Hermenêutica

II
My contention here is, to repeat it once more, that the theoretical beginnings - what we may call the ontological breakthrough occurring at the onset of the modern age and laying the foundations on which the edifice of modern science was reared - was the all important event. To understand this event historically, we do well to turn our minds back to the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It was a time not only pregnant with change but also conscious of it, with a will for it, and with (…)

I
We live in a revolution — we of the West — and have been living in one for several centuries. We are naming its central agency when we call it the scientific-technological revolution. Having begun as a "provincially" European event, it has by now become global. In its progress it reshapes the external conditions of our being — that is, the world we live in; it thereby reshapes the ways of our living; and finally — or perhaps first — it reshapes the modes of our thinking. In brief, what (…)

VII
After this analytical summary of the direct conceptual content of the theoretical revolution in dynamics, a brief metaphysical evaluation of it is in order. We said at one point that what the innovation was originally about was not the time-honored principle of causality per se, but the conception of change. We must now add that the altered conception of what constitutes a change, i.e., an effect, naturally reacted on the conception of what constitutes a cause. Now, "change" had been (…)

VIII
The plain picture of classical, Newtonian mechanics here drawn, whose prime data were nothing but mass and acceleration, was later, especially from the nineteenth century on, made more complex by the addition of electromagnetism, radiating energy, atomic valency, nuclear forces, molecular structure. Though a far cry from the simplification of the original "matter and motion" formula of Descartes, the more advanced scheme in all its enormously increased subtlety still adheres to the (…)

XI
Modern technology, in the sense which makes it different from all previous technology, was touched off by the industrial revolution, which itself was touched off by social and economic developments entirely outside the theoretical development we have been considering. We need not deal with them here, except for saying that they determined the first distinctive feature of modern technology, namely the use of artificially generated and processed natural forces for the powering of (…)

IX
What has neither will nor wisdom and is indifferent to itself solicits no respect. Awe before nature’s mystery gives way to the disenchanted knowingness which grows with the success of the analysis of all things into their primitive conditions and factors. The powers that produce those things are powerless to impart a sanction to them: thus their knowledge imparts no regard for them. On the contrary, it removes whatever protection they may have enjoyed in a pre-scientific view. The (…)

X
It is a common misconception that the evolutions of modern science and modern technology went hand in hand. The truth is that the great, theoretical breakthrough to modern science occurred in the seventeenth century, while the breakthrough of mature science into technology, and thereby the rise of modern, science-infused technology itself, happened in the nineteenth century. What happened in between?
The question involves the impact which science may have had on technology or vice (…)

The novel powers I have in mind are, of course, those of modern technology. My first point, accordingly, is to ask how this technology affects the nature of our acting, in what ways it makes acting under its dominion different from what it has been through the ages. Since throughout those ages man was never without technology, the question involves the human difference of modern from previous technology. Let us start with an ancient voice on man’s powers and deeds which in an archetypal (…)

It follows that the knowledge that is required — besides the moral will — to assure the morality of action, fitted these limited terms: it was not the knowledge of the scientist or the expert, but knowledge of a kind readily available to all men of good will. Kant went so far as to say that "human reason can, in matters of morality, be easily brought to a high degree of accuracy and completeness even in the most ordinary intelligence" ; that "there is no need of science or philosophy for (…)

Let us extract from the preceding those characteristics of human action which are relevant for a comparison with the state of things today.
1. All dealing with the non-human world, i.e., the whole realm of techne (with the exception of medicine), was ethically neutral - in respect both of the object and the subject of such action: in respect of the object, because it impinged but little on the self-sustaining nature of things and thus raised no question of permanent injury to the integrity (…)