Das Verhältnis von Lebenswelt und Wissenschaft befindet sich mit ungewissem Ausgang in stetiger Bewegung. In diesem Prozess ist das treibende Element die Wissenschaft, die Technisierungen ermöglicht und mit ihren Erkenntnissen die Welt überzieht. Trotz der fortschreitenden Verwissenschaftlichung hat sich die Lebenswelt jedoch ihre Eigenständigkeit bewahrt. Die vorliegenden Studien tragen zur Aufklärung dieses erstaunlichen Phänomens bei. Sie weisen Strukturdifferenzen der beiden Erfahrungsweisen auf und zeigen, wie sie mit- und gegeneinander existieren. Zugleich wird deutlich, dass ein Ende der lebensweltlichen Eigenständigkeit einen fundamentalen (...) Wandel für die gesellschaftliche Stellung nichtwissenschaftlicher Erfahrung bedeuten würde. Die Untersuchungen sind begrifflich, wissenschaftstheoretisch und phänomenologisch orientiert. Sie gehen von einem weitgefassten Wissenschaftsbegriff aus, der auch Technikwissenschaften sowie wissenschaftliche Anwendungen umfasst. In den Fallbeispielen kommt den Naturwissenschaften und dem Naturbegriff eine besondere Aufmerksamkeit zu. Der Lebensweltbegriff schließt in kritischer Distanz an die Sozialphänomenologie von Alfred Schütz und die Phänomenologie Edmund Husserls an. (shrink)

Motivated by the significant amount of successful collaborative problem solving activity on the Web, we ask: Can the accumulated information propagation behavior on the Web be conceived as a giant machine, and reasoned about accordingly? In this paper we elaborate a thesis about the computational capability embodied in information sharing activities that happen on the Web, which we term socio-technical computation, reflecting not only explicitly conditional activities but also the organic potential residing in information on the Web.

Humans are always interested in distinguishing natural and artificial entities although there is no sharp demarcation between the two categories. Surprisingly, things do not improve when the second type of entities is restricted to the arguably more constrained realm of physical technical artifacts. This paper helps to clarify the relationship between natural entities and technical artifacts by developing a conceptual landscape within which to analyze these notions. The framework is developed by studying three definitions of technical artifact which arise from (...) different perspectives. All these perspectives share two intuitions: that technical artifacts are physical objects that exist by human intervention; and that technical artifacts are entities to be contrasted to natural entities. Yet the perspectives are different in the way they spell out these intuitions: the relevant human intervention may range from intentional selection to intentional production; and the contrast between technical artifacts and natural entities may be introduced by a constitution relation or by defining properties that set technical artifacts apart. The three perspectives are compared and their similarities and dissimilarities are explored with the help of ontological analysis. (shrink)

Vier Entwicklungtendenzen des Verhältnisses von Natur und Technik betreffen industrielle Gesellschafen als Ganzes: 1. der zunehmende Naturferne Technik, 2. zunehmende Naturnähe der Technik, 3. vermehrte Hybridzustände von Natur und Technik und 4. zunehmende Eindringtiefe der Technik in die Natur. Vor dem Hintergrund dieser teils gegenläufigen Tendenzen kann von Grenzen der Technisierung in industriellen Gesellschaften nicht im Allgemeinen, sondern nur in Bezug auf besondere Kontexte gesprochen werden. Zu ihnen gehört die Lebenswelt als ein nichtprofessioneller der und privater Erfahrungsbereich, es immer (...) noch erlaubt, kulturwirksam zwischen Natur und Technik zu unterscheiden. Zwei Beispiele werden diskutier: Die Wahrnehmung des Leibes, der sich als das lebensweltliche Zentrum das Natur erweist, sensibel auf Technisierungen reagiert, und der die Grenzen der Technisierung Reproduktion. Abschließend werden Gründe dafür angeführt, warum die Lebenswelt gegenüber Technisierungen, deren bevorzugtes Objekt sie ist, bisher in erstaunlicher Distanz geblieben ist. (shrink)

At the beginning of Western philosophy, Aristotle contrasted made objects, which did not have the source of their own production within themselves, with beings formed by nature. This distinction persisted until Marx, who conceived of the possibility of an evolution of the technical object. This philosophy developed while industrialisation was in the process of overthrowing the contemporary order of social organisation, which highlighted technology's new place in philosophical enquiry. Bernard Stiegler goes back to the beginning of Western philosophy and revises (...) the Aristotelian assessment, developing a complex argument whereby the technical object can be seen as having an essential, distinctive temporality and dynamic of its own. The author engages the ideas of Rousseau, Husserl, and Heidegger, the paleo-ontologist Leroi-Gourhan, the anthropologists Vernant and Detienne, the sociologists Weber and Habermas, and the systems analysts Maturana and Varela. (shrink)

Volume 20, Issue 8, August 2020, Page 27-29.

Technical change, defined as the manufacture and modification of tools, is generally thought to have played an important role in the evolution of intelligent life on earth, comparable to that of language. In this volume, first published in 1983, Jon Elster approaches the study of technical change from an epistemological perspective. He first sets out the main methods of scientific explanation and then applies those methods to some of the central theories of technical change. In particular, Elster considers neoclassical, evolutionary, (...) and Marxist theories, whilst also devoting a chapter to Joseph Schumpeter's influential theory. (shrink)

In this volume, first published in 1983, Jon Elster approaches the study of technical change from an epistemological perspective.

Technics and Time 2: Disorientation continues Stiegler's interrogation of prosthetic and ortho-thetic memory in light of the crisis that arises when speed and delay are irreconcilable, the crisis of "human being" itself.

Many outside science and engineering, especially social scientists and “rhetoricians”, claim that rhetoric, “the art of persuasion”, is an important part of technical communication. This claim is either trivial or false. If “persuasion” simply means “effective communication”, then, of course, rhetoric is an important part of technical communication. But, if “persuasion” has anything like its traditional meaning (a specific art of winning conviction), rhetoric is not an important part of technical communication; indeed, its use in technical communication would be unethical. (...) [By] an advocate is meant one whose business it is to smooth over real difficulties, and to persuade where he cannot convince. (shrink)

What is a technical object? At the beginning of Western philosophy, Aristotle contrasted beings formed by nature, which had within themselves a beginning of movement and rest, and man-made objects, which did not have the source of their own production within themselves. This book, the first of three volumes, revises the Aristotelian argument and develops an innovative assessment whereby the technical object can be seen as having an essential, distinct temporality and dynamics of its own. The Aristotelian concept persisted, in (...) one form or another, until Marx, who conceived of the possibility of an evolution of technics. Lodged between mechanics and biology, a technical entity became a complex of heterogeneous forces. In a parallel development, while industrialization was in the process of overthrowing the contemporary order of knowledge as well as contemporary social organization, technology was acquiring a new place in philosophical questioning. Philosophy was for the first time faced with a world in which technical expansion was so widespread that science was becoming more and more subject to the field of instrumentality, with its ends determined by the imperatives of economic struggle or war, and with its epistemic status changing accordingly. The power that emerged from this new relation was unleashed in the course of the two world wars. Working his way through the history of the Aristotelian assessment of technics, the author engages the ideas of a wide range of thinkers—Rousseau, Husserl, and Heidegger, the paleo-ontologist Leroi-Gourhan, the anthropologists Vernant and Detienne, the sociologists Weber and Habermas, and the systems analysts Maturana and Varela. (shrink)

The evermore explicit technicization of the world, together with the immeasurable nature of the political and ethical questions that it poses, explicitly defy the syntheses of human imagination and invention. In response to this challenge, how can philosophy, in its relation of nonrelation with politics, help in orienting present and future negotiation with the processes of complexification that this technicization implies? The article argues that one important way to do this is to think and develop our understanding of (...) technicity from out of metaphysics, its destructions and deconstructions. The argument proceeds from the aporia of knowledge in Plato's Meno, situates continental philosophical thought's various articulations of the ‘other’ of metaphysics in relation to the problematic of this aporia and claims that certain understandings of this alterity can be further articulated in terms of technical supplementarity. Working between the concept of ‘arche‐writing’ in the thought of Jacques Derrida and that of ‘epiphylogenesis’ in that of Bernard Stiegler, the article then develops this supplementarity in terms of a play between originary technicity and its historical differentiations, one that both holds to the articulation of alterity in recent continental philosophy and develops it further in terms of its relation to historical determination. This relation, posited through a thinking of technicity, permits, finally, the ‘development’ of an ethics of giving time with which negotiation with processes of complexification can be undertaken in the name of justice. An ethical relation to these processes thereby emerges through the very excess of the human. (shrink)

This is a technical supplement to "Abstraction and Grounding", forthcoming in /Philosophy and Public Affairs/.

The TV series American Gods (2017-2021) features a war between the Old Gods, a syncretic pantheon of deities of the natural powers drawn from all mythological and religious traditions, and the New Gods, the deities of history and the artificial realm of man-made technics. Gods of both fences are shown as beings whose morals beyond good and evil is entirely focused on fulfilling their will to power in terms of immortality. Humans are trapped within this conflict; their only option is (...) seemingly limited to choose which side they stand. While the series sumptuously renders Heidegger’s claim that metaphysics and technics are the same, it also employs a different and positive meaning of the latter: by showing the old gods, the new ones, and humans as different options about existence – namely the logic of sacrifice, the logic of hedonism, and the economic logic of human reason – and eventually rejecting all of them as viable solutions, it favours an idea of existence as full open-ness and experimentality. In the end, technics is one with man’s self-creativity, embodied in his very biology, providing him an escape route from the vicious circles constantly ambushing him on his path towards authenticity – namely, all deities, religious as well as secular. (shrink)

Acoustic Technics, aware that digital and computer embedded technologies produce data that today can be transformed into acoustic images, notes the transformations these phenomena imply for a diverse set of practices, such as music, communication, medical diagnosis, and scientific knowledge.

In this paper we present an action-theoretic account of artefact using and designing and describe our ICE-theory of function ascriptions to technical artefacts. By means of this account and theory we analyse the thesis of the dual nature of technical artefacts according to which descriptions of technical artefacts draw on structural and intentional conceptualisations. We show that the ascription of technical functions to technical artefacts can connect the intentional and structural parts of descriptions of artefacts, but also separate these parts. (...) Our conclusion is that the concept of technical functions forms a ‘conceptual drawbridge’ between the intentional and structural natures of technical artefacts.Keywords: Intentional and structural descriptions; Technical artefacts; Function theory; Action theory; Use; Design. (shrink)

This essay explores the nature and neurological basis of creativity in technical production. After presenting a model of expert technical cognition based in cognitive anthropology and cognitive psychology, the authors propose that craft production has three inherent sources of novelty — procedural drift, serendipitous error and fiddling. However, these are quite limited in their creative potential, which may help explain the virtual absence of innovation over the long millennia of the Palaeolithic. Innovation can be far more rapid and effective via (...) invention, which requires folk theories of causation and adequate working memory capacity, all fairly recent evolutionary developments. The neurological basis of expert technical cognition lies in well-known cortical and sub-cortical structures, but recent research has established a provocative role for the cerebellum in the formulation of novel arrangements. (shrink)

BackgroundNon-technical skills are cognitive and interpersonal skills underpinning technical proficiency. Ethical values and respect for human dignity make operating room nurses responsible for nursing decisions that are clinically and technically sound and morally appropriate.AimTo learn what ethical issues operating room nurses perceive as important regarding non-technical skills.Research designQualitative individual in-depth interviews were conducted. The interviews were analysed using Braun and Clarke’s six phases for thematic analysis.Participants and research contextEleven experienced perioperative/operating room nurses working in an operating unit at a Norwegian (...) university hospital.Ethical considerationsApproval was given by The Norwegian Social Science Data Service in care of the hospital’s Data Protection Officer.FindingsThree main themes were found: respect and care for the patient, making the patient feel safe, and respect within the perioperative team. These features or themes, which incorporate collaboration and communication, are closely connected to patient safety.DiscussionDefending the patient’s dignity is part of caring for and respecting the patient. The manner in which the operating room team collaborates is important for the patient to feel safe and secure. Poor teamwork may have dire consequences. Reciprocal respect within the team includes respect for each other’s tasks and responsibilities and to talk to one another in a friendly manner.ConclusionBeing respectful and contributing to a caring atmosphere are central ethical skills in the operating room. To patients, harmonious teamwork translates into a feeling of safety and being cared for. The nurses see respect and patient safety, and respect and reciprocal politeness among the members of the perioperative team as central ethical non-technical skills. Lack of respect influences the team negatively and is detrimental for patient safety. Good communication is an important safety measure during surgery and creates a feeling of good ‘flow’ within the operating room team. (shrink)

Every living science, especially in its early stages, is compelled to devise fresh terms, either by coining new words or by giving new meanings to old ones. Unless and until these fresh terms become absorbed in the vocabulary of everyday speech, their unfamiliarity makes them a target for the shafts of the humourist. There can be no doubt that in the late fifth century B.C. literary criticism was still a new science. We can trace its beginnings in the treatises of (...) the Sophists, many titles of which have been handed down to us. Strepsiades' lesson in metric, though of itself amusing enough, would certainly gain in topical appropriateness if enacted at a time when such investigations were not only much in the air, but were still novel. And the whole ‘Agon’ of the Frogs, the character of which is forecasted in lines 796–802, depicts in the strongest colours the contrasted views of technician and inspirationist. We should therefore naturally expect a play of such a kind, written at such a time, to be full of technical jargon, barely understood by the ‘man in the street,’ and forming the object of his half-contemptuous amusement. That is, I believe, exactly what we do find, to an extent insufficiently recognized. Professor Radermacher, in his recent edition of the Frogs, has rendered valuable service by pointing out the frequent occurrence in that play of technical terms which meet us later in Dionysius of Halicarnassus and other critics. But I believe that technical language lurks unsuspected in many other passages, though the precise meaning may often be beyond recovery. (shrink)

This interview with Bernard Stiegler’s long-time translator and collaborator, Daniel Ross, examines the connections between different periods of Stiegler’s work, thought, writing and activism. Moving from the three volumes of Technics and Time to the final large-scale collaborative project of The Internation, the discussion concentrates on Stiegler’s conceptualization of ‘protentionality’, hope and care for a world confronted by climate crises, entropy and computational economic reconfigurations of work, economy and imaginations for futural possibilities. The interview foreshadows the special issue on The (...) Internation project planned by Bishop and Stiegler for TCS that will appear in the near future. (shrink)

We take for granted that only certain kind of things exist - electrons but not angels, passports but not nymphs. This is what we understand as `reality'. But in fact, `reality' varies with each era of the world, in turn shaping the field of what is possible to do, think and imagine. Our contemporary age has embraced a troubling and painful form of reality: Technic. Under Technic, the foundations of reality begin to crumble, shrinking the field of the possible and (...) freezing our lives in an anguished state of paralysis. Technic and Magic shows that the way out of the present deadlock lies much deeper than debates on politics or economics. By drawing from an array of Northern and Southern sources - spanning from Heidegger, Junger and Stirner's philosophies, through Pessoa's poetry, to Advaita Vedanta, Bhartrhari, Ibn Arabi, Suhrawardi and Mulla Sadra's theosophies - Magic is presented as an alternative system of reality to Technic. While Technic attempts to capture the world through an `absolute language', Magic centres its reconstruction of the world around the notion of the `ineffable' that lies at the heart of existence. Technic and Magic is an original philosophical work, and a timely cultural intervention. It disturbs our understanding of the structure of reality, while restoring it in a new form. This is possibly the most radical act: if we wish to change our world, first we have to change the idea of `reality' that defines it. (shrink)

It is commonly held that Christian ethics generally and Christian bioethics particularly is the application of Christian moral systems to novel problems engaged by contemporary culture and created by contemporary technology. On this view, Christianity adds its moral vision to a technology, baptizing it for use. In this essay, I show that modern technology is a metaphysical moral worldview that enacts its own moral vision, shaping a moral imaginary, shaping our moral perception, creating moral subjects, and shaping what we imagine (...) as moral intentions. In fact, modern technics has its own liturgics, which is foreign to Christian Divine Liturgy. Divine Liturgy is world forming, showing us a different world than the one that comes into relief in the ersatz liturgy of modern medical technics. (shrink)

We have argued that Lehrer's definitions of coherence and justification have serious technical defects. As a result, the definition of justification is both too weak and too strong. We have suggested solutions for some of the problems, but others seem irremediable. We would also argue more generally that if coherence is anything like what Lehrer's theory says it is, then coherence is neither necessary nor sufficient for justification. While our current objections are directed at the ‘letter’ of Lehrer's theory, other (...) criticisms can be aimed at its very ‘spirit’. We would argue that coherence is unnecessary for justification because of the existence of ‘basic beliefs’, those about self-presenting states (‘I have a tingling sensation in my leg’) or self-evident truths (‘All men are men’). Such beliefs may be justified even though there are no other propositions in the subject's acceptance system that makes them more probable than competitors. Coherence is, moreover, insufficient for justification, because it ignores the inferential structure of the subject's acceptance system, and requires no justification of any kind for the subject's acceptance system itself. But we must develop these more fundamental objections on another occasion. (shrink)

Although we see much utility in Osiurak and Reynaud's in-depth discussion on the role of what they term technical reasoning in cumulative culture, we argue that they neglect the time and energy costs that individuals would have to face to acquire skills in the absence of specific socio-cognitive abilities.

_Disorientation_ is the first publication in English of the second volume of _Technics and Time_, in which French philosopher Bernard Stiegler engages in a close dialogue with Husserl, Derrida, and other philosophers who have devoted their energies to technics, such as Heidegger and Simondon.The author's broad intent is to respond to Western philosophy's historical exclusion of technics and techniques from its metaphysical questionings, and in so doing to rescue critical and philosophical thinking. For many years, Stiegler has explored the origins (...) and philosophical, ethical, and political stakes of a global process he calls "the industrial temporalization of consciousness." Here, demonstrating that technology—including alphabetical writing—is memory, he argues that through new technologies of retention and inscription we have come to live in a world where time devours space, a disoriented world in which we have lost our bearings. Immersed in the multimedia of an over-connected world, with time and space as we know them abolished, we no longer find "cardinal points" to guide us and may even be led where we do not wish to go. We must therefore prepare to confront new spheres of ideological control and discover new possibilities in the digital environment. (shrink)

In the first two volumes of _Technics and Time_, Bernard Stiegler worked carefully through Heidegger's and Husserl's relationship to technics and technology. Here, in volume three, he turns his attention to the prolematic relationship to technics he finds in Kant's _Critique of Pure Reason_, particularly in the two versions of the Transcendental Deduction. Stiegler relates this problematic to the "cinematic nature" of time, which precedes cinema itself but reaches an apotheosis in it as the _exteriorization process_ of schema, through tertiary (...) retentions and their mechanisms. The book focuses on the relationship between these themes and the "culture industry"— as defined by Adorno and Horkheimer—that has supplanted the educational institutions on which genuine cultural participation depends. This displacement, Stiegler says, has produced a malaise from which current global culture suffers. The result is potentially catastrophic. (shrink)

Donald Schön’s theory of reflective practice has received unprecedented attention as an approach to professional development in nursing and other health and social care professions. This paper examines technical rationality in Schön’s theory of reflective practice and argues that its critique is a broad and often overlooked epistemological underpinning in this work. This paper suggests that the popularity of Schön’s theory is tied in part to his critique of technical rationality, and to his acknowledgement of the significance of practitioner experience (...) and indeterminate zones of practice in the development of expertise. Schön tapped into a growing disillusionment with technical rationality that coincided with a crisis of knowledge across a range of disciplines. The question is raised as to whether Schön’s critique sets up a dichotomy between technical rationality and experience, or overcomes it. The conclusions suggest that Schön is not discarding research‐based professional knowledge, but rather challenging conflated views of its practical significance. In this way, it is proposed that his critique of technical rationality can be interpreted as an attempt to overcome dualistic thinking as it pertains to professional knowledge. (shrink)

Cinematic time -- The cinema of consciousness -- I and we : the American politics of adoption -- The malaise of our educational institutions -- Making (the) difference -- Technoscience and reproduction.

Embracing an inter-disciplinary approach grounded on Gärdenfors’ theory of conceptual spaces, we introduce a formal framework to analyse and compare selected theories about technical artefacts present in the literature. Our focus is on design-oriented approaches where both designing and manufacturing activities play a crucial role. Intentional theories, like Kroes’ dual nature thesis, are able to solve disparate problems concerning artefacts but they face both the philosophical challenge of clarifying the ontological nature of intentional properties, and the empirical challenge of testing (...) the attribution of such intentional properties to artefacts. To avoid these issues, we propose an approach that, by identifying different modalities to characterise artefact types, does not commit to intentional qualities and is able to empirically ground compliance tests. (shrink)

For several hundred thousand years, the genus homo deployed a characteristic technical creativity, communicating and transmitting its outcomes, together with its operative protocols, without the available recourse to articulated language. The thesis proposed here is that the aforementioned functions should be attributed to a complex intertwining of embodied abilities, which can in turn be ascribed to the classic philosophical concept of imagination. It is through imagination that the human becomes involved in material engagement, by virtue of which its extended mind (...) takes part in the processes of producing artifacts and is in turn shaped by them. The main issue of this article consists in investigating how this involvement occurs and the part that articulated language plays in it, following the invention of the latter. The latter’s emergence can indeed be traced back to the transformation and specialization of a recursive element, already present in the pre-linguistic work of imagination, whose ability to implement a denotative semantics is discussed in particular. (shrink)

This paper examines the impact of the introduction of Western (European) technical civilization on regional cultures in Nigeria, using Igboland in South-EasternNigeria as a test case. It begins with a discussion of some general features of Western technical civilization whose evolution has been profoundly influenced by technological advances in Europe and her cultural colonies in North America and elsewhere. Consequences of the contact between Western technical civilization and traditional Igbo culture are also examined. The paper concludes by discussing the challenging (...) problem of Africa’s contribution to technical civilization. (shrink)

An essay review of the Routledge Revival edition of Oswald Spengler, 'Man and Technics (1932).

The onset of the electronics-based information revolution will augur changes in the sociological perceptions of 'suitable careers' for women. This phenomenon is particularly evident in rural Appalachia. A planned, systematic delivery system was designed, developed, and implemented by Southwest Virginia Community College to introduce women to the challenges and possibilities of technical careers. This was accomplished through a gradualized phase-in to Technological Literacy, followed by in-depth involvement, culminating in an industrial internship experience. A special curriculum was designed to ease the (...) transition of the women, most of whom were homemakers, into the fast-paced mainstream of the academic environment. Duration of the introductory segment was one academic quarter. All project participants were clustered in a peer group, led by the project director, a trained counselor. In addition to a central course on Career Directions for Women, the program design emphasized Industrial Dynamics, the variety of uses possible with "user-friendly" microcomputers, Computer-Assisted Drafting, Electronics Instrumentation, Mathematics and Communications. Field experiences and visits to area industries were integrated into the program plan, as were visits from women who had achieved success in technical careers. Particular efforts were made to arrange for visits by the limited number of women alumni from the college's technical programs. Students were then mainstreamed into a regular program in Electronics or Computer Aided Drafting in the intermediate segment. Students are given a closer look at the industrial sector in the final segment. An examination of the social structure in Appalachian Virginia is presented, together with an albeit tentative prediction of the implications for female wage earners in this highly traditional region, so dependent heretofore on coal mining. Finally, the concept of whether this effort will lead to evolution, rather than revolution, is discussed. While covering a somewhat homogeneous and unique population cluster, the action blueprint outlined can be applied to other population groups in the U.S. and abroad. (shrink)

Life -- Labour -- Psyche -- Being -- The other -- Time -- Death.

Note: This is not an ad hoc change at all. It’s simply the natural thing say here – if one thinks of F as a generalization of classical logical entailment. The extra complexity I had in my original (incorrect) definition of F was there because I was foolishly trying to encode some non-classical, or “relavant” logical structure in F. I now think this is a mistake, and that I should go with the above, classical account of F. Arguments about relevance (...) logic need to be handled in a different way (and a different context!). And, besides, as Luca Moretti has shown (see below), the original definition of F cannot be the right basis for C ! OK, now on to C. (shrink)

Autonomous agents (robots) are no longer a subject of science fiction novels. Self-driving cars, for example, may be on our roads within a few years. These machines will necessarily interact with the humans and in these interactions must take into account moral outcome of their actions. Yet we are nowhere near designing a machine capable of autonomous moral reasoning. In some sense, this is understandable as commonsense reasoning turns out to be very hard to formalize. -/- In this paper, we (...) identify several features of commonsense reasoning that are specific to the domain of morality. We show that its peculiarities, such as, moral conflicts or priorities among norms, give rise to serious challenges for any logical formalism representing moral reasoning. We then present a variation of default logic adapted from [5] and show how it addresses the problems we identified. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to contribute to a philosophy of technics by proposing an answer to the following question: what is the nature of the human body as an element of technical systems? The argument focuses on an examination of the phenomenon of bodily technics. This examination is guided by the conviction that Pierre Bourdieu's social theory can be read as contributing significantly to an answer to the above question. However, since Bourdieu's project is not directly aimed at (...) enhancing our understanding of the technicity of the human body, a reading of Marcel Mauss's seminal essay on bodily technics is also discussed to set the stage for an examination of the technicity of the body and to justify the manner in which Bourdieu's theory is read here. Through a careful study of the key notions of habitus, field, practice, time and rule, Bourdieu's social theory is systematically presented and explored for its contribution to an understanding of the question raised in this article. In conclusion, a number of remarks are made on how the relation between Mauss and Bourdieu is to be understood and on the argumentative strength of Bourdieu's work. (shrink)