Ideal for undergraduate students in philosophy and science studies, Philosophy of Technology offers an engaging and comprehensive overview of a subject vital to our time. An up-to-date, accessible overview of the philosophy of technology, defining technology and its characteristics. Explores the issues that arise as technology becomes an integral part of our society. In addition to traditional topics in science and technology studies, the volume offers discussion of technocracy, the romantic rebellion against technology. Complements The Philosophy of Technology : The (...) Technological Condition: An Anthology, edited by Robert C. Scharff and Val Dusek. (shrink)

Comprehensie collection of historical and contemporary philosophies of technology, including Plato, Aristotle, St. Simon, Comte, Marx, Heidegger, Mumford, Foucault.

This book examines Fuller’s pioneering vision of social epistemology. It focuses specifically on his work post-2000, which is founded in the changing conception of humanity and project into a ‘post-‘ or ‘trans-‘ human future. Chapters treat especially Fuller’s provocative response to the changing boundary conditions of the knower due to anticipated changes in humanity coming from the nanosciences, neuroscience, synthetic biology and computer technology and end on an interview with Fuller himself. While Fuller’s turn in this direction has invited at (...) least as much criticism as his earlier work, to him the result is an extended sense of the knower, or ‘humanity 2.0’, which Fuller himself identifies with transhumanism. The authors assess Fuller’s work on the following issues: Science and Technology Studies (STS), the university and intellectual life, neo-liberal political economy, intelligent design, Cosmism, Gnosticism, agent-oriented epistemology, proactionary vs precautionary principles and Welfare State 2.0. (shrink)

Patrick Heelan, with background in quantum theory and in hermeneutic phenomenology, investigated not only the hermeneutical philosophy of science but also the parallels between quantum mechanics and human experience in general and the logic of changes of worldview. Heelan’s closeness to Aristotle and Lonergan, often neglected, is discussed, and issues concerning Heelan’s treatment of the social context of science are raised.

Imre Lakatos gained fame in the English-speaking world as a follower and critic of philosopher of science Karl Popper. However, Lakatos’ background involved other philosophical and scientific sources from his native Hungary. Lakatos surreptitiously used Hegelian Marxism in his works on philosophy of science and mathematics, disguising it with the rhetoric of the Popper school. He also less surreptitiously incorporated, particularly in his treatment of mathematics, work of the strong tradition of heuristics in twentieth century Hungary. Both his Marxism and (...) his emphasis on heuristics contained a view of science and mathematics that contrasted with the mainstream of Anglo-American philosophy of science. Both involved a dynamic view of science, whether historical or psychological, and an emphasis on practice as opposed to static, formal representations of scientific theories. (shrink)

Feyerabend and Lakatos were invited to be assistants of the literary Marxists Brecht and Lukács, respectively. In the 1930s Expressionism Debate, Lukács associated artistic expressionism with irrationalism and fascism, while Brecht criticized Lukács' anti-modernism. Lakatos' criti cisms of Kuhn echo Lukács' denunciations of German idealism, and Lukács influenced the terminology and topics in Lakatos' methodol ogy. Lakatos, concerned with progress, and fearful of irrationalism and degeneration, recapitulates positions of his teacher, Lukács, in the latter's attack on modern art. Feyerabend's criticisms (...) of Lakatos paral lel Brecht's critique of Lukács. (shrink)

David GormanNorthern Illinois UniversityThe official topic of Steve Fuller’s editorial is aphorisms, but I think that it is early days in his thinking about this interesting genre. He mentions them...

Review of conference with criticism of some of the presentations.

Discussion of von Wright's account of logic and time in relation to Marxist dialectics.

Edgar Zilsel offers a Marxist account of the rise of experimental science avoiding both crude determinism and the anti-scientific bias of much “Western Marxism.” This account supplements Don Ihde’s instrumental realism with a social account of the systematic extension of perception by instrumentation. The social contact of non-literate craftspeople with purely intellectual scholars forged the social basis of what became technoscience.

Edgar Zilsel offers a Marxist account of the rise of experimental science avoiding both crude determinism and the anti-scientific bias of much “Western Marxism.” This account supplements Don Ihde’s instrumental realism with a social account of the systematic extension of perception by instrumentation. The social contact of non-literate craftspeople with purely intellectual scholars forged the social basis of what became technoscience.

A review of Kaplan's anthology implicitly comparing it to my anthology.

Fuller's account of religious parallels to scientific and science studies disputes, non-Western science, Merton on values of science.

An analysis of Steve Fuller’s social epistemology and epistemic agency.

Remedios’s and Dusek’s response to Lynch’s review is that Lynch misreads Fuller on knowledge and misdirects his criticism of Fuller’s turn to agency.

Review of work on several debates, including Galileo vs. the Church, Bohr vs Einstein, Hoyle vs. Big Bang theory, Oppenheimer vs. Teller, N-rays, magnetic monopoles.

Review of work on Renaissance technology.

Sokal and Bricmont in their exposé of allegedly meaningless statements about science by recent French philosophers take errors of particular applications of philosophical ideas to science as refutations of the whole general framework utilized. They also seem to think that taking snippets out of context is sufficient to expose the "fashionable nonsense." In the early twentieth century, British analytic philosophers such as Bertrand Russell and A. N. Whitehead did the same with Hegel on mathematics. After deciding not to bother to (...) read Hegel because of distaste for what he wrote about mathematics, Whitehead was later surprised to learn that his own relational process philosophy resembled that of Hegel in various respects. (shrink)