Science Technology and Society

Four Meanings of Technology

TECHNOLOGY

Technics

A technology

A form of human cultural activity

A total societal enterprise

Technology as Technics

• Technology will sometimes be used to mean and refer to

material products of human making or fabrication
borrowing Lewis Mumford's term, I will call such items
technics.
• Technics- are the material artifacts (to use anthropological
term) or “hardware” (to use at engineering term) produced
by a person, group, or society.
Technology as Technics
• There are various, sometimes
overlapping, subcategories of
technics, including tools,
devices, machines, implements,
istruments, and utensils.
• Thus, computers, bicycles,
contact lenses, hammers, axes,
watches, guns, forks
microscopes, and, for that
matter, clothing, buildings,
pianos, and statues all fall
within the general category of
technics.
Technology as Technics

• To be precise, as used here, technic does not refer

directly or primarily to a particular individual, devices,
machines, and so on. Rather, it is to be understood as
referring to generic types or kinds of devices, machines
and so on－to the watch, the axe, the videocassette
recorder, the dishwasher, the personal computer, rather
than to my watch, your axe, and so on.
Technology as a Technology

• Here, unlike in the previous sense, technology does not

refer directly or primarily to a particular technic itself
(namely, the bicycle.)
• Rather, a technology refers to the complex of knowledge,
methods, materials, and, if applicable, constituent parts
(technics themselves) used in making a certain kind of
technic (at a certain point in time).
Technology as a Technology

• Technology in this sense can be used in either the

singular or the plural－that is, to refer either to a
technology or to two or more technologies, as in “many
technologies are involved in the manufacture of an
automobile, such as brake technology, carburetor
technology, engine technology, and transmission
technology.”
Technology as a Form of Human Cultural Activity

• Technology will often be used to refer to a distinctive form

or kind of human cultural activity, just as the terms art,
law, medicine, sport, and religion are often used to refer to
disctinctive forms of human practice.
• In this sense, technology is a type of endeavor of which
certain people, technologists－a category including
craftspeople and machinists as well as professional
engineers－are practitioners, just as artists are
practitioners of art and physicians are practitioners of
medicine.
Technology as a Total Societal enterprise

• “Here, technology does not refer only to the specific

technics and related technologies involved, or to one of
the activity forms－technology－through which they were
invented or developed.
Technology as a Total Societal enterprise

• Rather, it refers to the total societal enterprise of

technology－that is, the complex of knowledge, people,
skills, organizations, facilities, technics, physical
resources, methods, and technologies that, taken
together and in relationship to one another, are devoted to
the research, development, production and operation of
technics (at a given point in time in a particular societal
unit, be it national or global scope.)
Four Meanings of Science

SCIENCE

Knowledge

a field of systematic inquiry into nature

A form of human cultural activity

A total societal enterprise

• An important distinction must first be made about uses of
the term science.
• In its most general sense, one carried by the German
term Wissenschaft, science means “systematic theoretical
inquiry.”
• Thus understood, we may immediately distinguish
Formal Science- including logic and mathematics, wherin
abstract symbols do not necessarily refer to phenomena of
the natural world, from what might be called
Substantive Science- including physics, biology,
psychology, and sociology.
In the latter areas, science takes phenomena of the natural
world (including mental and social phenomena) as its
object.
Science as Knowledge

“With his germ theory of disease, Pasteur made a seminal

contribution to modern medical science.”
Science- refers to the organized, well-founded body of
knowledge of natural phenomena, contributions to which
have been made by thousands of men and women.
Science as a Field of Systematic Inquiry into Nature

In “physics is the most basic science.”

Science- refers to a particular field or domain of systematic
inquiry in which such knowledge－science in the first sense
－is sought.
• As with the second sense of technology, science in this
second sense can be used in either the singular or the
plural (“the science of physics” versus “the social
sciences”)
Science as a Form of Human Cultural Activity

• Corresponding to the third sense of technology, science

will sometimes be used in what follows to refer to a
distinctive form or kind of human cultural activity, one
practiced by people now called scientists and formerly
known as, among other things, natural philosophers and
savants.
Science as a Total Societal Enterprise

• Paralleling the situation with technology, the expression

“science” is sometimes used to refer to the total societal
enteprise of science－that is,the complex of knowledge,
people, skills, organizations, facilities, technics, physical
resources, methods, and technologies that, taken
together and in relationship to one another, are devoted to
the study and understanding of the natural world (at a
given point in time in a particular societal unit), the latter
understood as including in its domain all human mental,
physical, and social phenomena.
Four Meanings of Technology and Science
TECHNOLOGY SCIENCE

Technics Knowledge

A technology a field of systematic inquiry into nature

A form of human cultural activity A form of human cultural activity

A total societal enterprise A total societal enterprise