Five Views on Technology Development: Implications for Democratic Control and Ethical Assessment

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FIVE VIEWS ON TECHNOLOGY DEVELOPMENT: IMPLICATIONS FOR DEMOCRATIC CONTROL AND ETHICAL ASSESSMENT Henk van den Belt Applied Philosophy Group Wageningen University and Research Centre E-mail: Henk.vandenBelt@wur.nl In this article five different views on technology development will be expounded and discussed.[i] These views originate from various disciplines like philosophy, economics, sociology and history. Each of these disciplines has a special branch dealing with the development of technology (or, more broadly, the development of science and technology). Thus we have specialisms like the philosophy of technology, the history of technology, the sociology of technology and the economics of technological (or technical) change. In this article we will freely cross the boundaries between these (sub)disciplines, as we are less concerned about guarding disciplinary identities than about gaining useful insights into the character of technological development and its social preconditions and consequences. Etymologically, `technology' derives from the Greek words tekhnè (art) and logos (science or knowledge). The term therefore means literally: the science of the useful (or practical) arts. When the term was first introduced during the 18th century, it denoted the scientific study of the useful arts. At that time men of higher learning (savants, or `scientists' as we would say nowadays) avidly studied and described the procedures used by craftsmen in their daily work and attempted to explain them in terms of known scientific principles. Chemists, for example, tried to disclose and to make sense of the recipes followed by textile dyers in colouring cloth. In modern English, however, the term `technology' has become more or less synonymous with `the useful (or practical) arts', not especially with the scientific study of these (logically, the synonym `technics' -

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