (1958). 12. For external evaluation see Quintanilla (1989), chapter 6, "EI desarrollo tecnol6gico," pp. 111-123. 13. See Quintanilla (1989), chapter 3, "Fundamentos de la ontologia de la tecnica, " especially pp. 63-64, where we define the magnitude or importance of events in a system as the distance between initial and final states, and the performance or productivity of an action of system S on system S' as a relation between the importance of the event cause in S and the event effeet in S'. 14. This notion of control in a system, although more lax, is compatible with what is used in cybernetics. See Wiener (1985), and Ashby (1972). 15. See, e.g. N.S. Goel, S.c. Maitra, and E.W. Montroll, On the Volterra and Other Nonlinear Models of Interacting Populations. New York: Academic Press, 1971. 16. This is one of the arguments used to defend the indeterminist conception of the universe, even from the point of view of classical physics, as Popper (1984) proposes.

REFERENCES Ashby, W. Ross (1972). IntroducciOn ala cibernetica. Buenos Aires: Nueva Visi6n. English original: Introduction to Cybernetics. New York: Wiley, 1956. Berk, A. A. (1985). Prolog: ProgramaciOn y aplicaciones en inteligencia artificial. Madrid: Anaya. Boden, Margaret A. (1984). Inteligencia artificial y hombre natural. Madrid: Teenos. English original: Artificial Intelligence and Natural Man. New York: Basic Books, 1977. Braun, E., and S. MacDonald (1984). Revoluci6n en miniatura: La historia y el impacto de la electr6nica del semiconductor. Madrid: Teenos-Fundesco. English original: Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1978. Broncano, F. (1988). "Las posibilidades teenol6gicas: Una linea de demarcaci6n entre ciencia y tecnologia," Arbor, issue no. 507, pp. 47-70. Bunge, Mario (1974). Semantics. 2 vols. Boston: D. Reidel. Bunge, Mario (1982). La investigaci6n cient!fica. Barcelona: Ariel. Bunge, Mario (1985). Treatise on Basic Philosophy. Vol. VII: Philosophy of Science and Technology, part II: Life Science, Social Science and Technology. Boston: D. Reidel. Campbell, J. A. (1984). The Implementations of PROLOG. Chichester: Ellis Horwood. Cuena, J., et al. (1985). Inteligencia artificial: sistemas expertos. Madrid: Alianza. Dickinson, H. W. (1958). "The Steam-Engine to 1830," in C. Singer et al., eds., A History of Technology. New York: Oxford University Press, vol. 4, pp. 168-198. Fikes, R. E., N. J. Nillsson. (1971). "STRIPS: A New Approach to the Application of Theorem Proving to Problem Solving," Artificial Intelligence, vol. 2, no. 2, pp. 189-208. Garcia Noriega, B. (1987). "L6gica, problemas y programas," Arbor, issue no. 496, pp. 105-124. Loveland, D. W. (1978). Automated Theorem Proving: A Logical Basis. Amsterdam: North Holland. Maattessich, R. (1978). Instrumental Reasoning and Methodology. Boston: D. Reidel. McCarthy, John (1980). "Circumscription: A Form of Non-monotonic Reasoning," Artificial Intelligence, vol. 13, no. I, pp. 27-40 McDermott, D., and J. Doyle (1980). "Non-monotonic Logic," ArtificialIntelligence, vol. 13, no. I, pp. 41-72.

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Mompin Poblet, J., ed. (1987). Inteligencia artificial: Conceptos, tecnicas y aplicaciones. Barcelona-Mexico: Marcombo-Boixareu. Newell, Allen, and Herbert A. Simon (1983). "GPS: A Program that Simulates Human Thought," in Feigenbaum and Feldman, eds., Computers and Thought. New York: McGraw-Hill, pp. 279-293. Nilsson, N. (1982). Principles ofArtificial Intelligence. Berlin-Heidelberg-New York: Springer Verlag. Popper, K. (1984). The Open Universe: An Argumentfor Indeterminism: From the Postscript to the Logic of Scientific Discovery. Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Littlefield. Quintanilla, Miguel Angel (1976). "EI mito de la ciencia," in M. A. Quintanilla, ed., Diccionario de fil!osofla contemporanea. Salamanca: Sfgueme, pp. 65-81. Quintanilla, Miguel Angel (1980). "EI problema de la racionalidad tecnol6gica, " Estudios Filos6Ji,cos, vol. 29, no. 8, pp. 105-131. Quintanilla, Miguel Angel (1982). "La verosimilitud de las teonas," in Actas del Primer Congresode Teoriay Metodolog(a de las Ciencias. Oviedo: Pentalfa Ediciones, pp. 473-503. Quintanilla, Miguel Angel (1984). "Creatividad y racionalidad en la ciencia," in Estudios de 16gica y filiosofla de la ciencia II. Salamanca: Editorial Universitaria de Salamanca, pp. 55-79. Quintanilla, Miguel Angel (1989). Tecnolog(a: Un enfoque filos6fico. Madrid: Fundesco. Raphael, B. (1984). EI computador pensante: Introducci6n a la informatica para psic61ogos y humanistas. English original: The Thinking Computer: Mind Inside Maller. San Francisco: W. H. Freeman, 1976. Robinson, J. A. (1979). Logic: Form and Function: The Mechanization of Deductive Reasoning. Edinburgh University Press. Shoham, Y. (1987). "What is the Frame Problem," in Georgeff and Lansky, eds., Reasoning about Actions and Plans. Los Altos, CA: Morgan Kaufman, pp. 411424. Simon, Herbert A. (1969). The Sciences of the Artificial. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Vazquez Campos, M. (1988). "Planificacion y control en los sistemas artificiales," Arbor, issue no. 507, pp. 89-96. Cibernetica. Madrid: Guadiana. English original: Wiener, Norbert (1960). Cybernetics. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1948.

JOSE SANMARTIN

FROM WORLD3 TO THE SOCIAL ASSESSMENT OF TECHNOLOGY: REMARKS ON SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY, AND SOCIETY

1. ON THE AUTONOMY OF SCIENTIFIC THEORIES From a well-known point of view, science is thought to constitute a world of objective entities (World3) different from the objective world of material things (World1) and the subjective world of minds or mental states (World2). This is an old trichotomy, of which Popper is the leading contemporary proponent. For Popper, the argument that science is an inhabitant of World3 can be summarized in three propositions: (a) Science is a linguistic framework consisting of statements. (b) Statements express propositions or thoughts. (c) Thoughts do not require any knowing subject to exist, since they are ideas - and, thereby, independent entities - that can be comprehended by anyone sufficiently familiar with the language or the totality of designations used. Thus thoughts are not subjective, are not bound up with anyone thinking individual. They enjoy a separate ontological status and are the common property of many. Therefore their objectivity cannot be disturbed by any corresponding mental states of particular knowing subjects. Even if I am bored or drunk, the thought expressed by E = mc2 does not change while I am aware of it. Nor will it be modified because it is comprehended by persons with different ideologies. The independence of World3 allows us to proclaim science autonomous with regard to the physical, social, and psychological worlds. Social or psychological characteristics of scientists can be stories attached to a scientific theory, but they are not factors determining the structure of any scientific theory. The consistency of a scientific theory exists independent of any mental state or social status of scientists. A scientific theory is consistent when it is free from contradiction, when both A and - A cannot be derived from it. That is all. Moreover, neither psychological nor sociological elements are factors relevant to the dynamics of scientific theories. Scientific theories are refuted or corroborated regardless of scientists' particular mental states or the kinds of social frameworks involved. The refutation or corroboration of a scientific theory depends on a "yes" or "no" said by the world to the

197 Carl Mileham (ed.), Philosophy of Technology in Spanish Speaking Countries, 197-209. °1993 Kluwer Academic Publishers.

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theory.

Logic, on the one hand, and the world, on the other, are the only determining factors of the structure and dynamics of scientific theories. Intuitions, beliefs, feelings, values, norms, etc., are outside this range of relevant factors. They belong to the external history of science. They may affect the process of formulating a hypothesis. In this context, it is not odd that anecdotes are told about the invention of certain hypotheses. It has been said, for example, that the chemist Kekule had long been trying unsuccessfully to devise a structural formula for the benzene molecule when, suddenly, he found an appropriate hypothesis while dozing in front of his fireplace. Gazing into the flames [Hempel writes] he seemed to see atoms dancing in snakelike arrays. Suddenly, one of the snakes formed a ring by seizing hold of its own tail and then whirled mockingly before him. Kekule awoke in a flash: he had hit upon the now famous and familiar idea of representing the molecular structure of benzene by a hexagonal ring. I

Although this is true, it is one thing to invent a hypothesis, and something else to accept the hypothesis as scientific knowledge. Hypotheses can be accepted into science only if they pass critical scrutiny, which includes, in particular, logical analysis and empirical testing. Therefore, appealing to psychological or social elements - to the external history of science - to account for the structure or dynamics of science is completely inappropriate.

In accounting for the structure and dynamics of science, it is not legitimate to appeal to elements that do not strictly fit criteria of analytic rationality - a rationality bound to the understanding of science as a set of theories and to the understanding of theories as sets of statements with objective and autonomous content. 2. ABOUT BASIC SCIENCE AND APPLIED SCIENCE This traditional understanding of science can be supplemented by a widespread distinction between pure science (or basic research) and applied science. Scientific theories belong to pure science. Scientists do research into pure science without necessarily thinking of applications. They try only to satisfy the need to know. But at times some theories are applied. Applied science, then, is simply applied theories. If a scientific theory has been applied to a technique, the result will be a technology. From this point of view, technology is technique

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with a remarkable added characteristic. Techniques are arts and crafts. There are arts and crafts without any underlying scientific theory, so that theoretical ignorance is attached to practical knowledge. The practitioner knows how to do something, but not that something is the case. The practitioner can successfully control events, while ignoring the nature of these events. Such a practitioner can, for example, produce beer without knowing about the existence of brewer's yeast. Technology is, on the contrary, technique with an underlying scientific theory. This theory provides scientific knowledge about the events earlier controlled by techniques without underlying science. Such theory is like the eye of technique; it can see the events controlled by technique. In technology, theory guides technique. This means that technology will successfully control events previously explained scientifically. Unlike technique, the success of technology - its efficiency - does not result simply from increased practical knowledge, but depends also on underlying scientific theory. Once a technology to results from the application of a scientific theory To, to will evolve in parallel to the evolution of To. On the one hand, the sequence To ... Tn means that there is an increase in scientific theory, that scientific knowledge grows. This is what constitutes socalled "scientific progress." On the other hand, "technological progress" is constituted by the technological evolution that results from a continuous replacement of worse technologies by better ones. Improved theories bring about better technologies. In advancing science, we advance technology. Thus it can be said that, sometimes, scientific is paralleled by technological progress. This is summarized graphically in Figure 1. Knowledge ~ To .... Tl .... T2 .... T3 .... ~

~

~

~

to .... tl .... ~ .... ~ .... Efficiency • (where T; are theories, t; are technologies, and each subsequent ~ is better)

Figure 1. Dynamics of Scientific Theories and Related Technologies But what does it mean that technologies are replaced by better ones? Although there are different criteria to account for progress in technology, there is one theme common to all. One technology is better

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than another if it is more efficient (or effective). Technological progress means an improvement in the rate or measure of efficiency, and efficiency means to work better with lower costs. A technology works better when it has an increasing capability to detect and control events (or their causes). As its capability for detecting and controlling events increases, technology multiplies and diversifies its good effects. In particular, new technology (better technology) entails improvements in nature, culture, and society. One of the most obvious characteristics of technology is that it brings about (or inhibits) changes in nature. Technological changes in nature brought about by human beings are addressed to the satisfaction of their necessities, or better, to the abolishing of necessities. "The necessities," argues Jose Ortega y Gasset, "are imposed on human beings by nature; human beings respond by imposing changes on nature."z These changes are technological. Nature is re-formed by technology. This reformation means that nature is adapted technologically to human beings. Such adaptation involves technologically abolishing the aspects of nature that place us in need. In removing necessities imposed on human beings by nature, we can create increasingly new welfare possibilities. At least since the Industrial Revolution, such welfare has depended mainly on the application of technology to industry. Applying technology to industry means applying scientific knowledge to production. This entails that science guide production procedures and increase their measure of effectiveness. The result is higher profit with lower cost. This yields more wealth. As more wealth is produced, more wealth can be socially distributed.

Some scientific theories are sometimes applied to techniques, generating technologies. The improvement of these theories entails the improvement of such technologies. As technology improves, human beings increase their welfare: the world becomes more human and, of course, richer. This could be what is called "social progress. " 3. ON THE EXTERNAL HISTORY OF SCIENCE AND TRADITIONAL TECHNOLOGY ASSESSMENT Science has an inner logic of development, independent of psychological or social elements. Applied science equals technology. Technology makes it possible for humans to scientifically control and use their natural environment. This scientific control and use entail social progress. Thus science developing according to its own inner logic is the source of social progress. Therefore neither science nor technology should be impeded by external factors. We should not

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interrupt or disturb the successful inner workings of science and technology by contextual interventions from society. Social progress depends on science and technology being allowed to run by themselves

- without social intervention.

But there is another point as well. During the Industrial Revolution not only was technology applied to industry but a new kind of economic market emerged. This was the free market. Such a market, like science and technology, demands freedom, the blocking of external influence or control. Just as science must be free from external constraints, so technology (applied to industry) must be free from external constraints, and the economic market must be free from external constraints. "External constraints" and "contextual interventions from society" are synonymous here. The global consequence is the idea that an alliance between science, technology, and the market, as independent from external interventions by society, equals social progress. Sometimes (the traditional argument continues) the special autonomy of technology is contested because the uses of technology are confused with technology. However, in speaking of the use of technology, it is conceded that technology is something in itself. Technology is only applied scientific theory, not necessarily used. One may possess a technology and not use it. Thus the use of technology is, on the one hand, extraneous to technology. And, on the other, the use of technology may be ethically right or wrong. Therefore, technology by itself is ethically neutral (as neutral as scientific theory). In short, there is nothing inherently either good or bad in technology. It is use that

may be good or bad. 3

Identifying the uses of a technology with a technology itself leads people to blame neutral technology for negative impacts raised by wrong uses. The only way of avoiding these impacts seems to be, then, relinquishing the technology at issue. This is the current behavior of Luddites. The contrary view, not confusing the uses of technology with technology itself, allows us to assess applied technology. 4

The first step in a Technology Assessment process is to identify positive and negative impacts. These impacts may be categorized along disciplinary lines enabling the assessment to draw on specific expertise (e.g., sociologists to treat sociological impacts, economists to treat economic impacts, etc.). This is the so-called EPISTLE (Environmental, Psychological, Institutional/Political, Social, Technological, Legal, and Economic) impact classification scheme.

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In a strict sense, this approach (technological impact assessment) must assume that a technology has been applied. You can only assess the effects of causes that have already occurred, the effects of a technology that has been applied. S There is however a more farsighted version of this approach. Potential technological impacts may also be predicted. In fact, early warning and forecasting was originally the main role attributed to Technology Assessment. However, forecasting does not entail here that society is then better able to chart the course of events. Because the traditional conception of the science, technology, and free-market complex as a neutral source of social progress involves the idea that society must not disturb its inner workings, social constraints have traditionally not been proposed as appropriate solutions for potential problems raised by a technology. Thus, according to the traditional image of the science-technology-market complex, these problems should not be solved by social intervention but through better science, better technology, and a better market. 6

With the impacts identified, the second step in a Technology Assessment process is to study or analyze its magnitude. This is the goal of impact analysis. The magnitude of the impacts is usually determined by cost-benefit analysis in accordance with the traditional conception of technology. But in regard to this one can add two remarks. First, attention has not usually been paid to negative social impacts (real or potential). The reason is simple. Even if it seems that particular persons win or lose, the sum of all technical applications benefit humanity as a whole, since "the human being without technique, " as Ortega says, "is not human. ,,7 In contrast to the common adaptation of the living being to an environment, human beings react on their environment, adapting it to themselves. The adaptation of this environment to humans assumes that humans reform the nature that places them in need. This reform means that humans successfully abolish the necessities imposed by nature. The way of doing this is technically to construct a new nature - " a supernature interposed between man and original nature," as Ortega says. If this assumption is true, technology would be a better servant to produce this supernature than technique. For technology is scientific technique, and scientific technique is more efficient than technique in shaping an artificial milieu. Second, the cost-benefit analysis of impacts on nature assumes that nature is a set of economic goods. It means that everything in nature has a price. s Environmental values (e.g., the values of clean water,

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clean air, wilderness, etc.) are then somehow expressed in dollars. The magnitude of an impact depends on the price of the affected natural factor. That price, in tum, depends on how much you are prepared to pay for this unaffected natural factor. This implies that one has ready answers for questions such as: How much are you prepared to pay for clean water? How much are you prepared to pay for preserving endangered species? Perhaps it would be difficult to determine prices such as these, but according to the traditional image of the sciencetechnology-market complex, this procedure would be the only appropriate way of allocating natural factors (as economic goods) in a rational manner. This allocation would allow us to compare the benefits of a technology (in particular, a technology applied to industry in a free market) to its negative natural impacts, and to take rational decisions about controls. For example, as Thurow says, "the basic problem in our national debate about pollution controls is that neither side is really willing to sit down and place a value on a clean environment and then do the necessary calculations to see whether it can be had for less than this price. "9

Once the impacts are identified and analyzed, all that remains are policy options for dealing with the desirable and undesirable consequences. Minimizing undesirable consequences (if possible) would optimize desirable effects. It would promote, in tum, the positive public perception and acceptance of technology. This last point is very important, because today there is evidence of an increasingly broad social concern over the deleterious (direct or indirect) effects of technology. Since technology is applied science, this concern affects science. Thus science is being less and less perceived as the foundation for a cornucopia and more and more perceived as a source of disaster. Science is less and less entrenched in society. This increasingly negative social perception of science could be the source of the current crisis in scientific vocations and of contemporary difficulties in finding managers of innovation. The supporters of the traditional image of science, technology, and Technology Assessment blame the crisis on the fact that there is a set of techno-catastrophists who are almost paranoid opponents of science. Many philosophers, radical environmentalists, and feminists are said to belong to this group of scientifically illiterate and uninformed neo-Luddites. lO Their problems with science and technology are reduced to a matter of lack of information about science and technology. Therefore it is necessary to supply society with more scientific and technological information.

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However, the real issue is not more information about science and technology; it is education in Science, Technology, and Society. 4. SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY AS SOCIAL PRODUCTS Let us re-examine the traditional conception of the sciencetechnology-market complex and its relation to Technology Assessment (TA). First: What does it mean to say that technology is applied science? It means that technology results from the application of scientific theories. What is a scientific theory applied to, when a technology is produced? Technology results from applying scientific theories to previous techniques. Technique is historically developed without the benefit of science. Technique arises empirically either by accident or as a matter of common experience. 11 Its improvement depends then on concrete trial-and-error experiences. Technology is scientific theory added to technique. In this framework, scientific theory explains the causes of events that were controlled by technique. The improvement of technologies does not depend on concrete experience, but on increasingly better scientific theory. Second: Among the factors involved in a technology, what is prior, scientific theory or technique? Usually, it is technique. Asking for the real causes that are controlled by a technique is, in general, the first step in the search for appropriate scientific theories. Therefore, it is necessary to complicate Figure 1 by introducing technique, in Figure 2:

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~

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Figure 2. Technique + Scientific Theory = Technology But neither the genesis nor the development of technique has the same inner logic as the development of scientific theory. The improvement of scientific theories depends on increasing our knowledge of efficient causes, while the origin and the development of techniques depend on

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fulfillment of final causes. The improvement of techniques, in particular, depends on employing trial and error to satisfy needs or goals. According to results, structural changes may be introduced in technique. These changes could improve the function of a technique, even if one is still ignorant of what precisely occurs or why this improvement in the function of a technique is really produced. Third: This raises at least two questions. On the one hand, when a technique becomes a technology, do the intentions, purposes, or goals fulfilled by this technique stand outside the technology? On the other hand, why is a certain technique chosen for the application of science? These questions can be answered altogether. The fulfillment of intentions, purposes, or goals resides in the development of technologies too. Usually, these goals are the same ones fulfilled by the respective techniques. The main difference between technology and technique is that the first is vastly accelerated in efficiency by having been brought under applied science. It entails that a technology fulfills definite goals better than the respective technique. It does not entail that technology is goal-free.

The goals of technologies are framed by social contexts. Within them, values normally guide the formulation of ends for technology. In this sense, technology is called value-laden. But if this hypothesis is correct, then society is not an add-on that appears in the last step of a process that starts with pure science. Technology, as science applied to technique, is not something autonomous with respect to society. Technology by itself is not free from social factors. In sum, the social framework in which technology occurs decisively affects technology. FIRST CONSEQUENCE: Thus, it is not legitimate to say that technology provides social progress if its own logic is not disturbed by social elements extraneous to its essence. It could be replied that social elements shape the uses of technology, not the technology itself, because the uses are to satisfy needs, goals, or purposes. But it is necessary to review the distinction between technology and the use of technology. In this context, the term "technology" usually refers to tools. Other potential references are excluded. Certainly it is much easier to distinguish between a tool and its use than between a social organization and its use. The apparent straightforwardness of the distinction between tools and uses rests, in turn, on the conventional concept of use.

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According to this conventional concept, people think, as Winner says, that once things have been made, we interact with them on occasion to achieve specific purposes. One picks up a tool, uses it, and puts it down. One picks up a telephone, talks on it, and then does not use it for a time. . .. The proper interpretation of the meaning of technology in the mode of use seems to be nothing more complicated than an occasional, limited, and nonproblematic interaction. ,,12

Problems with technology then force us to solve the question about how the things are made, how they work, and how they are used. "How things are made" and "how things work" are the domain of technologists. The appropriate answers are yielded in terms of materials, principles, or scientific procedures. To answer "how the things are used," it is enough to list the different ways in which these things are used to aid in human activity. The tasks seem easy. But this conventional concept of technology and use is incorrect. Even if we consider "technology" and "tool" as synonymous, it is obvious that technologies are not merely servants of human activity. In general, "technologies are also powerful forces acting to reshape that activity and its meaning. ,,13 The very act of using certain technologies such as phones, computers, faxes, etc., reshapes the human activity of work and its meaning. These technologies can even give rise to activities and become forms of life, because "life would scarcely be thinkable without them. ,,14 SECOND CONSEQUENCE: The interpretation of technologies as forms of life entails that it is incorrect to see technologies as things with which, once made, there is only an occasional interaction. On the contrary, the very existence of certain technologies (for example, computers), beyond their occasional use, introduces vast transformations in the texture of life. Take the case, for example, of the introduction of computers in our society. Computers not only increase productivity, they also radically change the process of production. Computers are not only used to do banking transactions, to write papers, or, through networks, to send mail; they are radically changing our concepts of time and space. Thus it is not enough to list occasional uses about "how the technology is used" or "how it is going to be used." It is necessary to clarify the transformation of human activity and its meaning through the mediating role of technological devices - a transformation that alters concepts of self and sets up new social relationships. In other words, it is necessary to scrutinize the technology, not its occasional uses, to understand how

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it can affect the texture of our lives. Forecasting is required. Early warning and forecasting was originally the main role of Technology Assessment. But forecasting does not entail that society is then better able to chart the course of events. If technological innovation - without unjustifiable social intervention - is understood as the basic cause of social progress, one assumes that technological innovation will be carried forward. The effects or impacts of this technological innovation are going to happen no matter what. Forecasting impacts helps us to conform to them. As the guidebook of the 1933 international exposition in Chicago dedicated to a "century of progress" declares: "Science finds, Industry applies, Man conforms." Forecasting then means that it would be convenient to know the potential effects of a technological innovation. So one will be ready to adapt human societies (even human nature) to technological impacts. But. .. THIRD CONSEQUENCE: If technology is value-laden, then social

intervention, or better, the social mastery 0/ technology, is not only justified, but required. This means that the forecasting of potential effects of a technological innovation does not imply the necessity to conform to them; it is required to chart the course of the events. A potential event is the generating of a new form of life. Thus, it is not enough on that score to analyze potential uses of the technology at issue. It is necessary to identify potential new forms of life that might be produced. This new task of Technology Assessment, which would better be called the Social Assessment o/Technology, is very difficult to carry out. But the contemporary social entrenchment of technology seems to require it. Only when society begins to play its role in technological decision making will society begin to see technology in a different way. To fulfill this objective, it is necessary to enhance new ways of

democratic decision making.

One possible procedure has been proposed, so-called "Constructive Technology Assessment" (CTA). In order to bring technology within democratic decision-making processes, technology assessment must be modified by three new elements: (1) Assessments of the potential impacts of a new technology must be able to be brought forward by the social groups concerned or by representatives of society at large. Here, special technoethics committees could be useful. (2) Institutions (parliaments, research units, corporations, etc.) related to the technological innovation in question must develop possible technological and, if need be, organizational solutions for problems

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identified by both "experts" and social groups. (3) There must be procedures for feedback from social interpretations to technological design. IS See Figure 3.

Value-laden technology X

• • - Parliaments • Technologists • techno- - Reconfigured • legal or Redefined

Committees of TA experts Social groups involved

logical designs

social arrangements

Figure 3. Social Assessment of Technology Such assessment could give rise to positive public perceptions of particular technologies and help solidify technology in society.

University of Valencia NOTES 1. Carl G. Hempel, Philosophy of Natural Science (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1966), p. 16. 2. Jose Ortega y Gasset, MeditaciOn de /a tecnica, section 1. 3. "Ethically, technology is neutral. There is nothing inherently either good or bad about it. It is simply a tool, a servant. . . .• This text is found in an advertisement for the United Technologies Corporation (see Steven L. Goldman, Science, Technology, and Social Progress, Bethlehem: Lehigh University Press, 1989, p. 297). 4. See, for example, Alan L. Porter, Frederick A. Rossini, Stanley R. Carpenter, A. T. Roper, Ronald W. Larson, and Jeffrey S. Tiller, A Guidebookfor Technology Assessment and Impact Analysis (New York: North Holland, 1980). 5. "After the bulldozer has rolled over us, we can pick ourselves up and carefully measure the treadmarks," says Langdon Wmner (in The lWIale and the Reactor (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986), p. 100. 6. "Better science" implies "more knowledge." "Better technology" implies "more efficiency." "Better market" implies "more free enterprise." None entails "more social control. " On the contrary, as social control is increased, less knowledge, less efficiency, and a worse market are produced. 7. See Ortega y Gasset, "El mito del hombre allende da t6cnica" [The myth of humanity outside technology], in Obras completas, vol. 9, pp. 617-624. First published as "Der Mythos des Menschen hinter der Technik," in Otto Bartning, ed., Mensch und

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Raum (Dannstadt: Neue DannstidterVerlagsanstalt, 1952), pp. 111-117. 8. See, for example, Langdon Wmner, The lWzale and the Reactor (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986), pp. 123-127. 9. Lester Thurow, The Zero-Sum Society: Distribution and the Possibilities for Economic Change (New York: Basic Books, 1980), p. 105. 10. See, for example, W. Hafele, "Energy," in C. Starr and P. Ritterbush, eds., Science, Technology, and the Human Prospect (New York: Pergamon, 1979), p. 139. 11. See James K. Feibleman, "Pure Science, Applied Science, and Technology: An Attempt at Defmitions," in Carl Mitcham and Robert Mackey, eds., Philosophy and Technology (New York: Free Press, 1972, 1983), pp. 36-38. 12. See, for example, Winner, The lWzale and the Reactor, p. 6. 13. Ibid. 14. Ibid., p. II. 15. See Paul Slaa and E. J. Tuininga, "Constructing Technology with Technology Assessment," in Miguel A. Quintanilla, ed., Evaluaci6n Parlamentaria de las opciones cientificas y tecnolOgicas (Madrid: Centro de Estudios Constitucionales, 1989), pp. 99111. Slaa and Tuininga add there two examples of CTA. The first is a summary of an extensive case study carried out by Jasp Jelsma for the Netherlands Organization for Technology Assessment (NOTA) about recombinant-DNA experiments. The second is a recent project on the Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN) - an integration of the telephone, telex, and data networks - to be installed EC-wide in the course of the 1990s. According to some leading consumer and privacy organizations, this new technology is a threat to individual privacy and to the principle of unifonn public access to telephone service. NOTA also carried out a CTA on this project. First, an overview was provided of social concerns and proposed modifications. (These are reported in Paul Slaa, ISDN as Design Problem (The Hague: NOTA, 1988). Second, these concerns and changes were discussed by all groups involved (industry, trade unions, consumer representatives, government) in a workshop. Third, based on these discussions an advisory report was brought to parliament in which political and organizational proposals are made, see Slaa and E. J. Tuininga, pp. 105-106.

JOSE SANMARTIN

GENETHICS: THE SOCIAL ASSESSMENT OF THE RISKS AND IMPACTS OF GENETIC ENGINEERING

The main issue regarding technology is not just finding ever more precise answers to questions such as "How was it created?" and "How does it work?" The most crucial issue concerns "How is it going to be used?" A socially acceptable answer to this last question cannot be reduced to offering a list of the particular uses of the technological elements and systems at issue. As these elements and systems are developed, it very often happens that they become new ways of life. A technology becomes a way of life when it brings into being new forms of existence that wind up seeming essential to life itself. Thus society usually hinges in some way on technologies, yet currently people have little opportunity to choose such ways of life. There are even people (mostly engineers and politicians) who think that asking for understanding and approval of the consequences of a technology prior to its use is pure demagogy which can lead to stagnation or decline in the standard of living. This argument is usually accompanied by the stipulation that no individual's creative labor should be interfered with. Quite the reverse, it is said: Humanity has often progressed thanks to the work of a genius who dared like a pioneer to go further than was considered morally convenient at the time. History, it is added, winds up honoring such pioneers, showing just how unjustified it was to set up limits that have to end up being overcome. It seems that today we are entering a new social order over whose dominating ways of life the joint use of two powerful technologies computers and genetic engineering - are going to have a decisive influence. Revolutionary changes, even in our self-comprehension, can be predicted. We can either trust that pioneers will continue to force us to advance, no doubt through catastrophic clashes with religious or mystic-ecological creeds, or we can try rationally to assess the risks and impacts of these technologies. Such assessments, which would transcend mere economic analysis and include not only impacts on the environment, could be called "social assessments." 211 Carl Mitcham (ed.), Philosophy of Technology in Spanish Speaking Countries, 211-225. °1993 Kluwer Academic Publishers. . .

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PARAMETERS IN THE SOCIAL ASSESSMENT OF TECHNOLOGY At the risk of oversimplifying this social assessment of technology, I will deal with a process circumscribed by three parameters: (1) The first parameter is the strict analysis of such technology. Every technology is the result of embedding some technique in a theoretical framework. This framework tries to explain the causes that are being controlled by the technique without people being conscious of it. In order for this explanation to be scientific, in a strict sense, the causes must be quantifiable. Such an analysis will allow us to separate the technique and the theory that are woven together in a technology. See figure 1. Identifying the

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theoretical framework of a technology is very important in order to identify its key concepts. Among such concepts there might be some that are transferred from earlier theoretical frameworks, thus providing theoretical unification or a unified theory. This unification might provide hypotheses which, in tum, would allow reinterpretation of the results of such a technology. For example, the concepts of information and information processing system play important roles in the theoretical framework of computer technology. In the framework of information theory, computer technology embeds the techniques of calculating and sorting. In cognitive science during the 1980s, the concepts of information and information processing systems were transferred from information theory to several theories about the behavior of non-human and human animals. Through this theoretical unification, the cognitive sciences tried to explain the behavior of living organisms - from the phototropisms of a microorganism to intelligent responses of a human or non-human animal - as the output of a living system that processes information in the form of sensory inputs. The theoretical framework of the cognitive sciences, in tum, provided interpretive assumptions of the results of computer technology. Certain computer processes were reinterpreted as thoughts. Some interpretive assumptions, provided by the theoretical unification of the cognitive sciences, have allowed us to reinterpret computers as entities so similar to human beings that they fall today into a single new genus, the so-called "informavores." Such an analysis of computer technology can clarify both the theoretical framework of the techniques of the technology and the theoretical unification that eventually makes it possible to interpret the results of the technology. It can even allow us to better understand the epistemological character of this unified theory - whether it is scientific or merely metaphysical speculation, in whose name the results of the technology are very often interpreted and legitimized. (2) The second parameter of the social assessment of technology must attend to the social risks and impacts associated with panicular technologies. In standard assessments today, attention is not usually paid to ways of life, values, etc. This is not surprising, when assessment means only setting a price. It is very often impossible (not just difficult) to calculate economically the value of social elements that are not commodities. However, not to assess these social elements is something that leads many citizens to be suspicious of technology. (3) The third parameter for the social assessment of technology that goes beyond a purely economical context has to do with proposed laws to regulate the development and use of technology. Laws and regulations in this field should be inspired by ethical principles. I am

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not, at this time, going to indicate these principles, the foundations of which demand profound philosophical reflection. I simply refer to the wide discussion of principles that aim to defend rights that individuals democratically acknowledge by virtue of their birth. FROM BIOTECHNOLOGY TO HUMAN GENETIC ENGINEERING The following example of genetic engineering should allow me to clarify some of the foregoing parameters. From a historical point of view, genetic engineering is the last stage of biotechnology. Biotechnology, in a strict sense, consists of techniques that, first, allow us to isolate microorganisms or live cells, starting with vegetable and animal tissues and, second, allow us to cultivate and use these microorganisms or cells to obtain metabolic products or to serve as catalysts for chemical reactions. The procedures mentioned have not always been consciously carried out. At least since neolithic times microorganisms have been isolated and used for fermentation, but the existence of microorganisms has been known only since the seventeenth century. Prior to this period techniques were known and used, taking advantage of fermentation, for instance, to make bread, beer, wine, yogurt, and cheese. What was not available was the technology, because the causes of fermentation were unknown. There was technique but no theory. Today we have the technology - to be more exact, in these contexts, biotechnology. Compared to traditional techniques, biotechnology shows two great differences. The first difference concerns the procedures of contemporary biotechnology, which are guided. In other words, biotechnology involves scientifically explained entities or events. Thus there are theories that explain the causes that had been unknowingly controlled by earlier biological techniques. To summarize: The isolation of microorganisms or cells, and their subsequent cultivation, involves careful planning within a framework that is set, at least in part, by the theory of evolution, microbiology, and genetics - in particular, molecular genetics. We begin by isolating microorganisms or cells that are potentially useful for achieving our aims. Then we try to determine the diverse forms in which a certain gene could be present in the individuals of a population. Later, we try to select appropriate mutants. Finally, we attempt to multiply the separate microorganisms or cells, creating a line of genetically stable microorganisms or cells as the end result. Biotechnologists working in this way do not exhibit great differences

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from those engaged in the traditional improvement of vegetables or animals. But in the 1970s, recombinant DNA technology started to be increasingly used in place of the traditional selection of appropriate mutants. This leads directly to the second characteristic of contemporary biotechnology. To obtain metabolical products, the most successful procedure in the last twenty years is the following. To begin, we choose a certain microorganism; later, we try to insert into its chromosomes the DNA sequence coding for a given protein from another individual. The technology that makes the mixing of diverse genetic materials possible is called recombinant DNA technology. During the 1980s we were able to synthesize (even industrially) somatostatin, human insulin, human growth hormone, and interferon by means of recombin~t DNA and technological manipulation of the E. coli bacterium. A change in the traditional pharmaceutical industry has thus taken place. For example, the pancreas of a cow or pig was traditionally used to produce insulin to treat diabetics. Given the difference between human insulin and porcine or bovine insulin, the immune system of some diabetics produces antibodies against the foreign insulin, neutralizing its action. Using recombinant DNA technology, the DNA sequence coding for human insulin can be inserted in the genome of an organism such as E. coli. Under appropriate circumstances, this microorganism can be raised to a cell-lineage, and the bacteria, like microscopic assembly-line workers, will produce human insulin. Thus by the term "genetic engineering" we mean in the first instance that set of technologies for gene manipulation which includes: - A technology that allows us to cut an organism's genome at a certain spot. Like microscopic scissors, restriction enzymes are used. - A technology that allows us to remove a DNA sequence. - A technology that allows us to insert a DNA sequence in the genome of an organism. Such genetic manipulation has already gone through three phases. In the first, almost exclusively microorganisms were manipulated. These manipulated microorganisms have been mostly applied in the pharmaceutical industry and to a lesser degree in the mining of minerals that were scarcely profitable using traditional techniques. In the second phase, vegetables and non-human animals have been genetically manipulated. Here we can mention the efforts to develop new varieties of plants (e.g., wheat) capable of fixing nitrogen. In the third phase, gene manipulation is being attempted on human beings. In this phase, gene therapies for diseases and even propensities or predispositions to

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certain diseases are expected. But, as a second meaning, we include human genetic engineering, especially technologies that are not strictly manipulative such as: - Technologies for the mapping and sequencing of the human genome or for the finding of bases that make up the human genome, and the localization of the gene coding for proteins (or regulating that process) among the total human DNA. - Diagnostic tests for genetic diseases or propensities. GENETIC DIAGNOSTIC TESTING IN CLINICAL CONTEXTS Let me now focus on the second of these aspects of genetic engineering, genetic diagnostic testing, and then turn to the issue of the social assessment of its risks and impacts. Genetic diagnosis, in particular genetic screening, consists of locating gene abnormalities responsible for diseases or propensities. This is, in theory, easy to attain. If the gene abnormality is known (for example, a case where one or several bases are replaced by different ones), a DNA probe can be made that identifies the affected DNA sequence. This probe is made with a chain of bases (usually, radioactively labelled) complementary to the sequence of bases that constitute the defective DNA sequence. In this way, given appropriate conditions, the bases of both the DNA probe and the defective DNA sequence will adhere to each other. The radioactive labeling will allow us to identify a pair of adhered chains. See Figure 2, next page. Using genetic screening, we can today identify a hereditary disease or a susceptibility to develop some disease. Consider the following two paradigmatic cases - one of a genetic disease, the other of susceptibility or predisposition to disease.

A Paradigmatic Genetic Disease: Sickle-Cell Anemia The principal cases for genetic screening are constituted by hemoglobinopathies, such as sickle-cell anemia or thalassaemias. Sicklecell anemia is a well known example because it is determined by an apparently minimal defect in just one gene. A change in one base causes a valine amino acid to substitute glutamic acid in one of the chains of human hemoglobin (the beta chain). As a result the hemoglobin molecule stops being soluble and forms a rigid crystalline structure inside the red cells that adopt the form of a sickle - hence the name, "sickle-cell anemia." This structure (see Figure 3, p. 218) causes

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On the other hand, it was very likely that normal homozygotes, who had inherited two copies of the normal genes for the beta chain of hemoglobin, would have died of malaria. The heterozygotes for the sickle-cell trait do not develop the sickle-cell disease, and even exhibit resistance to diseases that people with a normal genetic makeup can suffer.

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A Paradigmatic Genetic Susceptibility To Disease: G-6-PD Deficiency There exist propensities that only lead to diseases under certain environmental conditions. Some specific circumstances of the workplace environment (e.g., the existence of chemicals, nuclear radiation) stand out among such environmental conditions. Workers with a susceptibility or propensity to a disease have one or more genetic DNA sequences that can potentially lead them to develop a disease under prolonged exposure to certain agents of the workplace environment. For example, there are people (mainly members of racial or ethnic minorities) who have a genetic susceptibility to develop a particular kind of job-related anemia when they have prolonged exposure to naphthalene and other industrial chemicals. In this case, the genetic susceptibility is induced by the so-called "glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase" (or "G6-PD") deficiency.

Clinical Utilization Undoubtedly, from a clinical point of view, the genetic diagnosis of diseases is going to have increasing value. We are already able to know about the existence of a hereditary disease at a very early stage. Thus in some cases we can treat the patient to appropriate therapies in early stages with spectacularly positive results. It is to be hoped that as genetic diagnostic tests are improved, the number of diseases detected in this way will increase with consequent advances in the field of preventive medicine. In this sense predictive medicine might be even more important than preventive medicine. The genetic diagnosis of susceptibility can allow us, in particular, to identify employees suspected of being predisposed to a disease when exposed to certain workplace environments. Genetic information on the future status of their health gathered through genetic screening could allow employees to plan their lives accordingly. For example, workers detected as carriers of the G-6-PD deficiency can decide whether or not to keep their jobs when such jobs subject them to prolonged exposure to naphthalene. The clinically positive impacts of genetic diagnosis seem, in short, very important, and they will certainly increase as the reliability and accuracy of the genetic tests increase. However, these advantages should not obscure problems that are already present in clinical contexts in which genetic diagnostic testing takes place. First, there are issues referring to the reliability and accuracy of these tests. Second, even if the reliability and accuracy of the tests increase, it is obvious that interpretive assumptions can have a strong influence on how they are used.

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Among contemporary interpretive assumptions there are hypotheses that depend on unified theories derived from the genetic engineering technologies. Consider especially theories of biological determinism, which argue somewhat as follows: Since genes are related to anatomical and physiological phenotypes, such theories enhance the prospects for identifying DNA sequences that determine traits of human behavior and mind. As new technologies are developed for genetic testing and manipulation, with the potential to remove or alter the controlling genes, such theories enhance the prospects for locating and removing the genetic determinant basis of important characteristics of human mind and behavior. Usually the supporters of these hypotheses at first refer only to diseases such as schizophrenia or mental retardation. But then they mention characteristics such as aggressiveness or IQ, and tendencies such as alcoholism and drug abuse. . The Minimization Of Environmental Factors

Such theories rely on genetics and genetic engineering. In turn, they provide frameworks for interpreting the results of gene technologies. In particular, they provide hypotheses that allow us to interpret a DNA sequence predisposing to a disease as the basic genetic determinant of that disease. In this way, the role played by environmental factors is minimized. In the specific case of occupational diseases, minimizing the role of the workplace environment entails placing the responsibility on workers for their health. Accordingly, if employees who undergo prolonged exposure to certain workplace environmental agents get sick, it is attributed to individual biology, to genetic predispositions to disease. Companies do not have to clean up their plants; workers have to change jobs. Minimizing the importance of environmental factors in diseases can have an impact well beyond the clinical setting. It directly enhances the appeal of a particular belief about the causes of disease. From Pasteur until now the dominating image of disease has been that of a health problem caused by invading microorganisms. Medicine has been mainly anti-biotic. Today this view is starting to give way to a new one. Developing a disease depends mainly on individual biology, on genetic makeup. This is obvious in some cases, when there are actual physical pathologies. It is much less obvious when we seek to identify the root causes of future physical health problems in the absence of actual symptoms. People who believe in biological determinism assert that the role played by the affected DNA sequences in the appearance of a predisposition to disease is the most important. Environmental agents

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such as air pollution, chemicals, or nuclear radiation would not cause ill health in the absence of DNA sequences determining individual susceptibility. Thus they assume that individual genetic makeups are the root causes for human health problems arising from environmental pollutants and conclude that we must use genetic technology to improve human biology and induce the appropriate genetic resistances. HUMAN GENETIC ENGINEERING IN NON-CLINICAL CONTEXTS Genetic diagnostic testing does not remain within the clinical context. This is usually the only place where risks and impacts are analyzed, but the results obtained by genetic diagnostic testing can be (in fact, are) transferred to data banks, where they are available to non-clinical institutions. These data banks gain particular relevance for corporations, insurance companies, schools, and the courts. Let me limit discussion here to considering the risks and impacts of genetic screening in large corporations ("occupational genetic screening"). The early discovery of genetic susceptibilities is, in theory, of great advantage to diagnosed workers. Theoretically, such results allow workers to cease contact with whatever is inducing the development of a disease. This is a crucial point. But we must immediately consider the way in which this "ceasing to have contact" can take place. It is not the same, for example, if the decision to give up a job is made by the person diagnosed with (hyper)susceptibility or if it is made by the employer. It is also not the same whether a decision not to take a job is made by an applicant in whom a (hyper)susceptibility has been detected (but who for the most part is perfectly capable) or whether it is an employer who decides not to hire the applicant so diagnosed (although the individual is otherwise quite capable). In the first instance, supposing that there are no economic constraints, the patient simply decides to take a risk. This is like deciding to sky dive. In the second instance, when genetic screening becomes a means employers use to evaluate and hire workers, companies will almost certainly be acting to save money by avoiding one or more of the following costs:

- Costs of cleaning up a work place: By eliminating workers at "high risk" employers can leave the work place in its current "contaminated" state. There have already been cases, especially in the chemical industry, in which the alternative has been to exclude

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employees rather than decontaminate the work place. - Costs of worker absenteeism: A person prone to a disease is a worker who may well probably miss work because of health problems. - Health costs: It is frequent (at least in the case of large corporations) that firms are the organizations which fund medical insurance policies and provide health care. Hiring workers prone to certain illnesses increases health benefit costs. - Costs of lawsuits and possible compensation for health damages: This is a motive that is extraordinarily strong today and the reason why North American employers are increasingly using genetic screening.

Aspects Of The Social Assessment Of Genetic Testing On the one side, such advantages for employers must be attended to by any assessment of genetic screening; on the other, the risks and impacts should also be considered. These risks and impacts affect, at first, individual patients, and afterward society as a whole. Regarding the risks and impacts for individuals, there are at least three points to be considered. First, false positives involve diagnosing someone as diseased or as prone to a disease when this is not the case. This problem depends to some extent on the reliability and accuracy of diagnostic tests. Some people think this problem will diminish with increased diagnostic accuracy, but in the real world of today in which false positives do occur, they can cause individuals to find themselves involved in, at times, basic labor decisions with important economic consequences. Or they can cause social marginalization. A second risk will not decrease with improvement of the accuracy and reliability of genetic screening tests. It has to do with an attitude that has been developing since the first genetic diagnostic tests were introduced. Even among those realizing that it is not the same to be heterozygote as it is to be homozygote for a certain disease or susceptibility, heterozygotes tend to be (and have often been) treated as homozygotes . Given that hereditary diseases and susceptibilities are tied to mutant genes, it is logical that, from an evolutionary point of view, they almost always affect ethnic or racial minorities. If, moreover, heterozygotes and homozygotes are dealt with in the same manner, a large part of an ethnic or racial group could be considered actually or potentially sick. This is at least ironic, considering that ordinary heterozygotes are the most fit individuals for dealing with certain environmental circumstances to which their populations were at one time subject. To treat heterozygotes as actually or potentially sick could have grave economic

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consequences and marginalize a significant portion of some race or ethnic group. This could reasonably lead to the suspicion that genetic diagnostic testing is simply being used to disguise the racist attitudes of those who defend what they are doing as adopting scientific methods to improve the health of the labor force. The third risk is the possibility that diagnosing persons with a susceptibility to a disease at a later date can jeopardize their present even when the future disease may never occur. This jeopardy could force a person to make important decisions about occupation and way of life on the basis of quite weak statistical probabilities. Complementary to this economic issue there is a grave ethical question. Should we inform persons that they have a susceptibility to develop a disease in the future? Given the lack of excessively high levels of reliability and accuracy in genetic diagnostic testing; and given that it is not known why some people having the same susceptibility develop a certain disease when others do not; and in light of the role that idiosyncrasies· and environment play in the final appearance of a disease, is it reasonable or fair to ask a person to bear the burden of social discrimination - or even the burden of personal knowledge? It is also the case that the understanding of statistical probabilities among the general population, and even among experts, is woefully inadequate to the correct interpretation of much of the existing genetic diagnostic testing information and results. Regarding the risks and impacts of genetic diagnosis technologies for society, there are at least two points to be considered. First, when there is a choice between decontaminated work places or "resistant" workers, it is likely that employers will choose to have nonsusceptible workers employed in contaminated work environments. Genetic diagnostic technologies can be used by employers to promote two very different kinds of action: keeping genetically susceptible workers out of specific workplaces, and reducing high levels of pollutants in all work places. We run a grave risk that the second will take place - which is clearly against the interests all members of society have to live in a clean environment. A second serious social risk is that which, in fact, underlies a large number of the possible negative impacts already mentioned. This concerns the invasion of personal privacy. Information regarding an individual's genetic makeup increasingly tends to be transferred from private case histories to data banks, which then make it available to nonclinical institutions. Such institutions then can invade personal privacy, using the genetic information to impose labor and other choices upon affected individuals.

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EPILOGUE: TOWARD GENETHICS In countries such as the United States, where genetic diagnostic testing can now be introduced on a mass scale, employers are appealing for such testing to avoid long and costly lawsuits caused by strict health liability and workplace regulation. I suspect that it is not on the basis of ethical principles that these employers - who otherwise oppose strict social regulation of the workplace and who may be trying to circumvent its principles and implications by genetic testing - are now speaking up in favor of genetic diagnostic testing. What I mean by basing social regulation on ethical principles is this. If genetic technologies in general, and genetic diagnostic tests in particular, have advantages, risks, and disadvantages for both individuals and society, then it is obvious that there should first be a social assessment, then use should be regulated so that the risks and disadvantages can be minimized and the transgression of rights avoided. The relevant rights could, in the case of genetic diagnostic testing, be reduced to one basic principle: Genetic information should not be used to impose decisions on diagnosed individuals. The formulation of this right is what I understand as an ethical principle, or better yet as a genethical principle, the foundation of which need not depend on deep philosophical reflection. It rests quite simply on the nature of the human social organizations that respect these rights. (I think that going beyond this, looking for justifications of another sort, would be philosophically interesting but is practically unnecessary.) Once such a genethical principle is established, it is not difficult to apply it in regulations for specific technologies. It is enough, following a list of risks and impacts, to start taking preventive measures. In any case, strict fulfillment of the genethics principle at issue will remove most actual and potential problems. If, for example, the abovementioned principle is respected, then it is clear that - There will be no problems of economic deprivation, social marginalization, or social stigma as a result of false positives. - There is no possibility that heterozygotes will be treated as if they were homozygotes (in non-clinical contexts). In each case the information necessary to produce such consequences would be known only by the diagnosed persons and their physicians. Furthermore, if concerns about their health on the part of workers were to become a basis for pressuring companies to alter policies regarding workplace contamination, then there would be no reason to worry about the consequences of the use of genetic diagnostic

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technologies. At present, however, numerous indicators point in the opposite direction. Thus it is important to establish certain preventive measures for the use of this technology if we do not want to end up creating a new social class, membership in which would depend on having an acceptable genome. The best preventive measure I know is to pursue the social assessment of human genetic diagnostic technology and then to establish legal regulations for its use based on genethics principles. REFERENCES Hubbard, Ruth, and M. S. Henefm (1985). "Genetic Screening of Prospective Parents and of Workers: Some Scientific and Social Issues," International Journal of HealJh Services, vol. 15, no. 2, pp. 231-251. Mitcham, Carl (1989). i Que es Ia filosofla de Ia tecnolog{a? Barcelona: Anthropos. Nelkin, Dorothy, and Laurence Tancredi (1989). Dangerous Diagnostics: The Social Power of Biological Information. New York: Basic Books. Sanmartin, Jose (1990). • Alternatives for Evaluating the Effects of Genetic Engineering on Human Development,· in Paul T. Durbin, ed., Broad and Narrow Interpretations of Philosophy of Technology. Boston: Kluwer, pp. 153-166. Sanmarti'n, Jose, ed. (1991). GenEtica: El impacto social de Ia ingenier(a genetica humana. Theme issue of Arbor, whole no. 544 (April), pp. 47-70. Suzuki, David, and Peter Knudtson (1990). Genethics: The Engineering of Life. Revised edition. Stoddart, 1990. First published by Stoddart, 1988; then with a subtitle, The Clash between the New Genetics and Human Values, by Harvard University Press, 1989. Wmner, Langdon (1986). The Whale and the Reactor: A Searchfor Limits in an Age of High Technology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986.

PART V

FROM VENEZUELA

JUAN DAVID GARCfA BACCA

SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY, HISTORY, AND PHILOSOPHY IN THE CULTURAL ATMOSPHERE OF OUR TIME

Our corporeal life is ordinarily spent on earth and within the air. The earth is almost completely the possession of someone, individual or state. It is, as the economists say, a good with a price, and a high price. The air - for now - is a non-valuable good, that is to say, with no determined or determinable price, either by the amusingly named democracy of the market or by some authority with more brute power than grace or efficiency. Now air is known as a mixture consisting mostly of oxygen and nitrogen, plus small amounts of water vapor, argon, neon, helium . . . .I Physical-chemical science tells us that. Life tells us that the air is atmosphere, a Greek word that in common terms means: sphere in which we breathe. Such is its vital function; and such has it been for man, probably for a million years, without noticeable change in composition. But that air is a mixture of gases in various proportions is a discovery of science that dates back little more than a century. The mind, soul, or spirit of man lives within another atmosphere. Almost coeval with the discovery of the physical composition of the material atmosphere was the discovery of the atmosphere of the soul, which has been called the "culture of an age" or "worldview." To know of what this is composed, and in what proportions, as well as their tempestuous or daily changes, is an even more modern discovery. Let us name the discoverer. It is Dilthey. Until him each epoch breathed in its worldview or cultural atmosphere, in an immediate, unconscious, global way; but it knew neither what it was nor of what it was composed. It breathed; it did not know. It lacked something like the physics and chemistry of its culture. Our soul or spirit changes much faster and more radically than our body. In a million years the physical atmosphere has not noticeably altered, but the cultural atmosphere has been transformed at least six times - either by the introduction of new elements or by changes in the These changes are proportions of those which already existed. equivalent, to put it in physical language, to the introduction of gold vapor into the air, or to inverting the proportions of nitrogen and oxygen, twenty percent for the former and seventy-eight percent for the latter. The formal components of our cultural atmosphere are science,

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technology, history, philosophy, theology, law, art, and so on. What is the typical proportion of these in our age, that is, what is the composition of our cultural atmosphere? The percentages about which I am going to talk clearly do not have any more than a symbolic value. And, of course, what will be said is more proposal than pretention to a definitive answer. Our worldview, our cultural atmosphere, or the air of our spirit is composed of forty percent science, thirty percent technology [tecnica], ten percent history; of seven percent philosophy; of five percent law; of four percent art; of two percent theology, and let us leave two percent for other elements. In other ages - the medieval, for example - the proportion of theology must have been eighty percent, with five percent for philosophy, the "handmaid of theology," and less than one percent for science. . .. Our atmosphere would have been asphyxiating for medievals, just as theirs would be for us. It is thus of decisive importance to know what science, technology, history, and philosophy are - with "apologies to God" for ignoring the other components. (A little justice mixed with urbanity will engender proper respect for this remark.) So let us begin with the theme, What science is - the oxygen of our cultural atmosphere. I. WHAT IS SCIENCE? AS THE FIRST AND PRIMARY ELEMENT OF OUR CULTURAL ATMOSPHERE

What is science for us - for us in the twentieth century? What science was or was understood to be by Greek, medieval, and Renaissance men is a matter of history - a history of what we would propose was of a discreet ten percent importance compared to the seventy percent for contemporary science and technology. And what science will be for the men of the year three thousand, thirty thousand, three hundred thousand, or three billion, is a matter of super-prophecy that we are not in a hurry to declare, since we have to be modest and take care not to be ridiculous with epochal or egotistical pretentions. Science is, for us, an ideal: the ideal of theoretical, technical, ontological, phenomenological, objective, and systematic knowledge. Therefore, every field of action and knowledge has become obsessed with setting itself under the rule of science. From biology, economics, and sociology to librarianship, journalism, and folklore - all aspire to become sciences; and sometimes they believe they already are such. And they flaunt, with mocking innocence or with discreet complacency, formalities, formulas, conceptualizations, and incipient axioms . . .

before the supreme scientific court presided over for centuries by mathematics, accompanied now by physics and logic. Contemporary

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philosophy has also adopted such a complex; and it is said of philosophy that it is the science par excellence, even more a science than all the others which, unfortunately, being science, do not know either what they are or ought to be. Pretensions are one of the cheapest thrills; and the pretentious or pretenders are content with very little in the name of science. Consider how little it takes for people to call themselves scientists and to begin to talk about science, about the crisis of science, etc., compared to all that is included in the contemporary ideal of science, the ideal of serious scientists, in the fullness of time and for life. To take knowledge as an ideal that integrally organizes life is the enterprise of our time - one that has been increasing since the Renaissance. Before, in the immediate past, the ideal of human life was constituted by salvation of the soul, so that life became a journey through the valley of tears. The model or ideal knowledge was theology, with its foundation of faith and its high voice of authority. Thus was salvific action opposed to knowledge of reality. There is a practical knowledge of reality: one given by the natural senses, one that, from what is given by the senses, sometimes abstracts ideas and concepts, while at other times it draws forth experience, makes skilled experts, dexterous artisans, yielding recipes, procedures, tricks, and little secrets of work. Beyond this, man invented theoretical knowledge, or knowledge of reality through theory, theory for knowledge of reality, and knowing the real through theory, mastering it. Nothing like pure, contemplative, abstract theory of a final ideal or eternal vision of the One-True-God, but theory to know what a thing is and, knowing the what it is, to take advantage of it, transforming it or not, in order to serve man. This fusion of theory and practice we will call techno-logy [tecno-log(a] and the learned in it technologists.2 And in it are those examples of theoretical-practical fusion such as physics and chemistry . . . or even modern architecture; and other candidates for it such as economics and biology. The finest part of mathematics and logic - the theoretical, par excellence - has become theory of the physical, of the real, and theory directed toward technics, toward ordered and planned praxis, far from the motley bazaar of inventiveness, bright ideas, tricks, and recipes of those times in which knowing was, at the most, an ideal of one part of man - who was destined, it was said, to live in another world, beyond this one. Certainly it was not the ideal of the integral and real man now, who is of this world and in a world now for him. So it is that the modern ideal of science excludes equally both abstract and empirical knowledge; what it includes is the theoretical-technical as both its first and second components. The contemporay ideal of science demands ontological theoretical-technical

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knowledge, disregarding axiological or value knowledge. That is to say, it does away with every religious, moral, or artistic valuation or judgment. It disregards them; it does not negate or oppose them, provided they do not intrude on the field of the scientific arrangements and attitude. Until Galileo, for instance, theology occupied the field of astronomy, in part because of the impotence of philosophy as the handmaid of theology and in part because of the long-term deficiency of physical science and technology. That is why astronomical opinions could be referred to as heretical, or close to it. . .. Galileo placed questions like "What is the center of the world? Does the sun move or not? Does the earth move or not? Are the stars corruptible or incorruptible bodies? Are the heavens like the earth or of a different matter?" ... - placed them, I repeat, on an ontological level, that of the what is of reality, and disregarded the axiological or moral and religious valuation. With him was officially inaugurated this component of the modern scientific plan: ontological theoretical-technical knowledge. First, we must know what things are; then we will see if they are of any use for eternal life, if they agree with the Bible, and if they are fit to be approved by the moralists .... But while theoretical-technical knowledge has been showing us what things are, the because of them has had consequences for man, and for natural morality, not for his eternal life. . .. All of this theoreticaltechnical knowledge is in itself subordinate to man. Ontological theoretical-technical knowledge is anthropological. Science now deals with what things are, but in a way that ascertains what they effectively are for man. (Summing up, we now have three components.) The ideal of science includes still another component: the phenomenological. The ideal of science, it is said, employing an overused word, is Truth. But it has to be recognized that people understand many things to be true, using a word which so fills the mouth and is pronounced with an undisguised insinuation of threat and a final decisive blow. Truth is what in the thing is obvious or manifest to the senses or understanding; it is thus opposed to the hidden, to the dark and shadowy. But what, without addition, naturally shows itself to us in things - things in the air, on the land, both together, to man, in the sun . . . - are the most insignificant aspects of reality: mere minutiae and embellishments. Light is as obvious as we could want - as much a phenomenon as you could imagine, to use the Greek expression. But what light manifests to us hides what it is; and it is with great difficulty that we have come to know what light really is, transverse waves in an electromagnetic field the energy of which condenses in photons. This is the real, and by knowing this the man who discovered it can produce light. The truth of its reality is not what is obvious or evident; it is

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what man has obtained through inventions that reveal things. The ideal of contemporary science is real phenomenology: making appear that which is hidden in things under the form of their appearances or immediate natural circumstances. Contemporary science is the most real phenomenological ontology, not the so-called and much ballyhooed phenomenology of the philosophers. This makes four components of the defining ideal of contemporary science. Let the fifth be objectivity. For science subjectivity, the conscience, the I, the you, is discarded: no I Galileo, I Leibniz, I Newton . . . I Einstein. . . . When the objectivity of science is mentioned, because it surrounds us, we all now understand this means that the I is excluded - whether it is Plato's, the reigning Pope's, Oppenheimer's, Gauss's, or Riemann's - as one of the proper and necessary components of a scientific affirmation, theorem, or axiom. In phrases such as the "Pythagorean theorem" and "Einstein's theory of relativity," the mention of names is nothing more than an act of historical deference, not a step toward demonstration. But this interpretation of "objective" is of much less importance than another: objective is impartial in the face of those human attitudes and bad habits found especially in politics, religion, art. . .. Let those attitudes and habits be part of individuals, or corporations, churches, or states. Science belongs to no one. Its acquisitions belong equally to all, without regard to morals and political or religious conventions. Science, or theoretical-technical-ontological-phenomenological knowledge is a good belonging to Humanity. It fulfills, without any pretentious exhibitionism, the biblical saying: "The sun rises on the evil and on the good, and it rains on the just and on the unjust. ,,3 In a third sense, objective rules out secrecy. If the circumference could, in a given moment, hide from us some of its properties or whisk out of sight some of its points; if the proton could want its mass not to be discovered - that is to say, could let itself be weighted or not, however it wanted - science would not be possible. The real has no secrets; the concealed is not hidden. To paraphrase Einstein, reality is loyal. 4 Science has no secrets, and it deals with a reality that has none either. From this it follows that the feeling of security that science offers the scientist is the great substitute for faith and trust. Finally, contemporary science completes the harmony of the components of its ideal with that of the systematic. Negatively, this excludes from itself encyclopedism, dictionaries, indexes, card catalogs. Everything can be found in an encyclopedia, in alphabetical order; and the book itself usually gives us the same matter in a systematic form in the text and in alphabetical form at the end in its indices. All

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these encyclopedias, etc., are prescientific instruments. The systematic excludes erudition and scholars, afficionados, courtesans, and playboys. But it positively demands order, an order that encompasses everything. Many procedures have been invented by science to impose order in that tropical drizzle - continuous and varied - of data, curiosities, bright ideas, recipes, inklings, findings, affirmations, apparatus, that has been falling over mind and senses for centuries. I mention five: imposing order, or systematizing, by the relations of principle and principled (axioms to theorems), cause and effect, part and whole, abstract and concrete, natural fact and construct. These are the great models or molds used to give diverse types of things the systematization of an inner order. From these molds have come the mathematical things that structure with scientific principles, the physical things with cause and effect relations, and so on. Such procedures or models realize, each one in its own way, the ideal of systematization. When then, we employ, the word "Science," let us not take it in vain or vaguely. It is a kind of theoretical-technical, ontological, phenomenological, objective, and systematic knowledge, obtained according to one or more of the five models. When you hear or read that science is "knowledge of things through their causes and principles," remember that this is a half or a fourth or a fifth part of the truth, and that it is missing the decisive part. Science is an ideal - a chord of six notes, of six far-reaching requirements. If it sounds once, with its proper tone, science will be contemporary science: one of the components of the cultural atmosphere of our age. II. TECHNOLOGY, AS THE SECOND ELEMENT OF OUR CULTURAL ATMOSPHERE

In order of importance, technology occupies second place among the components of the normal cultural atmosphere of our age. But apart from the vague conceptual resonance that sounds in terms like technics, technical, technocracy, technocrats, technologists, it is difficult to try to define the what is of technics and contemporary technology. That we breathe technology day and night is easy enough to show by making a summary account of everything that surrounds us, that we use and consume. And perhaps - apart from some few weak and barely tolerated trees, some rivers (kindly so-called by tradition, but without foundation since they have become so choked and smelly), a sun carefully avoided, a confused bird here and there, a sky rarely looked at, and some mountains heroically defended by our landscape

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painters - we will not find anything that presents itself and acts in accord with its natural matter, form, and uses. What do we do that is still natural with our body and soul? Who still walks on foot, apart from some poor wretched creatures we call pedestrians? Who goes to see things themselves, and does not prefer to see them at the cinema or on television? Our physical. geographic. spiritual atmosphere is an artificial one, increasingly artificial. The natural recedes more and more into the background, to the bottom of the background. And perhaps it will not be many years before our soul is altered in relation to our body in a way similar to what has already happened with our voice: which once emerged through our mouth. throat. and chest but now emerges from records or magnetic tapes. And machines are already being substituted in logic and mathematics for the natural potencies which have exercised a special monopoly in understanding, machines that now "reason" and "calculate." If we do not invent other chores for the understanding, soon we will not know what to do with it, and it will become atrophied like certain organs in our body. Those who invented cut flint or stone knives, the wheel. distaff. arrow, pots. staff, rudder, raft, bricks, etc., did not know they were starting a chain reaction, an avalanche of novelties, of anti-naturalness. of monsters that. millennium by millennium at first. then century after century. and now day by day. threatens to suck out the substance of the natural. including the natural brains of men. and to transubstantiate everything into anifacts. into anificial being. into technemes. Let us not trust the meekness with which the broom or the polisher serves us, the normal and assured docility of the car. the abnegation and lack of pretension of the loudspeaker. the admirable and inexhaustible patience of paper. Nor let us be tranquilized by that other serviceability of formulas. truth tables, axiomatization. systems coordinates. all the inventions, mental artifacts. which are not offspring of the natural understanding. "Blessed be the age and blessed those centuries" in which Aristotle could, with simple truth. say: "If nature made beds it would make them like those which. through technics. we make; if through technics we made plants. we would make them like those engendered by nature." because "technics does no more than imitate nature. when the latter is perfect. or help it achieve its perfection when. by accident. it did not achieve by itself alone the proper perfection. lIS We would not dare, not even the most devout Aristotelian. to speak like this: "If nature made airplanes it would make them like those we make through technology; and if we made a brain through technology it would be like the natural one, the one we are born with." We would

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say instead: "If nature tried to make airplanes or submarines, the result would inevitably end up as fish or birds; if we tried to make a brain the result would inevitably be an electronic brain." Our art and technology no longer imitate nature; and nature, with all its perfection on its back, and all its essential properties and power, will not be enough to make or engender a plane, a nylon stocking, a submarine, a pencil, a television set, an axiom set, a logic table, a set of coordinates. The artificial, artifacts, or technemes belong to a different order than that of the natural; and the natural, no matter how well it is formed - gold, marble, linen, uranium, petroleum, iron, . . . - has all been reduced to matter, form, and properties at the level of raw material. It has been disqualified in its ontic and ontological constitution - if you will excuse the use of such highfalutin Greek words. Between natural and artificial, between nature and technology, between the most intelligent natural man and the engineer [tecnico] , there interposes a fathomless abyss. There is no logical bridge. We have to jump, with the kind of jump Hegel sometimes called dialectical, at other times qualitative. Modern physics, quantum physics, no more than half a century ago lost the fear of quantitative jumps. If "nature does not jump" - Natura non facit saltus, in the horrible sounding medieval Latin - technology does, quantum physics does; and it is one of its typical axioms to quantify, that is to say: determine the magnitude of the jump, the magnitude of the energy needed to jump from one level to the other. We philosophers still suffer - except for some very honorable and rare exceptions - from permanent quantum fear, from entitative continuismo [continuity-ism]. In other words, so I can be understood one way or the other: we suffer from fear of newness, of idolizing identity, being, about which it has been said since Parmenides that identity is its essential attribute. And we still believe, between innocence and ignorance of what is happening in science, in fighting with each other over what being is, what essence is . . . which is no less than gigantomania - a giant battle among giants. St. Theresa could have said truly that "God walks among the cooking pots too," because the kitchens of her convents were almost natural kitchens in everything: from the material and shape of their cooking pots, through fire, to the food. God created nature, the heavens, and the natural earth and all that is in them. Nothing more consonant then that among such pots, fire and food, walked God, as he strolled, as the Bible says, around the Garden of Eden at dusk to take the cool air, very likely in the tropical stagnation of Mesopotamia. But in our kitchens, true laboratories, equipped with pressure cookers, gas and electricity, controllable ovens, washers and dryers, refrigerators,

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would God walk among these as he did among the kitchens of the troglodytes or in the no more advanced kitchens of the nuns at Avila near the end of the sixteenth centurl? Nature has gone to the bottom 0 our appliances, whether in kitchen or not. Their forms, functions, uses are no longer natural. They are - and I stress the verb to be - inventions, creations, productions of man; not of the natural man, but of a man who has improvised by and for himself in order to be inventor, creator, producer of what neither his nor external nature could ever have made if left on its own. If some few, now thousands, are the inventors, humanity has invented the actions and habits of being served by inventions, which is a secondhand invention. All men, in all respects, are progressively transforming, improvising, learning to be second-hand creators with respect to those first-hand inventors and producers of artifacts: inventors of a new way of being. (And pardon this premeditated slip of the tongue implicating metaphysics or first and primary philosophy, as Aristotle called it.) But inventions or artifacts are not only refrigerators, cars, televisions, typewriters, presses, airplanes, masers and lasers. Inventions and artifacts include our political and social structures, religions, and arts. That democracy is an invention and artifact in no way disqualifies it; on the contrary. Set to traverse distances on the earth, we do it better by car than with our legs; and set to excavate, it is better to work with a mechanical excavator than with a natural stone cutter, by pick and shovel. Set and determined to live together, a million men are lucky to have the invention of modern cities, no matter how deficient their urban organization might be. And welcome be to the invention of churches that do not have to act like religious troglodytes in catacombs - in abandoned quarries, turned into cemeteries and churches. We complain, sometimes, of the anijicial - cities, cars, telephones, government but all of them are our offspring, much greater and better than these from nature, just as the believer is convinced that he, and the natural, are profoundly and decisively much greater and better as children of the creator God, than that which is of its natural parents. Contemporary man is still a hybrid of natural and artificial, of nature (or essence) and technology. If a cow had suddenly a flash of understanding it would think, at seeing us go by on a motorcycle, that we were a kind of centaur. Something similar, perhaps, is what eagles think when they see an airplane. No such thought will occur to those little dressed up dogs that bark, a little contemptuously, at us pedestrians from the windows of certain luxury cars.

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Really, in true reality, contemporary man is a hybrid of nature and technology. And the most serious aspect of this is that he is such because he has invented this manner of being by hybridizing, and he invents it and imposes it on nature. We fmd ourselves, then, being everything: nature and men in a hybridized state. And do we feel strange facing the magnitude and newness of problems of the all kinds - religious, political, urban, etc., even scientific and philosophical - that such hybridization, in its development, imposes on us - or we impose on and propose to ourselves as an adventure and enterprise of contemporary man, and, for that, of the universe, and, consequently, of being? We must not allow such a way of being ourselves, of making all being into an adventure and an enterprise, to get lost from sight for a moment; nor, having been seen, should it be allowed to be cowardly hidden. Over against an adventure and enterprise of such high caliber pardon my calling it ontological - there does not exist nor can there be found an Ontological Insurance Agency. Technology is not a process for inventing and using apparatus or making buildings, pretentious skyscrapers, or modern Towers of Babel; technology is the adventurous enterprise invented by man to give everything a new kind of being: the artificial. Will such an enterprise terminate in blessedness or in misfortune? We do not know whether we are able to know this. It deals with something new in the history of humanity; and the new has neither guard nor harmonizing octave. "Those who do not dare will not cross the sea," goes the saying that Columbus and company must have repeated some centuries ago. Those who do not dare the technological will not cross the sea of the natural. The dreadful part is that, as Pascal said in a like situation, we are already embarked: embarked in technology. III. HISTORY, AS THE THIRD ELEMENT OF OUR CULTURAL ATMOSPHERE

Liberty! How many crimes have been committed in your name! goes the famous saying, apostrophe, or insult - which, if not invented by a totalitarian, tyrant, dictator, or mock dictator who deems himself a know-it-all, a wise guy, is fit to be said to the next mock dictator that may be preparing now his proclaim or pronouncement. History! How many definitions have been committed in your name! Since there are so many, one more could pass unheeded, or as it is said in the delicious jargon of the free market economy, one more is not

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going to alter the price. So I will offer the everyday concept of history. The craze of making history or of making for everything a history does not go back many centuries. The history made by God in person embraced only six days, and on the seventh he rested. The divine history of the world finished the first Saturday of the very first week of the world. In six days were made, with the power of the words "Let there be": the heavens, the earth, firmament, plants, animals, and man. What happened after the Great Saturday composes human-divine history: the recounting of those imperfections and havoc caused by man, patched up by God every now and then in the Old Testament, and remedied by Christ in the New, although the remedy was one of multisecularly slow effects. In its entirety, the divine history of the world loosely encompasses some millennia. Let us have a few moments of silence to mark reverently the distance between God and Gamow. Gamow, in his suggestive book, The Creation of the Universe (1952), with a sparkling wit well served by the most modern mathematics and physics, tells us, summarizing the history of the natural-scientific creation of the world: "Indeed, it took less than an hour to make the atoms, a few hundred million years to makes the stars and planets, but three billion years to make man!,,6 With respect to the end of the universe, and with it human history, it will suffice to remember that our Sun has about five billion years ahead before its hydrogen is burned up. Lavishly are we trusted. 1 We accept that with which we are entrusted, and entrust ourselves to science and technology, which is like trusting and entrusting our lungs to the air. God did not make the world in one stroke, all at once. He did it historically, with a temporal rhythm and temporal order of ascending creations from heaven to man. Creation, and history, was set aside by God, and finished with man. Speaking about ourselves: the human - and I am not other than human - was the primary intention of creation. The distinct human history of the world is a product of, and originates in, the sin of Adam and Eve - or the serpent, if we want to relieve our first ancestors of such an enormous burden and have him continue to drag his tail [cola] across history. But man learned from God how history is made or what history is. History is made and is a temporal and ordered series of inventions that leave a coherent trail afterward. Or if you excuse the popular whiff of the phrase: History is a series of inventions that tell a tale [cola]. 8 Wakes in the ocean were made by the old barges and galleys; and wakes are produced in the air, very visible, by jet propelled airplanes. And wakes are left, ostentatiously, by the fireworks at any fair.

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Bows and arrows are not born, nor are anchors, rudders, and oars, neither are needles, thread, distaffs, and wool - nor ramparts, plazas, torches, matches . . . nor consuls, tribunes, the emperor, the pope, a king, presidents of republics. All these, and infinitely more, are inventions, the materialization of inspired bright ideas. But whoever had the bright idea of making fire - and not just waiting patiently for nature to make it - and succeeded in inventing a fixed and available procedure for making it - invented, that is, the now simple, but originally complex combination of flint, iron, and tinder unchained an avalanche of inventions that cohere with those that flow from it once they materialize. Matches are part of the relatively short trail that began with those primitive tinderboxes. Because matches, which the parents of those of us born at the beginning of the century did not have at their disposal, are part of the trial that includes tinderboxes, the wake of which makes these tinderboxes obsolete, turns them into museum pieces. In the wake of the automobile are honorably retired carts, coaches, stagecoaches; on the expectation of another invention, within the general line of nullifying space and time with speed, our pretentious automobiles will be left as "venerable retirees." In the wake or trail of axiomatic geometry are found wrapped up, in order, Euclidean geometry and the almost contemporary demonstrations of Gauss, Lobachevsky, Riemann. And the theory of relativity has included Newton's physics in its wake or trail, which, at the same time, relegated medieval and Greek physics to the tail end of the line. We should not believe that our form of politics, which we call democracy, is a brainchild of nature like lemon trees, amoebas, the higher vertebrates, anthills, or wasps' nests. It is an invention, a product or efficient materialization of an inspired bright idea, of some adventurous enterprise, as always, by very few. But once it came over or emerged into the human world, it relegated to the tail those other inventions or invented social forms that are, or were, constitutional monarchy, absolute monarchy, tyranny, and tribal regimes. All of these were in their own time inventions, consolidations of bright ideas and adventures. Now they are museum pieces, or at most they sometimes walk about in our world like revered retirees. History moves in fits and starts or to the beat of inventions. Sometimes an invention will last for centuries, for lack of another that relegates or throws it into the wake and devalues it as ancient, outdated, an anachronism. In musical scores there are notes and chords that endure as the same through bars and bars, without the danger of becoming monotonous, thanks to the colossal provision of musical inventiveness. But in history there are inventions - of political, social,

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religious, scientific, and technical forms - that endure for centuries, that are obstinate in their persistence. . . These are the backwaters, the marshes, the traditional isms of history. But as soon as the next "invention" springs up, they are relegated to the tail end of the line, to the museum. And this happens to them instantly, as it did to the portrait of Dorian Gray: old age comes with a sudden stroke to the face, revealing all defects, prejudices, provincialisms, anachronisms. Man, it has been said and repeated for almost twenty-three hundred years, is a "rational animal." That too has gone to the tail end of the line, to become a part of the wake of a being that man invented for himself, now that he has become bored of being a natural rational animal. The being that the contemporary man is inventing for himself is that of the engineer. Let us inventory the balance of what we still have in a natural state and level - in will, understanding, senses, memory - and we will notice that such natural wealth diminishes now not to the rhythm of centuries or millennia, but of years. Quill pens have gone in the wake of our fountain pens. The art (invented) of writing now has a history. And, in an unacknowledged way, the presence of our grandparents's inkwells and quills does not hurt us. But it also does hurt us - making us refrain and repress, hide and bury with pluperfect Freudian technology - having to confess and accept that so many, many dear things - efficient and adored, and vivid and vital in other ages - have become museum pieces, retired, obsolete, in politics, science, religion, art, technology. As students, we were sometimes relegated by our teachers to the tail end of the class. Will we all, in everything, ever learn to go discreetly and voluntarily to the tail end of history at the opportune moment? For this we need many things, especially given the vagueness of the qualifier "many," but among these one stands out: sensitivity to authentic newness, to newness thickened or set up like concrete in inventions. Newness that does not thicken into invention is idle chatter [noveler(a). And a bright idea person who does not become an inventor will never be more than a daydreamer [novelera). Such daydreamers and their idle chatter are a typical pest of our age, precisely because it is, in a spectacularly distinguished way, an age of inventions. Inventions, adventure, and enterprise form the categorical complex of history with regard to itself. There is no science in our day that is not burdened with its history. Mathematics, the history of mathematics; chemistry, the history of chemistry; biology, the history of biology; philosophy, the history of philosophy; art, art history; religion, the history of religions; economics, the history of economics; technology, the history of technology; and so

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on with everything else. That is the first instance. In the second instance appear the philosophy of history and the history of the histories of philosophy: philosophy of the history of religions, and history of the histories of dogmas. Ordinarily, because it is almost inevitable, a history, for example of biology, is, really, the history of the histories of what has been made of biology. History, in its first or higher instances is an obsession of our time. The madman who, at this point, made this certain was Hegel. An inspired madman affirming and determined to prove that philosophy is history of philosophy, that philosophy is history. And it must be remembered that in Philosophy Hegel included or pushed in everything: divine and human - with this classical phrase to save ourselves a long and always incomplete enumeration. Philosophy is history. History of philosophy is not a string or parade of errors, mistakes, patches, inklings, or dawnings of The Philosophy, autonomous and uniquely true. Philosophy is history in the same way that man is boy, young man, adult, and old man. The essence of man - that of "rational animal" - is neither infant nor old; has no age; but for that reason it is not the real essence of the real man. It is an abstraction that is neither born nor grows old nor dies. Nobody would want to be that; nobody would want to be the essential man. Real man is biological history. No one can say or accuse us of anthropological historicism or of historicist anthropology. That philosophy is history is the same as saying that it is an intellectual, emotional, enterprising, adventurous, living entity. None of this is historicism, no matter how much it is imputed to Hegel by the followers of eternal or perennial Philosophy. The slanderers of mutability, Galileo said, should be condemned to be statues. The slanderers of history should be condemned to be essence. History is, then, an eminent and total way to be living. History being an element of the atmosphere of our age, our age is one of the most alive, vivacious, living, and full of vitality that has ever existed. And for the same reason (only inverted), never in any other historical age have there been so many deaths of such diversity and originality, of so many new and varied ways of assassination - deaths and assassinations of political, social, religious, theoretical, artistic, and economic forms. We should not be frightened now when faced with the quantity and quality of inventions that invade us from all sides, and kill those things that preceded them in that subtle and non-malevolent death called obsolescence or antiqueness. We should not be frightened either when faced with the new inventions of human, social, political, economic, religious, artistic, philosophical, forms of life that burst the boundaries of life, nor with the deceased - from natural or artificial death - that the new things keep

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making. Let us cry moderately if they are our own; but with tears or teary eyes, let us fulfill the words of the Gospel: "Let the dead bury their dead. n9 These are the words of Jesus Christ. So that he did not say those words, like many others, in vain, we philosophers above all should take them seriously in everything. IV. PHILOSOPHY: THE FOURTH ELEMENT OF OUR CULTURAL ATMOSPHERE Proverbs are not always supposed to be taken as rules. Some of them provoke their own breaking. Perhaps one of these is the saying, "The one who cuts the pie and distributes it always takes the best slice." In the distribution of "importance" in the cultural atmosphere proper to our age, philosophy here has given itself the fourth place, with a symbolic seven percent. The best slices have been taken by science, technology, and history. We have not given philosophy the least part, though such would perhaps be the evil wishes of some scientists and theologians, and other people of no good disposition toward philosophers. During the many centuries - from the third to the thirteenth - in which theology cut and distributed the elements of the cultural atmosphere that should be breathed by humanity, in order to be saved theology took or arrogated to itself the lion's share, the biggest and the best. To philosophy was given the part of the slave; the sciences were the slaves of that slave. That is to say, philosophy was the housekeeper of the sciences and technology. Or in a more decorous, but no less real phrase, the sciences were subordinate to philosophy. History - which is the life of the integral man, of concrete humanity - has turned the tables. And now - increasingly since the Renaissance - philosophy is subordinated to science, technology, and history. More and more each day, the philosopher is the philosopher of science, of technology, of history. "You, Professor Garcfa Bacca, are the one who is subordinate to all," I seem to hear from more than one of my esteemed colleagues. "Not me. "Nor me." "Nor am I." "None of us will ever be." Of no value to theocracy, now and for centuries, are its immediate divine rights, since there is no such political regime in any part of the world that prides itself on being such a state. Nor have the mediated divine rights of absolutist kings impeded anything but their glorious demise from the ambience of history. Nor could Aristotelian physics, reigning queen for fifteen long centuries and supported by the authority of Aristotle and ecclesiastical blessings and consecrations, be kept from being put aside like a hefty antique book for private, almost clandestine II

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use. Not even the reign of Euclidian geometry, undisputed for over two thousand years, could keep it from turning into just one of so many equally possible geometries - indeed, the simplest one with respect to general axiomatic geometry or modem differential foundations. To Aristotelian logic - the so called natural logic of human understanding - has happened what would have happened to the best Roman galley, had it proclaimed itself the natural ship. The presence of a trans-Atlantic ship suffices to refute such pretentiousness. Modem artificial logics are as powerful and specialized as cars, planes, televisions. Aristotelian logic is, at most, a logic for kindergarten or elementary students. And not even that; because our children now are beginning to be taught basic mathematics and logic with set theory. And do we philosophers believe we enjoy some exceptional, extremely rare and superlative immunity in ontology, metaphysics, ethics, etc., as something "natural" or "essential" to human understanding? I can believe anything, said Oscar Wilde, as long as it is impossible enough. 10 We must be careful, however, not to accumulate so many impossibilities that we end up by not being able to believe them. But, above everything else, what is contemporary philosophy? Or to what has our present historical time reduced the philosophy of times past? To what social or humanfimction can we philosophers aspire, and in what measure contribute to the immediate future of human society? Many solemn and difficult questions these are to be answered here and now - in case I could do it. The trouble is that I only know how to ask questions, and, at most, dare an initiation of a beginnmg of a start of an answer. In his Phenomenology of Spirit, after a look at the history of philosophy, Hegel loses patience and lets out that irreverent but very true remark: "It is now time for the philosopher to stop being a philosophos, or lover of knowledge, and to become sophos, or sage. "11 Two thousand years of philosophizing have gone by, aspiring and sighing for wisdom. Enough now, Hegel seems to tell us, of defining philosophy as "love of wisdom," leaving, with Plato, being sages to the gods, and contenting ourselves with those leftovers and crumbs of being forever aspiring sages. In 1848 Marx coarsely and cruelly rebuked the philosophers with his thesis nine on Feuerbach: "The philosophers have done nothing until now except interpret the world; it is now time for them to set upon transforming it. " Hegel and Marx have lost their patience; and according to the ring with which they would have said those phrases they would sound to us like irreverent tirades, outrageous insults, or unacceptable threats.

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Marx's phrase undisguisedly tells us: Go to work, go to work as sociologists! Hegel's says: Go to work, go to work as scientists! Hegel began to work, saying and doing, in his Science of Logic (1812), utilizing for it what the scientists of his historical present offered him in mathematical science, physics, chemistry, biology - Newton, Leibniz, Lagrange, Laplace, Carnot, those who had not only been "lovers of" mathematics, physics, or biology but mathematicians, physicists, chemists, biologists. They were scientists - and engineers. Beside some of the members of the neo-Kantian school of Marburg, no one then nor now has in the body of philosophy employed more mathematics or physics than Hegel. Bear in mind that from 1812 until our day, physics, mathematics, biology, and technology have advanced spectacularly in an astonishing way. For the great majority of contemporary philosophers it is as if such persons as Gauss, Riemann, Einstein, Heisenberg, Fermi, and Oppenheimer had never come onto the world. At the most they talk about them by "hearsay," through quotations - and sometimes through quotations of quotations. In the middle of the last century a new science was born: political economy; or economics - the real one practiced for so many centuries, explosively developed by the industrial revolution. It was fighting to give itself a scientific shape, at once economics and politics, economy and social life. Go to work, go to work in sociology under its concrete form of political economy! Marx told himself. And he set to work for about forty years, and the result was Das Kapital. I am afraid that Latin Americans do not like to hear, from the mouths of Hegel and Marx, or anyone else, not even the Pope, admonitions telling them to "Go to work, go to work." And I am afraid that the phrase "go work in science and political economy" will not sound particularly alluring or flattering to us philosophers. But if I am not mistaken, such is the task that defines philosophy if it wants to stay contemporary . In other times, centuries ago, it was pompously said that the end of the law and of government, kingly or popular, was "the common good." "Law is an order of reason, directed toward the common good and promulgated by the one who is in charge of taking care of the community. ,,12 Now, ready to work for that common, really common good, we talk about national resources, national production, about national income, gross national product - and the authorities propose increasing their clearly specified budgets a determinate percentage every year or during a five year period. For the abstract philosophical, classical, clear, enlightenment-oriented - and inoperative, like the light of the pole star - has been substituted that task which is concrete, immediate, a trifle coarse, more efficient, ordered by parliament after

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voting on a budget and directing the government to its execution. The care of the community is now called the "budget"; inventing it and carrying it out with and against human mistakes is the task of our age. Truth is the philosophical abstract par excellence, and its monopoly. But science and technology together provide us with "the gross socio-cultural product of truth, truly real." Real truth, arising from those productive factors that are science and technology, comprises the real truth produced by society. The real society does not progress because of the Idea of the Good; real progress stems from good assumptions that employ and promote the social product, gross or net. Philosophy does not progress through the idea of Truth. It really progresses through the successful enterprises of science-and-technology. Philosophy is not presently something like "universal and necessary knowledge of the supreme causes and principles of all things." Contemporary philosophy has no definition; it has a task. It had a definition in those ages in which man did not know very well, and sometimes not at all, what real man has to do in this real world. Philosophy had a definition in those ages in which the pole star or the moon served as a vague orientation or rough calendar. Moon and pole star were part of another world; we were part of the sublunar world, by essential or natural condemnation. Now, in our present history, the moon will serve us as a mine or laboratory or tourist resort. And the pole star keeps the name pole by transitory condescension; we are better served by a common automatic pilot. Contemporary philosophy has no definition; it has an imposed task: to work in science, technology, and political economy. If it fulfills its task well, it will end up, possibly, having graduated in metascience, metatechnology, or metaeconomics ... but no longer in metaphysics. It will not be love of wisdom, but wisdom, and real wisdom, incarnated, materialized, corporealized - in the appropriate reality to be real: contemporary and active - in the flesh, matter, or body of science, of technology. For this, God, to redeem us firmly, in a truly real manner, incarnated himself, humanized himself in Christ. If philosophy does not incarnate itself in our real sciences by virtue of technology, if it does not run through the adventure of our sciences and technology, if it does not rise to the enterprise of transforming the natural world, philosophy will have to keep the definition, "universal and necessary knowledge of the supreme causes and principles of all things." Or that of "an interpretation of the meaning of the world" or "a conception of man and the world." But no one will pull from the flesh of contemporary philosophers that frustrating thorn-phrase: "Enough of interpreting the world - ideal-

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istically, realistically, materialistically, spiritualistically. Transform it, transform it. Go to work, go to work, following the good example of our sciences and our technology. " - Translated by Carl Mitcham and Waldemar L6pez Pineiro Central University of Venezuela

NOTES [1. All ellipses in the text are the author's, generally indicating something like "etcetera." Many ellipses have simply been dropped.] [2. Although Garcia Bacca's text uses both the terms tecnica and tecnologfa, as the passage indicates he interprets the former in terms of the latter. Hence the general use throughout the translation of "technology."] [3. Adapted from Matthew 5:45.] [4. The last two sentences, "Lo oculto no esIA ocultado" and "Lo real es leal" contain word plays that are typical of Garcia Bacca but cannot be rendered in English.) [5. Garcia Bacca is fmt quoting, apparently from memory, Aristotle, Physics II, 8; 199a 12-15. Aristotle .there refers to a house, not a bed. The second quotation, again slightly adapted is from Physics II, 8; 199a 16-18. The blessing that opens the paragraph is, of course, a sarcastic adaptation from the rosary.) [6. George Gamow, The Creation o/the Universe (New York: Viking, 1952), p. 139. This is the last sentence in the book. It is not italicized in the original.) [7. "Largo nos 10 f'l&n" paraphrases some famous words of Don Juan in a play by Tirso de Molina. It refers to the ease with which he would get out of trouble, knowing he would someday have to pay for his deeds, but not too soon.] [8. Garcia Bacca is here playing with words again, this time with the meanings of the Spanish cola - which the English "tail" and "tale" sometimes match, but not always.) [9. Adapted from Matthew 8:22.) [10. "Man can believe the impossible, but man can never believe the improbable." Oscar Wilde, "The Decay of Lying, Intentions (1891).) [11. Note the direct quotation Garcia Bacca presents it as. See Hegel, Phenomenologie des Geist, "Vorrede," paragraph 5.] [12. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I-II, Q. 90, art. 4: "Thus from the four preceding articles, the defmition of law may be gathered; and it is nothing other than an ordinance of reason for the common good, made by him who has care of the community, and promulgated. ")

ERNESTO MAYZ VALLENILLA

THE PRESENT AND FUTURE OF HUMANITY

Insofar as it is possible, without being naive, to advance any prediction at all about the future of humanity, it is possible to say that the present and future state of humanity depend upon the development of technics. But technical development as conceived today - that is, as an activity directed toward the search for mastery (dominium) over otherness in general- does not have a univocal meaning, nor does it operate under a single unique modality that is universally accepted. As a human activity, technics is eminently historical. As such it finds itself exposed to suffering or provoking the transformations that human beings bring about through their free agency. This causes its meanings and ends to be bound in an intimate relation with experimental changes through the epistemology and ontology of the age. The primary thesis of this essay is that we live a decisive moment in the historical evolution of ratio technica (technical reason), the traits of which will have a parallel influence over the present and future state of humanity. In this sense, in our judgment, we find ourselves at a crucial juncture. We, the human beings of our time, are protagonists and witnesses of a revolution that we are not able fully to comprehend nor to appreciate in its complexity and extent. Indeed, against the background of the mode of technics that has prevailed until now - one with an anthropomorphic, anthropocentric, and geocentric style and limits - we are witnessing the initiation in our time of a new project and model in which the underlying logos aims to transform and overcome previous human and earthly limits. In so doing it is also radically modifying the style of technical know-how with the aim of increasing the power at human disposal beyond the bounds imposed by innate psychosomatic constitution and cognitive capacity. But it is not easy to perceive the details - even less to explain them - without considering the general contours and meaning of this confrontation. For purposes of illustration we have chosen the example provided by the concept of space - a choice that may appear accidental, but is in fact carefully selected. The example aims to show how through the shaping and ordering of spatial otherness the technical logos of meta-technics provokes radical changes within the very notion of space. These changes in turn affect all human institutions (linguistic, ontological, moral, scientific, political, etc.) in which the very process

249 Carl Mitcham (ed.), Philosophy of Technology in Spanish Speaking Countries, 249-258. °1993 Kluwer Academic Publishers.

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of institutionalization is based on spatial forms. OPTICAL SPACE AND META-TECHNICAL SPATIALITY One of the fundamental traits that distinguishes ratio technica as manifested in our time - in contrast to that made possible by the primordial technical model that prevailed until now - is the radical change introduced by its action and products in the notion or concept of space. Insofar as space is now visualized, organized, and constructed on the basis of the category of function - in direct opposition to ordering affected through the category of substance and the array of criteria based thereon - it is not only possible to detect a basic modification of its conceptual meaning; but a concomitant variation is reflected in the concrete, real spatiality of the phenomena in which this notion is exhibited and incorporated. Accordingly, instead of representing space as an aggregate of contiguous or juxtaposed points, elements, or atoms, today space is conceived and managed as a functional or systemic structure that constitutes a field or a dynamic whole, the synergy of which determines its eventual forms and limits. Not being grounded on substantiality, the characteristics of our spatiality are radically different from - and sometimes opposed to - those exhibited by the notion when it was thought about or established on prior foundations. But the transformation that has taken place in the notion of space is not reducible to this simple change of categories. At a deeper and more decisive level what has begun to change in our time has been the inner ordering and configuring through technics of the logos of spatial possibility. This has introduced a radical and parallel modification or transformation in the epistemological and ontological structure of the traditional notion. One of the most peculiar traits of meta-technics in this sense is based on the attempt to create or produce a modality of non-human - transor meta-human - logos or thinking, the forms, laws, and principles of which are neither identical with nor similar to those that inform and sustain human discourse. To realize this end, not only has recourse been made to the variation, modification, or alteration of the innate constitution and functioning of the human cognitive senses, but also to their substitution by instruments or equipment whose mechanisms and operations eliminate (or replace) the senses, thereby producing a metahuman logos or thinking devoid of anthropomorphic, anthropocentric, and geocentric references, the correlate of which is configuration of a trans-human and trans-finite otherness. Such otherness, as a result, instead of being ordered according to the

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spatio-temporal principles of the human (measured) logos, embodies and expresses a trans-reality in which - acting as a logos constituting the ordering imposed by a de-anthropomorphized instrument or apparatus that replaces the classical subject of the traditional epistemological framework - can undermine or abolish the spatio-temporal (optical and metrical) characteristics projected onto otherness by the innate human senses. In lieu of these characteristics - replacing them, modifying them, transforming them - there then appear, under the profile of otherness, other traits (stemming from tactile, olfactory, auditory, etc., orderings not necessarily anthropomorphic in character) that, while amplifying the traditional epistemic spectrum, introduce radical changes in the texture and significance of otherness. What we have said - far from being the product of fantasy or a mere dream of science fiction - is the simple description of the metatechnical conquests that human beings have already utilized in some of the instruments constructed to amplify and deepen dominion over otherness. In effect, instead of the classic microscopes or telescopes designed and constructed to utilize light waves and conceived to enhance by means of the use of mirrors and lenses the constitution and functions of the human eye - today human beings "see" with the help of sonic waves or waves invisible to the naked eye, as is illustrated by the use of sonar or instruments that employ ultrasound to achieve a more perfect "vision" than the one supplied by other more simple anthropomorphic artifacts. This occurs - to cite some well-known examples - in the case of missiles that search for and locate their objectives utilizing thermal devices (that is, a thermal rather than optical ordering or organization of spatiality), which also happens, by the way, with some reptiles. Nothing thus stands in the way, once the limits of anthropomorphism and anthropocentrism have been overcome, of being able in a parallel manner to order spatiality in olfactory terms (as is the case with certain insects) or by means of unsuspected modalities of a trans-human and trans-jinite logos - of being able to institutionalize otherness in general under the form of a super-nature that does not correspond to the innate anthropomorphic, anthropocentric, or geocentric pattern that has until now prevailed in the epistemic dealings of humanity with the connatural experience of otherness. Furthermore, and as a complement, there is another aspect of decisive importance with respect to that super-nature constituted and designed through meta-technics. In fact, if primordial technics utilizes in its instruments of knowledge and dominion only the innate forces or energies available in nature within the confines of our planet, meta-

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technics can now resort to a type of energy or force that - possibly through the same super-nature constructed by human beings - is not subject to the limits of strictly innate and terrestrial energies. This means, briefly stated, two distinct though related things, namely: - that with the creation of this super-nature human beings attempt to break the original (and limiting) structures of innate nature (or connatural energies) that exist on our planet; and - that they intend at the same time to create new structures and reorderings of matter by means of which to obtain dominion over nature as a whole, this is to say, precisely in a galactic sense. OTHERNESS AND META-TECHNICS Everything said thus far is derived, as is easily recognized, from the transformation and experimental overcoming of the optical (and therefore metrical) foundation that until now has prevailed in the spatial ordering and organization of otherness. Its modification or substitution by a meta-technical spatiality signifies, at the same time, a radical change in the meaning and range of the epistemological and ontological determinations of otherness. But the consequences of this are neither trivial nor innocent. Indeed, if we attempt systematically to revise those human institutions in which this revolution is reflected, it is necessary to acknowledge that its imprint affects and ought to be exhibited, in a primordial way, in the etymology, structure, and syntax of language. From this, almost automatically, its influence incites and provokes modifications in the fundamental concepts of ontology, in the methodology and foundations of science, as well as within the systems of categories that hold together the diverse (though convergent) cultures of this common spatial and optical ground. Whatever these are, the modification of their underlying spatial foundation extends into and also affects moral, political, and legal institutions along with uses, conventions, and the day-to-day dealings that are based on an optical interpretation of otherness. Transformation of the optical-spatial foundation of otherness - to say it in the most direct and simple terms - signifies at the same time a radical change in the basic beliefs that sustain it. This, in turn, poses the urgent need to forge a repertoire of categories and principles (absolutely distinct from current ones) with which to confront, accept, or interpret this new and unknown world that is deploying itself before us. Within the limitations of the present exposition it is not possible to elucidate the vast panorama of problems that we have so far only

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suggested. Each would require profound, complex, and extensive research, as well as subtle linguistic and conceptual analysis. With the sole purpose of pointing out some of the more telling aspects that, as indicated, can serve as an approach to the worldview that we are attempting to formulate, we can make the following comments. 1. With respect to language as such, it is immediately possible to recognize and to demonstrate that, from a semantic point of view, the majority of linguistic meanings - from ordinary, technical, and even metaphysical vocabularies - stem from optical-spatial (or, derivatively, temporal) determinations to which they subsequently and tacitly are referred. Moreover, the syntactical rules that provide the backbone of the language have as a logical or ideal horizon - that is, as their rational foundation - a ratio or logos that is nurtured, in turn, by a conception of space and time that is presupposed and evidently taken for granted. Indeed, all the logico-syntactical principles have, as a horizon of meaning, sustenance, and intelligibility, the substantialist conception of spatial-temporal otherness derived from Aristotle. Consider, for example, the meanings of affirmation and negation. These are, as Husserl calls them, positions (Setzungen, Positionen). Now every position requires a space (place, site, ambiance) in which to pose itself, to sustain itself, to situate itself. Within such a spatial ambiance there takes place the movement or intention (also conceived in spatial terms) that defines the opposed spatial scheme of negation and affirmation. This, strictly speaking, is made evident by a very brief incursion into semantics and etymology: (a) Negation or the act of negating (in Greek, lx7rolj)ac1L~; in German, Ablehnung) means - at least with respect to the pre-propositional or judgment level- to separate, to remove something from something else (see Aristotle, De interpretatione 17a26). This separating - in which, as is evident, there is a space - is realized by means of a distancing, rejecting, or a non-admission, excluding from a certain ambiance or sphere which is denied. The Greek prefix ix7ro, and the German particle ab, clearly have a spatial meaning. This corresponds precisely to the separation and removal contained in the original Aristotelian meaning. (b) The same occurs - though with an opposite meaning - in the case of affirmation and the act of affirming. An affirmation (in Greek, KCX7cXlj)ac1L~; in German, Zustimmung) instead of separating, according to Aristotle, unites two terms (see De interpretatione 17a25), which also, as is evident, has a clear spatial meaning. To unite, in effect, means to reunite: to co-locate a proposition alongside another, to verify its admission or inclusion within a certain ambiance or sphere. The prefix KCX7cX has, in this respect, a clear spatial meaning. It signifies, as a preposition, looking down from or simply toward. This indicates

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the spatial direction that realizes the union or reunion of the propositions in affirmation. This same spatial meaning is present in the German term ZU, where it indicates a movement of coincidence (Zustimmung) at a certain spatial point or place. Now we must inquire, What will become of affirmation and negation if they are deprived of that spatial meaning - as exclusively embedded in an optical and substantialist perspective - which nurtures and sustains their meanings? What will become of a language if its syntax can no longer count on the values or meanings of traditional negation or

affirmation?

2. All this, which is only suggested with respect to language and its syntactic norms, can be further confirmed if the basic concepts of ontology and corresponding foundational epistemological determinations are duly analyzed. . It is by no means accidental, in this sense, that one of the oldest and most venerable ontological formulations of Western philosophy - that of Parmenides - should start out with a full and complete identification between Being and Thinking, with the latter implying both intelligibility and vision and/or sensory perception. To 'Yap a~TO VOfLV ~U7LV Tf KaL avaL. "For to think and to be said is one and the same thing," says the third fragment of his famous poem. I Throughout that fragment and wherever the term vOfTv is found it is necessarily linked with those of AO'YO<; and ~ov (Jvm), as well as with voo<;, vO'r/J.£a, and lxA.'r/8fULV. Yet at the same time it should not appear strange that, given the sensory meaning that the reference to such VO€LV represents, Parmenides should compare Being with a sphere (uclipa) whose attributes - perfectly homogeneous and balanced within its visual limits (7rfpa<;) - ostensibly witness to the alleged overcoming of the finite imperfections of seeing and/or perceiving as such. 2a. But this presence of optical elements in Parmenides' conception of Being (which are not difficult to trace in the sequence of future thought) is reaffirmed and evidenced with even greater clarity in a different yet parallel field. Indeed, whether the concept of Being is taken in a predicative sense (so that the intellectual procedures by means of which the copula is established should be examined), or whether it is taken in an existential sense (so that its characteristics, forms, modes, and moments are to be examined) - in both cases, without exception, it is possible to detect the manifest optical-spatial elements that are embedded in each of its etymologies and meanings. This is proved, for example, if we examine etymologically the designations with which the just mentioned procedures that interpret the meaning of the copula are distinguished. There is the doctrine of inherence, in which meaning is based on inhering (inesse, b7rapX fLV) ,

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the doctrine of supposition, which involves putting under (sub-positio, ~7r68EO"~), and the doctrine of relation, which involves com-positing (compositio, O'VP8E(1£~). In each case the spatial connotations are manifest. The same results will be achieved if we briefly analyze the characteristics attributed to Being as a result of the annihilation of its sensory limit (7r€pcx~), or what expresses and reveals itsforms (such as, e.g., the "in itself," "out of itself," or "for itself'), or its modes, possibility and necessity, both derived in Greek as well as Latin from eminently optical-spatial roots), or, finally, its moments, if by this term we understand its determination as existence (from the Latin ex-sto) and as accident (from ac-cido), whose elements are also manifestly spatial. 2b. It is no less significant that in the concept of Being itself it is possible to find vestiges of optical-spatial elements in the epistemological determinations that are at its base. In order to shorten examples, we shall mention only the famous opposition between phenomenon and noumenon. Just as in the former the presence of the Greek verb tPcx{po is manifest - and, accordingly, an implicit reference to light (tPw~), as the agent of the visible - likewise the latter term noumenon stems from the word pov~ which is, in turn, derived from poeLP. Referring to this last term - as an expression of the verb to see in general - it was Husserl who, in our time, defended this as the supreme condition for giving rise to and legitimizing all rational affirmations. As he writes in Ideen: Das unmittelbare 'Sehen' [poelll],

nicht blo,P das sinnliche, erjahrende Sehen, sondern das Sehen aberhaupt als originl1r gebendes Bewu,Ptsein welcher Art immer, ist die letzte Rechtsquelle aller vernanftigen Behauptungen. "Immediate 'seeing, , not merely sensuous, experiential seeing, but seeing in the universal sense as an originally presentive consciousness of any kind whatever, is the

ultimate legitimizing source of all rational assertions. ,,2 3. If the optical-spatial elements animate the most elevated ontological and epistemological concepts of philosophical action, it is easy to infer that their influence should be found not only in the design of social (political, legal, and cultural) institutions created by human beings, but also within the values that sustain them. 3a. This is in fact what happens. Whether it is in the epistemological roots that define the phenomena of possession and property in legal terms (possideo is a synonym of occupo, and this is derived from capio: to take up, to seize, maintain something within the closed space of one's grasp); in the territorial notion of sovereignty insofar as it is conceived as the spatial basis of the state; or in the common space where the meeting of the community of the faithful takes place, which is what the term ~""A71O'U:x or ecclesia (communis locus) stands for; or the word

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claustrum (closed space) that indicates not just a style of monastic life but also determines the epistemological architectonics of universities, where knowledge is divided into presumably autonomous and noncommunicating spheres or fields - throughout all of these meanings we find the imprint of optical-spatial elements in the design of institutions. 3b. But even beyond the simple design of institutions, the preeminence of the optical-spatial is projected into the values that implicitly or explicitly act as normative support for them. In this respect, if we want to investigate the intellectual heritage of such foundational values, we have to mention Platonic theory as their origin or primordial source. According to the Platonic canon, values were ideas (lofa, Joo~) and the ideas were correlates of seeing (lOfLJI): aspects, images, or visible shapes (species) which ideas offered to vision. From this, in reference to the Good, the value of values, Plato compares it to the sun, the light of which helps the human eye, allows this visual sensor to realize and accomplish its fundamental end. In like manner the Good, from which the soul obtains the necessary light with which it is able to know the intelligible, is that which illuminates the realm where ideas lie, making them not only visible but resplendent. It is through the power of the Good (aho TO a-ya86J1) - understood in comparison to a clarifying and intelligible light - that the remaining values are seen and visualized. The beautiful (TO KaM JI) , the just (TO OLKaLOJl), even the true (TO lx')..:1186J1), are all thereby seen precisely through the Good, "that which imparts truth to the known and power of knowing to the knower." TOVTO TOLJlVJI TO rl}JI liX.~8eLaJl 7rapexoJl TOr~ !o/ YL-YJlWUKOJln rl}JI 56J1ap.LJI ix7rOOLOOJl T~JI TOU i:x-ya8oU toeaJl 4>&8L efJlm. 3

')'L-yJlWUKop.eJlOL~ KaL

It would be almost impossible to find in the whole history of philosophy a more revealing passage on the preeminence of optical elements in the configuration of metaphysical thought. From this preeminence, there naturally flows the spatial texture that impregnates the significance and meaning of its foundations, principles, and concepts, as well as everything that directly or indirectly is based upon them. Given its limits, our argument cannot multiply nor indefinitely extend the search for examples. What is now necessary, in light of the points made, is to ask the following question: What is the destiny that awaits this form of thought? What is the destiny of language, of human institutions and their values, if the optical-spatial elements of the traditional mode of thought are questioned and overcome by the advances of meta-technics?

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CONCLUSION AND PERSPECTIVES This is the crossroad that confronts the present. The present and future of humanity depend on the course that humanity plots for itself in the face of this. We are embarked upon a period of profound and unimaginable changes whose meanings and bearings cannot yet be fully nor clearly apprehended. Weare in a position similar to that of those sailors who at the end of the fifteenth and the early sixteenth centuries had not perceived the significance of their own discoveries. Perplexed and confused, they still believed that the new territories they were visiting were part of the known world. They thereby missed the very meaning of their discoveries, not realizing that their presence in those lands embodied an emerging new reality that would eventually decree the inexorable breakdown of their own worldview (Weltanschauung). Such is the case with meta-technics today. It is not just simply that we are placed before a new phase of technics, one that could easily insert itself within the development of the previous conception of technics as its natural outcome or as the fruit of its gradual evolution. It implies, on the contrary and at the same time, the overcoming in our time of the traditional anthropomorphic, anthropocentric, and geocentric characteristics, as well as radical substitutions for all the epistemological and ontological foundations that had hitherto sustained human institutional inventiveness and through this technics itself as a display of rationality. It is the noetic root of this rationality - through its own pre-eminent capacity for institutional inventiveness - that has been disrupted by the creation of its own prodigious production. The design and creation of a meta-technical logos at once denies and overcomes the inherent finitude of that very same rationality. This means - as we shall see even more clearly in times to come - the gradual and inexorable introduction of new modalities, horizons, and limits in the deployment of human and trans-human rationality and, of course, in the syntax of its projects and institutional faces. In something as simple as this, we think, lie the seeds of the immediate future. - Translated by Luis Castro Leiva and Carl Mitcham

International Institute for Advanced Studies (Caracas)

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NOTES 1. Hermann Diels and Walther Kranz, Die Fragmente der Vorsokraliker, vol. I (Zurich: Weidmannsche Verlogsbuchhandlen, 1964), p. 231. 2. Edmund Husserl, Ideen zu einer reinen PhIJnomenologie und phlJnomenologischen Philosophie, I, 19; in Husserliana: Gesammelte Werke, vol. III, part 1 (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1976 [first published 1913]), p. 43. English trans. F. Kersten: Ideas

pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy, First Book

(The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1982), p. 36. The Greek in brackets is a marginal annotation made by Husserl in 1929. 3. Plato, Republic, S08e.

LEOPOLDO MOLINA P.

EDUCATION FOR FREEDOM VERSUS SOCIO-TECHNICAL CONTROL BY PEDAGOGICAL MEANS

The rise of modern science and technology itself gave rise to distinctive discussions of what has since the modern period been taken as a defining characteristic of being human - namely, free will. The main questions have been: To what extent is science able to know the foundations of free action? What are the possibilities for the technological manipulation or control of such action?' Expanding on such basic questions are a host of more specific ones: Does scientific and technological progress expand human freedom, as nineteenthcentury positivists believed, or does it limit freedom? Is freedom different in the so-called "developed" than in the "developing" world? And most immediately relevant to the present discussion: Is human freedom subject to socio-technical control by pedagogical means?2 It is not our intention to offer complete answers to these questions, but only to reflect upon them from the perspective created by the interaction of contemporary technology and formal education in Latin America. The importance of such reflection can only increase when considered from the point of view of those subject to the teaching and learning process in developing countries, since it is their lives that constitute the real foundations upon which the institutions we call schools are based as well as the many hopes for that development that is the focus of so much Latin American thought and action. 3 DREAMS OF SOCIAL CHANGE THROUGH PEDAGOGICAL MEANS Latin American educators have not infrequently imagined new worlds in which schools become technically organized to solve difficult social problems such as poverty or injustice. Organizational perfection and efficient school teaching are also magic ideas that have currently captured the attention of educational theorists, practitioners, and administrators throughout the developed world. Indeed, today there seems to be a wide consensus that scientific and technological advances in the social sciences should be put at the service of teaching rather than learning. 4 Child-centered pedagogy has been replaced by teachercentered pedagogy assisted especially by the latest advances in electronic learning. This has in turn reinforced Latin American dreams of having

259 Carl Mitcham (ed.), Philosophy of Technology in Spanish Speaking Countries, 259-268. 01993 Kluwer Academic Publishers.

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pedagogical means play an enhanced role in the pursuit of social development. 5 But given the disparate realities existing in North and South America, it is little wonder that such words as "science" and "technology" - not to mention "organizational perfection" and "efficiency" - are likely to have quite different meanings in each region. Nevertheless, many Latin American educational theorists, having been trained in the dominant positivist culture of the North, continue to believe in science and technology as panaceas for all the problems of development from Mexico to Patagonia. 6 For example, having once tried to import from the North the ideal of equal opportunity in education, Latin American educators now, like their colleagues in more developed circles, are calling for the introduction of technologically assisted teaching. Computers and the electronic culture represent a new means to be utilized by progressive educators - none of whom are particularly worried about questions of human freedom. Freedom remains a philosophical issue outside the bounds of realistic educational planning. Contrary to such a practical view, we want to ask: What are the existential conditions at the basis of the true satisfaction of human needs? And how are those needs related to the prowth of personal freedom in contemporary Latin American societies? TOWARD AN EXISTENTIAL THEORY OF EDUCATION

Building on the analyses of Martin Heidegger,8 we can argue that as existent beings, both teachers and students are always intentionally transcending themselves in their relations with the world. If existential anxiety is the normal attitude characterizing a being in search of Being, then surely teachers and students must be allowed to experience such anxiety. By existentially apprehending their inner selves and surrounding circumstances, persons become conscious that their temporal reality, their finitude, is thus open to a realm of learning that is not exhausted by any school setting. They thus transcend any formal system of education, any school program. 9 This means that although it may start with formal schooling, to become educated cannot be accomplished completely by such means. Such a process is only one aspect of the more general achievement of a higher human ideal than becoming formally educated - the achievement of a state of authenticity. At the same time, authenticity only becomes real within existing social and political institutions such as those we call schools. And schools, as historical institutions, belong to a particular society and culture. 10

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Insofar as this is so, schools are also the carriers of a tradition that is handed down to each new generation in order to help it deal with the inexorable threat of temporal, historical disappearance - and the persistent possibility of meaninglessness. Within the horizon of continuously threatened meaning, a tradition has its own authority for any particular group. Here lies the importance of the cultural setting of any school process. Here also lie the root values with which the schools have been invested, as agents of both preservation and change. Without examining in depth the complexity of these assertions, let us simply sax that a teacher's authority seems to be initially grounded on tradition. Assuming an existential perspective, however, let us also note that such authority can degenerate into sheer authoritarianism if it is not put at the service of existential growth in the student. The teacher is thus one who has a responsibility for letting pupils, in the process of learning, free their own existential possibilities. The teacher has to focus upon this ideal and not simply on reproducing a supposedly correct view of the world mistakenly called tradition. 12 Out of this freeing of existential possibilities emerges a period of reliance on and guidance by older fellow students. Beyond this, growth in autonomy seems to be directly proportional to the development of a person's possibilities for naming the world and a commitment to the enrichment of experience. 13 However, human growth rests on the discovery of our belonging to a realm of meaning that transcends the beings with whom we find ourselves in immediate experience. 14 If this is so, then in any culture students becoming existentially mature persons can enter inexorably, if they are permitted to do so, into a phase of being their own teachers. This does not mean that students can create from nothing a new tradition and culture. Tradition will remain always as the inescapable background for educational action. Given this dialectical growth between one's inner freedom and one's existential development, nobody can avoid the determinants of a particular tradition. We are incarnated beings. IS Caught within the web represented by institutionalized determinants, factually present within a socio-cultural milieu, individual freedom is constituted of existential autonomy grounded in a particular tradition. It can promote or retard that autonomous growth through which anyone living in society has to pass. Yet here resides the deepest educational predicament of human beings: They often grow at the expense of the growth of their tradition. 16 THE CHALLENGE OF EDUCATIONAL POLICY What is the impact of such a predicament on the organizational

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aspects of education - rational policy formation, administration, and formal educational practices? The ideal of the rational organization of educational or cultural experience has been a persistent aspect of educational theory in both North America and Latin America. 17 Indeed, since the rise of modernity, and especially of the nation state, organizational dreams have pervaded formal education, as can be illustrated through the history of educational administration and the establishment of teacher training institutions in many countries, particularly in the United States. IS Development of the field of educational policy analysis has given new impetus to this movement. What in European countries was first called simply pedagogical planning has been bureaucratically expanded in North America into policy analysis, with the aim of betterin9 the profession of teaching and rationally reforming the school system. 9 But one may well ask: To what extent can education of the existential self, of the person, be effectively or technically planned? To what extent are human potentialities eXlstentially fostered by means of wellplanned, rational institutions? Another version of this question: What kind of education is a rational education? Does the term "reason" here refer only to scientific and technological rationality'f' THE MEANINGS OF REASON From the perspective of an existential theory of education the term "rational" must be taken to include more than an effective arrangement of means toward the accomplishment of some projected end. 21 The term rational has to encompass apprehension through logos of the plurality of meanings that open up to us as intentional beings. At the same time, as Heidegger has argued, the understanding of Being is obscured by the temporal appearance of pluralities of beings and things, including human beings. The human use of reason thus must also include the discovery of that true reality which manifests itself through social, political, and cultural pluralities - in a word, through traditions. 22 Whether education proceeds through formal schooling or through lived experiences at home and in the streets, no learner can be deprived of an ultimate freedom to choose or reject such traditions in a multitude of ways.23 Indeed, once freedom is taken as the aim of the educational process certain limitations of the term reason are exposed. In the analytic sense, reason involves planning out social and individual experience within a particular tradition. The cult of efficiency in education develops from such a conception.24 But not all educative actions can be scientifically or technically rationalized. That special feature we call freedom belongs to the structure of the self and

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ontologically limits such a reductive possibility. ~ The myth of the rational administration of formal education is especially dangerous when it belongs to international agencies interested in the effective planning of what euphemistically has been called human capital. From the perspective of Western, technological culture and the person living within a tradition that has become universally accepted, such an assumption or attitude nevertheless seems to be unavoidable. The question no longer seems to be: How can we radically change this situation? but What can the individual learn from the technological tradition? Stated more existentially, from the perspective of education for freedom, we can ask: How can a person be initiated in such a tradition without sacrificing inner potentialities for freedom? By means of what intellectual instruments can this be accomplished? How can technology help in this humanizing enterprise'f6 But such questions can take a different form among the policy analysts in Latin America, where the meaning of reason and rationality transcends or goes beyond the pragmatic meaning that dominates in developed countries. People living in third world countries (Latin American countries included) must become aware of their own distinctive traditions of reason and rationality. 27 Following Heidegger again, we can argue that the kind of rationality that lies in the very foundations of the mentality of contemporary Western society technical or pragmatic rationality - does not fit the educational needs of people living in countries other than the developed ones. Paradoxically, the instrumental way of thinking does not grasp the deepest meaning of either technology or of education.28 A belief in pragmatic or instrumental rationality nevertheless pervades education schools and teacher training institutions in Latin America that have been heavily influenced by the United States. 29 In these institutionalized environments, the social planning view of education is grounded on a pragmatic view of the process of learning and given theoretical support by positivist social science research. A whole methodological apparatus has been created to support this belief. Statistical methods and the search for objectivistic scientific paradigms attest to this assertion. 30 THE HUMANISTIC-CRITICAL MOVEMENT IN EDUCATION A counter-movement in education theory can be found in the works of humanist-oriented educationalists whose works, though influential, only quite recently began to be professionally consumed by teachers trained in education schools or teacher training institutions in the United States. For Ivan Illich and Paolo Freire,31 for instance, human life is

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distinguished by three main characteristics - freedom, autonomy, and dignity, with freedom being the most radical element. Such thinkers are committed to promoting the self-unfolding of a human nature that transcends itself. The natural goodness of such a nature, the humanist soon realizes, can readily be hindered by negative societal forces that must be overcome through the development of critical thought and action. This development of critical thought thus becomes the proximate aim of education toward which all humanist theory is oriented. 32 Personal growth depends on the integration of wisdom, technical knowledge, historical tradition, imaginative creativity, and courage. All this must be oriented toward the enrichment of the sense of belonging to a particular culture as well as to the development of a transcendentcritical stance toward that culture. 33 Such a process of educational growth and maturation in no way eliminates reason as such. What it establishes are the limits of analytical reason understood in the technical or pragmatic sense. Restraint becomes discipline as self-restraint within the limits of practical reason - that is, within the limits of personal freedom. The primary rule of the learner's conduct should be, as Immanuel Kant would say, rational autonomy. Without education for freedom there is no practical reason beyond that of technical or instrumental reason. But within such an education there opens up the possibility not only for wisdom but also for passion - passion guided by reason and placed at the service of the human condition. Only in freedom can we exercise reason. 34 Despite the many misrepresentations of the humanistic movement, this is the kind of freedom to which humanist educators refer. Freedom grounds reason - at least the kind of freedom to which even a person in chains may aspire, and that may even :§ive meaning to existence when everything seems to be rationally lost, and is on occasion even the self-discovery of students within the confines but without the help of the schools. THE LATIN AMERICAN EXPERIENCE Examples of such self-discovery and humanistic pedagogy at the service of true education actually exist in Latin America outside the specialized literature of professional educators, and despite technocratic pressures. Within the catechesis of the poor by the poor that has become a distinctive feature of the Latin American Catholic Church there is precisely an education for freedom not found in the schools.36 In some of the secular social revolutionary movements one can point to

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elements of the same kind of education. What is repeatedly discovered in such education is a duality in the realm of social possibilities, a duality opening as existential possibilities for the person acting both as teacher and as student. Things and oneself exist in a certain way - but they need not remain that way. Conditions can either be accepted or altered - and in a multitude of ways. Indeed, even in being accepted there is a human entering into that once recognized makes it no longer possible that things will simply impose themselves on the student. With the help of free teachers students can learn from the world, and then become teachers of the world and themselves. 37 Thus what needs to be hermeneutically examined is not only the real teacher-student interaction within the real milieu of the classroom and school, but also and even more crucially the scientific constructs that try to keep this world from becoming unreal. The realm of discourse through which human beings are taught represents the domain for such a hermeneutical analysis. 38 Given contemporary circumstances of cultural dependency in many Latin American countries, a whole hermeneutical shift is necessary to reveal what is concealed in the dominant educational theory. This shift can easily start by helping teachers and learners become more conscious of the tradition in which their knowledge and values are rooted. 39 From the examination of such a tradition and values, they will be in a better position to understand what is happening in reality and better able to imagine future institutions such as schools that can help persons grow as conscious and critical human beings. In the end this can support the creation of a new existential theory of education that goes beyond humanistic-critical ideas. This could be a humanistic social science relying heavily on hermeneutic reflection and cross-disciplinary analyses. Within this perspective liberal education as a theoretical realm is no longer to be conceived as a host of separate fields of study, but as an interrelated process of learning, teaching, and rational inquiry. 40 Against this background, the separation among educational disciplines also needs to be transcended. New ways of educating can go beyond the onesidedness of specialized inquiry (e.g., empirical classroom observations for statistical analysis; the gathering of instructional data for story telling) or beyond interdisciplinarity as the institutionalized gathering of disciplines whose value for the education of human beings is presupposed (as when students are required to take unrelated courses in sociology, political science, or psychology).41 What is required is a transdisciplinarity that illuminates the being-in-the-world of our Latin American tradition and culture. 42 University of the Andes (Merida)

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NOTES 1. Hans-Georg Gadamer, Reason in the Age of Science (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1989); H. Tristram Engelhardt Jr., "Human Nature Technologically Revisited," in Ellen F. Paul, Fred D. Miller Jr., and Jeffrey Paul, eds., Ethics, Politics, and Human Nature (Oxford: Blackwell, 1991), pp. 180-191; and Howard Gardner, The Mind's New Science: A History ofthe Cognitive Revolulion (New York: Basic Books, 1985); Michael Posner, ed., Foundations of Cognitive Science (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1989); and Charles Taylor, "The Significance of Significance: The Case of Cognitive Psychology," in Sollace Mitchell and Michael Rosen, eds., The Needfor Interpretation: Contemporary Conceptions of the Philosopher's Task (New Jersey: Humanities Press, 1983); and Charles Taylor, "The Dialogical Self," in David R. Hiley, James F. Bohman, and Richard Schusterman, eds., The Interpretive Turn (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991), pp. 304-314. 2. Manfred Stanley, The Technological Conscience: Survival and Dignity in an Age of Expertise (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978), pp. 78-185. 3. Gregorio Weinberg, "EI universo de 1a educati6n como sistema de ideas en America Latina," in Leopoldo Zea, ed., America Latina en sus ideas (Mexico: Siglo XXI, 1986), pp. 432-445. 4. Daniel P. Liston and Kenneth M. Zeichner, Teacher Educacion and the Social Conditions of Schooling (New York: Routledge, 1991). 5. Sharon A. Shrock, "A Brief History of Instructional Development," in Gary J. Anglin, ed., Instructional Technology: Past, Present, and Future (Engelwood, CO: Libraries Unlimited, 1991), pp. 11-19. 6. G. Psacharopoulos and M. Woodhall Psacharopoulos, Educationfor Development: An Analysis of Investment Choices (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991). 7. Ivan Illich, Toward a History of Needs (New York: Pantheon, 1978), pp. 68-92; and Ivan Illich, Deschooling Society (New York: Harper & Row, 1971). 8. See, e.g., Martin Heidegger, "Being and Time: Introduction," in David F. Krell, ed., Martin Heidegger: Basic Writings (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1977), pp. 7982. 9. Martin Buber, Between Man and Man, trans. Ronald Gregor Smith (Boston: Beacon Press, 1955), pp. 83-117; and Maxine Greene, The Dialectics of Freedom (New York: Teachers College Press, 1988), pp. 1-23. 10. John Dewey, "The School and Society," in Martin S. Dworkin, ed., Dewey on Education (New York: Teachers College Press, 1959), pp. 33-90; and Jerome Karabel and A.H. Halsey, eds., Power and Ideology in Education (New York: Oxford University Press, 1977). 11. Georgia Warnke, Gadamer: Hermeneutics, Tradition and Reason (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1987), pp. 156-174. 12. Paulo Freire, The Politics of Education: Culture, Power and Liberation, trans. D. Macedo (South Hadley, MA: Bergin and Garvey, 1985). Introduction by Henry Giraux. 13. John Dewey, Experience and Education (New York: Macmillan, 1938). 14. Donald Vandenberg, Education as Human Right: A Theory of Curriculum and Pedagogy, "Advances in Contemporary Educational Thought," vol. 6 (New York: Teachers College Record PreiS, 1990). 15. Gabriel Marcel, Tragic WISdom and Beyond: Including Conversations between Paul Ricoeur and Gabriel Marcel, trans. Stephen Jolin and Peter McCormick (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1973). 16. Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method, trans. Joel Weinsheime and D.G. Marshall (New York: Crossroad, 1991). 17. William J. Paisley and Matilda Butler, Knowledge Utilization System in Education:

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Dissemination, Technical Assistance, Networking (Beverly Hills, CA: Sage, 1983). 18. David Tyack, The One Best System: A History of American Urban Education

(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1974), pp. 126-176. 19. Joel Spring, The American School 1642-1990 (New York: Longman, 1990), pp. 225-258. 20. Jiirgen Habermas, "An Alternative Way out of the Philosophy of the Subject: Communicative Versus Subject-Centered Reason," in The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity: Twelve Lectures, trans. Frederick G. Lawrence (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1991), pp. 294-326; and Harold Brown, Rationality (New York: Routledge, 1988), pp. 178-228. 21. Thomas McCarthy, The Critical Theory of JQrgen Habennas (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1991), pp. 162-192. 22. Gadamer, Truth and Method (1991), pp. 280-283. 23. See Vandenberg, Education as Human Right (1990). 24. Raymond E. Callahan, Education and the Cull of Efficiency (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962). 25. Paul Ricoeur, Oneself as Another, trans. Kathleen Blamey (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992); and Anthony J. Cascardi, The Subject of Modernity (Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press, 1992). 26. Stanley, The Technological Conscience (1978), pp. 188-249. 27. Francisco Mir6 Quesada, "Ciencia y tecnica: Ideas 0 mitoides," in Leopoldo Zea, ed., America Latina en sus ideas (Mexico: Siglo XXI, 1986), pp. 72-94; and Leopoldo Zea, Filosofla de Ia historia Americana (Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Econ6mica, 1978). 28. S.B. Rosenthal, "Scientific Method and the Return to Foundations: Pragmatism and Heidegger," Journal of Speculative Philosophy, vol. 2, no. 3 (1988), pp. 192-205. 29. R.F. Dearden, P.H. Hirst, and R.S. Peters, eds., Education and Development of Reason (London: Routledge, 1972); and Harvey Siegel, Educating Reason: Rationality, Critical Thinking, and Education (New York: Routledge, 1988), pp. 48-61. 30. J. Robey, "Policymaking, Analysis and Evaluation: A Topical Bibliography of Recent Research, " Policy Studies Review, vol. 3, nos. 3-4 (May 1984), pp. 521-532; and DJ. Amy, "Toward a Post-Positivist Policy Analysis," Policy Studies Journal, vol. 13, no. 1 (September 1984), pp. 207-211. 31. Stephen T. Leonard, Critical Theory and Political Practice (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990), pp. 136-166. 32. Dieter Misgeld, "Education and Cultural Invasion: Critical Social Theory, Education as Instruction, and the 'Pedagogy of the Oppressed'," in John Forester, ed., Critical Theory and Public Life (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1988), pp. 77-120. 33. Seyla Benhabib, Critique, Norm, and Utopia: A Study ofthe Foundations of Critical Theory (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986), pp. 279-354; and Jeff Mitscherling, "Philosophical Hermeneutics and 'The Tradition' ," Man and World, vol. 22 (1989), pp. 247-250. 34. William J. Richardson, "Heidegger and the Quest of Freedom," in Joseph Kockelrnans, ed., A Companion to Heidegger's Being and TllTIe (Washington, DC: University Press of America, 1986), p. 161; and Paul Ricoeur, Freedom and Nature, trans., With introduction Erazim V. Kohak: (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1966), pp. 482-486. 35. Frithjof Bergman, On Being Free (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1977), pp. 41-53. 36. David Lehmann, Democracy and Development in Latin America: Economics, Politics and Religion in the Postwar Period (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1990). 37. Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed (New York: Herder and Herder, 1972), pp. 57-118; and Paulo Freire and Antonio Fernandez,Learning to Question: A Pedagogy

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of Liberation , trans. Tony Coates (New York: Continuum, 1989).

38. Paul Ricoeur, "Life: A Story in Search of Narrator," in Marion J. Valdes, ed., .A. Ricoeur Reader: Re.fkction and Imagination (Buffalo, NY: University of Toronto Press, 1991), pp. 425-441; and Paul Ricoeur, Interpretation Theory: Discourse and the Surplus of Meaning (Fort Worth, TX: Texas Christian University Press, 1976), pp. 125. 39. Robert E. Young,.A. Critical Theory of Education (New York: Teachers College Press, 1990), pp. 167-172. 40. Peter Marsh, ed., Contesting the Boundaries ofLiberal and Professional Education (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1988). 41. Julie Thompson Klein, Interdisciplinarity: History, Theory and Practice (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1990), pp. 77-85. 42. Joseph J. Kockelmans, "Why Interdisciplinarity1," in Joseph J. Kockelmans, ed., Interdisciplinarity and Higher Education (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1979).

PART VI FROM OTHER AMERICAS

RAUL FORNET-BETANCOURT TWO PHILOSOPHICAL APPROACHES TO THE PROBLEM OF TECHNICS AND THEIR MEANING FOR LATIN AMERICA

The first difficulty one encounters when thinking about technics concerns whether it is singular or plural. Technics manifests itself today in the guise of many technics, as an irreducible plural reality, which argues against any hypostatizing of the phenomenon by talking about it with a reductiomst singularity. Technics are not always some one technique. There are always many technics in the form of radically diverse manifestations that are impossible to unify in some global definition that takes account of this complexity. It is thus necessary to warn of a danger in any attempt at a "philosophy of technology" that tries to determine too quickly what kind of thing technics is, and to offer some unique vision of the whole. This action is dangerous because, beside being inadequate and insensitive to the complexity of technical phenomena, it tempts us to pass global judgment, whether positive or negative. 1 In this respect there are many representative, antithetical positions in traditional philosophy of technics. 2 Philosophically, then, it is possible to speak in many different ways about technics. In fact, the arguments of Jos~ Ortega y Gasset and Martin Heidegger - as representatives of the most philosophical reflections on technics - enable us to show how even within the horizon of philosophical understandings, reflection can take radically different paths. But using Ortega's and Heidegger's reflections as a starting point, I want to try to clarify the most appropriate way to speak philosophically about technics in Latin America. ORTEGA'S "MEDITACI6N DE LA TECNICA" It is risky, and ultimately inappropriate, to undertake the examination of a specific question in the thought of a philosopher without first trying to set it in the conceptual framework of the experience or fundamental intuition that inspires and shapes his philosophy. This general methodological principle applies, naturally enough, to Ortega and his meditation on technics. The intention and limits of the present paper nevertheless force us to satisfy this principle in the most elementary and thus deficient manner.

271 Carl Mitcham (ed.), Philosophy of Technology in Spanish Spealdng Countries, 271-281. 01993 Kluwer Academic Publishers.

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Let us begin simply by pointing out that Ortega's meditation on technology is located in the fundamental perspective established by the Spanish thinker's central intuition on life as radical reality. Within the horizon of understanding made possible by this intuition, being human appears as the foremost manifestation of life as an inescapable and constant project. Life, and especially human life, is activity, a program of production and self-production, in the clear creative sense of "fabrication." For Ortega technics, including modem technology, must be sought in those human acts by which human beings try to defend life, to secure it - that is, to realize the configuration of life as continuation, subsistence. With this, Ortega ties the origin of technics to (human) life as a given that is insecure and full of necessities, and that therefore forces us into action. Nevertheless, he warns us against a possible misunderstanding: "Technics is not what the human being does to satisfy necessities" (p. 324).3 The characteristic feature of the technical act is the novelty that is involved by seeking satisfaction for necessities through the introduction of a fundamental change in the structure or, as Ortega would say, in the circumstances in which those necessities are experienced. In technics human beings are not satisfied with what they find in nature, but throw themselves at it to transform it, so that it yields what it would otherwise not directly yield. The novelty of this kind of making brought about by technical action resides in the act by which the human being becomes a producer. Human beings do not adjust to nature, because human necessities are not just biological. "The concept of human necessity covers indifferently the necessary and the superfluous" (p. 327). By introducing the dimension of the superfluous as part of human necessity, Ortega points out that human life necessarily entails an eagerness not just for living but living well. This eagerness for wellbeing (not just being) is so necessary that Ortega dares to declare that it is the greatest human necessity. "Well being and not being is the fundamental human necessity, the necessity of necessities" (p. 324). On the basis of human necessities thus construed Ortega links technics to the essence of human being, its way of being. Humans are beings whose way of being inevitably implies being through the making of technics. The reason for this fundamental equivalence between humans and technical being rests with the postulate of human life as well-being. The root of the "variability" of technics is its historicity, and the root of its historicity is its essential dependency on the vital program of being human. Ortega is thus one of the first philosophers to have clearly perceived the historical character of technics. As an instance of human activity, technics happens and evolves, that is to say, has history. Furthermore, technics is in a certain way the history of the forms

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through which humans have tried to fulfill their programs for being or well being. In this light, Ortega distinguishes three stages in the evolution of technics: (1) the technics of chance; (2) the technics of the artisan; and (3) the technics of the engineer. Let us focus a moment on the third stage. At the foundation of modern technics - the technics of the engineer - lies experience or awareness of the fact that technics is not subject to the personal limitations of the one who practices it. The historical source of this shift in perspective is, for Ortega, the invention of the machine. The appearance of the machine marks a revolution in the relation between human beings and technics because with the machine it is made clear that technics ceases to be what it had been until this point, manipulation, maneuver, and becomes sensu stricto fabrication. . . . In the machine ... the instrument takes first place and is no longer that which helps the human, but the reverse: the human becomes the one who simply helps and supplements the machine (p. 360).

But if the machine has such a meaning in the historical evolution of technics, it is because its appearance represents the moment in which human beings become aware of their full technical capacity and their ability to invent. This capacity for invention, which includes the certainty of making discoveries, is what separates the engineer from the artisan, and constitutes what Ortega calls "the technic" (la tecnica). In other words, with the machine there comes about this radical change in the relation between humans and their technics, the awareness that before having any' particular technics they possess the technic ability or technics in itself. 4 At first it may seem strange that Ortega speaks about the technic ability to point out the radical turn that is produced in the present age, since this might seem inconsistent with his conception of technics as a necessary human activity and, therefore, historical. With technic itself, however, Ortega is not trying to go beyond the historical-human plane, pointing toward some abstract, atemporal, metaphysical entity. He simply wants to point up a separation between the technical function of being human and human beings practicing many determinate technics. By doing so he illustrates his basic insight that "technics are only a posteriori concrete manifestations of the general function of technic as part of the human" (p. 369). Beyond this possible misunderstanding, it must be added that with the awareness of possessing technic before technics, Ortega indicates the new stage in which human beings, having broken out of a weak and limited self-awareness, begin to understand themselves within a horizon of unlimited possibilities. Consciously possessing technic is, in the end,

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synonymous with a new anthropological situation. In the context of this development in technics, Ortega warns about two points. The first has to do with the internal possibility that opens up for the technical process with the discovery that, logically prior to technics, there is technic. Ortega calls this the "technicism" of modem technics, including with this the new way that inspires the nuova scienza: to act methodically, analyzing and experimenting. Technicism is the concrete manifestation in technics of the union between science and technics. From this union comes forth precisely the distinctive and specific configuration of modem technics. This gives modem technics independence and complete self-confidence. It is not a magic-like inspiration nor pure chance, but a method, a pre-established path, firm, aware of its foundations (p. 369).

The second point is directly connected to the idea that the explicit discovery of a generic technical function puts human beings in a situation whose real novelty resides in "the awareness of its principal limitation" (p. 372). In this discovery, which constitutes the unique achievement of modem technics, Ortega perceives in a remarkable intuition the danger latent in the present technical process: "technic, under the appearance . . . of a capacity, unlimited in principle, makes for the human being who is ready to live upon faith in technic and in it alone an empty life" (p. 366). But it must be emphasized that although he points out this danger, Ortega does not in any way minimize the importance of technics for modem humanity. On the contrary, Ortega begins with the conviction that human beings today cannot live without technics, because they are as immersed in it, and with the same familiarity, as was primitive humanity in the natural environment. This is why his attention is focused not on warnings against technics, but on our way of conceiving and relating to it. For Ortega, the danger of the contemporary evolution in technics is that human beings will see in technics their only way of upholding and determining the content of their existence. This would be a mutilation, because "human life is not only a struggle with matter, but also the struggle of human beings with theIr soul" (p. 375). HEIDEGGER'S "DIE FRAGE NACH DER TECHNIK" In clear contrast to the Spanish thinker who saw in the concept of human necessity an entry into the field of technics and defined technics as a kind of human activity having human happiness as an end, Heidegger establishes from the beginning a profound distinction as the starting point of his question concerning technics. Stated succinctly the

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distinction is this: "Technics is not the same as the essence of technics" (p. 5)5

This distinction between technics and the essence of technics is fundamental in the following ways. First, we find in this distinction the goal toward which Heidegger's questioning about technics is oriented. In fact, from this distinction it can be inferred that what is really important is to understand the essence of technics, and not simply technics. Second, in light of his corollary point that "the essence of technics is not anything technical" (p. 6), Heidegger warns against searching for the essence of technics in the realm of technics. If the essence of technics is absolutely non-technical, we must direct our questioning to a more primordial realm than that of technical artifacts and procedures themselves. This distinction indicates that Heidegger asks himself about technics in the context of and in deep and essential connection with the question about being. This is the same as saying that such a question is not marginal or secondary for Heidegger. The essence of technics belongs to the same realm as that which essentially makes us think and which is, therefore, devoted to thought as its most sublime task that is, to the realm of being. Third, and almost as a consequence of the second, the distinction between technics and the essence of technics is of fundamental importance because it also indicates that making a distinction between the human and technics necessarily takes us to the essence of technics as something non-technical. Only from this primordial and fundamental dimension will it be possible to understand technics in its truth. This is the way through which Heidegger essentially connects the question about technics with the central question of his thought, the question about the truth of being. Moreover, this shows that, for Heidegger, the question about technics is not just any question. Asking about technics is today asking about the truth of our reality. Truth and the essence of technics cannot be seen apart from each other as if they were two realms oblivious of one another. They are, in the end, the same realm. Technics properly takes place in the realm opened up through the unconcealing of truth, since every bringing forth finds its possibility in the space of the unconcealed. From this more primordial or fundamental vision that opens the ordering of technics into the realm of truth, the reduction of technics to a mere instrument or means is completely overcome. Technics, thought out from this perspective, does not simply make things or artifacts, nor is it a simple making. It is, as Heidegger says, a way of unconcealing or revealing - a way of bringing forth reality. Just as with ancient technics, modem technics is a constitutive force in its revealing - it

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frees and founds reality. Nevertheless, it is in the light of this constitutive aspect of all technics that the true novelty of modem technics stands out, because it brings forth in a specific, previously unknown way. The way of bringing forth that dominates and distinguishes modem technics is "provocation." The decisive tum in modem technics thus consists in the fact that with it begins to rule a way of bringing forth that implies a planned and programmed attack on nature. Nature is provoked to give up what is required of it - or, in other words, is forced with provoking exigencies that make it give up what is required of it, so that it appears or unconceals itself as that which is available. Thus the bringing forth of modem technics is a provocation that not only gives us objects (things), but also a reserve of resources ready to yield to any requirement or demand - what Heidegger calls Bestand. As a result of the bringing forth of modem technics, that which we today call reality exists in the guise of Bestand or resources. The bringing forth of reality under the heading of Bestand is, for Heidegger, the point at which technics is shown decisively not to be a simple human making. As a mode of revealing, Bestand involves a provoking bringing forth that cannot be created by any human making. Stated more concretely, the subject of the provoking bringing forth that characterizes the modem epoch is not human beings. It is not possible, then, to define technics in terms of pure human activity, as was done by Ortega. In contrast to Ortega's anthropological determination, Heidegger's idea is that humanity does not possess the basic disposition in which all the technical activities of manufacturing, production, control, modeling, etc., are constituted as possibilities. True, human beings are the subjects of technical practices; moreover, they are the carriers and executors of technical makings and, as such, they may provocatively engage nature, using it according to their requirements. The problem is that such technical activities come forth from a reality over which human beings have no control, because it is not a possibility that is constituted in and with their technical making. This is the primordial, fundamental possibility of the unconcealing or revealing of the world as a reality able to be technically modeled and controlled. Technics is not, therefore, merely a human affair, but an ontological possibility in which even the human has been included as carrier of the historical-concrete realization of this possibility. THE THOUGHT OF ORTEGA AND HEIDEGGER IN THE LIGHT OF PRESENT NEEDS IN LATIN AMERICA As was said at the beginning, our main concern in the study of

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Ortega's and Heidegger's conceptions of technics is to analyze their possible meaning for the elaboration of a philosophical reflection on technics from the perspective of the present situation in Latin America. Ortega and Heidegger, in spite of fundamental differences, have a common standpoint that is decisive for our attempt to use their positions in our search for counsel concerning how to think philosophically about technics from the perspective of our continent. We refer to the idea, with which we agree, that technics has become for modern human beings the ground in which they are standing and being. In fact, for Ortega as well as for Heidegger, technics is not just one more simple ingredient, element, or component, among others, of our life and world. It is not a trait or characteristic that can be isolated and separated from the rest of the circumstances of our lives. Technics is the circumstance, the surrounding situation in which we are and from which we have to be and make. To the questions "Where and how are we?" and "How do we live?" contemporary humanity cannot answer by making an abstraction from technics, because technics is constitutive of the world configuration. Technics is part of the fundamental situation that informs the state in which humanity finds itself today, and which in fact penetrates the dynamics of human life itself. From this fundamental situation, which we call fundamental because it answers the question about the texture of the ground in which humanity exists today, human beings are not free. This idea of technics as the fundamental situation of modern human beings is decisive for considering Ortega and Heidegger in relation to their possible meaning for a Latin American reflection on technics. This is true not only because from it stems the complementary thought that today technics cannot be judged as something radically anti-human and, for that reason, to be completely rejected. It is true also because of the fact that technics in its development, and given the socio-political basis in which its progress is made, endangers the being of humanity. After many catastrophic experiences with technics, almost no one doubts that this is not just a possible danger, but an active force that is already undermining part of our human substance - or what we believe to be our human substance. Ortega as well as Heidegger, each from his particular perspective, has warned about a real danger hidden in the process of the technification of life and the world. Both insist that technics has in some way become a necessity and, consequently, that the attitude of wanting to banish technics from human life is not possible. Most simply, without technics the material base of life would be radically endangered. In saying that we agree with the fundamental points established by Ortega and Heidegger with regard to the meaning of modern technics,

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we indicate, of course, that these points reflect our own conviction or the personal point of view from which we see the problem of technics in Latin America. We begin, however, with an assumption that evidence about the meaning of technics can also be found in Latin America. But with this assumption things become complicated - since this is a debatable starting point. Without trying to reconstruct the history of the debate, recall that even prior to the founding of its nation states, Latin America had begun a discussion about whether in these countries national life should conform to the pattern of European and North American civilization or whether it was necessary to look for national orientations within their own cultural substrata. As historical-cultural illustrations, recall the very different programs proposed by two of the greatest figures of the intellectual conscience of Latin America, Domingo Sarmiento and Jos6 Marti, 6 or the reaction of the indigenist movement against those European influences which ruled at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries in many Latin American countries. For even more recent examples, demonstrating that this is not a thing of the past, simply consider contemporary literature, where the matter of our cultural identity continues to be discussed with unusual vigor. 7 There is also evidence in our philosophy, which discusses with increasing intensity the issue of the relationship between our culture and Western scientific rationality. And, of course, we must not forget the field of theology, which, with Latin American liberation theology, is contributing in no small way to this question. The preceding brief and general indications show that we are, in fact, in the presence of a true quaestio disputata, because the questions "from where" and "where to" by which Latin America must be defined are far from having definitive answers. Thus to take as a starting point that Latin American reality is debatable and troublesome implies that although this reality has to some extent come from Europe, Latin America has not been defmitively incorporated in the dynamics of Western civilization. But let us clarify this starting point. With Ortega and Heidegger, we hold that technics is also constitutive of reality in Latin America and that, as such, it configures the fundamental situation in which the great majority of the Latin American population lives. But it does not follow from this presupposition that we have decided the matter of the identity of Latin America in favor of what can be called its European or Western face, because our assumption also includes a basic distinction between context and culture. By "context" we understand the global framework that defines the shape of the political-economic organization which determines the official course of our countries, while "culture"

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designates the inherited substrata within which we exist with simple awareness of being here. In the concrete case of Latin America, this is expressed - although perhaps somewhat less clearly for the mestizo in being woven into a tapestry with a clearly rational texture, but one equally rich in symbolic, magical, and mythic connotations. In light of this distinction between context and culture, the analyses of technics by Heidegger and Ortega acquire a distinctive character for philosophical reflection on this issue in Latin America. In the first place, especially with Heidegger, a possibility is opened up for asking ourselves from our own situation about the ability we may still have to "put technics in its place" - that is, not only to set technics in a context that it itself determines and configures, but to relate it to the dimension of cultural significance that relativizes the totality of the technical context. Heidegger's question about the possibility of a Gelassenheit in the context of technics, as a sign that the human could recover the indigenous within the framework of a technoscientific civilization, can be for us a leading idea that drives us to look for our own possibilities to make technics a part of culture. Keeping in mind the weight of our own technical context, that is, that we cannot and should not banish technics from our nations, but also remembering tl1e-resistances thaCderive from our varied cultures that open up alternative engagements with reality, we must make the task for our philosophical reflection about technics a thinking about this phenomenon following the Heideggerian model of saying both "yes" and "no" to technics. To make technics a part of culture is a program that says "yes" to technics, since it considers technics a necessary phenomenon for the cultivation of life in a state of well-being, as Ortega would say. But, at the same time, saying "no" to technics makes it relative, differentiates and analyzes its adaptability in the fundamental referential system of the correspondent culture. Thus to ask, How does a technics fit within this culture?, presupposes the possibility of rejecting, in the name of the cultural substrata, certain technical achievements, certain technics. This implies the discovery of some kind of relationship with technics that is not simply technical that is, that the situation created by the technical context, in which only the technical has value, has been broken, and that a criterion for evaluation is available to discern the course of the development of technics. Our purpose is not to create a culture centered on technics, nor to try to mold culture to the requirements of technical development. It is more to center and to concentrate our cultures, thus opening ourselves up to technics in a way that can situate and apply it to the extent that our cultures are capable of incorporating technics without having to negate themselves or having to retreat to marginality.

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At the same time, the program of making technics a part of culture is a program that necessarily situates technics in an ecological perspective. The radical revision of the relationship between culture and technics necessarily goes through a reconsideration of the relationship between nature and technics. Finally, we want to call attention to an idea of Ortega's that has special value in helping us think about technics in Latin America. This is his definition of technics that starts with the concept of human necessity and the consequent essential connection between technical making and human desire for well being. We must remember that, according to Ortega, the union between technics and well-being is of such an intimate nature that technics changes according to the idea of well-being. Observing technics from the perspective that sees it as in the service of the human need for well-being, we understand that in Latin America the task of making technics a part of culture is no longer just an academic problem, but has concrete implications for the way of life of the majority of human beings on our continent. If culture has to do with the mode and manner in which human beings cultivate their lives, if it has to do with the question of how we exist in a vital space, then it necessarily has to do with socio-political questions of justice. And since it is manifest that in Latin America the answer to this question is clearly that injustices prevail, that "we are not well," that we are in a "general discomfort," then Ortega's idea of well-being as the end of technical making may serve gradually to unmask the true interests in our countries that obstruct increases in well-being and happiness for the majority of the people. That is, Ortega's insight encourages us to examine critically those conditions and goals within the framework of which technics is made possible in our countries. At the same time, Ortega's idea may be an interesting indication that technics, no matter how complicated and sophisticated, is not a metaphysical horror, but a human capacity and that, as such, it does not escape human responsibility. - Translated by Waldemar L6pez and Carl Mitcham

Catholic University of Eichstatt (Germany) NOTES 1. Cf. Giinther Ropohl, Die unvollkommene Technik (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1985), pp.58ff. 2. Consider, e.g., on the one hand, Friedrich Dessauer's interpretation of technics as essentially the human continuation of divine creativity (Dessauer, Philosophie der Technik [Bonn: Cohen, 1927] and Streit um die Technik [Frankfurt: Knecht, 1956]) and, on the other hand, Robert Dvorak's vision of technics as a diabolical reality with fatal consequences for humanity (Dvorak:, Technik. Machi und Tod [Hamburg: Claassen & Goverts, 1948]).

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3. All quotations from "Meditaci6n de la tecnica" are cited from the Obras completas (Madrid: Revista de Occidente), vol. 5. [4. This is an attempt to translate Ortega's distinction between "la tecnica" (with the "lao sometimes italicized) and "las tecnicas." - Translators] 5. All quotations from "Die Frage nach der Technik" are cited from Vortrlige und Aujslitze (Pfullingen: Neske, 1954). [6. Domingo Faustino Sarmiento (1811-1888) was the first president of the Republic of Argentina (1868-1874). His CivilizaciOn y barbarie: La vida de Juan Facundo Quiroga (1845), in the form of a biography of Facundo, the tyrannical gaucho lieutenant of the Argentine dictator Juan Manuel de Rosas, both criticized the dictatorship and initiated a tradition of gaucho literature. It has been one of the most important books written in Spanish America. Sarmiento, as president, also saw the U.S. as a model for Latin American development. Jose Julian Marti y Perez (1853-1895) was a Cuban poet, essayist, and revolutionary leader. Having lived in Cuba, Spain, Guatemala, Mexico, France, and New York City, he united liberal ideas with free verse and considered himself a citizen of the Americas - as indicated in such essays as "Nuestra America" (1881), "Emerson" (1882), "Whitman" (1887), and "Bollvar" (1893). - Translators] 7. For a global vision with representative references on the central importance of this topic in our literature, from 1492-1984, see Fernando Ainsa Amigues, Identidad cultural de lberoamerica en su narrativa (Madrid: Gredos, 1986).

Margarita M. Peiia Borrero

SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY, AND SOCIETY EDUCATION IN THE LATIN AMERICAN CONTEXT

The following is a brief review of science, technology, and society (STS) education as it has developed especially in the United States in recent years, with comments from a Latin American perspective - using Colombia as an example and a point of reference while venturing some generalizations. I do not intend to present defmite conclusions, but only to propose a few points for further consideration. EDUCATION IN SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY, AND SOCIETY: DEFINITION AND EVOLUTION Science, technology, and society studies are expanding rapidly in universities and schools throughout the United States and Europe. The idea for such studies emerged in the university setting as a result of the ecological movement and criticism of technology during the 1960s and 1970s. Recently it has been extended to primary and secondary education, after having won support in national documents on educational policy. As Waks (1988) says, the original stimulus for science, technology and society studies can be found in the works of thinkers such as Jacques Ellul, E. F. Schumacher, Ivan Illich, and others. The ideas of these thinkers, developed initially on the margins of academia, then influenced various philosophers, social scientists, and engineers who dedicated themselves to the study of technology in its social context. The tone of these first discussions was markedly anti-technology, and the purpose of many early courses in STS was to educate students about the "true" social impact of technological progress. This movement rapidly transcended its initial biases, however, and has been maintained in many universities in the form of interdisciplinary courses whose central thesis can be defined as the attempt to view science and technology as social processes. Science and technology are seen as the product of such social processes as politics, interest groups, economic forces, etc. The anti-technology radicalism which characterized the movement during its early years has given way to a vision of technology as a product of concrete interests and of actions by individuals or groups of individuals in determinate historical

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circumstances, stressing the importance of democratic control and responding to pressing social issues. As summarized by Wales (1989, p. 201), "STS education aims to promote scientific and technological literacy in order to empower citizen participation in democratic decisionmaking and action processes for resolving the pressing, technologicallydominated problems of our late industrial society. " Recent efforts have moved STS education into the school curriculum at the primary and secondary levels. In this movement STS methods are commonly seen as ways to promote what is called scientific and technological literacy. Such developments have responded, on the one hand, to a growing perception of deficiencies in science education in the United States and, on the other, to the interests of some educators in promoting citizen participation on issues and problems directly related to technology. Studies in STS have not been pursued as independent subjects in the school curriculum. The principal strategy consists of infusing units of STS education into the curriculum of other subjects (principally the sciences and social studies). The contents of these units are defined by problems of immediate interest to the students and their communities. The objective of such units is not exclusively to inform students or make them capable of using a set of techniques. The fundamental purpose is to make them conscious of the way technological changes affect the life of societies and how these changes can be controlled and directed through conscientious citizen participation in the context of a democracy. SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY, AND SOCIETY RELATIONS FROM A LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVE Critical reflection on modern technology and its social impact is close to the heart of Latin American thought. The deception caused by the model of economic development centered around growth has created some skepticism with regard to technology as a factor and indicator of progress. This attitude has also generated great hope for the idea of socalled "appropriate technology." Contemporary industrialized countries are not examples to be followed. Although aspects of their development may be desirable, their general pattern of development is not ecologically viable. Recent studies suggest that if the "underdeveloped" nations reach the consumption levels implicit in the model of development of the highly industrialized countries, the pressure on the natural environment will reach catastrophic proportions (Dagnino, 1986). This ecological argument was preceded in Latin America by antidependency criticism of traditional technological development patterns as a factor in economic subordination and the alienation of culture.

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Although in the beginning dependency was attributed to the absence of industry or capital goods, or the kind of innovation which makes indigenous technology possible, today we know that this argument is not valid. Recent studies in different Latin American countries (see, for example, Katz, 1987) indicate that in the heart of Latin American industry there exists a core of technological innovation that is growing, thanks to which some Latin American economies have reached a level of sophistication enabling them to compete with imports. However, a pattern of technological development based solely on increased innovation is unable to achieve the desired autonomy or technological self-determination. During the decade of the 1970s other authors (e.g., Herrera, 1972; and Sagasti, 1981) attributed technological dependency to the absence of local scientific activity effectively connected to the productive system. Transformation of the productive systems in the industrialized countries, that is, the diverse "industrial revolutions" which have occurred during the last decades as a result of the development of new scientific technologies such as microelectronics, biotechnology, designed materials, etc. demonstrate that the level of scientific development in a country is one of the factors that influences the nature of its participation in the international economic system. In maintaining the new international division of labor which has resulted from the global transformation of the productive system, the technological gap between industrialized countries and the Third World tends to increase, and the traditional comparative advantages of the latter diminishes as well. The situation requires Latin American countries to implement a clear plan in regard to what is termed the politics of science and technology - that is, directions to be pursued in scientific research and technological development, and the creation of means to implement policy decisions. Such plans demand, in tum, a better definition of what is meant by "appropriate technology." Not necessarily appropriate are solutions characterized by decentralization or small scale and intensive handwork. Appropriate technological solutions are those which respond effectively to social (not individual) necessities, and mayor may not include hightech developments such as those being pursued in the industrialized countries. Decisions about what technologies to adopt or develop are not strictly technical but rather political, and the capacity of a country to make such decisions depends partly on its potential to assimilate critically the processes of technological development which take place beyond its borders. It has recently been established, for instance, that there exists in Colombia, as in other Latin American countries, an awareness of the need to develop a national capacity in science and technology. This is

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necessary in order to break: the crcle of technological dependence that has affected the country since Its integration into the international market, and which will include effects that reactivate production, generate employment, and strengthen the internal market. There also exists an awareness in some scientific and intellectual circles (and even at a governmental level) of the need to pursue new paths of technological development that do not repeat errors committed by the industrialized nations, and a need to be more in harmony with the needs, expectations, and cultural inheritance of the people, as well as the demands of environmental preservation. Whether such good intentions can materialize or not depends in part on the formulation of national strategies of technological development and on the capacity - political as well as technological - of each country to implement them. It also depends on an individual conception of what is meant by development, a notion that was largely imprinted on us externally, and that we must now redefine in our own terms, without being afraid of confronting the demands of social transformation that a genuine concept of development seems to imply. What is reflected in such plans, ambiguous as they may appear, is a new perception of the problem of technology. If before there was an attempt to overcome the old ways and play "catch up" with the technological advances of the "developed" world, there is now an attempt to find solutions to urgent national problems - selecting between the most convenient technologies, decoding them and/or if necessary generating individual answers based on traditional repertoires of technology. In other words, the challenge is not to slavishly reproduce the technological model of the industrialized countries. Rather, it consists of putting in motion a critical process for the selection and generation of technologies at the local level, based on a clear vision of where we want to go. SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY, AND SOCIETY EDUCATION: POSSIBLE CONTRIBUTIONS TO TRANSFORMATION From an educational point of view, the generation of a solid local base in science and technology could be interpreted by some as a problem of human resources. From this perspective what is needed is to elevate the quality of scientific and technological education at all levels and to form a critical group of scientists and technologists to support it. These are, no doubt, immediate necessities which must be attended to by the educational system. But to limit the contribution of education to increasing such human resources means to reduce education to a variable whose only purpose is that of providing the human capital

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necessary to meet the goals of economic development. An alternative vision conceives education as an agent of cultural transformation. If we see the culture in a given country as a repertoire of ideas, practices, and expressions which grow and are reborn constantly in concrete historical and societal contexts, we can think of education as a way not only to reproduce cultural values and pass them on from generation to generation, but also as a way to generate new values. Whether these new values challenge the dominant culture or not - in this case the dominant model of scientific and technological development - depends to a large degree on the political purpose of the protagonists. From a critical perspective, education should contribute to the challenging of traditional forms of production, as well as the diffusion and utilization of scientific and technological knowledge. Education in STS as a concept applicable to the Latin American reality makes sense if - we question the inherited forms of study and manipulation of reality, reflected in the organization of the disciplines in our centers of higher education and in the institutional organization of basic and applied research; - we question the inherited forms of social distribution of knowledge between "those who think" and "those who act," reflected in a dual education system which differentiates between general and vocational education; - we effectively combat the fragmentation of basic knowledge at the primary and secondary levels that is reflected in a curricular design centered on isolated subjects; and - we promote an authentic democratization of scientific and technological knowledge so that these concepts are not only popularized through a massive informational campaign, but are also integrated into the productive activity of the community in a selective, free, and creative way. So defined, an education which integrates STS goes further than the evaluation of the social impact of technological development and of the promotion of mechanisms of social action directed toward minimizing negative effects. It presupposes radically different forms of the investigation of reality as well as the revamping of education and its curricular structure. It also demands the transformation of cultural values associated with the forms of social organization for the production, distribution, and utilization of scientific and technological knowledge currently existing in society. Autonomy in science and technical material is without doubt central

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in our project of development. We will achieve very little, however, if

innovative forms of scientific and technological development implemented in our countries do not, as one of their principal purposes, permit a generalized approach to the cultural principles and ways of understanding that are the base of such development (Mockus, 1987). Not only does this constitute a fundamental right for each and every member of society, the democratization of scientific and technological knowledge is necessary in order that a majority of the population can participate in technological development as a national project. - Translated by Ana Mitcham and Carl Mitcham

National Ministry of Education (Bogota, Colombia) REFERENCES Dagnino, Renato (1986). "Nuevas tecnologfas de desarrollo: Un dilema de los pafses latinoamericanos," Economfa Cowmbiana, Supplement 11, pp. 13-28. Herrera, Amilcar (1972). ·Social determinants of science policy in Latin America: Explicit science policy and implicit science policy,· Journal of Devewpment Studies, vol. 9, pp. 19-37. Katz, Jorge, ed. (1987). Technowgy Generation in Larin American Manufacturing Industries. New York: St Martin's Press. Mockus, Antanas (1987). "Capacidad en ciencia y tecnologfa y formaci6n basica," in Presidencia de la Republica, MEN, Colciencias, Foro Nacional sobre Polftica de Ciencia y Tecno/ogfa; Memorias (Bogota: COLCIENCIAS), pp. 527-536. Sagasti, Francisco (1981). Ciencia, tecn%gfa y desarrollo latinoamericano. Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Econ6mica. Waks, Leonard (1988). "Science, Technology and Society Education and Citizen Participation." Working Paper, Center for Philosophy and Public Policy, College Park, Maryland. Waks, Leonard (1989). "Critical Theory and Curriculum Practice in STS Education," Journal of Business Ethics, vol. 8, pp. 201-207.

JANE ROBINETT

THE MORAL VISION OF TECHNOLOGY IN CONTEMPORARY LATIN AMERICAN FICTION

INTRODUCTION: PHILOSOPHY AND LITERATURE The relationship between philosophy and literature has always been both interesting and frustrating. Philosophers and writers of fiction often explore the same ideas - ideas dealing with ethics, aesthetics, logic, and metaphysics, with morals and values and how we make choices, with the nature and meaning of human experience, and with the laws which underlie knowledge and reality. But they do not approach these questions in the same way. Philosophy deals explicitly with ideas, and abstracts and examines them in a detailed, systematic manner. Literature deals implicitly with ideas by embodying them in the feelings and actions of characters, and the situations in which they find themselves. Although structured, as any art form is, literature does not set ideas out in the rigorous, systematic lines which philosophy does. For a novelist to do so would be counterproductive. Novelists often make rather dreary philosophers, just as philosophers often make rather dreary novelists. Nevertheless, literature and philosophy present us with complementary viewpoints on ideas which concern us all deeply. To say that philosophy and literature represent theory and practice may be simplistic, but it begins to explain the relationship between the two. The theoretical propositions of the philosophy of technology, like other theoretical propositions, need to be examined in light of the realities of human society and experience. If they are valid, we will be able to find them at work in the world around us. One way to examine the practical value of theory is to turn to the rich world of contemporary fiction. The primary subject of literature has always been the human experience in all its variety - an experience which, especially in the twentieth century, is shaped extensively by our technologies. Since this is true, we should expect to find in literature some discussion of issues raised in the philosophy of technology. However, when we read fiction to examine philosophical issues, we must do so with the understanding that those issues are not going to be delineated with the same sharpness that we find in philosophical discussions. Novelists are concerned with the lives and experiences of the characters who populate their work. Their primary commitment is not to the philosophic or the scientific or even to the factual, but to the

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whole range of human experience. Fiction can thus serve as counterpoint for the theoretical work of the philosopher. It embodies both theoretical philosophical questions and the dimension of moral values, since the characters in a novel, like their non-fictional counterparts, reveal their attitudes toward technologies in the way in which they put such technologies to use and are delighted by or suffer from them. TOWARD A MORAL VISION OF TECHNOLOGY Most often we think of technology as a means of technical progress or economic development and our vision of it is expressed only in technical or economic terms. We are not accustomed to thinking of it as something which possesses moral qualities. To speak of a moral vision of technology is to consider technology not simply in terms of its economic or technical character, but to view it in relation to the human or the social values it promotes or inhibits. A moral vision of technology is thus concerned with its relation to both human beings and to nature. It assumes that technology is not neutral, that is, that technological objects and systems carry in their conception, design, and realization certain biases, biases which have moral implications. This is easy to see in the case of weaponry, but more difficult to appreciate and understand in the case of what appear to be beneficial technologies such as hydroelectric projects, technologies for agricultural improvement, educational technologies, and technologies of mass communication. Beneficial technologies, once in place, form a framework for our lives which we quickly learn to take for granted. Lulled by lives made easier, we forget that there are alternatives, and thus moral decisions to be made. Technology has reshaped our lives whether we are rich or poor, urban or rural, without regard to gender, race, or nationality. On the whole, we have simply assumed that this reshaping has been for the better, and have not questioned it. We can no longer afford to make such facile assumptions. Industrial, agricultural, political, and military technologies all need to be examined, and for this reason it is important that we develop a moral vision by which to measure them. It is here where novelists serve us well by turning their intelligence and imagination to develop a view of technology which is seldom publicly articulated - but which, because of its character, is fundamentally important. To speak of technology in terms of good or bad, just or unjust, right or wrong, in relation to human beings and the natural environment is to possess a moral vision. Such a vision cannot be found in technical reports or governmental bulletins or university textbooks, but in the

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literature of the imagination. In the contemporary fiction of Latin America we can fmd such a vision. Realities in Latin American fiction are often characterized as falling into two categories: political and magical. In each of these the presence of technology, in the form of artifacts, techniques, and systems, occasions an examination of complex questions of moral value. Both the traditional values which are being threatened by the direct and indirect effects of technology and those new values which are replacing or displacing older ones are called into question. Technology fmds its place in both of these realities, but when it appears in fiction it frequently seems closely linked to magic. This paper will limit itself to a closer look at the relation between technology and magic in two well-known Latin American novels: Gabriel Garda Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967) and Isabel Allende's The House of the Spirits (1982). Though technology is not the dominant theme in these novels, it runs through them as a force to be reckoned with, a force which comes constantly into conflict with human life and the natural world. Technology is not, as is often the case in North America, seen as some simple positive force. Nor does it always provide the central framework for the lives of the characters. It mayor may not be present, but it is not to be depended upon - the electricity mayor may not work, running water is not to be taken for granted, the ubiquitous telephone is not always there, and heat, cold, rain, and wind are more often to be endured than escaped. FROM ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SOUWDE TO mE HOUSE OF mE SPIRlIS Marquez's novel begins with the introduction of technology in the form of a pair of magnetized metal ingots into Macondo, a village lost in the swamps and jungles. It arrives via a tribe of gypsies led by the learned Melquiades. At that time, the narrator tells us, "the world was so recent that many things lacked names, and in order to indicate them it was necessary to point" (p. 11). The tension between technology/science and magic is made immediately and continues to be strong even though the town becomes increasingly familiar with this new form of "magic." Melquiades sees the science and technology he brings from the outside world into Macondo as a kind of pure knowledge, a way of increasing understanding of the world. This echoes the moral vision of the scientific community, which sees technologies as neutral if not essentially good. It is a view that is, like Melquiades himself at this point, naive and simplistic. Jose Arcadio Buendia, the patriarch of the

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family, wants to tum each new technological artifact into a tool (or weapon) for gaining wealth, fame, or power. He is consistently unsuccessful at this, as Melqufades warns him he will be. Attempts to put technology to work on a practical level, for personal gain, in the Eden of Macondo's early days, are doomed to fail. Throughout the one hundred years of Macondo' s history the gypsies periodically return bringing new discoveries, inventions, and diversions. At first these are regarded as miraculous and magical by the townspeople. Later they come to be seen as scientific, then as mere amusement, and finally (the original tribe of Melqufades having died and been replaced by a kind of inferior tribe), as perverted and undesirable. At this point, the townspeople ban the gypsies and their technology from Macondo. By the end of the novel, the town has sunk so far back into its original primitive state that once again the magnetized ingots are regarded as new and magical. Technology, in Garcfa Mc1rquez's novel, is something foreign, something that arrives from the outside world, brought by gypsies. (Yankees and Europeans?) Not only is it seen as foreign in origin, but also as embodying foreign assumptions about social conduct. As a consequence, it is not to be trusted. The townspeople have a constant suspicion that they are all somehow the victims of gypsy tricks. When one of the seventeen sons of Colonel Aureliano Buendfa (all likewise named Aureliano) brings the railroad to Macondo, and shortly afterward electric lights, phonographs, telephones, and the cinema, the people oscillate between excitement and disappointment, no longer able to distinguish between reality and illusion. When the motion pictures arrive, people nearly cause a riot in the cinema when they discover that the actor whose troubles they suffered over, and whose death they had witnessed the previous week, appears the following week, alive and well in a new movie. The idea of technology as the property and concern of foreigners is common to both One Hundred Years of Solitude and The House of the Spirits, as well as to other Latin American fiction. In itself, this idea might seem to justify the ambiguity expressed about its value. But this explanation alone is too facile. Technology is not just foreign in the sense that it was created elsewhere, imported and imposed on the local people. It is foreign to and at odds with the natural magic inherent in nature itself, in the world of swamp and jungle. This magic, rooted in the natural world, responds to the love between human beings and the love human beings feel for the natural world of which they are a part. In One Hundred Years of Solitude, the response of the natural world to the love between man and woman is reflected in the astonishing fecundity of the animals which belong to Aureliano Segundo and Petra

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Cotes, his life-long mistress. In The House of the Spirits, we see how the flowers in Clara's house respond when she dies and there is no one to water or talk to them. They die as much for lack of conversation as for lack of water. In the realm of magical realities, the identification between technology and magic is not as naive as it might appear. The primary reason lies in the nature of magic itself. Magic is not something belonging to primitive superstition or backwoods ignorance. Rather, it is founded on a sophisticated understanding of human nature and its creativity. It has to do with people's understanding of their proper place in the natural world as one species among many, and with spiritual relationships based on a profound kind of love and respect for the multiplicity of lives contained in the world. There is no glorification of the primitive as morally superior in itself. There is, in fact, a stress on the kind of education which leads toward technological sophistication. But there is also a deep concern for the price which is paid for this. Magic is threatened when foreigners, technical specialists, arrive or are summoned to the scene. The point is illustrated by the scene in One Hundred Years of Solitude when Mr. Herbert arrives in town (by train, of course) and discovers the bananas that he will later help convert into a huge international business. Mr. Herbert gets out his instruments and meticulously examines, dissects, and weighs the tiger-striped banana. He calculates its breadth with a pair of gunsmith's calipers, then with a second collection of instruments, measures the temperature, the level of humidity in the atmosphere, and the intensity of the light. Although all this attention lavished on a banana seems faintly ridiculous to everyone, including the reader, the arrival of a fully developed technological system in the form of the banana business will have disastrous consequences. The high-tech barbarian horde that with Mr. Herbert invades Macondo changes the pattern of the rains, accelerates the crop cycle, and moves the river from the place where it had always been and puts it on the other side of town. A year later the only thing known about this invasion is that the foreigners are planting banana trees. The "banana plague" continues and, as might be expected, comes to a bad end. There is a strike over working conditions. The workers ask for better medical care and sanitary facilities. But the strike leads to martial law and the massacre and secret disposal of three thousand four hundred and eight people. The exploitation of nature includes the exploitation of local workers, themselves simply a resource for the technological system. But the magic of the natural world has the last word over the impressive technology of the gringos. The rains begin, and Mr. Brown

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declares banana operations suspended until the rain is over. Four years eleven months and two days later when the rain ends every banana tree has been wiped out as has the whole colony of foreigners and nearly everything which could be properly regarded as technology. But Macondo will never recover. The invasion of agricultural technology in the form of the banana company is referred to in terms of a natural disaster. The narrator refers to it as a "plague" and a "hurricane," and one of the characters later declares that the rains were brought on by the engineers. More tellingly, it turns into a real disaster for the town and its people. The foreigners, bringers of science, technology, and disaster, are themselves hardly affected. They simply go back to where they came from, leaving the ruined land behind, in a perfect image of technological irresponsibility. The House 0/ the Spirits also sets up a tension between technology and magic, although it coincides only to some extent with that found in One Hundred Years o/Solitude. Instead, Allende draws a more complex picture by laying out a parallel between the relationship of charity to justice and that of technology to magic. Justice and magic are absolutes, truths written with capital letters. As such, both have a kind of mythical qUality. Opposed to these are the more practical or possible worlds of charity and technology, which are what one does or has or uses when justice and magic are impossible - which is most of the time. But charity (and frequently, technology) is clearly a sop, totally inadequate to solve the moral and practical problems of injustice and poverty. Furthermore, technology is presented as a male domain, while charity is something practiced by women and priests. The relationship between charity and justice is illuminated for us by the women in the novel. Initially, the narrative has little to do with men. Charity, says Trueba, is only "good for building the character of young ladies" (p. 137). Continuing a tradition which began with her suffragette mother, Clara takes her daughter Blanca with her on visits to the slums with food, clothing, and comfort for the poor. With her usual keen insight (she is not called Clara for nothing), she remarks to her daughter, "This is to assuage our conscience, darling . . . but it doesn't help the poor. They don't need charity; they need justice" (p.

136).

But real justice is unobtainable, even farther out of reach than real magic. Lacking justice, one must make do somehow with charity, that lesser thing, which like the soup kitchens set up to feed the starving children after the coup d'etat, is never enough, since for every child who eats a plate of lentils there are five looking on, starving. Charity, like technology, eases the conscience and puts a good face on bad

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situations. But it changes nothing. The same is true of technology. Trueba brings progress to his estate at Tres Marias, builds brick houses for his peasants, sets up a school, modernizes the dairy and, like the agricultural engineers who change the rhythm of the banana harvest to suit the needs of a rapacious capitalism, he "force[s] the cows to produce enough milk to meet his needs" (p. 59). But the lives of the peasants are not substantively different. They remain subservient to the patron, almost entirely dependent on his good will for their daily necessities, and indeed, for their very existence. CONCLUSION: A MORAL CRITIQUE In both novels, but especially in the work of Allende, the view of technology includes a sharp, although not completely negative, moral criticism. By itself, technology is unreliable and insufficient to better the human condition and bring about a better world. It is, like charity, simply a rather futile gesture in the face of overwhelming need, made to assuage both the individual and collective social conscience. By itself technology tends to alienate people, driving them farther from any small remaining sources of the magic which might help them - just as charity clouds the possibility for justice because it salves the consciences of people and makes them think they are really doing something when little is actually done other than cosmetic, superficial good. Technology also tends to prevent any real examination of the problem and so prevents any real solutions by giving the impression that "something" is "being done" about the problem. As long as technology remains foreign, neither developed nor adapted in the broadest sense to the life of each region, there is no possibility of using it to improve and maintain the lives of all living beings. But if a love and respect for life in all its forms is combined with thoughtfully developed technology, then extraordinary things, things almost magical, can happen.

San Diego State University - Imperial Valley Campus REFERENCES Isabel Allende. La casa de /os esp{ritus. Barcelona: Plaza y Janes, 1982. Trans. Magda Bogin, as: The House of the Spirits. New York: Bantam, 1986. Quotations in the text are from this English translation. Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Cien aflos de soledad. Buenos Aires: Editorial Sudamericana, 1967. Trans. Gregory Rabassa, as: One Hundred Years of Solitude. New York: Bard Avon, 1971. Quotations in the text are from this English translation.

JUDITH SUTZ

THE SOCIAL IMPLICATIONS OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGIES: A LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVE

ANALYTICAL FRAMEWORK I: THE RELEVANCE OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGIES Information technologies (ITs) are among the most important scientific-technological developments of the past forty years. Beside their technical importance, they are also ubiquitous in influence. This social influence is both vertical - i.e., throughout various levels of the economy and society - and horizontal - on living conditions in all countries and societies. With regard to living conditions, the particular aspect that best exemplifies horizontal pervasiveness is the trend toward the "dematerialization" of production. Labor and raw materials are no longer the most significant costs of an increasing number of goods and services. These have been replaced by information. As a result there is a decrease in the strategic value of raw materials and the "comparative advantage" of cheap labor. Continuous training and updating takes on unprecedented direct economic significance due to the highly volatile and changeable character of information. The existence of institutions engaged in generating and circulating information becomes crucial. The relevance of national innovating capacities tends to be comparable to that of the labor force or the accumulation of wealth. Highly industrialized societies are having some difficulty in adapting to the demands imposed by ITs on their economic and social life, despite the fact that the technologies were devised and develop in these societies. Naturally everything is much more difficult for peripheral societies. The most direct impact of ITs on the underdeveloped world could be considered the erosion of its positions in the international division of labor because it is less and less attractive as a place for direct foreign investment. But the problem is actually far more serious and can be phrased in the following questions: What is the selftransformation capacity of underdeveloped societies when confronting the challenge of ITs? What is their capacity to modify educational systems, forms of production and organization, social institutions, in order to make the most of information, which has become the new vital raw material? Last but not least, what is their awareness of the strategic

297 Carl Mitcham (ed.), Philosophy of Technology in Spanish Speaking Countries, 297-308. 01993 Kluwer Academic Publishers.

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need to carry out such transformations, and how do they envisage their realization? ANALYTICAL FRAMEWORK II: LATIN AMERICA IN THE 19908 In the Latin-American case the current social context hardly supports a positive answer to such questions. The World Bank described the 1980s as the "lost decade," an expression that has become well-known in Latin America. The causes for such a bitter judgment are overwhelming. Virtually all economic indicators, as well as those used to assess living conditions, dropped back to the levels of the 1970s, and in some cases even further. The return to democracy in five Latin-American countries Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay, and Uruguay - was no doubt encouraging. But the decline in living conditions for the great majority and, even worse, the forced adoption of strategies that do not promote the primary goal of improving them, pose a major problem for democratic stability in the region. Moreover, a strong neoliberal economic ideology now prevails throughout Latin America. This means, first off, a systematic effort at privatization, both in the economic and the social fields. As far as the social implications of ITs are concerned, two privatizations deserve special attention: those of the telecommunications system and the educational system. The former is direct and consists in transferring the right to render a service and to decide on its future evolution to a private agent. The latter is indirect and involves pushing people to seek private educational solutions by reducing the public budget devoted to education. A second consequence of neoliberalism is state retrenchment not only as owner or agent for the redistribution of resources, but also as policy maker. Since market indicators are considered the main factor in the determination of priorities, the points of view of various sectors are ignored. Thus overwhelmed by the impact of neoliberal macroeconomic policy, industrial policies disappear, technological policies are aborted, and any scenario addressing the need for innovation policies cannot be articulated. At the same time, organized social movements have noticeably weakened, a phenomenon due in part to the political, economic, and ideological collapse of East-European regimes. Lacking a clear view of the future, and decimated by years of repression, LatinAmerican social movements have few answers for the urgent problems of the region and its people.

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It is not clear, however, that the expansion of neoliberalism and the weakening of social movements is exclusive to Latin America or, more generally, to the peripheral countries. Recent reflections by Riccardo Petrella, Director of the European Program for Forecasting and Assessment of Science and Technology (FAST), point to the presence of a similar phenomenon in Europe. In fact, referring to what he considers prevalent ideas in Europe, Petrella says that

- What prevails is a mercantile economy of a fundamentalist type; no one questions the predominance of the private economy and market. - The only thing that counts is competition - no longer seen as a means but as an end in itself, giving rise to a vulgar social neoDarwinism. - The common good has become opaque, with only individualism and tribalism surviving. - Under such conditions the purpose of the state is simply to service business enterprise. 1 Despite the apparent universality of the neoliberal creed, marked differences persist. Caricaturing somewhat, the essence of these differences lies in the fact that in Latin America the creed is applied to the letter, while in the developed world this is not the case. It is not only Japan and the "Four Tigers" of Southeast Asia that demonstrate the active participation of the state in the orientation of different strategic options. 2 The very neoliberal government in Baden-Wurtember~ systematically applies industrial, technological, and innovation policies, and what is done there on a small scale is done also by the European Economic Community or, rather, by OECD, for the most developed countries group. The deepest difference, however, is not what is done or not done but the reasons determining these attitudes. The "deviations" from the creed clearly perceptible in the First World originate in a recognition that the depth of productive transformations, mostly resulting from the explosion of ITs, demand harmonizing efforts from society as a whole, so as to make the most of their potentialities and, to some extent, to minimize risks. In Latin America, at the same time, insensitivity in the application of the model is partly due to the fact that phenomena such as the transformation of the technical system and its consequences have not even been recognized as problems.

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ANALYTICAL FRAMEWORK ill: THE EVOLUTION OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGIES AND THEIR POTENTIAL IMPACTS The evolution of information technologies makes possible a phenomenon called the "customizing" of production. This consists in the construction of economically feasible technical solutions tailored to the needs of individual end users. That is, it is becoming technically feasible to mass produce without standardizing. The introduction of ITs into the whole sequence from design to production to consumption, and vice versa, creates this new possibility, the social consequences of which can hardly be exaggerated. First, there is the potential for a convergence of some of the features of craft production with customized or tailor-made design production. 4 Second, the exploitation of this new possibility demands an enormous expansion of innovating capabilities, in both society and particular enterprises. There emerges the possibility that the person who innovates is not only the person who designs but also the person who demands a design. This creates the idea of user as innovator as a most influential social fact. S The process of innovation almost by definition has no limits apart from creative imagination. Now the expansion of this no-limit phenomenon poses crucial challenges to both education and re-education. The possible practice of permanent innovation has deep cultural and political implications. No isolated institution will be able to carry out the process on its own. This leads to the idea of some national system of innovation to focus the cooperative aspects, the interconnection of all participating agents, in the materialization of different innovations. Thus within the very neo-Darwinian framework referred to by Petrella there emerges a new collaborative tendency which, although certainly not inspired by an ideal of solidarity, at least recognizes the limits imposed upon efficiency by excessive individualism. Third, there are the particular social consequences of technological evolution for the countries of Latin American. Perhaps a good way to illustrate this is to think back thirty, twenty, or even ten years and imagine some sanitation, agricultural, industrial, educational, or urban problem in the region. In most cases the technological solutions for such problems had already been "prefabricated." The problem specificity might cause at most a slight variation in the design of the solution. The present search for flexibility in the answers to more individualized and precise demands could be put to good use in underdeveloped countries. The proper exploitation of ITs could give

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rise to major positive social impacts, especially in the form of an increased selection of endogenous technological capabilities compatible with a greater technological modernity. The design of technological solutions tailor-made to existing problems has always been an alternative to the utilization of predetermined solutions. But this was hardly if ever explicitly recognized as such, especially in the underdeveloped world. At present, the flexibility with which ITs endow design and manufacture, as well as current discourse praising tailor-made goods, which is a consequence of this flexibility, increases awareness of alternatives and broadens possibilities for the application in underdeveloped or developing situations of a model which is being increasingly practiced in developed countries. A PESSIMISTIC BUT PROBABLE SCENARIO Is there a real possibility that the new technological opportunities offered by ITs will be properly used in our countries? What kinds of problems could make the best use of the special potentials of ITs understood in the broadest senser Mention should be made of two broad kinds of problem - those for which rigid technology has not so far offered reasonable solutions, and those getting highly inadequate solutions for whatever reasons. The first type of problem exists mainly among medium and lowincome economic and population sectors: small and medium-sized enterprises requiring partial automation, digital telephone exchanges for towns with less than one thousand inhabitants, small medical electronic devices allowing the extensive application of modem treatments, simple but efficient systems for data collection and transfer for rural areas, etc. The second can be linked to large-scale projects, many of them being in the public sphere up to now, such as country-wide data communication packages, the construction of automatic systems for exchanging electric power, and more generally, all the great technical systems that are strongly based upon computerized elements and which until now have been produced and installed on a tum-key basis. With regard to the "small-scale" problems, a major difficulty is that those who deal with them have no support whatsoever, so they know nothing about the abilities of ITs to provide solutions. Is any small or medium-sized enterprise in Latin America in a position to learn by itself that it is possible to tailor a simple data collection system likely to increase productivity by, for instance, rationalizing energy expenses? Is there a team of physicians linked to the lower-income population sector in a position to design and eventually foster the production of computerized electronic equipment that is not highly sophisticated but

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nevertheless performs some vital functions? Is there a small rural municipality that knows it can have access to new small-scale communications systems that are both efficient and inexpensive? There are solutions, but those in need either do not know of their existence or lack sufficient strength to acquire them. The recognition of this situation (which is also common in developed societies), is at the root of the broad working guidelines defined by new innovation policies, particularly as far as the attention to technological demand is concerned. 7 In Latin America during the 1990s, where most policies stress the fact that the only valid indicators are those coming from the market, it will not be at all easy for these positive IT impacts to materialize. A similar argument applies to "large-scale" problems linked to major enterprises, generally in the public sphere. Since more often than not the solutions to such problems were sought from large international firms, in many cases because of pressures exercised by these same firms, why should we expect a technological reversal based on the smallest, most efficient tailor-made components once privatization, which is likely to mean "foreignization, has taken place? A pessimistic scenario, i.e., one in which the potentialities of ITs do not materialize, is in fact highly likely. But the scenario deserves its adjective not only for all that which will not be done. Unfortunately it is also likely that the effective application of ITs will have a negative social impact. Where there exist highly heterogeneous social situations, the use of ITs directed to the most restricted and wealthy population sectors can do nothing but increase the gap between rich and poor. The consequences of this are potentially catastrophic because they may, within the framework of increasingly open economies, make it impossible for many people to develop even minimally competitive economic activities. This in turn will push increasing numbers of people toward a subsistence economy, with the serious consequences of social impoverishment. At the same time, failure to make use of the opportunities offered by ITs with regards to the strengthening of the local capabilities of design and technological construction will inevitably contribute to maintaining and, possibly, deepening the present status of technical dependence. H

IS IT POSSIBLE TO CONSTRUCT A DIFFERENT SCENARIO? Technological opportunities versus social political checks. Is it possible in Latin America to loosen the latter so as to be able to make the most of the former? We would like to approach this topic from three perspectives: technical, sociocultural, and political.

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Technical perspective. The technical perspective causes us to wonder whether the technological capacities to make use of ITs exist in Latin America. It seems obvious that with regard to the Third World as a whole it is extremely difficult to give an affirmative answer. For the Latin-American region, however, this may not as much the case. In virtually all the countries of the South technological capacities do exist, and with the addition of the new potentialities of ITs, these could give rise to a truly qualitative leap in the search for efficient technical solutions to problems that remain unresolved. Just to give one example, consider the case of Uruguay. In Uruguay electronic pacemakers have been designed and manufactured that cost three times less than imported ones. Thanks to this development, the whole population now has access to this device. Modular telex stations have also been designed and manufactured in Uruguay, beginning with 124 lines that were expanded according to the evolution of demand. A data commutation package, URUPAC, has been designed and manufactured locally. An automation system for the scouring and baling of wool has been designed and manufactured, and has been recognized by the French fIrm that at present owns the facilities as one of the most efficient systems known. Complex information systems for both public and private use, such as the computer network of the Federated Agrarian Cooperatives, have been designed and installed. Insistence on local design and manufacture capacity - which is certainly not the same as any pretension to autarchy - is justifIed because allover the world tailor-made design has a strong local component. This point leads in turn to recognition of the central role of local training and education. For too long a time, training in ITs in Latin America, particularly in the fIeld of computers, was determined by the need to train users. It is crucial to reverse that trend in order to strengthen the training of innovators.8 Let us emphasize that what can be said for Uruguay is also applicable to Argentina, Chile, Brazil, Venezuela, and Mexico. Indeed, the whole region is sure to achieve this, though on a lesser scale. Let us not forget that globally considered, Latin America is the most industrialized region in the periphery. Therefore, from a technical perspective, it is possible to construct a positive scenario for the use of ITs. Sociocultural perspective. From a sociocultural perspective, there are two aspects that will no doubt influence the viability of this positive scenario. The fIrst is associated with what could be termed the "technological image" (and even self-image) of the region, that is, the self-awareness of one's own technological capacities, and the belief that self-defIned technical solutions are possible. Such a technological image is virtually nonexistent in Latin America today. People do not

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that there are relevant local capacities to do things. They believe that technology, and particularly IT, is an exclusive product of development. Thus they do not find answers or, rather, they do not even formulate the questions. The second is related once again to education, though from a different angle. The basic question is, What do Latin American engineers want? Do they want to seek original solutions to indigenous problems? Or do they only want to identify with that which is more modem, more sophisticated, more powerful - disregarding its real usefulness - in order to feel that they "live" in the developed world? The answer has a decisive social relevance, because the influence of engineers in the adoption and application of all kinds of solutions, particularly in the case of ITs, is well known. Concern for the social loyalties of those who possess the technical knowledge thus becomes a priority to which the educational system may provide some answer. Science, technology, society, and development are issues to be studied and debated at the university level so that on reaching the stage of potential practice the decisions made by engineers are based upon socially constructed loyalties. 9 Political perspective. Finally, from a political perspective a difficult question arises. Is it possible within the macropolicies framework to open opportunities to ITs from meso- or micro-levels, so that their social impact is as positive as it should be? This question is part of a more general problem that can be phrased as follows: Will the strong presence of macroorientations totally opposed to the implementation of sectoral policies allow the construction of spaces for innovation policies at the meso and micro levels? An affirmative answer would almost be equivalent to stating that Latin America has not missed the opportunity offered by ITs to move toward a self-constructed modernity. Foundations for an answer of this kind are not easy to identify, but we would like to comment on an experience that shows movement in this direction is possible. In Uruguay, within the framework of some recent research into the electronics complex,IO the almost total lack of information in certain productive sectors about the existence of a national technological capability in professional electronics was identified as a problem. The result of this lack of knowledge was that the above-mentioned sectors either did not tum to electronics at all or that they imported solutions that were in general expensive and did not meet their needs. Since the research had generated abundant information about the professional electronics industry, a decision was made to publish a directory of enterprises working in this area and to organize a workshop to be attended by everyone interested. And there, within the framework of

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that workshop, a peculiar phenomenon took ~lace that triggered a participation mechanism nobody had anticipated. 1 Electronics entrepreneurs, for the first time, were given an overall vision of their own sector. It was no longer each of them and two or three colleagues or rivals, but there were over forty enterprises represented, with a considerable turnover and a diversified production. The feeling of belonging to a group appeared for the first time, and with it a question. Should we not get together to find out who we are, what we do, and what we could do, not as individuals but as a sector? In the governmental sphere, a sector whose existence had been ignored emerged as such, showing significant levels of technological dynamism and a high problem resolving capacity. The truth is that less than a month after the workshop, the Ministry of Industry and Energy - a meso level par excellence - invited both the enterprises included in the electronics directory - a micro level - and the research team to a series of meetings. These meetings gave rise to more frequent contacts among the enterprises, which resulted in the identification of a series of common problems. It thus becomes obvious that the lack of information existing in the country about what is done is a major problem. So is the evident mistrust toward that which is national, which is increased when this involves complex technological production. So is the state policy, which is more often than not unpredictable. The result is that enterprises need equipment and instruments that could sometimes be shared but cannot be purchased individually, and they need information to which they have no access. The idea of creating a collective body capable of organizing and centralizing some of these aspects in order subsequently to socialize them started to take shape. The idea was to purchase equipment whose use was to be shared, to facilitate access to information, to formulate common positions vis-a-vis the different aspects of negotiation with the state, common undertakings in exports, etc. A few months later, this idea materialized with the incorporation of the Grupo de Inter~ Econ6mico de la Industria Electr6nica Profesional Uruguaya, a collective entrepreneurial body, which is already taking its first steps, especially in negotiations associated with MERCOSUR, the subregional integration process with Argentina, Brazil, and Paraguay. Minimal as it may seem, this example shows a certain encouraging attitude at the meso level and a certain capacity for the constitution of actors at the micro level. The existence of this situation linked to work with state-of-the-art technologies was not evident a priori. Fostering initiatives of this kind, in each country, according to its circumstances, may constitute a concrete affirmative answer to our fundamental question, above, about a different, non-pessimistic scenario for the

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future. 12

WHAT KIND OF FOREIGN SUPPORT WOULD THIS ALTERNATIVE REQUIRE? The basic idea is that classic theories of technology transfer are not much help any more. The issue in question is support for the creation of capacities, as well as the creation of the awareness that said capacities are useful to construct suitable solutions to problems, which are really those identified by people as such. According to the pessimistic hypothesis, that doubts the possibility for forward movement at the level of macropolicies, the idea would be the promotion of a meso-Ievel-to-meso-Ievel transfer, from development to the periphery, in addition to starting work together. What we need is a transfer promoting innovation policies and industrial extensionist policies; support for research into the technological reality and the massive dissemination of results; encouragement in the teaching of science, technology, society, and development; support for IT producer associations; the fostering of joint projects for IT development; the stimulation of prospective studies that help orient the choices made in relation to ITs. What organizations could participate from one side or the other in these particular forms of transfer? The local level plays a major role here. The government and the local institutions may have valuable experience that is worth sharing. In addition, research organizations, out of an overall concern both for development in general and for the direction of technical change and its social impact in particular, could see their perspectives greatly enriched by the strengthening of joint working links, which are at present far too feeble. The main aim of technology transfer, namely, meeting certain needs, would thus find a different field of application. In the midst of a general indifference if not contempt for concern about the social consequences of IT and of technical modernization, the transfer of this certainly would be of great help.

CONCLUSION The true opportunity of ITs for underdeveloped countries lies in the possibility of designing and constructing in the countries themselves technical solutions to endogenously defined problems. The positive social impacts of ITs is dependent on the materialization of this possibility, which is not an easy task. Deceiving ourselves in this regard will serve no purpose.

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Carlos Fuentes, the Mexican writer, was obviously not thinking about technology when he stated, at the beginning of this decade: "Latin America is on its own. The Continent has not been invited to the feast of the future." But his reflection also applies to the case of technology. Those from within the countries who think that the problem of modernization comes down to importing solutions, and those from without who regard the region as a great market, leave no room at that table for Latin America. I think Carlos Fuentes was right. Latin America - and not only Latin America - has not been invited to the feast of the future. Naturally, it remains to be seen what this future is. The construction of the forces enabling us to share that table, and enjoy a feast to be defined by us all, is an enormous and urgent challenge. Let us hope that cooperation and mutual support will give us the strength to take up that challenge - and to invite ourselves even if we have not been invited.

Uruguay Center for Information Studies (Montevideo) NOTES 1. "Puissance technologique et fragilite sociale, " round table discussion with Riccardo Petrella, Futuribles (July-August 1991), pp. 39-44. See especially p. 42. 2. W. Hillebrand, "The Newly Industrializing Economies as Models for Establishing a Highly Competitive Industrial Base - What Lessons to Learn?" in The New Industrializing Economies of Asia (New York: Springer, 1990). 3. H. Schmitz, "Industrial Districts: Model and Reality in Baden-Wurtemberg," in F. Pyke and W. Sengenberger, ed., Industrial Districts and Local Economic Regeneration (Geneva: International Institute for Labour Studies, forthcoming). 4. "In the long run, the convergence of market forces, consumer preferences and technological opportunities suggest the possibility of 'totally flexible' production systems, in which the craft era tradition of custom-tailoring of products to the needs and tastes of individual consumers will be combined with the power, precision, and economy of modern production technology." The MIT Commission on Industrial Productivity, Made in America: Regaining the Productive Edge (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1989), p. 131. 5. The relevance of the user as innovator was demonstrated in a recent book: Eric von Hippel, The Sources of Innovation (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988). The relationship user-producer as a source of socially useful innovations has also been analyzed by Ben-Alee Lundvall, "Innovation as an Interactive Process: From UserProducer Interaction to the National System of Innovation," in Dosi, et al., eds., Technical Change and Economic Theory (London: Pinter Publishers, 1988), pp. 349369. 6. ITs in their broadest sense will be taken to include all technologies within the electronics complex that runs from industrial and agricultural automation through telecommunications to medical electronics, etc. This broad defmition is justified insofar as all the technologies in question are fundamentally based on the generation, transfer, processing, and retrieval of information.

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7. A very interesting case of recognition of these problems and the action taken to solve them is analyzed in M. Dodgson, "Research and Technology Policy in Australia: Legitimacy in Intervention," Science and Public Policy, vol. 16, no. 3 (June 1989), pp. 159-166. 8. On this subject, see J. Sutz, "La formaci6n de recursos humanos en informatica: Una aproximaci6n a la situaci6n latinoamericana," in Transferencia de tecnolog{a informatica en la administraciOn pUblica (Caracas: Planeta, 1988). 9. In the Science Faculty of the Central University of Venezuela, there is an experience, which has lasted six years, of teaching "Computers and Society" to students in computer science courses, that has had the extensive support of the students. A similar experience is taking place in Uruguay with a "Technology and Society" course in the Faculty of Engineering. 10. The research project is called "Uruguay: Problems and Prospects of the Industrial Electronics System in a Small Country" and is carried out at the Centro de Informaciones y Estudios del Uruguay with the support of the Volkswagen Foundation. The hardware and software industries, the public policies for the sector and the training of human resources were studied within the framework of this project. 11. Later, the research project produced another enterprise directory, this time of computer enterprises, whose diffusion also took place at a workshop. 12. Another recent initiative pointing in the same direction, and growing in the region, is related to the link between the university and the productive sectors.

NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS LUIS A. CAMACHO NARANJO (Costa Rica) is professor in the school of philosophy at the Universidad de Costa Rica, president of the Asociaci6n Costarricense de Filosoffa, and a founding member of the Asociaci6n Costarricense de Historia y Filosofia de la Ciencia. He received his Ph.D. from the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. Recent publications include Conocimiento y poder (1983), Introduccion a la logica (1983) and Logica simbOlica (1987). ENRIQUE DUSSEL (Mexico), born in Argentina, with doctorates in philosophy (Universidad Central de Madrid), history (Sorbonne), and theology (Honoris causa, Freiburg, Switzerland), is professor at the Universidad Aut6noma de Mexico (UNAM). His numerous books, which have been published in Spanish, English, French, Portuguese, and German, include A History of the Church in Latin America (1982), Filosofta de la produccion (1984), Philosophy of Liberation (1985), Ethics and Community (1987), El Marx definitivo, 18631882 (1990), and 1492: El ellcubrimiellto del otro (1992). JOSE GAOS (Mexico), was born in Gij6n, Spain, in 1901, and exiled by the Civil War to Mexico, where he died in 1969. His major work De lafilosofta (1962) is an exhaustive phenomenological study of verbal expressions in philosophic thought. He is also the translator of Martin Heidegger's El ser y el tiempo (1951). RAUL FORNET-BETANCOURT (Federal Republic of Germany), a native of Cuba, is currently editor of Concordia, and director of the Latin American He is author of Kommentiene Studies Institute in Aachen, Germany. Bibliographie zur Philosophie in Lateillamerika (1984), Problemas actuales de lafilosofta en hispanoamerica (1985), and editor of Ethik in Deutschland und Lateinamerika Heute (1987). MARfA LUISA GARCIA-MERIT A (Spain) is a younger member at the University of Valencia of the inter-institutional Instituto de Investigaciones sobre Ciencia y Tecnologia (INVESCIT). JUAN DAVID GARCiA BACCA (Venezuela), was born in Pamplona, Spain, in 1901. Exiled from Spain following the Civil War, he taught in Ecuador, Mexico, and for many years at the Universidad Central de Venezuela. Upon retirement he returned to Ecuador where he died in 1992. Among his over thirty books are translations of Plato and other classic philosophers, textbooks on logic and systematic philosophy, historical anthologies, and numerous contributions to the philosophy of technology. For philosophy of technology, see especially: Curso sistematico defilosofta actual (1969), Teorfa y metateorfa de la ciencia (2 vols., 1977 and 1984), Elogio de la tecnica (1987), and De magia a tecnica (1989). MARCOS GARCiA DE LA HUERTA I. (Chile) received his Ph.D. in philosophy from the Universite de Paris and has done postdoctoral research at 309

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the Universitiit Miinchen. Currently he is professor in Estudios Humanfsticos of the Facultad de Ciencias Ffsicas y Matematicas at the Universitiit de Chile in Santiago. His books include La tecnica y el estado moderno (1978) and Crftica de la razon tecnocratica (1985). ERNESTO MAYZ VALLENILLA (Venezuela), having studied in Venezuela and Germany, taught at the Universidad Central de Venezuela, and served as founding rector of the Universidad Sim6n Bolivar (1969-1979), is currently director of the philosophy unit of the Instituto Intemacional de Estudios Avanzados (IDEA), Caracas, Venezuela. With special reference to the philosophy of technology, he is the author of Del hombre y su aliena cion (1966), Esbozo de una cr(tica de la razon tecnica (1974), and Fundamentos de la meta-tecnica (1990). MANUEL MEDINA (Spain) is professor at the Universidad de Barcelona and vice president of the Instituto de Investigaciones sobre Ciencia y Tecnologfa (lNVESCIT). His publications include De la techne a la tecnolog(a (1985) and, with others, New Worlds, New Technologies, New Issues (1992). CARL MITCHAM (United States) is Director of the Science, Technology, and Society Program at Pennsylvania State University. His publications include Philosophy and Technology: Readings in the Philosophical Problems of Technology (1972, 1983), iQue es lafilosofia de la tecnolog(a? (1989), and Thinking Through Technology: The Path between Engineering and Philosophy (forthcoming) . LEOPOLDO MOLINA P. (Venezuela) received his doctorate from the Universidad Central de Venezuela and teaches at the Universidad de los Andeas. HUGO PADILLA (Mexico) is professor at the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico (UNAM). His publications include Tratamiento proposicional del algebra de clases (1964), the translation of Gottlob Frege's Conceptografla (1972), and (with Arturo Azuela and Jaime Labastida) Educaci6n por la ciencia: El metodo cient(fico y la tecnolog(a, 2d ed. (1980). MARGARITA M. PENA BORRERO (Colombia) is a historian and holds a doctorate in Education. She is currently working with the Ministry of Education in Colombia. She is the author of a textbook for teaching history as well as diverse articles in the area of education. RAM6N QUERALT6 MORENO (Spain) received his Ph.D. in philosophy from the Universidad de Sevilla where he is currently professor. His books include Naturaleza y finalidad en Arist6teles (1983) and La cienciajrente a las expectativas del hombre contemporaneo (1983). MIGUEL ANGEL QUINTANILLA (Spain) is professor at the Universidad de Salamanca, and editor of Arbor, a journal of the Consejo Superior de

NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

311

Investigaciones Cientificas. He has also served as a senator in the Spanish Cortes, where he was president of the Comisi6n Parlamentaria de Ciencia y Tecnolog{a, and as editor of Diccionario de fiLosofia contemporanea (3d edition, 1985). His book, TecnoLogfa: Un enfoque filosofico (1989), was awarded the Premio Fundesco de Ensayo for 1988. EDGAR ROY RAMiREZ BRICENO (Costa Rica), following graduate work at the Catholic University of America, is associate professor of philosophy, Universidad de Costa Rica and the Instituto Tecnol6gico de Costa Rica. He is a founding member of the International Development Ethics Association, and the author of Ciencia, responsabiJidad y vaLores (1980) and La responsabiJidad etica en ciencia y tecnoLogfa (1987), among other works. JANE ROBINETT (United States) received her doctorate in North American literature from the University of Notre Dame, and teaches at the San Diego State University-Imperial Valley campus. She taught for five years in Barcelona, Spain, and has been a Fulbright Lecturer at the Universidad de Costa Rica. EDUARDO SABROVSKY J. (Chile), an engineer and philosopher, has served as editor of the computer magazine Quinta Generacion (1989-1990) and as an independent consultant with the Instituto Latinoamericano de Estudios Transnacionales (ILET). His publications include Hegemonfa y racionalidad polftica (1989) and TecnoLogfa y modernidad en Latinoamerica (1992). JOSE SANMARTIN (Spain), after studies in Spain and Germany, is currently professor at the Universidad de Valencia. He is the founding president of the Instituto de Investigaciones sobre Ciencia y Tecnologia (INVESCIT). Publications include Los nuevos redentores: Reflexiones sobre La ingenierfa genetica, La sociobiologfa y el mundo feliz que nos prometen (1987) and TecnoLogfa y futuro humano (1990). JUDITH SUTZ (Uruguay), an electrical engineer with an advanced degree in the social sciences from the Universite de Paris, is with the Centro de Informaciones y Estudios del Uruguay, Montevideo. CARLOS VERDUGO S. (Chile) received his doctorate from Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, and has done research on the philosophy of Karl Popper at the London School of Economics. Currently, he is professor at the Instituto de Estudios Humanisticos of the Universidad de ValparaISo. LEOPOLDO ZEA (Mexico) studied at the Universidad Aut6noma de Mexico where he is now professor. Two books available in English are The LatinAmerican Mind (1963) and Latin America and the World (1969).

NAME INDEX

This index is for all proper personal names except those which occur in the preface, bibliographies, or as authors and translators of articles. An n after a number indicates occurrence in the notes. Abbagnano, Nicola xxxvn Abrecht, Paul xxxvn Acevedo, Jorge xxxivn Adorno, Theodor 41 Agassi, Joseph 130n Ainsa Amigues, Fernando 281n Allende, Isabel 291,294-295 Allende, Salvador xxi Althusser, Louis 31, 38n Aman, Kenneth xxxivn Amy, OJ. 267n Anaxagoras 160 Anaximander 159 Anaximenes 159 Anders, Gunther 72 Angel, Jerome 37n Anglin, Gary J. 266n Aquinas, Thomas 247n Archimedes 32, 125 Arendt, Hannah 12 Aristotle 4-5, 9-10, 153, 156-158, 161-162, 166, 235, 237, 243-244, 247n, 253 Ashby, W. Ross 194n Asquith, Peter O. 87n Athanasiou, Tom 58n Axelos, Kostas 16, 37n

Bogen, J .E. 150 Bohman, James F. 266n Bohr, Niels 74 Bolivar, Simon 281n Born, Hedwig 97n Born, Max 89, 97n Borremans, Valentina 98n Braun, E. 185 Brenes Mesen, Roberto 71 Brody, B. 67n Broncano, F. 174, 193n Brown, Harold 267n Buber, Martin 266n Bunge, Mario xx, 62-63, 67n, 87n, 129, 130n, 174, 176, 193n Butler, Matilda 266n Callahan, Raymond E. 267n Camacho Naranjo, Luis A. xx, xxiii, xxv, xxxiii, 131n Campanella, Thomas 18 Campbell, J.A. 181 Carnot, Nicolas Leonard Sadi 245 Carpenter, Stanley R. 208n Carpio, Adolfo P. xxxivn Cascardi, Anthony J. 267n Casey, Timothy xxxivn Castoriadis, Cornelius 96, 98n Caturelli, Alberto xxxvn Caufield, Catherine 67n Charles V of Germany 136, 138 Church, Alonzo 43 Columbus, Christopher 135, 136 Comte, Auguste 6 Cooper, C. 37n Corominas, Joaquim xxvii Coronado, Guillermo 74, 76 Crocker, David xxxvn, 98n Cuena, J. 193n Cutcliffe, Stephen H. xxvii, xxxvin Oagnino, Renato 284

Bacon, Francis 6-7,18,31,34,125, 163 Bartning, Otto 209n Baumgartner, Hans Michael xxxvn Behrens, William W. 37n Bell, C. 59n Benhabib, Seyla 267n Bergman, Frithjof 267n Berk, A.A. 181 Black, Max 87n Blanco, Papa 84 Blanshard, Brand 67n Block, Ernst 36 Boden, Margaret 193n

313

314 Dahlstrom, Daniel O. 67n Darwin, Charles 299-300 Dascal, M. 78n Dengo, Maria Eugenia 78n Dearden, R.F. 267n Descartes, Rene 6,31,34,41,45, 48-49,58n Dessauer, Friedrich xix, 280n Dewey, John 18, 266n Dickinson, David 194n Didier, Julia xxxvn Diels, Hermann 258n Dilthey, Wilhelm 74, 229 Dionysius II of Syracuse 166n Dodgson, M. 308n Domar, Evsey D. 21, 37n Dosi, Giovanni 307n Doyle, J. 181 Dreyfus, Hubert L. xxi, 47, 49-54, 58n,59n Dreyfus, Stuart 58n Drucker, Peter 59n Dulles, John Foster 140, 141n Durbin, Paul T. xxxvin, 87n Durkheim, Emile 6 Dussel, Enrique xxiv, xxxiii Dvorak, Robert 280n Dworkin, Gerald 33 Dworkin, Martin S. 266n Drucker, Peter 51 Edwards, Paul xxv Einstein, Albert 97n, 233, 245 Elejabarrieta, F. 148 Ellul, Jacques xxix, xxxivn, 21, 37n, 148,283 Emerson, Ralph Waldo 281n Engelhardt, H. Tristram Jr. 266n Engels, Friedrich 11 Euclid 240, 243 Eyzaguirre, Jaime 27 Facundo Quiroga, Juan 281n Farias, Victor xxxivn Faustino Sarmiento, Domingo 281n Feibleman, James K. 209n Fermi, Enrico 245 Fernandez, Antonio 267n Ferrater Mora, Jose xxv, xxxvn, 89, 97n Feuerbach, Ludwig Andreas von 244 Feyerabend, Paul K. 87n

INDEX Fikes, R.E. 181 Fiore, Quentin 37n Flores, Fernando xxi, xxxivn, 52, 59n Flores Hernandez, Luis xxii Forester, John 267n Fornet-Betancourt, Raul xxxi, xxxiv Franco, Francisco xx, xxvii Francis I of France 136, 138-139 Freire, Paolo 263, 266n-267n Freud, Sigmund 241 Friedman, Milton 33 Fuentes, Carlos 307 Gadamer, Hans-Georg 266n-267n Galbraith, John Kenneth 11 Galilei, Galileo 6-7, 72, 114, 169, 172n, 232-233, 242 Gamow, George 239, 247n Gaos, Jose xxv-xxvi, xxxi, xxxiii, xxxvn,119n Garagorri, Paulino xxxivn GarCIa, J.J. 78n Garda Bacca, Juan David xx, xxix-xxx, xxxiv, xxxvin, 131n, 243, 247n GarcIa de la Huerta, Marcos xxi-xxii, xxxiii, 37n GarcIa Marquez, Gabriel 291-292 Garda-Merita, Marfa Luisa xxviii, xxxiii Garda Noriega, B. 180 Gardner, Howard 266n Gauss, Karl Friedrich 233, 240, 245 Giere, Ronald N. 87n Giraux, Henry 266n Goel, N.S. 194n Goldman, Steven L. xxvii, xxxv in , 208n Gonzalez Seara, L. 149 Gordius, King of Phrygia 137 Gracia, J.J. 74 Gramsci, Antonio 31 Gray, Dorian 241 Greenberg, Mark xxxivn Greene, Maxine 266n Groen, J.J. 149 Groethuysen, Bernhard xxxvn Grosseteste, Robert 125 Gusdorf, Georges 74 Gutierrez, Miguel S. 72 Haar, M. 60n

INDEX Habennas, Jiirgen 267n Hafele, W. 209n Halsey, A.H. 266n Hanson, Norwood Russell 87n Hayek, Friedrich von 33, 108 Habennas, Jiirgen xxii, xxix, 37n, 39, 41-42, 47, 53-54, 57n-58n, 60n Hegel, G.W.F. 4, 18-19, 34, 37n, 41,236,242,244-245,247n Heidegger, Martin xx-xxii, xxv, xxix, xxxi, xxxivn-xxxvn, 3, 16, 34-35, 37n-38n, 41, 47-50, 52, 54-56, 57n-6On, 76, 111, 129, 260,262-263, 266n, 271, 274-279 Heisenberg, Werner 245 Hempel, Carl G. 198, 208n Herrera, Amilcar 285 Hiley, David R. 266n Hillebrand, W. 307n Hippel, Eric von 307n Hippias 9 Hinkelammert, Franz 35, 38n Hippocrates 165n Hirst, P.R. 267n Hobbes, Thomas 5, 140 Hobsbawm, EJ. 37n Hottois, Gilbert xxvii, 147 Husserl, Edmund xxix, 42, 253, 255, 258n Huxley, Aldous 16, 136 Ibanez, T. 147 Illich, Ivan 98n, 263, 266n, 283 James, William 18 Jelsma, Jasp 209n Jesus Christ 243, 246 Jewkes, John 87n John Paul II xxiii Jonas, Hans 6 Kant, Immanuel xix, 41, 45, 168,264 Kapp, Ernst xix, 5 Karabel, Jerome 266n Karpinski, Rose Marie 74 Kantorovich, Leonid Vitalievich 108 Katz, Jorge 285 Keen, Peter 53, 59n Kekule von Stradonitz, August 198 Klein, Julie Thompson 268n Kockelmans, Joseph J. 267n-268n

315 Kohak, Erazim V. 267n Kranz, Walther 258n Krell, David F. 38n, 266n Krings, Hennann xxxvn Kropotkin, Peter xxix Khrushchev, Nikita 141n Kuhn, Thomas S. 87n Ladriere, Jean 97, 98n Lagrange, Joseph Louis 245 Lalande, Andre xxxvn Laplace, Pierre Simon de 245 Larson, Ronald W. 208n Lascaris Comneno, Constantino xxiii, 71-73, 78n Layton, Edwin T. Jr. 87n Lehmann, David 267n Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm von 233, 245 Leonard, Stephen T. 267n Leontieff, Wassily 87n Leroi-Gourhan, Andre 4, 37n Levy, J.M. 147 Linton, Ralph 74 Lipsey, Richard G. 67n Liston, Daniel P. 266n Lobachevski, Nikolai Ivanovich 240 Lopez Cerezo, Jose Antonio xxvii Loveland, D.W. 180 Lugo, Elena xxxivn Lujan L6pez, Jose Luis xxvii Lukacs, Gyorgy 41 Lundvall, Ben-Ake 307n Lyotard, Jean Fran~ois 37n Maattessich, R. 185 Mackey, Robert 209n McCarthy, John 181 McCarthy, Thomas 267n McDennott, D. 181 MacDonald, S. 185 McLuhan, Marshall 4-5, 16, 37n Machiavelli, Niccolb 6, 32 Maitra, S.C. 194n Malthus, Thomas Robert 21 Marcel, Gabriel 266n Marconi, Guglielmo 72 Mariategui, Jose Carlos 27 Markovic, Mihailo 90 Marsh, Peter 268n Marti, Jose 278 MartI y Perez, Jose Julian 281n

316 Martinez, Aquilina xxiv Marx, Karl xxi-xxii, xxiv, 21-22, 31, 33,35,41,244-245 Mayz Vallenilla, Ernesto xx, xxix-xxx, xxxiii, xxxvin Meadows, Dennis L. 37n Meadows, Donella H. 21,26, 37n Medina, Manuel xxvii-xxviii, xxxiv, xxxvin Merton, Robert K. 37n Mesen, Brenes 78n Miller, Fred D. Jr. 266n Mira Quesada, Francisco 95, 98n, 267n Misgeld, Dieter 267n Mitchall, Sollace 266n Mitcham, Carl xxvii, xxxivn, 67n, 147, 209n Mitscherling, Jeff 267n Mockus, Antanas 288 Moles, Abraham 16, 37n Molina, Leopoldo xxx, xxxiii Molina, Tirso de 247n Montroll, E.W. 194n Morande, Pedro 27-30, 38n More, Thomas 18 Morera, Rosibel A. 72 Morkovsky, Christine xxiv Moya, Andres xxvii Mumford, Lewis xxix, xxxvn, 3-4, 56n Munduate, L. 148 Murillo, Roberto 74, 86, 87n Nagel, Ernest 63, 67n, 129, BIn Neely, Alan xxiv Nelson, Benjamin xxxvn Newcomen, Thomas 183 Newell, Allen 44, 57n, 179 Newton, Isaac 124, 233, 240, 245 Nielsen, Kai 97, 98n Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm 33 Nilsson, N. 178, 181, 193n Oppenheimer, Robert 233,245 Ortega y Gasset, Jose xx-xxi, xxv, xxvii, xxix, xxxi, xxxivn, 23, 37n, 74, 76, 111, 119n, 200, 202, 208n-209n, 271-274, 276-280, 281n Padilla, Hugo xxiv-xxv, xxxiii, 76, BIn

INDEX Paisley, William J. 266n Papa Blanco, Francisco 87n Parmenides 236, 254 Pans, Carlos xxix Parsons, Talcott 42 Pascal, Blaise 238 Pasteur, Louis 220 Paul, Ellen F. 266n Paul, Jeffrey 266n Paz, Octavio 30, 38n Pena Borrero, Margarita xxxi, xxxiii-xxxivn Peters, R.S. 267n Pericles 160 Petrella, Riccardo 299-300, 307n Piaget, Jean 74 Pius XII xxii Pinochet, Augusto xxi-xxiii Plato 4,9-11,61, 98n, 125, 153, 156,159-161,163,165n-l66n, 233,244,256,258n Plutarch 74 Poblet, Mompin 193n Popper, Karl xxii, xxviii, 18, 37n, 67n, 197 Porter, Alan L. 208n Posner, Michael 266n Prometheus 165n Protagoras 9-10, 160-161, 165n Psacharopoulos, G. 266n Psacharopoulos, M. Woodhall 266n Puig, Josep xxvii Pyke, F. 307n Pythagoras 233 Queralto, Ramon xxviii, xxxiii, 172n Quintanilla, Miguel xxviii, 93, 98n, 176-177,193, 193n-194n, 209n Rabossi, E. 78n Ramirez Briceno, Edgar Roy xxiii, xxxiii,76 Randers, J0rgen 37n Raphael, B. 179, 193n Rawls, John 33 Reuleaux, Franz xix, 3, 5 Richardson, William J. 267n Ricoeur, Paul 267n-268n Riemann, Georg Friedrich 233, 240, 245 Ritterbush, P. 209n Robey, J. 267n

INDEX Robinett, Jane xxxi, xxxiv Robinson, J.A. 180 Rojo, M. 149-150 Roper, A.T. 208n Ropohl, Gunther 280n Roqueplo, Philippe 146 Rosas, Juan Manuel de 281n Rosen, Michael 266n Rosenthal, S.B. 267n Rossini, Frederick A. 208n Rousseau, Claudia 60n Rudner, Richard 63, 67n Russell, Bertrand 16, 24, 37n Ryle, Gilbert 47, 58n Sabrovsky, Eduardo xxii, xxxiii Sagasti, Francisco 285 Saint-Simon, Henri de 11, 33 Saint Theresa 236 SanmartIn, Jose xxvii-xxix, xxxiii, xxxv in , 147 Sarmiento, Domingo Faustino 278, 281n Sauvy, Alfred 26, 37n Sawers, David 87n Saxe Fernandez, Eduardo 72 Schachterle, Lance xxxivn Scheler, Max xxix Schelsky, Helmut 37n Schmitz, H. 307n Schumacher, E.F. 94, 98n, 283 Schusterman, Richard 266n Searle, John 44-46, 57n, 59n Segal, Jerome 85, 87n, 96, 98n Sengenberger, W. 307n Shinn, Roger xxxvn Shoham, Yoav 194n Shrock, Sharon A. 266n Shue, Henry 92, 98n Siegel, Harvey 267n Silva G., Sergio xxii , xxxivn Simon, Herbert A. 44, 57n, 174, 179 Singer, Fred 138, 141n Slaa, Paul 209n Smith, Adam 6 Socrates 61, 96, 165n Soler, Francisco xxxivn Solis, Javier 77 Solow, Robert 78, 87n Spaey, Jacques 87n Spring, Joel 267n Stanley, Manfred 266n-267n

317 Starr, C. 209n Steinbeck, John 74 Steiner, Peter O. 67n Stillerman, Richard 87n Suppe, Frederick 87n Sutz, Judith xxxi, xxxiii, 308n Taminaux, J. 60n Tartaglia, Niccolo 6-7 Taylor, Charles 266n Tedeschi, Pablo 130n Thales 159 Thurow, Lester 203, 209n Tiller, Jeffrey S. 208n Tobar-Arbulu, Jose F. 147 Tuininga, E.J. 209n Turing, Alan 43, 57n Tyack, David 267n Ursua, Nicanor xxvii Valdes, Marion J. 268n Vandenberg, Donald 266n-267n Varela, Francisco J. 57n Vasconcelos, Jose 27 Vazquez Campos, M. 186 Vera L., Jose Miguel xxii Verdugo, Carlos xxii, xxxiii Veren, Jules 136 Viccarioli, Giulianna 74 Viccarioli, Lino 72, 74 Vico, Giambattista 6-7 Vilanova, Santiago xxvii Villanueva, E. 78n Vincenzi, Moises 71, 78n Virgil 74 Volterra, Vito 186, 194n Waks, Leonard 283-284 Warnke, Georgia 266n Watt, James 83, 183 Weber, Max xxxvn, 23, 37n, 41, 46, 50-51, 55-56, 57n Weinberg, Gregorio 266n Weiner, Norbert 194n Whitehead, A.N. 91, 96, 98n Whitman, Walt 281n Wild, Christoph xxxvn Winner, Langdon 3, 146,206, 208n-209n Winograd, Terry xxxivn, 59n Wisdom, J .0. 124, 1130n

318 Wise, George 76, 78, 78n, 87n Wisser, Richard 34-35, 38n Xenophanes 165n Young, Robert E. 268n Zea, Leopolda xxiv-xxvi, xxxi, xxxiii, xxxvin, 141n, 266n-267n Zeichner, Kenneth M. 266n Zulay Soto, Ana 72

INDEX

PHILOSOPHY AND TECHNOLOGY Series Editor: Paul T. Durbin OFFICIAL PUBLICATIONS OF THE SOCIETY FOR PHILOSOPHY AND TECHNOLOGY Philosophy and Technology Edited by Paul T. Durbin and Friedrich Rapp. 1983 ISBN 90-277-1576-9 (Published as Volume 80 in 'Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science') 2. Philosophy and Technology, II. Information Technology and Computors in Theory and Practice. Edited by Carl Mitcham and Alois Huning. 1986 ISBN 90-277-1975-6 (Published as Volume 90 in 'Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science') 3. Technology and Responsibility Edited by Paul T. Durbin. 1987 ISBN 90-277-2415-6; Pb 90-277-2416-4 4. Technology and Contemporary Life Edited by Paul T. Durbin. 1988 ISBN 90-277-2570-5; Pb 90-277-2571-3 5. Technological Transformation. Contextual and Conceptual Implications ISBN 90-277-2826-7 Edited by Edmund F. Byrne and Joseph C. Pitt. 1989 6. Philosophy of Technology. Practical, Historical and Other Dimensions Edited by Paul T. Durbin. 1989 ISBN 0-7923-0139-0 7. Broad and Narrow Interpretations of Philosophy of Technology Edited by Paul T. Durbin. 1990 ISBN 0-7923-0684-8 8. Europe, America, and Technology: Philosophical Perspectives Edited by Paul T. Durbin. 1991 ISBN 0-7923-1254-6 9. Democracy in a Technological Society Edited by Langdon Winner. 1992. ISBN 0-7923-1995-8 10. Philosophy of Technology in Spanish Speaking Countries Edited by Carl Mitcham. 1993 ISBN 0-7923-2567-2 1.

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