Acceptance through adaptation—The human and technology in the philosophical and scientific-historical context of “Sinnfälligkeit”

Abstract

Fritz Giese—a famous scientist of psychotechnics—responded to a debate of man-machine-adaptation with his concept of object psychotechnics in order to adapt the environment to the worker. The idea behind this adjustment was, that man should be working in a trouble-free and decent environment, because of his complex biological nature, which allows him only to do productive work in the aforesaid environment. The economic movement or operation should always be intuitive and energy saving. The term for this problem was “Sinnfälligkeit”, which was rather discovered by engineers than by psychologists. Below I will investigate in a philosophical and historical way how engineers and also psychologists operate with the concept of “Sinnfälligkeit”.