History of Technology

Abstract

Technological change is a key issue for the philosophy of history, because technology is itself a complex social process, involving the influence of many social factors (economic, scientific, political, organizational, educational). So arriving at a history of a particular technology—e.g., electric power, inertial navigation, or medieval ship construction—is itself a challenging and important task for historians. And second, technological change is itself often invoked as one of the large causal factors that account for other important large social outcomes—e.g., population increase, the incidence of war and peace, or environmental change. We need to be able to provide an account of the metaphysics of the causal properties allegedly possessed by technology systems. It is worthwhile to examine both sets of problems in the context of the philosophy of history.