Abstract
“For six millennia at least, the banks of the lower Nile have been a human artifact rather than the swampy African jungle which nature, apart from man, would have made it.” So observes historian of technology Lynn White, Jr. The myth of Prometheus equates human uniqueness with our ability, indeed our need, to fashion artifacts in order to assume a place among the flora and fauna of the planet. Our appropriation of the world is forever mediated by our tools. We swim in an artificial sea.
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Notes
Lynn White, Jr.,’The Historical Roots of Our Ecologic Crisis’, in his Dynamo and Virgin Reconsidered: Essays in the Dynamism of Western Culture ( Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1968 ), p. 76.
Albert Borgmann, Technology and the Character of Contemporary Life: A Philosophical Inquiry ( Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984 ).
Langdon Winner,’The Political Philosophy of Alternative Technology: Historical Roots and Present Prospects’, in D. Lovekin and D. Verene, eds., Essays in Humanity and Technology (Dixon, 111.: Sauk Valley College, 1977 ), p. 131.
Alasdair Maclntyre,’Objectivity in Morality and Objectivity in Science’, in H. Engelhardt and D. Callahan, eds., Morals, Science, and Society ( Hastings-on-Hudson, N.Y.: The Hastings Center, 1978 ), pp. 28 - 29.
E. F. Schumacher, Small Is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered ( New York: Harper & Row, 1973 ), p. 51.
Robert B. Reich, The Next American Frontier ( New York: Penguin, 1983 ), p. 266.
Langdon Winner,’Do Artifacts Have Politics?’, Daedalus 109 (Winter 1980): 121-136.
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© 1988 D. Reidel Publishing Company
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Carpenter, S.R. (1988). A Discussion. In: Durbin, P.T. (eds) Technology and Contemporary Life. Philosophy and Technology, vol 4. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-3951-6_1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-3951-6_1
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