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 Technology
and the Lifeworld : From Garden to Earth (Indiana
Series in Philosophy of Technology) by Don
Ihde
Technology and the Lifeworld explores some of the most
crucial issues relating to the role of technology in daily life in the
contemporary, multi-cultural world. The role of tools and
instruments in our relation to the earth and the ways in which
technologies are culturally embedded provide the foci of this
thought-provoking book. Don Ihde begins by comparing life in a
nontechnological imagined "garden" with our experience in the
technologically mediated world. He then offers three programs for
understanding the variety of human involvement with technologies.
Drawing from the traditions of phenomenology and hermeneutical
philosophy, the first program analyzes the diversity of human-technology
relations and shows the extent to which technology is nonneutral.
The second program takes up the issue of technology as a cultural
instrument, in part through a discussion of indigenous technologies,
technology transfer, and neocolonialism. The third program maps
the topography of technologies around the world, introducing the concept
of pluriculturality. The book concludes with recommendations for
the reconstruction of modern technological science aimed at preserving
the inherited earth.
Don Ihde is Leading Professor of Philosophy and Dean
of Humanities and Fine Arts at the State University of New York at Stony
Brook. His numerous publications include Philosophy of Technology - An Introduction,
Instrumental Realism - Interface Between Philosophy of Science and Philosophy of Technology,
Postphenomenology - Essays in the Postmodern Context,
and Experimental
Phenomenology.
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by Don Ihde
Excerpt:
The late twentieth century seems marked by a deep
intellectual discomfort about the ways in which Western thought
generally has framed its ways of understanding the World. One symptom of
this dis-ease revolves around the current philosophical debates which
see either a dramatic end to, or a winding down from 'modernity.' Are we
'postmodern'? 'a-modern'? or, were we, as Bruno Latour claims, never
modern to begin with? In this contribution to the closing of the
first "Hermeneutics and Science" meeting, I shall be using
this context to re-interpret both hermeneutics and science...
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Excerpt:
The idea for my title was suggested quite a few years
ago by Langdon Winner. Langdon had sent me a copy of a collection of his
essays to read and respond to which eventually became The Whale and
the Reactor. And, although his topic was philosophy of
technology and his experience was what many of us felt in technology
studies at the time, the point applies equally well to science, or even
better, to what is now often called technoscience...
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Excerpt:
1. How Many Phenomenologists does it take
to detect a 'Greenhouse Effect'?
Let us take a very commonplace, often discussed and
critical topic within our conversations regarding critical environmental
issues: Are we detecting a 'Greenhouse Effect,' and related to this, is
it exacerbated by 'homogenic factors,'i.e., human actions? At this
occasion I suspect that most of you would be inclined to give a positive
answer to both of these questions. But, if pushed philosophically, what
would be the evidence, and how well grounded would it be for such
affirmations?
Within scientific communities and associated
scientifically informed circles, the answers have to be somewhat more
ambiguous, particularly when rigorous questions concerning evidence are
raised. Were scientific truth to be a matter of consensus--and some
contemporary philosophers of science argue that scientific truth often
turns out to be just that--then it is clear that there is beginning to
be a kind of majoritarian consensus among many earth science practitioners
that the temperature of the Earth, particularly of the oceans, is,
indeed rising and that this is a crucial indicator for a possible
'Greenhouse Effect'...
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