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Joseph Agassi Technology: Philosophical and Social Aspects Joseph Agassi Technology: Philosophical and Social Aspects REVISED EDITION 2 Joseph Agassi © Joseph Agassi, 1985, 2005 Technology 3 For Pozzi Escot and Robert Cogan 4 Joseph Agassi TABLE OF CONTENTS EDITORIAL PREFACE xi PREFACE xiii ACKNOWLEDGEMENT xix INTRODUCTION 1 1. Control in General 1 2. Democratic Control in General 4 PART ONE : TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE INTRODUCTION TO PART ONE 10 CHAPTER 1: TECHNOLOGY AND LEARNING 11 1. Technology and Science 11 2. Technology as Non-Cumulative 16 3. The Task of Defining Technology 21 4. Education for Technological Society 26 5. Concluding Remarks 31 CHAPTER 2: TECHNOLOGY AND ART 32 1. Assurance 32 2. Intuition 37 3. Repetition 40 4. Social Technology 50 5. Concluding Remarks 50 CHAPTER 3: TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIETY 52 1. Is Democracy Really Necessary? 52 2. Long-Range Large-Scale Technological Projects 55 3. Short-Range Cybernetics 64 4. The Ugly Face of Technological Bureaucracy 71 5. Concluding Remarks 76 PART TWO : TECHNOLOGY AND PHILOSOPHY INTRODUCTION TO PART TWO 78 CHAPTER 4: MAGICAL AND SCIENTIFIC TECHNOLOGY 79 1. From the Scientific Point of View: Baconianism 79 Technology 5 2. From the Anthropological Point of View: Functionalism 83 3. From the Metaphysical Point of View: Fideism 87 4. From a Historical Point of View: The Scientific Revolution 92 5. Concluding Remarks 95 CHAPTER 5: THE IDEAL OF RATIONAL MAN 97 1. The Baconian-Cartesian Ideal 97 2. Idealizations versus Ideals 102 3. The Education of Rational Man 108 4. The Individualism of Rational Man 112 5. Concluding Remarks 115 CHAPTER 6: THE PRAGMATIST MESS OF POTTAGE 117 1. The Theory and Practice of Toleration 117 2. The Philosophical Foundations of Tolerance 121 3. The Definition of Truth 125 4. Truth as Ideal 128 5. Concluding Remarks 133 CHAPTER 7: PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY AND ITS IMPLICATIONS FOR TECHNOLOGY 135 1. Philosophy of Life 135 2. Traditional Philosophy 140 3. Pragmatist Philosophy of Science 144 4. Pragmatism and Meaning 147 5. Concluding Remarks 151 CHAPTER 8: CONTEMPLATIVE PHILOSOPHY AND ITS IMPLICATIONS FOR TECHNOLOGY 152 1. Science and Rational Technology 152 2. Repeatability versus Reliability 157 3. Science and Common Sense 160 4. Metaphysical Frameworks 164 5. Concluding Remarks 169 CHAPTER 9: SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY AND ITS IMPLICATIONS FOR TECHNOLOGY 171 1. Reductionism in Action 171 2. Error, Sin, and Optimism 176 3. Social Theory and Social Action 181 4. The Social Framework of Science and Technology 186 5. Concluding Remarks 190 6 Joseph Agassi CHAPTER 10: POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY AND ITS IMPLICATIONS FOR TECHNOLOGY 191 1. The Justification of Politics in Action 191 2. The Political Ineptness of Contemporary Liberals 196 3. Political Theory and Political Action 202 4. The Technocrat as a Frankenstein 205 5. Concluding Remarks 207 PART THREE : TOWARDS A CRITICAL PRAXEOLOGY INTRODUCTION TO PART THREE 212 CHAPTER 11: AN IMAGE OF A BETTER FUTURE 213 1. Towards a Theory of Practical Problems 213 2. Democracy, Dialogue, and Responsibility 219 3. An Image of a Half-Way Utopia 225 4. An Image of a Peaceful World 230 5. Concluding Remarks 233 CHAPTER 12: TECHNIQUES OF RAPID DEMOCRATIZATION 234 1. Sociotechnics and Technoethics 234 2. Towards a Theory of Research Incentives and Assessment 239 3. Towards a Theory of Democratic Mass-Movements 244 4. Towards a Theory of Responsible Democratic Leadership 250 5. Concluding Remarks 258 END NOTES 260 NAME INDEX 262 SUBJECT INDEX 266 Technology 7 EDITORIAL PREFACE This is a distinguished contribution to the philosophy and sociol- ogy of technology by one of the pioneers in these fields. The latter are comparatively new and they are not being cultivated vigorously enough. This is surprising given that technology, together with capital, was the motor of the industrial revolution that started in mid 18th century and that may never be completed. The neglect of the philosophy and sociology of technology seems to be due to three major factors. One is that many scholars confuse technology with science, so that when dealing with ei- ther of them they believe to have taken care of the other as well. A second reason is that most scholars do not realize the conceptual richness of technology: they do not understand that, unlike the traditional crafts, modern technology presupposes science and involves research, design, and planning, all of which pose intriguing conceptual problems. A third reason for the neglect is the traditional contempt of the scholar for every- thing that smells of manual work. This situation has started to change over the past few years, partly under the influence of Professor Agassi’s numerous writings and those of a few other scholars who have explained that technology presupposes and raises a number of interesting philosophical problems, and that technolo- gists, unlike basic scientists, are accountable to both their employers and the public at large. In fact, the philosophy and sociology of technology are expanding quickly. There are professional societies and periodicals devoted to them, and an estimated 2000 courses on science, technology and society are currently being taught around the world. A major problem faced by any teacher or student of a course in the philosophy and sociology of technology is the dearth of good text- books on the subject. The present work, a product of two decades of re- search and teaching on three continents, is a suitable textbook for any course on the philosophical and sociological aspects of technology. It covers an extensive ground in a clear and concise manner, and without using professional jargon. Agassi’s book gives us a faithful and clear picture of contempo- rary technology as both a product of human ingenuity and a powerful means for altering the world - for better or worse. It is also an eloquent plea for the democratic control of technology, a cultural force that, though ambivalent, is never socially neutral. MARIO BUNGE Foundations Philosophy of Science Unit, McGill University, Montreal 8 Joseph Agassi PREFACE The progress of man by the education of the mind - there is no safety but in that. Vic tor Hugo, “The Mind and the Masses” All societies have technology and control it by diverse means and with the aid of diverse social and political institutions. The eighteenth century thinkers of the Enlightenment movement considered technology as a peculiarly high form of applied natural science and disregarded all tradition, including, incidentally, many traditional social controls of tech- nology. Adam Smith expressed the spirit of the age when he said, entre- preneurs should control the machines they own, not the government; the control of production as a whole should be effected by the individual con- sumers through the open market. In the nineteenth-century, thinkers of the Reaction to the Enlightenment movement emphasized the ill effects which industrialization causes, and called for the maintenance of tradi- tions and of communal life. Karl Marx expressed the view, which soon became more influential than those of most modern thinkers, that the technological stage of development of a society is the sole basic determi- nant of its social and political structures. In recent years, a new view is emerging, to the elaboration of which the present volume is devoted, which presents social and physical technology as strongly interacting to varying degrees of satisfaction. To achieve a satisfactory man-machine integration we need a new technology - which should coordinate and harmonize social and physical technology. Technologies, especially agrarian, have destroyed societies that could not control them well enough. Today technology threatens to de- stroy the human race. This is why the task of the new technology is both so important and so urgent. The bias of the present book is frankly political: we have to im- plement a drastic change in our policy towards the implementation of technology, and center less on the physical and more on the socia l side of technology: we should prefer the change of the organization of a system to the introduction of a new piece of machinery. And we should study the social side effects of technological innovation and decide whether they are desirable or not, and if not, what to do about it. Such decisions are political, and the chief political question is, what political machinery should exercise such controls. The political bias of the present book is frankly democratic: it opts for democratic control and, moreover, for a broad public participa- tion in the political process. The major task thus posed to us, before it is Technology 9 too late - .if it is not too late already - .is that of democratization. The democratization bias of the present book is, finally, educa- tional: there is no short-cut that circumvents education. Indeed, the major contribution of technology from time immemorial is that of creating more leisure time and more opportunities that are educational. All anti-technological schools of thought are here opposed as re- actionary and as impractical. We need new technologies to help us fight the ills of the extant technologies. We can use the means of mass com- munication to create mass movements and use these as means for rapid mass education for democracy and as means for pressure on legislatures to enact new means of democratic controls of technologies. Once we see democracy as the process of increased participation of citizens in the political process through education, we cannot fail to realize that the dissemination of political knowledge and information is essential to democracy and so calls for institutionalization - .of both the dissemination of information and of democratic control of it. This leads us to perceive at once the terrible crisis in contemporary political life, the credibility gap so-called, the popularity of the view that one cannot suc- ceed in politics without being a liar.
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