EE 295 Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Jacques Ellul, Lifeworld, Social Constructionism
Document Summary
As we mentioned last week, up to this point in the course, we have been looking at the micro view of the modern engineering project. The macro view of the engineering project sees it as a contextualized phenomenon. The tendency within the modern engineering enterprise is to side-step context as much as we can, de- contextualization being intrinsic to the cartesian methodology which informs the modern engineering enterprise. The contextualized nature of the engineering project can be envisioned in terms of a venn diagram: Chpt 3 stresses colonization which is the primal force within the modern engineering enterprise. Chpt 6 stresses contextualization which is the primal force within the pre-modern engineering endeavor. Colonization implies that the principles and values of a systemic way of being rationalization, efficiency, functionality, calculability, productivity, predictability, quantitative measures, and control are imposed more and more upon the non-systemic human lifeworld.
