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Depending on how one construes the kinship relations, technology
has been either the stepchild of philosophy or its grandfather. In
either case, technology has not been taken into the bosom of the
family, but has had to wait for attention, care and feeding, while
the more unclear elements - science, art, politics, ethics - were
being nurtured (or cleaned up). Don Ihde puts technology in the
middle of things, and develops a philosophy of technology that is
at once distinctive, revealing and thought provoking. Typically,
philosophy of technology has existed at, or beyond, the margins of
the philosophy of science, and therefore the question of technology
has come to be posed (when it is) either by historians of
technology or by social critics. The philosophy of technology, as
analysis and critique of the concepts, methodologies, implicit
epistemologies and ontologies of technological praxis and thought,
has remained underdeveloped. When philosophy does turn its
attention to the insistent presence of technology, it inevitably
casts the question in one or another of the dominant modes of
philosophical interpretation and reconstruction. Thus, the logic of
technological thinking and practice has been a subject of some
systematic work (e. g., in the Praxiology of Kotarbinski and
Kotarbinska, among others). And the question of technology's
relation to science has been posed in the framework of the
nomological model of explanation in the sciences - e. g."
Depending on how one construes the kinship relations, technology
has been either the stepchild of philosophy or its grandfather. In
either case, technology has not been taken into the bosom of the
family, but has had to wait for attention, care and feeding, while
the more unclear elements - science, art, politics, ethics - were
being nurtured (or cleaned up). Don Ihde puts technology in the
middle of things, and develops a philosophy of technology that is
at once distinctive, revealing and thought provoking. Typically,
philosophy of technology has existed at, or beyond, the margins of
the philosophy of science, and therefore the question of technology
has come to be posed (when it is) either by historians of
technology or by social critics. The philosophy of technology, as
analysis and critique of the concepts, methodologies, implicit
epistemologies and ontologies of technological praxis and thought,
has remained underdeveloped. When philosophy does turn its
attention to the insistent presence of technology, it inevitably
casts the question in one or another of the dominant modes of
philosophical interpretation and reconstruction. Thus, the logic of
technological thinking and practice has been a subject of some
systematic work (e. g., in the Praxiology of Kotarbinski and
Kotarbinska, among others). And the question of technology's
relation to science has been posed in the framework of the
nomological model of explanation in the sciences - e. g."
Historically, philosophy has been the point of origin of the
various sciences. However, once developed, the sciences have
increasingly become autonomous, although often taking some paradigm
from leading philosophies of the era. As aresult, in recent times
the relationship of philosophy to the sciences has been more by way
of dialogue and critique than a matter of spawning new sciences.
This volume of the Selected Studies brings together a series of
essays which develop that dialogue and critique with special
reference to the insights of phenomenological philosophy.
Phenomenology in its own way has been interfaced with the sciences
from its outset. Perhaps the most widely noted relation, due in
part to Edmund Husserl's characterization of the beginning steps of
phenomenology as a "descriptive psychology," has been with the
various psychologies. It is weIl known that the early Gestaltists
were influenced by Husserl and, later, the Existential psychologies
acknowledged the impact of Martin Heidegger and Jean-Paul Sartre,
to mention but two philosophers. And, of course, Husserl's lifetime
concern for the foundations of logic and mathe maties, especially
as these (the former in particular) were developed into a
foundational "theory of science," has figured prominently in these
dialogues. 2 INTRODUCTION Less directly but more currently, the
impact of phenomenology upon the disciplines has begun to be feIt
in a whole range of the sciences."
Phenomenology in the United States is in a state of ferment and
change. Not all the changes are happy ones, however, for some of
the most prominent philosophers of the first generation of
phenomenologists have died: in 1959 Alfred Schutz, and within the
past two years John \Vild, Dorion Cairns, and Aron Gur witsch.
These thinkers, though often confronting a hostile intel lectual
climate, were nevertheless persistent and profoundly
influential-through their own works, and through their students.
The two sources associated with their names, The Graduate Faculty
of The New School for Social Research, and the circle around John
Wild first at Harvard and later at Northwestern and Yale, produced
a sizable portion of the now second gener ation American
phenomenological philosophers. In a way, it was the very hostility
of the American philo sophical milieu which became an important
factor in the ferment now taking place. Although the older, first
generation phenome nologists were deeply conversant with other
philosophical move ments here and abroad, their efforts at
meaningful dialogue were largely ignored. Determined not to remain
isolated from the dominant currents of Anglo-American philosophy in
par ticular, the second generation opened the way to a dialogue
with analytic philosophers, especially through the efforts of the
Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy, led by 2
INTRODUCTION such men as James M. Edie and Hubert Dreyfus and, in
other respects, Herbert Spiegelberg and Maurice Natanson."
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