Topics
- Conceptual/Eytemological Retrieve of techne ("know-how" from the Pre-Socratics through Aristotle).
- Technology, Culture, and Climate (global geography & climatology)
Readings: Needham's History of Science in China / various
archaeologial studies from Robinson Crusoe.
- Inventing & Questioning: Technology Naturalized.
- Making & Measuring: The Art of Engineering.
- Letter & Spirit; Technologies of Life and Death (Digression: A Short History of Scientific Instruments)
- Philosophy of Furniture : From Poe to Foucault (with a detour on Nietzsche, Architecture, and the Transvaluation of
Guilds). Focus will be on the contrast between manufacture under/over risk.
- Technology and Human Values, or Will the Real Mephistopheles Please Stand Up? (analysis of discourse about
technology--grammatical moods that pose technology [indicative mood] against values [imperative mood] are resolved
via the subjunctive).
- Technology and Science Fiction ("Scotty, beam me up": The Uses and Abuses of Imagination).
- How Things Work: The Sciences of the Artificial
- The Flow of Information
- Technology, Ideology, & Social Action (Whose techne, whose logos?
- Access to Tools: Liberation Technology
Readings: Whole Earth Catalogs, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle
Maintenance
Readings: Needham's History of Science in China / various archaeologial studies from Robinson Crusoe.
Readings: Whole Earth Catalogs, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance