CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2014
| Author | Arnautu, Robert Adrian |
|---|---|
| Title | Early Modern Philosophy of Technology: Bacon and Descartes |
| Summary | The contemporary understanding of technology is indebted to Bacon and Descartes, who challenged the pre-modern conceptions regarding useful material production. Although the production of artefacts has been a constant activity of humans since the dawn of history, the Ancient world tended to disvalue it, considering it a lower endeavour that aims to satisfy ignoble material needs. Technology, according to Ancient Greek thinkers, cannot surpass nature but can only bring small improvements to it; moreover, there is a difference in kind between natural things and technological artefacts; the activity of inventing and producing useful objects is unsuited for the nobility and for free men; there is an irreducible gap between proper knowledge and the production of artefacts. This approach toward technology is completely reversed in Bacon’s and Descartes’ works: material utility comes to be considered a genuine value; nature can be completely transformed through technological inventions, and even the human body can be improved by prostheses; natural things and technological artefacts are identical in their constitution and function; the invention of new artefacts becomes a proper endeavour of the natural philosopher; thinking about artefacts, or machines, is raised to the status of proper knowledge, while mechanical arts and mechanics become the core of natural philosophy. These ideas regarding technology became the familiar background of the contemporary approach toward material production; accordingly, to understand the magnitude of Bacon’s and Descartes’ paradigm shift it was necessary to analyse it against the pre-modern view. Moreover, in order to emphasize their powerful influence I approach their works from the technological perspective, since an epistemological analysis fails to rend justice to and to clarify some of the core ideas of their philosophy: utility, the centrality of mechanical arts and mechanics, the scope and scientific character of technology, the similarity between nature and technology. |
| Supervisor | Ben-Yami, Hanoch |
| Department | Philosophy PhD |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2014/fpharr01.pdf |
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