The Structure of Technology Knowledge

Abstract

There are several dimensions of technology knowledge: (1) There is knowledge about technologies. That is the engineer’s or technician’s knowledge, the knowledge of how a machine is made and how it functions. (2) There is what could be called theoretical technology knowledge, that is the knowledge of the physical, chemical or electrical laws and principles which allow any given technology the capacity to do what it does. This is the scientist’s or scientific engineer’s knowledge. (3) But there is also a different kind of technology knowledge — knowledge through technologies. This is a special kind of praxical or use knowledge which runs through a wide range of human actions. And it is this kind of knowledge which has been the focus of my own work for some two plus decades. And, indeed, in this paper, since I focus upon scientific knowledge which is instrumentally generated, there is a sense in which I am illustrating another point I have often emphasized. That is, much, if not most, scientific knowledge is ‘technologically dependent.’ It is ‘constructed’ through the use of instruments which are technologies. This is then a kind of inversion of the more standard notions that technologies are derived from science or scientific theories, rather it is the notion that scientific knowledge is instrumentally dependent upon technologies.