Technologies as forms of life

Langdon Winner

pp. 249-263

in: Robert S. Cohen, Mark W. Wartofsky (eds), Epistemology, methodology, and the social sciences, Berlin, Springer, 1983

Abstract

Perhaps the most accurate observation one can make about the philosophy of technology is that there really isn't one. At least if we look at the writings of the two sorts of people who might be expected to have been interested in the topic — philosophers and engineers — we find little attention to questions about the character and meaning of technology in human life. For example, the six-volume Encyclopedia of Philosophy, a recent attempt at a compendium of major questions in the traditions of philosophical discourse, contains no entry whatsoever under the category "technology.' ¹ Neither does that work contain enough material under possible alternative headings to enable anyone to piece together an idea of what a philosophy of technology might look like.