Prescience and Patience: A Reassessment of Technoscience in Light of Heidegger (original) (raw)
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Coming to Terms with Technoscience: The Heideggerian Way
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Heidegger's oeuvre (> 100 volumes) contains a plethora of comments on contemporary science, or rather technoscience because, according to Heidegger, science is inherently technical. What insights can be derived from such comments for philosophers questioning technoscience as it is practiced today? Can Heidegger's thoughts become a source of inspiration for contemporary scholars who are confronted with automated sequencing machines, magnetic resonance imaging machines and other technoscientific contrivances? This is closely related to the question of method, I will argue. Although Heidegger himself was notoriously ambivalent when it came to method, especially in his later writings, his oeuvre nonetheless contains important hints for how a philosophical questioning of technoscience could be practiced, such as: paying attention to language (to the words that we use) or taking a step backwards (towards the moment of commencement of the type of rationality at work). For Heidegger, method means: being underway, and a philosophical method must be developed along the way. After discussing Heidegger's views on method, both in his earlier and in his later writings, three dimensions of contemporary technoscience will be addressed, namely: technoscientific objects (research artefacts), technosci-entific sites (laboratories as unworldly environments) and technoscience as a global enterprise. In the final section, the question will be addressed whether and how a critical encounter between philosophy and technoscience is possible.
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The philosophy of technology, as a relevant theoretical field in contemporary philosophy, has a history that dates back to the classic philosophers of technology, as well as to the subsequent movement known as the empirical turn. However, as discussed in the field's specialized literature, several impasses currently challenge the objectives of the empirical turn. These impasses are particularly evident when considering technological phenomena from a planetary perspective, making it difficult nowadays to conceive a philosophical inquiry exclusively focused on analyzing technical objects and their local usage contexts. Therefore, this work aims to explore this historical-philosophical trajectory, beginning with thinkers such as Martin Heidegger and culminating in the present day, pointing out perspectives about the limits of the empirical turn.
Heidegger and the Question Concerning Technology
In the 1950’s Martin Heidegger published the essay “The Question Concerning Technology” which has proven to be difficult to decipher for many contemporary thinkers engaged in extracting the meaning of his work. This is often attributed to his poetically composes and unconventional rhetoric which conceals his equally complicated philosophical perspective. This essay we will primarily highlight Heidegger’s vocabulary regarding the trajectory that our technological-modern age traces, which observes and criticizes the dangerous path that humanity pursues, thereby providing valuable insight into what the future holds. I will organize the sequence of Heidegger’s thoughts by addressing his essay and interlinking his ideas that respond to answering the question concerning the status and essence of technology. The valuable meaning is embedded within the interpretation of the terms with relation to the text and an effort for constructing an organized understanding has created obstacles. By looking beyond his unique writing style and focusing on his language I will organize Heidegger’s thoughts and grasp the valuable existential characteristics of technology. I will provide a comprehensive understanding of Heideggerian language and thought in order to synthesize his philosophy into an organized manner for clarification purposes.
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Lost in the World of Technology with and after Heidegger
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Is Heidegger's theory of the era of technology a sufficent hermeneutics of contemporary globalization? It remains invaluable because it understands technology in terms of transcendence, and transcencence in terms of being-in-the-world. But should it nevertheless be revised in the context of contemporary social and technological environment? This article shows firstly how Heidegger's general idea of being-in-the-world is specified in his theory of technology, and how technology reduces man and nature into "natural resources" and being into elemental techno-nature. Secondly, the article presents two types of critique to Heidegger's idea: on the one hand, Ihde, Latour and Stiegler question Heidegger's understanding of technology as a total system; on the other hand, Foucault and Eldred question Heidegger's understanding of technology independently of social and economical structures. The article suggests that re-interpreted through these critiques, the theory of technology gives a good basis for an ontology of contemporary "uprooted" existence.
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