Technical artefacts

Abstract

What kind of objects are technical artefacts? In dealing with this question I will take a comparative approach. The two contrast classes that I will compare technical artefacts to are physical objects and social objects. My aim in the first three chapters is to argue that technical artefacts are a kind of hybrid objects that share some features with physical and others with social objects. They have a ‘dual nature’ because they may be said to be at the same time physical and social constructions. The first part of this chapter is preparatory. It starts with a demarcation of the kind of technical artefacts I will concentrate on (section 1). That is not a trivial matter since technical artefacts merge on the one hand into (mere) physical objects and on the other hand into social objects; they are, so to speak, embedded in a kind of seamless web with physical and social objects. My focus will be on technical artefacts produced on the basis of a design, a situation typical for most modern engineered technical artefacts. In view of my comparative approach I then turn to a sketch of some of the main differences between the conceptual frameworks used for describing physical and social objects and phenomena (section 2). It will also be necessary to address briefly the relation between the notions of natural and physical objects and between the notions of social and intentional objects (section 3). The second part of this chapter presents an overview of the kind of problems involved in clarifying what kind of objects technical artefacts are and ends with a first description of the dual-nature thesis and the various ways it may be interpreted. I turn to engineering practice to see how engineers conceptualize and describe technical artefacts (section I.4). They use what I call a structure-function conception of technical artefacts: they are physico-chemical structures with a (practical/technical) function. This conception still leaves open whether it involves concepts from the intentional conceptual framework. In order to shed light on this issue it will be necessary to unpack the notion of function, in particular how this notion is related to intentional human action. I will outline two different approaches for interpreting the notion of technical function, the one grounding technical functions in the physical world, the other in the intentional (social) world, and the problems they run into (section I.5). The conclusion I will draw from this is that an adequate conception of technical functions has to take into account their intimate relationship to physical features on the one hand, and to intentional features on the other, which leads me to posit that technical artefacts have a dual nature (section I.6). I close with taking stock of the main issues that our first exploration of the nature of technical artefacts has put on our agenda (section I.7).