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The Philosophical Richness of Technology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2022

Mario Bunge
Mario Bunge*
Affiliation:
McGill University, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México
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Extract

Headline, 20th July, 1976: VIKING I LANDS ON MARS. Certainly a triumph of space technology. But philosophically significant? Doubtful, but then we should not look for philosophy in material objects other than human brains. If we look for philosophy at the right spots in the technological process we are bound to find some, for there is philosophy in or behind every piece of human knowledge and in or behind every step of rational action.

We shall find philosophy, for instance, in the policy making that ended up in the decision to build and send off Viking I, as well as in the technological research that went into the implementation of that decision—and I am using the term ‘philosophy’ in its technical acceptation not in the popular one. Indeed one of the assumptions in planning the Viking I venture was that there might be life on Mars after all.

Type
Part III. Are There Any Philosophically Interesting Questions in Technology?
Information
PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association , Volume 1976 , Issue 2: Volume Two: Symposia and Invited Papers 1976 , 1976 , pp. 153 - 172
Copyright
Copyright © 1977 by the Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

1

A first version of this paper was written at the Eidgenőssische Technische Hochschule Zűrich while the author was holding a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation fellowship. Portions of it were read at the International Symposium on the History and Philosophy of Technology held at the University of Illinois at Chicago Circle, May 14-16, 1973. The present version was produced at the Instituto de Investigaciones Filosóficas of the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Mexico. I am grateful to George Bugliarello (New York Polytechnic), Emilio Rosenblueth (Instituto de Ingeniería, U.N.A.M.), and Iraj Zandi (Dept. of Civil and Urban Engineering, University of Pennsylvania) for stimulating interactions.