ARTH 3002 Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Analytic Philosophy, Martin Heidegger, Abstract And Concrete
19 Dec 2016
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Lecture 5 & 6 — (Week 5):
History of Technology &
Defining an Artifact
It depends on when you look. One place to look is the past. The ancient greeks were some of
the first people to write on the topic…
The ancient greeks wrote about it as:
- Necessary, but not good (to be trusted)
For example:
Prometheus (forethought) —brought fire to humans (fire as technology). His reward
was to be chained to a rock. Everyday a big bird came and ate his liver. He would recover, and
it would repeat. He was punished for bringing technology to humans.
He had a brother, named Epimetheus (afterthought) — involved with a woman named
pandora. she had a box that was never supposed to be opened. Epimetheus opened it, and the
causes of suffering escape (they were in the box). The box, and Pandora, were created by
someone named Hephaestus (a creator, an artisan, a god). He created the box and the woman.
He didnt follow the directions expected of Hephaestus, and is punished for it. Meaning people
do not use technology the way they’ve been warned, and that it is the root of all
suffering… Also, the last thing left in the box was hope.
Similarly…
Daedalus and his son Icarus:
Daedalus was a technologist, he made things. He was asked to build a structure in which a
queen could manage to mate with the god Zeus. He was successful. Offspring was something
called a Minotaur (wild monster), starts to destroy everything .. Basically: Technology is bad.
Then, they had to build something to fix the Minotaur problem. They built a Labyrinth. He is
trapped in it, is lost. He is successful. Then Daedalus and Icarus get put in it and gets stuck.
Ultimately, technology is bad. The only way they could get out is to use more technology. They
built wings, fly out, get too close to the sun, wings fail, and they die. Problem after problem after
problem. Lesson: Technology solves problems. But theres always a price to pay.
Also often concerns: Ancients believed difficult things were beautiful or perfect.
Technology leads to accumulation of wealth. People get accumulated to the soft, easy.
Opposite of perfection. The things you need to work hard to achieve are worth something, the
more technology you add to these tasks takes away from the outcomes worth.
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It is also considered desirable to base obedience to the law on habit. Base the law on habit
rather than force people to do it. Technology on the other hand (technology change),
undermines the authority of custom and habit. (old ways get replaced). This introduces violence
into the state.
Judeo-Christian perspective examples—
God creates everything overtime, part of this being the Earthly paradise Garden of Even. At first
God, Adam and Eve (first woman and man), live in the garden in paradise. Adam and Eve end
up eating an apple from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (which was forbidden). They
were banished for it, aka The Fall. First thing that happened after eating the apple: they were
naked. Once they realized they were naked, they made clothes. This is how God knew they ate
the apple, because they were dressed.
Making clothes is an example of technology. Kicked out of paradise (to till the soil,
technology).
Technology is the consequence of sinful behaviour, you only use technology to get out of
a bad situation.
This implies that if technology-free is paradise, then more technology is more corruption.
Tower of Babel: (everyone spoke the same language at the time) Humans thought they were
clever, decided to build a tower to heaven. God destroyed the tower. But, to prevent it from
happening again multiple languages were created, making it difficult to work with others to build
it again.
A skeptical / negative view of technology in the 1600s — Francis Bacon.
— Only through technology can humans regain happiness. and sovereignty over nature
that they had before the fall.
Nature: to serve human purposes.
NO: The old way of this: Wisdom of the ancients (aka traditional knowledge), this didnt work.
YES: New way: through empirical science. This worked.
The goal was to have a knowledge of the causes and secret motions of things.
The positive view of technology persists from 1600s, till the 1800s. People like Karl Marx
(who wasn't opposed to technology)
— said we should continue to use technology, he embraced it
Until a turning point… exemplar Erewhon. (written by Samuel Butter 1872). was influenced by
the industrial revolution and Darwins on the origin of species. It became an intellectual topic. It
was about a fictional country. At this place: all machines are banned. Possession of a machine,
or the attempt to build a machine, is a capital crime (you are killed). People are convinced that
ongoing technical improvements are likely to lead to a race of machines that will replace
humans as the dominant species on earth.
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Document Summary
Prometheus (forethought) brought fire to humans (fire as technology). The ancient greeks were some of the first people to write on the topic . Necessary, but not good (to be trusted) For example: was to be chained to a rock. Everyday a big bird came and ate his liver. He was punished for bringing technology to humans. He had a brother, named epimetheus (afterthought) involved with a woman named pandora. she had a box that was never supposed to be opened. Epimetheus opened it, and the (cid:1684)causes of suffering(cid:1685) escape (they were in the box). The box, and pandora, were created by someone named hephaestus (a creator, an artisan, a god). He didn(cid:1685)t follow the directions expected of hephaestus, and is punished for it. Meaning people do not use technology the way they"ve been warned, and that it is the root of all suffering also, the last thing left in the box was hope.
