Portuguese Philosophy Of Technology: Legacies And Contemporary Work From The Portuguese-Speaking Community [1 ed.] 3031146298, 9783031146299, 3031146301, 9783031146305, 9783031146329

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Philosophy of Engineering and Technology

Helena Mateus Jerónimo   Editor

Portuguese Philosophy of Technology Legacies and contemporary work from the Portuguese-Speaking Community

Philosophy of Engineering and Technology Volume 43

Editor-in-Chief Pieter E. Vermaas, Delft University of Technology, Delft, The Netherlands Series Editors Darryl Cressman, Maastricht University, Maastricht, Limburg, The Netherlands Neelke Doorn, Faculty of Technology, Policy and Management Delft University of Technology, Delft, Zuid-Holland, The Netherlands Editorial Board Byron Newberry, Baylor University, Waco, TX, USA Edison Renato Silva, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro,  Rio de Janeiro, Brazil Editorial Board Philip Brey, University of Twente, Enschede, Overijssel, The Netherlands Louis Bucciarelli, School of Engineering, Massachusetts Inst of Tech, Belmont, MA, USA Michael Davis, Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago, IL, USA Paul Durbin, College of Arts & Sciences, University of Delaware, Newark, DE, USA Andrew Feenberg, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, BC, Canada Luciano Floridi, University of Hertfordshire, Hertfordshire, UK Jun Fudano, Kanazawa Institute of Technology, Nonoichi, Japan Sven Ove Hansson, Division of Philosophy, Royal Institute of Technology KTH Stockholm, Stockholms Län, Sweden Craig Hanks, Texas State University, SAN MARCOS, USA Vincent F. Hendricks, Center for Information & Bubble Studies, University of Copenhagen, København, Denmark Don Ihde, SUNY at Stony brook, Stony Brook, NY, USA Billy Vaughn Koen, University of Texas, Austin, TX, USA Peter Kroes, Delft University of Technology Delft, Zuid-Holland, The Netherlands Sylvain Lavelle, Ctr for Ethics, Tech & Society ICAM Paris-Senart Engineering School Lieusaint-Senart, France Michael Lynch, Cornell University ITHACA, NY, USA Anthonie W. M. Meijers, Dept of Philosophy and Ethics Eindhoven Univ of Technology, Eindhoven, Noord-Brabant, The Netherlands Duncan Michael, Ove Arup Foundation London, UK Carl Mitcham, Liberal Arts & International Studie, Colorado School of Mines, GOLDEN, CO, USA Helen Nissenbaum, East Building 7th Fl, New York University, New York, NY, USA

Alfred Nordmann, Institut für Philosophie, Technische Universität Darmstadt Darmstadt, Hessen, Germany Joseph C Pitt, Virginia Tech Blacksburg, VA, USA Daniel Sarewitz, Consortium for Sci Policy & Outcome Arizona State University, Washington, DC, USA Jon Alan Schmidt, Aviation & Federal Group Burns & McDonnell Kansas City, MO, USA Peter Simons, Trinity College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland Jeroen van den Hoven, Delft University of Technology, Delft, The Netherlands Ibo van der Poel, Delft University of Technology, Delft, The Netherlands John Weckert, Centre for Applied Philosophy & Ethics, Charles Sturt University Canberra, ACT, Australia

The Philosophy of Engineering and Technology book series provides the multifaceted and rapidly growing discipline of philosophy of technology with a central overarching and integrative platform. Specifically it publishes edited volumes and monographs in: • the phenomenology, anthropology and socio-politics of technology and engineering • the emergent fields of the ontology and epistemology of artifacts, design, knowledge bases, and instrumentation • engineering ethics and the ethics of specific technologies ranging from nuclear technologies to the converging nano-, bio-, information and cognitive technologies • written from philosophical and practitioners’ perspectives and authored by philosophers and practitioners The series also welcomes proposals that bring these fields together or advance philosophy of engineering and technology in other integrative ways. Proposals should include: • • • •

A short synopsis of the work or the introduction chapter The proposed Table of Contents The CV of the lead author(s) If available: one sample chapter

We aim to make a first decision within 1 month of submission. In case of a positive first decision the work will be provisionally contracted: the final decision about publication will depend upon the result of the anonymous peer review of the complete manuscript. We aim to have the complete work peer-reviewed within 3 months of submission. The series discourages the submission of manuscripts that contain reprints of previous published material and/or manuscripts that are below 150 pages/75,000 words. For inquiries and submission of proposals authors can contact the editor-in-chief Pieter Vermaas via: [email protected], or contact one of the associate editors.

Helena Mateus Jerónimo Editor

Portuguese Philosophy of Technology Legacies and contemporary work from the Portuguese-Speaking Community

Editor Helena Mateus Jerónimo ISEG School of Economics and Management & Advance/CSG Universidade de Lisboa Lisboa, Portugal Editor-in-Chief Pieter E. Vermaas

ISSN 1879-7202     ISSN 1879-7210 (electronic) Philosophy of Engineering and Technology ISBN 978-3-031-14629-9    ISBN 978-3-031-14630-5 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-14630-5 © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Contents

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Introduction: Pathways in the Philosophy of Technology in the Portuguese-Speaking Community ����������������������������������������������    1 Helena Mateus Jerónimo

Part I Modern Technology and Aporias of Progress 2

 António Sérgio: Critical Rationalism and Technology ������������������������   11 João Príncipe

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 The God of Artefacts: Vico’s Principle and Technology����������������������   25 Hermínio Martins

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 Technique, Readiness-to-Hand and Development��������������������������������   53 Álvaro Vieira Pinto

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 Three Essays on Technique, the Artificial and the New Human���������   65 Vilém Flusser

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Technology and the Lifeworld in Miguel Baptista Pereira ������������������   75 Pedro Xavier Mendonça

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 Amílcar Cabral: Agriculture, Technology and Colonialism����������������   89 Teresa Duarte Martinho

Part II Technology, Risk and Values 8

Riscophrenia: The Risk Fallacy and the Repression of Uncertainty������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  111 Helena Mateus Jerónimo

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Four Visions of Technology ��������������������������������������������������������������������  127 Ivan Domingues

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Contents

10 The  Specificity of Technological Knowledge�����������������������������������������  145 Alberto Cupani 11 Lost  in Translation? Ethics and Engineering Practice ������������������������  163 Tiago Mesquita Carvalho 12 C  ritique of Western Technological Hegemony and Neo-Animism in Ruy Duarte de Carvalho ������������������������������������  185 Alexandra Santos Part III Technoscene and Postmodern World 13 Mediatization:  From Gutenberg to Unlimited Media and Datafication ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  211 José Luís Garcia and Filipa Subtil 14 The Virtualization of the Archive ����������������������������������������������������������  243 José A. Bragança de Miranda 15 Law-Technology  Lag or Law as Technology in the Big Data Age����������������������������������������������������������������������������������  263 Maria Eduarda Gonçalves 16 Ontotechnologies  of the Body: Technoperformativity and Processes of Subjectivation��������������������������������������������������������������  283 António Fernando Cascais 17 Solidary  Technoscience: A Concept for the Philosophy of Technology��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  305 Renato Dagnino 18 Commercially-Oriented  Technoscience and the Need for Multi-Strategic Research������������������������������������������������������������������  321 Hugh Lacey and Pablo R. Mariconda

Chapter 1

Introduction: Pathways in the Philosophy of Technology in the Portuguese-Speaking Community Helena Mateus Jerónimo

This volume is a collection of essays of a philosophical nature on the subject of technology, introducing authors from the Portuguese-speaking community, namely from Portugal itself, some African countries and Brazil. The set of essays I have selected is a response to a request from the editor of Springer’s Philosophy of Engineering and Technology series to make known writers from the Portuguese-­ speaking community and their reflections, not on the traditions of the philosophy of technology in the foundational thinkers in this field such as Heidegger, Anders and Ellul, but on the most significant technological developments in today’s world. This undertaking is certainly a bold one. In this volume I have collected contributions which I consider significant for assessing technology and its implications, individually distinct pathways in a constructive pluralism in terms of the generations, nations, continents, disciplines and currents of thought to which these authors belong. This polyphony of voices is still little known in European and North American philosophical circles, even though they address the same twentieth- and twenty first-century challenges – challenges which are difficult to deal with without the achievements of science and technology (and techno-scientific systems) and their consequences for the natural world, the human condition and collective life, as well as in terms of new uncertainties in the future. Some of the voices collected here view technology in a world historical period characterised by the twilight of empires, dictatorial domination, the destruction brought about by wars already carried out under industrialized science, the nuclear threat, and propaganda, but also by the winds of decolonization, economic growth driven by the science-technology complex and by big science, the increase in the influence of the media and the birth of the consumer society. Other voices, from a H. M. Jerónimo (*) ISEG School of Economics and Management, Universidade de Lisboa & Advance/CSG, Lisbon, Portugal e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 H. M. Jerónimo (ed.), Portuguese Philosophy of Technology, Philosophy of Engineering and Technology 43, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-14630-5_1

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subsequent generation, have experienced a context in which new dilemmas have arisen, associated with the irruption of the techno-sciences, in particular in the domains of biotechnology and information, the continuous expansion of markets, the deep technologization of war, and the acceleration of innovation, generally more technical and commercial than social. Genetic manipulation of human beings, the environmental crisis and climate change, artificial intelligence, the virtualization of social relations, the imaginaries of the subcultures of high technology and their dreams of downloading minds to computers and the cyborgization of the body, among so many other developments associated with techno-science, define the horizon for all those who made the transition into the twenty-first century and have to find answers within it. Philosophical and social thought on technology in the Portuguese language fully incorporates the international discussion of these issues, but there are different nuances and emphases in each of the Portuguese-speaking countries, linked to their specific continents and cultural and social contexts. Clear examples are the question of technological dependence, historical experience (particularly in Latin America and Africa) with the incorporation of Western technology into the social structure of ancestral communities and critical distancing on the inter-penetration of techno-science and economic globalization. But they all offer us thought-provoking reflections for the possible fertile interaction of philosophy and technology. A love of wisdom, inherent in the very etymology of philosophy, and the matrix of the Portuguese language, empower the conversation between these authors. Through shared historical experience, much of it marked by conflict and suffering, this language has become the linguistic heart of various countries, if I may here draw on an idea of Fernando Pessoa’s who, as one of the foremost poets of literature in the Portuguese language, using one of his chosen pseudonyms, Bernardo Soares, wrote “My homeland is the Portuguese language” (Minha pátria é a língua portuguesa). It is well-known that language is in itself a marker of a specific cultural identity. Despite its variations, it is nourished by other symbolic exchanges, through literature, religious ceremonies, art, songs, the media, televised and cinematographic fiction, cultural events, and computer network-enabled connections. Spoken by over 250 million people (Statista, 2021), it is the official language of countries covering several continents (Europe, America, Africa, Asia and Oceania), whether as a first language (Angola, Brazil, Mozambique, Portugal, São Tomé and Príncipe), or as a second or minority language (East Timor, Cape Verde, Equatorial Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Macau). Brazil stands out as the largest community of Portuguese speakers and the only Portuguese-speaking country in the whole South American continent. In some locations, the Portuguese language lives side by side with other languages and dialects (e.g. Tétum in East Timor, Cape Verdean Creole, the Guarani language of Brazil, and the Quimbundo language of Angola) which enrich it in both oral and written form. This great variety of territories, cultures and collective identities, anchored in a common linguistic ground, is the outcome of historical contingencies which began with Portugal’s maritime expansion, in which it was one of the pioneers of the first phase of globalization of the modern European world, towards both the East and the

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West. A small country in the southwestern corner of Europe, with meagre resources and a population made up of farmers and fishermen, became the point at which various shipping lanes between Europe, Africa and South America came together. The longue durée of the Portuguese empire – a globally networked empire (Garcia et al., 2017) – lasted for five centuries, from the conquest of Ceuta in 1415 to the independence of Brazil in 1822 and later, in the 1970s, of the African colonies, with a last symbolic breath in 1999 when sovereignty of Macau was transferred to China. Out of a traumatic colonial heritage, and with the end of its imperial fantasies, the Portuguese-speaking community has produced multicultural movements which tie together peoples speaking the same language, are opposed to homogenization and are open to the richness of pluralism, the virtues of coexistence, and cultural hybridism. In the realm of philosophy and reflection on technology, other languages have had internationally acknowledged thinkers such as Hans Jonas, Günther Anders, Hannah Arendt, Jacques Ellul, Lewis Mumford and Ortega y Gasset. This is not true for writers in the Portuguese language who remain, for the time being, little known. Portugal was however no stranger to the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century and subsequent technological developments. One sign of the international power relations surrounding the Anglo-Saxon (and in part Francophone and German) axis is the devaluing of the scientific and technical movements associated with maritime expansion, which were of fundamental importance for the birth of European modernity, and which took place upstream and downstream of the profound social, political, economic and cultural changes deriving from that maritime expansion and the so-called “discoveries”. These scientific and technical movements have come to be called “Iberian science”, as Sánchez and Leitão argue (2017). A number of writers have argued for and demonstrated the importance of such technical and scientific achievements (e.g. Devezas & Modelski, 2006), including references in the field of social studies of technology (Law 1987, 1993[1989]). The “commitment to science”, for example, was fundamental to this systemic undertaking (e.g. the scientific commission convened by King John II to devise improved methods for measuring altitude and to promote expeditions with the sole intention of elaborating precise charts to convert altitude into latitude; technical publications on Portuguese shipbuilding such as the Ars Nautica), the improvement and/or invention of techniques such as the quadrant, the balestilha [the cross-staff], the Grande Nau [large sailing ship] and systematic data-gathering, experimentation and calculations (Devezas & Modelski, 2006). The “Iberian science” perspective, tied to the earliest stages of modernity, belies the marginal and peripheral, indeed almost invisible, position of Iberian scientific and technical contributions to the discourse of the history of science and technology. The history of science and technology has long suffered from an “anglicized” bias, limited not only in geographical terms (focused mainly on historical events in Britain, France and the countries of central Europe), but also in terms of its interlocutors and traditions. For this reason, while not neglecting the violence and racism involved in the imperialism of the Iberian Christian monarchies, from the point of view of modern technology (and science) it is important to bear in mind the

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evolution of many scientific and technical fields in connection with navigation, cosmography, natural history, ethnology, etc., the accumulation of knowledge, and new concepts and images (the new cartography of the globe) (Sánchez & Leitão, 2017). Maritime expansion and colonial domination drove relations between the centre and the periphery in which natural resources, acquired knowledge, technologies, spatial control, communication and trade routes all came together. At the same time, they established the dynamics of dependence and conflict, and the struggle for autonomy which are part of the history of these countries and continue to be highly significant for their forms of knowledge, imaginaries and social practices. Authors and texts for this volume were selected from as broad a spectrum as possible, although obviously this selection does not exhaust all philosophical thought and reflection on technology in Portuguese-speaking countries. The breadth of thinking on technology comes up against the necessary limitations in length of a book of this nature. Diversity of thought and theoretical relevance were the key criteria for the choice of texts. Most of the texts here are expressed in the author’s own voice. Others introduce certain authors and their thought indirectly – namely António Sérgio, Miguel Baptista Pereira, Amílcar Cabral and Ruy Duarte de Carvalho. Even though these authors did not write specifically on the philosophy of technology, their work reveals valuable insights in this field. In this sense the present volume contains chapters by and about authors from Portugal, Brazil, Angola and the then unified state of Guiné and Cape Verde. The book brings together authors who have been trained as philosophers, and others who are thinkers in the realm of the human and social sciences, which is aligned with a non-restrictive interpretation of the philosophy of technology and which does not intend to explore the pathways of the philosophy of science, the history of technology, or even the history of the philosophy of technology. All the chapters of this book address the dilemmas of the twentieth or twenty-­ first centuries. Authors like Álvaro Borges Vieira Pinto (1909–1987), Vilém Flusser (1920–1991) and Hermínio Martins (1934–2015) are fundamental points of reference in the field of thought on technology in the world of the Portuguese language, but not only here. All of them left a legacy of extensive work in this field and opened up lines of thought which, in one way or another, are being creatively pursued today. Brazilian philosopher Vieira Pinto saw technology in the light of a theory of labour which responded to the contradictions between human beings and the environment, and was one of the key thinkers on development theory in Brazil, having been in exile in Argentina during the dictatorship which followed the military coup in 1964. Martins, a Portuguese born in Mozambique, but exiled in England on account of the Salazar dictatorship, was professor at Oxford University for three decades. At the heart of his thought was the human condition in the technological civilization of the late twentieth century from a critical perspective. Flusser was a Jewish Czech intellectual who fled National Socialism and wrote some of his work in Brazil and in Portuguese (he obtained Brazilian nationality in 1950), pioneering the paths of the “linguistic turn” and the reception of Germanic thinking on technology in Portuguese. Each of them has had a considerable influence, whether explicitly or implicitly, on subsequent generations who embarked on the more systematic work

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of reflection on technology in the major Portuguese and Brazilian universities. These authors are here represented by their own contributions. Belonging to a generation before these, António Sérgio (1883–1969), an intellectual born in Daman, a city in former Portuguese India, was exiled in Paris at the time of establishment of the Salazar dictatorship and never accepted the assumptions of neopositivism, having entered into an abundant dialogue with North American pragmatism. Essays on the philosophy of technology by three writers who belonged to the same generation as Vieira Pinto, Flusser and Martins are also published here. They are Portuguese philosopher Miguel Baptista Pereira (1929–2007), the agronomist and African political leader Amílcar Cabral (1924–1973) and the Angolan anthropologist, writer and film-maker Ruy Duarte de Carvalho (1941–2010). Pereira is a key point of reference for the University of Coimbra philosophical school. In essays on technology, adopting a phenomenological approach inspired by Heidegger, he discusses the problems of a lifeworld confronted by the calculating and instrumentalist nature of science. Cabral, born in Guiné-Bissau and one of the major thinkers on African independence, faced up to the challenges of the triangulation of colonialism, technology and development deriving from Portugal’s imperial dominion. This triangulation is also found in the work of Carvalho, a social scientist with a doctorate from the Paris École de Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS), who reflects critically on the destruction of the local practices of Angolan native peoples under modernization and development, which are seen as submission to the dominant techno-scientific paradigm. Towards the end of the twentieth century the issues of technology started to be a subject-matter which found relatively solid ground for development in the university. The authors included here are thinking and writing about technology in the present and make up an emerging community of thought and analysis of the dilemmas of techno-science, globalization and the search for alternative strategies. This is a generation which knows and acknowledges the work of earlier generations and is not exclusively receptive of those authors who have achieved the greatest international visibility. It follows and enters into dialogue with the major trends emerging from the post-Kuhnian momentum, the debates on late modernity, the importance attributed to the discourse and mechanisms of power, the multiplication of knowledge spaces and the conflicts over legitimate knowledge, the continuation of active forms of biopolitics and control of the body through the logics of gender, race and sexual identity, the challenges of techno-science and digitalization, and discussion of the anthropocene. At the Universidade de Lisboa [University of Lisbon], with Hermínio Martins as the key point of reference and active participant, a circle was established for reflection and research under the leadership of José Luís Garcia and of which I myself am a member, together with other researchers he supervised. The nucleus of ideas in this circle is an appeal to responsibility for the way techno-science is going, its relationship to the market, and the implications and uncertainties for the future of human life and nature, so as not to endanger present and future generations’ expectations. In the broad framework of the circle associated with the Universidade de Lisboa, Alexandra Santos, Teresa Martinho, Pedro Mendonça, Filipa Subtil and

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Tiago Carvalho may also be included. João Príncipe is also a member of this circle; he is attached to the Universidade de Évora [University of Évora], which is home to Praxis, the research centre which stands out for the work undertaken there on the philosophers of the phenomenological movement. Unfortunately it was not possible to include contributions from colleagues at that research centre in the present volume. In another institution of higher learning in the Portuguese capital, at the Universidade Nova de Lisboa [Nova-New University of Lisbon], a group of thinkers has flourished within a rhizomatic conception of rationality which looks at issues such as the transformation of human beings into “subjects” (both in the sense of subjection and of acquiring sovereignty over themselves) and the virtualization of human life. This is clear in the texts here published by José Bragança de Miranda and António Fernando Cascais. Also in Lisbon, but at the ISCTE-Instituto Universitário de Lisboa [ISCTE-Lisbon University Institute]  Maria Eduarda Gonçalves has focused her research on the study of the legal aspects of technology, which are so important in regulating new risks. In Brazil, a group of teachers and researchers in philosophy at the Universidade de São Paulo [University of São Paulo] set up the Scientiae Studia philosophical association in 2004, an important forum for publishing and debate on the philosophy, history and sociology of science and technology. It promotes seminars and book publications and has an open repository of articles published between 2003 and 2017 in the journal of the same name. Pablo Mariconda, who heads the Scientiae Studia, and Hugh Lacey, an Australian by birth with a long history of working with the Universidade de São Paulo, have been addressing the intersection of technoscientific practices and values. Also from Brazil and the state of São Paulo, but from the Universidade Estadual de Campinas [State University of Campinas],  Renato Dagnino has produced a significant body of work in the field of Social Studies of Science and Technology and has played an active civic role in science and technology policy. At the Universidade Federal  de Minas Gerais [Federal University of Minas Gerais],  Ivan Domingues has examined technology from an ontological, ethical and epistemological perspective, in particular in his work on biotechnology and its anthropological consequences, with an overriding concern to humanize technology. Alberto Cupani, born in Argentina, has lived in Brazil since the 1970s and has lectured at the Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina [Federal University of Santa Catarina] for over 30 years. Heavily influenced by Mario Bunge, this philosopher has undertaken important work in introducing and disseminating knowledge of the foundational writers and main currents in the philosophy of technology in Brazil today. In the Portuguese-speaking countries of Africa there is no truly organised school of thought on the philosophy of technology, nor is such an organisation in prospect. With no little daring, an attempt has been made here to read between the lines of the reflections of two key figures from the political, social and cultural sphere – Amílcar Cabral and Ruy Duarte de Carvalho – to identify those elements in their work which might at the very least constitute valuable contributions to thinking about technology in Africa. The link is not linear, nor direct, but in their writings we find critical arguments on colonization, decolonization and the destruction of indigenous

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knowledge and practices in the name of modernization, Westernization and technologization. I hope that the essays in this collection may provide a gateway for those who wish to get to know the philosophically reflexive thinking on technology of authors from the Portuguese-speaking community. This precise tonality in the community which shares the Portuguese language is only intelligible in the sub-title of this volume. The main title – Portuguese Philosophy of Technology – follows the pattern for the collection as a whole, for reasons of consistency. In this particular aspect it is similar to the volume on Spanish-language philosophy of technology. Despite the undoubted limitations of this volume, to open it is to embark on a voyage of discovery of the pathways taken by of these authors who live and write in Portuguese. In selecting the texts to be included, I was not guided by the authors’ possible explicit intentions, nor by the reception given to their writings when they first appeared. The texts stand on their own. Other texts could of course have been chosen. The contents of this book are the fruits of a personal choice and some circumstantial elements of the underlying idea. If it serves to encourage others who may follow, it will have doubly achieved the aim of making known Portuguese-speaking authors who have not hitherto been part of international circles. My choices were determined, under the influence of Ricoeur (1986), by the idea that every text contains truth downstream, that it is possible surreptitiously to interrogate the admitted assumptions in it in a different way, and that other open references to the world may emerge. A reading of any text offers the potential for introducing imaginative variations. And that is what I wish for readers of this work, that these texts may be an invitation for a reflexive hermeneutics generated by an emerging community of thought in technology coming from the Portuguese-speaking countries. Acknowledgements  I was encouraged to edit this volume by Pieter Vermaas, editor-in-chief of the collection entitled Philosophy of Engineering and Technology at Springer, whom I met almost 20 years ago at a conference of the Society for Philosophy and Technology (SPT). When he invited me to undertake this project, the aim was to offer English-speaking readers an opportunity to get to know the philosophy of technology in a number of countries: there are already volumes dedicated to authors from France, the Spanish-­language community, China and Italy. I am grateful therefore to see this work welcomed into such a valuable catalogue and I should express appreciation to Vermaas and to the editors of the series, Darryl Cressman and Neelke Doorn, for the patience shown in waiting for this work to be completed. In the lengthy process of meeting and deciding on the content of this book, which had to be reconciled with many academic responsibilities and more recently with the turbulence brought about by the Covid-19 pandemic, I must also extend my thanks to others. To the authors who contributed their chapters and were patient and responsive to my continual requests. To the publishers who ceded copyright to previously published texts. To my school, ISEG School of Economics and Management, and to the research centre that I belong to, Advance/CSG, and the Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia (through research grant UIDB/04521/2020) for financial support. To José Luís Garcia, who first introduced me to the philosophy of technology and who from the outset has accompanied and advised me in organizing this book. To my colleagues who participated in the Trends in the Philosophy of Technology in the Portuguese Language conference which took place at the University of Évora and the University of Lisboa in January 2018, jointly organized with José Luís Garcia and João

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Príncipe, and where some of the texts collected in this volume were presented and discussed. To Richard Wall who translated some chapters, reviewed almost all of them, and in whom I trust to render them legible in the language of Shakespeare. My acknowledgement and thanks to all the above clearly in no way involve them in any demerit, error or omission which may be found in this volume.

References Devezas, T., & Modelski, G. (2006). The Portuguese as systembuilders in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries: A case study on the role of technology in the evolution of the world system. Globalizations, 3(4), 507–523. Garcia, J. L., Kaul, C., Subtil, F., & Santos, A. (2017). The Portuguese empire: An introduction. In J.  L. Garcia, C.  Kaul, F.  Subtil, & A.  Santos (Eds.), Media and the Portuguese empire (pp. 1–27). Palgrave Macmillan. Law, J. (1987). On the social explanation of technical change: The case of the Portuguese maritime expansion. Technology and Culture, 28(2), 227–252. Law, J. (1993 [1989]). Technology and heterogeneous engineering: The case of Portuguese expansion. In W.  E. Bijker, T.  P. Hughes, & T.  Pinch (Eds.), The social construction of technological systems: New directions in the sociology and history of technology (pp. 111–134). The MIT Press. Ricouer, P. (1986). Du texte à la action. Seuil. Sánchez, A., & Leitão, H. (2017). La ciencia ibérica: ¿aparte o parte de la ciencia moderna? Revista de Occidente, 433, 5–18. Statista. (2021). The most spoken languages worldwide in 2021. https://www.statista.com/statistics/266808/the-­most-­spoken-­languages-­worldwide/. Accessed 29 April 2021. Helena Mateus Jerónimo  received her PhD from the University of Cambridge (UK). She is full time tenured assistant professor at the Instituto Superior de Economia e Gestão, Universidade de Lisboa [ISEG School of Economics and Management, University of Lisbon], Portugal, and researcher at Advance/CSG. Her research interests and publications are in science and technology, sustainability, risk and uncertainty, and in human resource management and organisational behaviour. Helena served on  the Executive Board of the Society for Philosophy and Technology (SPT) from 2013 to 2017. She is currently a member of the UNESCO World Commission on the Ethics of Science and Technology (COMEST). Her books includes Queimar a Incerteza: Poder e Ambiente no Conflito da Co-Incineração de Resíduos Industriais Perigosos ([Burying Uncertainty: Power and Environment in the Conflict of Co-Incineration of Hazardous Industrial Waste], Imprensa de Ciências Sociais, 2010), and co-edited Razão, Tempo e Tecnologia: Estudos em Homenagem a Hermínio Martins ([Reason, Time and Technology: Studies in Honour of Hermínio Martins], Imprensa de Ciências Sociais, 2006) and Jacques Ellul and the Technological Society in 21st Century (Springer, 2013).

Part I

Modern Technology and Aporias of Progress

Chapter 2

António Sérgio: Critical Rationalism and Technology João Príncipe

Abstract The Portuguese public intellectual and philosopher António Sérgio (1883–1969) proposed in his essays a critical rationalism with affinities with Dewey’s experientialism, insisting on a dialogical and personalistic neo-Kantian ethics. Inspired by Proudhon’s philosophy of work, and by the discussion in France, around 1910, of the practical/technical origin of human intelligence and the role of technique in scientific development (Bergson, Durkheim, Louis Weber, etc.) he highlighted the attitude of experimentalism of some members the Portuguese elite of the sixteenth century related to the Portuguese navigations, as well as Galileo’s interest in techniques, insisting on the practical factors favouring the Scientific Revolution. He made pertinent reflections on the relations between democracy and technical expertise, between capitalism, industry, war and the human condition (with a Marxist flavour). After the Great Depression, and echoing Veblen, he announced the possibility of an Age of Abundance, and showed how Capitalism sabotaged that real possibility. He insisted on the advantages of Cooperativism and Planning, and committed himself to the development of Cooperatives, paying a high price for his opposition to Salazar’s regime. In his last texts, during the 1950s, he favoured an holistic/ecological view of human affairs. He always kept the Kantian distinction between means and ends as essential to the comprehension and conduct of policies, avoiding any fatalist view of the role of Technique. Keywords  António Sérgio · Homo faber · Experientialism · Neo-Kantian ethics · Abundantism

J. Príncipe (*) Universidade de Évora & Instituto de História Contemporânea (IHC), Lisbon and Évora, Portugal e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 H. M. Jerónimo (ed.), Portuguese Philosophy of Technology, Philosophy of Engineering and Technology 43, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-14630-5_2

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J. Príncipe Os avanços da tecnologia tornam cada vez mais necessário a cultivação das forças morais [The advances of technology make the cultivation of moral forces increasingly necessary].1 (António Sérgio) 1

2.1 Introduction António Sérgio de Sousa was born in Damão, a Portuguese colony in India, in 1883, and died in Lisbon in 1969. He was the son and grandson of military personnel who occupied positions as colonial administrators, and his paternal grandfather was one of the tutors of the young D. Luís, the future king. The broad, liberal, and tolerant way of thinking was part of the family environment. Following the family tradition, António Sérgio embarked on a career as an officer in the Navy, but the proclamation of the First Republic gave him a pretext to abandon this career and devote himself to the public cause, becoming an intellectual or clerc in the sense of Julien Benda. António Sérgio was an active central figure in Portuguese cultural life for five decades (1908–1958). His main literary works were in the form of Essays, in the spirit of Montaigne, on subjects such as philosophy, pedagogy, literature and art, and Portuguese history and culture. He also wrote extensively for newspapers and magazines and cultural associations, such as Renascença Portuguesa and Seara Nova.2 His intellectual and civic life can be divided into two periods: the first coincides with the Portuguese First Republic, during which he concentrated his efforts on Education; the second corresponds to his opposition to the Estado Novo regime and his work on Cooperativism. During both periods he developed his social and historical understanding of Portugal and a rationalist philosophy and was active in civic life throughout. Portugal being a poor, essentially agricultural country, whose great contribution to world history lies in the period of the Discoveries which initiated a phase of global trade, it is natural that Sérgio’s essays do not contain a systematic analysis of

1  Epigraph to the first text of Ensaios I [Essays I] (1920), entitled “Science and Education”, probably written during First World War. When possible we quote from the modern edition of Sérgio’s complete works (publisher: Sá da Costa). 2  The Renascença Portuguesa [Portuguese Renaissance] was a Society created in 1911, in Oporto, with the objective of intervening civically and culturally, giving content to the republican revolution of 1910. It included artists and intellectuals, such as Teixeira de Pascoais, Leonardo Coimbra, António Carneiro, Raúl Proença, António Sérgio, among others. In 1921, a dissident group headed by Proença, of socialist sympathies and rationalist hue, founded Seara Nova, a more active intellectual movement publishing the magazine Seara Nova. The name Seara Nova [New Harvest], comes from a poem by the Proudhonian socialist, poet and philosopher Antero de Quental (1842–1891) who inspired the movement: “operários do futuro, semeadores da seara nova, que lançam uma ideia em cada cova” [workers of the future, seeders of the new harvest, who launch an idea in each pit] (Quental, 1875: 49). 1

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the problems arising from technological development in the founding countries of the Industrial Revolution. However, based on his cosmopolitanism and real interest in the modernisation of Portugal, he was able to apply philosophical considerations to cases where questions of technology were central in his early and seminal application of material and economic factors to the interpretation of historical events, together with his knowledge of many of the ideas systematised in Dewey’s philosophy.

2.2 A Philosophy that Advocates Experientialism During the First Republic (1910–1926), António Sérgio intervened in favour of a reform of education by publicising the ideas of the New School, of self-government, which he studied at the newly created Institut Jean-Jacques Rousseau in Geneva. Its director, Edouard Claparède, became a friend of his, and both recognised John Dewey to be the leading philosopher of Education.3 In his texts on pedagogy, Sérgio expressed his agreement with Dewey regarding the origin and character of thought, rejecting the opposition between empirical knowledge and rational knowledge, which originates from a mistaken notion of the passive nature of observation: But if the idea alone is not enough, being necessary to have the idea preceded by the fact, the simple fact observed is still insufficient, it being necessary to build the fact: for it is indispensable in the school to have action – action subject to a specific objective. Action was the source from which science sprang forth for humanity; (…) Thought comes from the need to establish a relationship between what we do and the future events that we will have to go through. Science is thus a means of adjusting and reorganizing activity. (Sérgio, 1918a, cit. in Sérgio, 2008: 232, italics in the original)

Dewey, like Sérgio, replaced a philosophy based on the dualism of knowledge and doing, of theory and practice, with a new notion of experience, in which there is continuity between knowing and action, the purpose of which is to change the environment, in a process of constant interaction: The function of theory is to choose and order, from past practice and from the present, that which, being general, may be used in future practice. I therefore seek, in both secondary and primary education, theoretical and general instruction. I ask that theory start from action, and return to action; from imitative practice to scientific practice. There is no reason to distinguish between theoretical thinking and practical thinking: there is only one way of thinking, which is essentially practical in origin. Thought and ideas have their source in desire; only in practice does theory gain meaning for us and only in experience and through experience is theory understood. (Sérgio, 1918a, cit. in Sérgio, 2008: 220)

 Public education was one of the main concerns of the First Republic, not least because it was necessary to combat Catholic dominance of teaching. Nonetheless, the ideas of Education Nouvelle (similar to Dewey’s Progressive Education) never had real practical support from the republican regime, although Sérgio was Minister of Public Education during 1923. 3

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Sérgio developed a synthetic interpretation of Portuguese history in which material and economic factors are emphasised. This approach, which is characterised by a pragmatist bias that goes back to Proudhon, is expressed by the idea that “humans are sapiens because they are faber, and to become alive and true their science must naturally spring from the needs of fabrication” (Sérgio, 1916: 4). This bias is also manifested in a 1926 text which ties together the practical motivation of Portuguese science at the time of the Discoveries and Galileo’s new science: Two peoples (the Italian and the Portuguese) found themselves at the forefront of the revolution [a profound transformation of mentality]. Industrial activity and maritime commerce drove the Italians to revolution, and it was their navigation and discoveries (the offspring of commercial needs) that initiated a new mental attitude in the Portuguese. The mechanical science of nature therefore originated from the flourishing industry of Italian cities, which sought to outdo each other in terms of manufacturing, in the invention of new processes and machines. The use of the forces of nature gave birth to a systematic knowledge of their ways of acting, forcing reflective minds to investigate their laws. [As is demonstrated in the passage of the Discorsi of Galileo, in which Sagredo accompanies the craftsmen-engineers of the arsenals of Venice] (...) This new spirit was theorised by Bacon of Verulano, but it was Galileo and Leonardo da Vinci who definitively instituted it (...) What mainly concerns mankind today in Leonardo’s manuscripts is the essential importance of the new experimentalist method and the correlative critical spirit on the one hand, and on the other hand, that without the applying Mathematics to Physics, there is no Physics that can be taken seriously. Accordingly, Physics is known as quantitative Physics (the opposite of Aristotle’s), or it is nothing. (Sérgio, Ensaios II [Essays II] 1926: 30−32)4

Among the many readings that motivated Sérgio to postulate that “before being a theoretical function, intelligence is a practical function” (Sérgio, 1916: 4, handwritten annotation), the book Le Rhythme du Progrès (1913) by Louis Weber (a historian of philosophy who wrote for the Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale) was one of his main sources of inspiration. Louis Weber, reflecting on an important French debate that opposed Bergson to Durkheim (Sigaut, 2000: 11–14), posits a fundamental identity of industrial and scientific work, insisting that the scientific laboratory is an important part of scientific work, in which special techniques are developed. Weber also suggested that the stagnation of ancient Greek science was due to insufficient experimentation, as a result of incipient industrialization (Weber, 1913: 123–136, 229ff., cit. in Sérgio, 1916: 13–14).5

 This thesis is related to that of the philologist and historian Leonardo Olshki (1885–1962) in the book Galileo und Seine Zeit (1927): Galileo transcended the infertile erudition of his scientific predecessors, by making contact with the new tradition of applying mathematics to technological issues, such as linear perspective, mining, fortification, ballistics, and tradition, which is invoked in the first day of the Discorsi (Cohen, 1994: §5.2). 5  This discussion, which is systematised in Floris Cohen’s books on the emergence of modern science, is important for the old Portuguese debate regarding the causes of Portuguese decadence after the period of navigation and Discoveries, which gave rise to several controversies during the First Republic. These have lasted until today. 4

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2.3 Democracy and Technical Expertise Like Dewey, for example in his famous book Democracy and Education of 1916, Sérgio also stresses the connection between his pedagogical beliefs and participatory democracy, the critique of working class conditions, and a certain optimism, all of which are aspects expressed when Sérgio advocated a labour school, conceived in the manner of Proudhon and Georg Kerschensteiner, where ‘productive labour’, whose paradigm is artisan activity, is a superior form of human expression, representing a privileged means of constituting character, incorporating elements of self-­ realisation and citizenship: Classical (‘liberal’) teaching and the simple abc school are dominated by the spectrum of the old society (...) From there it is seen that those who judge me to be ‘utilitarian’ when I ask for a labour school show that they have buried in their spirit an old notion of labour and the worker: they unconsciously see in the worker the slave labourer, the machine worker, who is completely absorbed in unconscious work as a labourer, and who is a plaything of the politician as a citizen (…). That old mentality is unable to comprehend the essentially modern union of the ‘liberal’ and the useful and practical man, of the human man and the mechanical producer, of production and science (and consciousness). Not being able to feel the possibility of this union, and its pedagogical corollary that is the labour school, is to understand absolutely nothing of the deepest problems of contemporary pedagogy, education in Democracy. (Sérgio, 1918a, note C, cit. in Sérgio, 2008: 231)

One of the aspects of modern societies is the specialised nature and omnipresence of technicians, which is a consequence of the need for competence in solving specific and complex problems. The organisation of the State involves the recruitment of specialists. This carries the risk that an anti-democratic technocracy will be established in the name of competence. In texts written at the end of the 1910s, when Sérgio was invited by the Government to join a commission on general reform of education in Portugal (Project Camoesas), he discusses the role of specialists and the ways of implementing technical policies for reform and development in Portugal. In his text “On public opinion and competence in democracy” (1918b), Sérgio starts optimistically, stating his belief that the idea of human dignity (promoted by the free association of workers), and the material elements of our modern civilisation and technical and scientific knowledge, go hand-in-hand with the democratic ideal. Naturally, Sérgio was well aware of contemporary anti-democratic movements. He thus argued against one of their main criticisms – that in a democracy the overwhelming will of the majority promotes mediocrity. This is not true if the most competent people are chosen,  if there exists an elite strongly influencing public opinion in order to keep power in check. Sérgio defines democracy as “the regime of public affairs audited by public opinion, which tends to create equal conditions of dignity for all people” (Sérgio, 1918b, cit. in Sérgio, Ensaios I [Essays I], 1920b: 232). The role of technicians must be fundamental, although it is subordinate. This is a judgment based on a distinction between means and ends, which is essential for the foundation of his Kantian ethics. In a democratic regime, Government ministers are representatives of public opinion who oversee an administration carried out by technicians and specialists. The cabinet must be formed from among the most

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competent from the point of view of generality, and should be assisted by experts who know how to implement decisions: The pseudo-democrats constantly confuse technical function with politics, and apply to one the principles of the other, demanding that politicians have technical competence, whilst considering the principle of elections to be a purely technical subject. It thus follows (…) that there is a mantra of incompetence which has always been associated with democratic regimes (both in their functioning, which would be fair, but also in the very principle and idea of Democracy). If we want to avoid this negative stage, if we want to save democracy, we must (…) clearly separate the technical official from the political official, subject to different criteria: the former is chosen by the technical criterion, with maximum power and maximum duration, and with authority which is recognised in the means and processes used to carry out their role; the latter is chosen by election, and is competent not in means, but in skills which are not technical, but rather political, that is to say, functioning as a part of the general coordination of the service for which they were elected. (Sérgio, 1920c: n.p.)

Members of this elite body of non-specialists leading public opinion tend to come from all social classes: “in addition to the governments, before and above them public opinion is necessary; those who constitute it are necessary; and these must be the intellectuals and members of the elite men of each class, and it is imperative that these people know how to carry out their duty: Democracy presupposes elites solidly organised: groups of apostles who are inspired to think and act by a good idea – be it technical, political, economic, or moral” (Sérgio, 1918b, cit. in Sérgio, 1920b: 233). Sérgio concludes by stating: “The existence of public opinion (...) depends on a system of education and on the creation of a true elite. This is the focal point on which all the problems of Democracy converge” (Sérgio, 1918b, cit. in Sérgio, 1920b: 238).6 As a good disciple of Dewey, Sérgio points out that any reforms must be based on the principle of experimentalism, whose implementation must be “gradual, slow, and experimental (...) for all reforms of any kind (...) which must first be tested in a restricted area of the territory, before being applied to the whole country” (Sérgio, 1920d: n.p.).

2.4 A Dialogical and Personalistic Neo-Kantian Ethics Sérgio agrees with Kant that the human being is an absolute value, as things always have a relative value, and also with the thesis that morality has a priori principles that guarantee its objectivity, that is to say, its necessity and universality, typified by the idea of a person who is capable of rising to Reason and of knowing what is necessary in the world of experience (causality), and is capable of free, self-determined acts in the ethical field. While a merely technical use, that of a merely practical/instrumental approach, is intended to manipulate events to advantage, Reason manifests itself in the practical and moral sense by establishing a kingdom

 See also Príncipe and Martins (2012: 73−76).

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of its own. In the realm of moral action, Reason is not limited to using a given domain (for example, nature) for its own purposes, but rather seeks to constitute a true kingdom of ends, governed by an “ought” inherent in the person (as a law of conscience, in the words of Antero de Quental and Sérgio). Reason works with Ideas (just as a priori forms of sensibility convert sensory impressions into intuitions, as categories organize intuitions into judgments, and as Ideas co-ordinate the infinite mass of judgments) and with maxims, being an essentially creative, teleological activity, with an eminently regulatory function, seeking harmony and unity, which is translated into the ethical plane by the primacy of perspective and attitude (Rotenstreich, 1979: 4, 17). Sérgio deals with the foundation of morality, which is understood to be ideal sociability, in his essay entitled “Education and Philosophy”. This text was probably conceived in Geneva, around 1916. Its starting point is a dialogic principle, that of “the consciousness of the other-self, the ‘partner’, the ‘like’, the partner” (Sérgio, Ensaios I [Essays I], § 7, 1920b: 149). An analogy is to be found here with the “Mitmensch”, the “You to whom I cannot remain indifferent” (as in the Parable of the Good Samaritan), as conceptualised by the neo-Kantian Hermann Cohen in his last work of 1919: Die Religion der Vernunft aus den Quellen des Judentums (and with Martin Buber’s Ich und Du of 1923).7 When analysing the process of building the personality of children, Sérgio points to the emergence of the moral self: The personality of the child grows by the imitation of other selves, by constant modifications of their sense of self (...) There is an unbroken chain between the ideas of self and of the other, which determines in the individual two complementary attitudes: the attitude of habit, and that of growth, affirming in the first the self that is already formed, and affirming in the second imitation, accommodation, and the suggestions that modify the habitual self. In addition to these two attitudes, a third one is soon developed, corresponding to the idea of a legislating self, which imposes itself [the procedures to be imitated are usually those of the parents and the teacher in the early days] (...) This is an attitude of adaptation – intentional, voluntary, conscious (...) However, just as the feeling of self was projected onto others (and hence the idea of the other self, of other people), in the case of this legislating self, the same phenomenon will repeat itself – its laws must be valid not only for me, but also for others, and it is ever afterwards the moral self. The ideal is determined by this process, not as a purely abstract rule, but rather with the elements and features of certain vivid personalities. (Sérgio, Ensaios III [Essays III], 1918c: 118)

For Sérgio, as for Kant, moral action is carried out under the aegis of Reason  – “Reason indicates supreme ends, once and for all: experience gained little by little perfects the means” – aiming to establish a spiritual order, according to an objective attitude that gives equal value or dignity to each individual by “establishing relations of reciprocity between himself and other people”, requiring universality for the rules, that is to say: “the possibility of their being adopted by all and applied to all men, without contradiction as a whole and requiring the generality of the scopes on which all the precepts are based” (Sérgio, Ensaios I [Essays I], § 6, 1920b: 145–146).  On Sérgio and ethics and religion, see “Nota sobre o carácter místico do racionalismo sergiano” in Príncipe and Martins (2012). 7

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2.5 Mankind and the Machine in the Time of Industry and the First World War The need to massively inject technology to raise the economic level of Portugal’s population was accompanied by the awareness that technology had proved to be disastrous when at the service of industrial capitalism and war. Indeed, for early twentieth century European educators who were aligned to the New School’s spirit and were inspired by Dewey, it was clear that the ideal of free-labour communities was in all respects different from that of a “constitutional state which is governed exclusively by lust for profit, money, and slave machines which money buys” (Kerschensteiner, 1911: 168).8 Faced with the carnage of the First World War, in which Portugal was to fight on the side of the Allies, Sérgio articulated a humanist pacifism, echoing the position of Romain Rolland and others who, from both sides of the trenches, had rebelled against war (as did Hermann Hesse and Werner Herzog). In 1915, while in Geneva, he wrote that “economic factors led to the slaughter”, stressing the “industrial aspect of the conflict” (Sérgio, 1915: 46–47). If the purpose of large enterprises such as the Krupp family was profit, then the economic advantages of the conflict, on the scale of nations and peoples, were false, following the opinion of the French economic historian Georges d’Avenel (1915). In 1916 he criticised the way in which education, which was used as “an instrument of public domination” by Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany, spread the warmongering and worship of German statism (Sérgio, 1920b: 177–179). Sérgio points out that there were intellectuals on both sides who defended peace against a status quo where Capital dominated, in the form of a new and advanced stage of industrialisation, centred on the old nationalism of worship of the state: “Let us renew the exploits of the old state (after all, of old Rome), for the greater profit of the ancient Greek priests who were the keepers of the keys of the storehouse of sorts. Based on the idea of hegemony over foreigners, the shepherds distract the herd from the economic reality of the shackle” (Sérgio, Ensaios I [Essays I], 1920b: 184–185).9 António Sérgio was certainly well aware of criticisms of industrial capitalism, in particular those of Karl Marx. In his analysis of human alienation (alienation from the product of labour, the labour process, his own humanity, and that of the other) in his manuscripts of 1844 and in Das Kapital, Marx insisted that the process of labour degrades the human worker, leading to an alienation of consciousness; whilst at the same time goods increasingly dominate every aspect of our lives, in such a way that human beings become “semi-sensitive appendages of the capitalist machinery”. Considered to be machines that only require complete and minimal maintenance, these human machines are provided only enough to meet their basic needs of eating,  See Príncipe and Martins (2012: 69−73).  The cult of statism was grafted onto medieval Christian cosmopolitanism during the Renaissance, by means of monarchical centralisation, which revived the idea of the sovereigns of ancient Rome – see the essay “Ainda os espectros” (Sérgio, Ensaios I [Essays I], 1920a, b, c, d: 194–196). 8 9

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drinking, and procreation. In this way, the humanisation of commodities goes hand in hand with the commodification of human beings, in such a way that “it is no longer the worker who employs the means of production, but the means of production which employs the worker” (Marx 1976 [1867], cit. in Boyer, 2008: 155–156). Sérgio’s criticism of the condition of the working class in industrial and bourgeois society emerges in other texts written in the time of the First Republic, when Sérgio in fact had almost no direct contact with the working class and its movements (a situation which was to be reversed under the Estado Novo). Below is another passage, in which he makes a peremptory judgment of the Western world after the First World War: The idea which school should insist on (lest the ‘bourgeois’ forget it) is that production exists for man, not man for production, and that man finally defines himself in spiritual terms, which is why the emerging problem is to interest men in their work, and to seek happiness and dignity – the spiritual elevation of the mechanical worker. (...) Let us all show the enormous error into which our Western World has fallen: that of forgetting the idea of true Culture, in its thoughtless enthusiasm for the mechanical means of Civilisation. (...) What matters most, in a future Society, is to give everyone the possibility of an intimate life of creation, however humble and restricted it may be. In the work of the machine that dominates today, the mental initiative of the worker is without work, and perverts itself. (Sérgio, Ensaios II [Essays II], 1923: 174, 184, 188)

2.6 Cooperativism and the Age of Abundance On return from his Parisian exile, between 1926 and 1933, Sérgio launched the idea that modern technology would enable the onset of a civilisation of abundance and free time, if the capitalist regime were to be abolished and replaced by Cooperativism. The abundantist theses, which were generally forgotten after the Second World War, were developed in France in the 1930s by names such as Jacques Duboin (1879–1978), the great French promoter of “abondantisme” (“abundantism”) and “économie distributive” (“distributive economy”), and the normalien Jean Nocher (1908–1967), a member of the Groupe Dynamo, which published the book Manifeste de l’Abondance (Nocher, 1938). As Sérgio pointed out, these ideas were drawn directly from the North American technocrats: People who ask whether it is in the books of Jacques Duboin that I inspire myself to affirm the technical possibility of abundance, I have answered that both Jacques Duboin and I are directly inspired by the research and demonstrations of the American technocrats (of which we accept, not plans for future economy, but precisely this demonstration of the current possibilities of technique). (Sérgio, 1938: 9)

In fact, it was during his Parisian exile that the ideas of the North American technocrats begin to be disseminated in France, following their success in the media in the USA (see Dard, 1999: 265–266; Adair, 1970). Social criticism and social movements opposing the status quo (see Chandler, 1970: 5, 20) flourished during the decade of the Great Depression (1929–1939), which profoundly affected American and later on European society, with a large

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increase in unemployment and a marked decline in incomes. One of these American social movements was the self-appointed Technocracy, which adopted an ideology that can be described as scientism: it stated that social reorganisation is a matter of science, in the sense that relevant social processes and operations are measurable (in the statistical sense) and predictable. For technocrats, technology was the revolutionary agent of the time, based on the belief that the present technological stage could guarantee purchasing power for all, if the current economic and social situations were to be corrected. A salient feature of Technocracy is its prophetic aspect, a belief in the imminent destruction of the “price-system” (Veblen’s designation was used for the present stage of capitalism): “In the current conditions of the industrial system, unemployment will continue to rise until reaching a maximum, which will lead to the collapse of the system”, wrote Howard Scott (1890–1970), one of the leaders of the future American technocratic movement, in 1932.10 The remote origins of this movement include Claude-Henri de Rouvroy, Count of Saint-Simon, also known for his socialist ideas, who drew directly from Taylorism, the school of Scientific Management, and Thorstein Veblen (1857–1929). In his book The Engineers and the Price System (1921), Veblen advocates the primacy of technicians, based on the incompatibility of interests between those who seek improvements in production (the engineers) and those who parasitize it by controlling and sabotaging it (the capitalists).11 Sérgio also concentrated his publicist efforts on the argument that Humanity is on the threshold of achieving the era of Abundance, and that Cooperativism is the economic system which enables mankind to take advantage of this real possibility offered by Technique: However, mechanical progress in itself is by no means evil: quite the reverse. Unemployment, in itself, is not bad at all: quite the contrary. Both are only maleficent within the capitalist regime and when subject to the capitalist regime. One and the other only hurt because we want the machine to produce profits and the work of the employees to produce profits. Finally, after dissipating the obsession of profit, what we call ‘unemployment’ would be called ‘time to cultivate the spirit.’ Profit is maleficent, and profit alone. If we maximise the applications of the machine and the current sources of mechanical energy; if we distribute work for everyone (a little for each one of us), and if we distribute the products to everyone – in other words, if we provide them at the cost of production, without the slightest concern for profit, just as in the case of Cooperatives: then the poor will benefit from the abundance of goods, with none of the rich being expelled. We can bring wealth to all, without having to plunder or mistreat anyone, by a work of love and only love, perfectly generous and fraternal. For the point is this: the systematic use of mechanical energy, given the resources of science today, has made abundance possible for all; and the possibility of abundance for all

 Quote from The New York Times, August 6, 1932 (cit. in Adair, 1970: 26). It should be pointed out that if the American technocrats erred on the date of the collapse, as Adair shows, the outbreak of Second World War is a cause of perplexity, as it occurred after the Great Depression. 11  Veblen describes himself as an educator (his intellectual relations with John Dewey might have favoured Sérgio’s knowledge of some of Veblen’s ideas). The Technical Alliance, which was directly inspired by Veblen, was the direct predecessor of the technocratic movement (see Adair, 1970: 16, 21). 10

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makes us approach a new era, and demands a whole new economy, in which the idea of profit becomes absurd. Political and social-economic plans that ignore this new fact will be transient and superficial, where the spirit is not worth taking. (Sérgio, 1939: XII−XIII, italics in the original)

In Abundantism, Sérgio saw an idea that was capable of developing dynamics and social movements, adhering in this case to a cornucopian vision of the role of Technique. In addition to disseminating some of the concrete ideas which provided real glimpses of a civilisation of abundance (for example in a series of articles published in 1939 in the newspaper O Diabo,12 in which he presents O.W. Willcox’s principles of agrobiology [1930]), the fundamental idea was repeated in successive texts, as well as in his plan for the History of Portugal (circa 1940, of which only the first volume was published and was immediately seized by the political police). He devotes its final volume to “On the threshold of the age of abundance” (Sérgio, 1974b: 245). Sérgio envisaged a real possibility for creating a better civilisation through proper use of the means facilitated by Technique, which resulted from a long historical process of technical-scientific development.13

2.7 A Humanistic and Unitary View of Development In the 1950s, the already septuagenarian António Sérgio actively participated as a member of the opposition to the dictatorial regime, in particular by launching the presidential campaign of General Humberto Delgado and intervening civically through his journalism and promotion of the cooperative movement. A series of short texts date from this period. They were initially published in newspapers such as República and Diário de Lisboa, and were later published in collections entitled Sociological Anthology and Letters of the Third Man. In these texts, Sérgio sets out a humanist and ecological-holistic vision. The context of the following excerpts is the construction of dams in the Vale do Cávado river (a tributary of the river Douro), which led to the destruction of villages such as Vilar da Veiga (in the hills of Gerês). The government never listened to popular protests: it was Antonio Sergio who gave them a voice:

 O Diabo [The Devil] was a weekly newspaper published in Portugal between 1934 and 1940, when it was closed down by the Estado Novo censors. Many of the intellectuals opposed to the regime wrote for it. 13  Only Barros and Costa (1983: 19–29) mention this subject, to suggest that Sérgio was too optimistic about the possibility of dominating nature, an impossibility that modern ecology has demonstrated. These authors refer to the agrobiology articles published in the O Diabo by Sérgio in 1939, ignoring the bibliography that Sérgio read, for example the book Nations can Live at Home by O. W. Willcox (1935); Sérgio’s intervention must also be understood in the context of his pacifist conceptions (world peace was in fact threatened, and Chapter VIII of the book by Willcox is called “The price of peace”). 12

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J. Príncipe In the humanistic concept, ‘material improvement’  – to indeed be a good  – ought to be integrated into Unitary thought. What I want to say is this: on the one hand, it is to be thought of as being included in a scientific conception, in a view of things in their organic whole, encompassing the whole of the reciprocal relations of the various aspects of physical nature in the portion of the Earth where the work is constructed or, in other words: Nature will be seen as One. (…) Whenever you start building dams, what a humanist engineer is aiming to achieve cannot only be the production of energy: for it is to modify the river, the earth, the spirits, for the greater happiness of all human beings – of all living stones – that inhabit the region where the reservoir rises, and this is carried out with the voluntary collaboration of the people, using the initiative of all the inhabitants of the valley. The population, the land, the vegetation, the water, must be considered in their totality and unity, so that they can develop in a harmonious way. (…) The agronomist, the educator, the sociologist, the artist, the isolated inhabitants, the unions, the cooperatives, will therefore collaborate with the hydraulic engineer on the same footing of importance as the latter, all of them inspired by noble philanthropic intention, of good humanistic mentality. (…) Viewed in isolation, and therefore considered in itself, and not as a factor in a system of resources, I believe that electricity may prove to be disastrous within the context of an imminent societal event: because the promotion of the industrial activity of a people, thanks to the ample supply of electric energy, not to mention the unity of economic living and the most suitable orientation for a certain human group, may lead to the destruction of their physical resources, and aggravate social inequalities and injustices. (Sérgio, Carta [Letter] no XXII, 1974a: 221−222)14

The appeal to the unitary vision and the virtues of character is summed up in the following excerpt, which warns of the socio-political consequences when a humanist vision is missing: In summary: in this case, as in others, avoid sacrificing honesty to the rush, the useful to the ostentatious. In all problems, first seek a broad overview, according to the idea of the interconnection of things – geographical unity, ecological unity, human unity, in order to consider a solution which balances out the different demands of the various points of view. And always act in the clear light, always listening to those who know, calling upon the people to collaborate with the technicians, to take initiatives, to govern themselves; creating possibilities for civic coexistence, without oppressing the thought of whoever it may be, the idea of dividing the social aggregate into inert spectators and born caudillos. (Sérgio, Carta [Letter] no XXX, 1974a: 256)

2.8 Conclusion The philosophical reflections of António Sérgio attribute great importance to action and practice, similar to those of John Dewey, and they gravitate around ethical neo-­ Kantian concerns. “Technique” is understood by António Sérgio to be divided into two correlative meanings: in one, applied reason transforms nature in a broader sense, based on the relationship between production and social relations, thus interacting in depth with the economy and with politics; the other is “technology” in our

 Sérgio mentions as a good example the Tennessee Valley Authority, whose most prestigious director was David Lilienthal (1899–1981). 14

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modern world, with its omnipresent material aspect, which is directly connected with the natural sciences. The distinction between means and ends is the cornerstone of his conception of Technique, underlining its connection with ethics  – whereby the sphere of Technique must be confined to the field of means which serve specifically human ends. The search for a general point of view, for unification, or for an ecological or holistic vision, must always prevail over the partial point of view of the specialists.

References  António Sérgio’s Texts Sérgio, A. (1915). A opinião pública americana perante a Guerra. A Águia, 2ª série, vol. 7, 46−48. Sérgio, A. (1916). Educação geral e actividade particular. Imprensa Comercial. Sérgio, A. (1918a). O ensino como factor do ressurgimento nacional. Renascença Portuguesa, Porto (republished in Sérgio, 2008, 209−241). Sérgio, A. (1918b). Da opinião pública e da competência em democracia. Pela Grei 1, 46−53 (republished in Sérgio, 1971−1974, Ensaios I, 225−238). Sérgio, A. (1918c). A vida moral é um processo psicológico.... In Pela Grei 1918. Notas de Literatura portuguesa, in Sérgio, 1971−1974, Ensaios III, 118−129. Sérgio, A. (1920a). Educação e Filosofia. In Sérgio, 1971−1974, Ensaios I, 131−167. Sérgio, A. (1920b). Ensaios I. Editores Annuario do Brasil, Rio de Janeiro, Renascença Portuguesa, Porto (republished in Sérgio, 1971−1974). Sérgio, A. (1920c). Sobre a reforma da educação Democracia e autoridade técnica, autonomia e fiscalização. Probably from A Pátria, Rio de Janeiro, newspaper founded by João do Rio, in António Sérgio’ estate. Sérgio, A. (1920d). Sobre a reforma do ensino. A Pátria, in António Sérgio’ estate. Sérgio, A. (1923). Divagações pedagógicas a propósito de um livro de H.  G. Wells. In Sérgio, 1971−1974, Ensaios II, 165−188. Sérgio, A. (1926). O Reino Cadaveroso (republished in Sérgio, 1971−1974, Ensaios II, 25−61). Sérgio, A. (1938). Tecnocracia. Seara Nova 565, 9−13. Sérgio, A. (1939). O programa cooperatista por Carlos Gide, vol. 2. Translation and preface by António Sérgio. Seara Nova. Sérgio, A. (1971−1974). Ensaios, 8 vols. Livraria Sá da Costa Editora. Sérgio, A. (1974a). Democracia, diálogos de doutrina democrática, Alocução aos socialistas, Cartas do terceiro Homem. Livraria Sá da Costa Editora. Sérgio, A. (1974b). Introdução geográfico-sociológica à história de Portugal. Livraria Sá da Costa Editora. Sérgio, A. (2008). Ensaios sobre educação. Preface by M. F. Patrício, colecção Pensamento Português. Imprensa Nacional-Casa da Moeda.

Other References Adair, D. (1970). The Technocrats 1919–1967: A case study of conflict and change in a social movement (Master thesis). Simon Fraser University. Barros, H., & Costa, F. F. (1983). António Sérgio: Uma nobre utopia. O Jornal. Boyer, E. M. (2008). Beyond Marx -ism and Dewey -ism: A ‘red pragmatism’ for the twenty-first century (Ph.D. dissertation). University of Minnesota.

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Chandler, L. V. (1970). America’s greatest depression, 1929–1941. Harper and Row. Cohen, H.  F. (1994). The scientific revolution: A historiographical inquiry. University of Chicago Press. Dard, O. (1999). Jean Coutrot: De l’ingénieur au prophète. Presses Universitaires Franc-Comtoises. d’Avenel, V. G. (1915). À qui profitera la guerre. Revue des Deux Mondes, 25, 241–264. Kerschensteiner, G. (1911). The fundamental principles of continuation schools. The School Review, 19(3), 162–177. Nocher, J. (1938). Manifeste de l’abondance: Charte du socialisme distributive. Nantal. Príncipe, J., & Martins, H. (2012). Quatro novos estudos sobre António Sérgio, ed. J.  Príncipe (with a postface by H. Martins). Caleidoscópio. Quental, A. de. (1875). Odes Modernas (2nd ed.). Livraria Chardron. Rotenstreich, N. (1979). Practice and realization, studies in Kant’s moral philosophy. Martinus Nijhoff. Sigaut, F. (2000). Homo Faber Documents d’un débat oublié, 1907–1941. http://www.francois-­ sigaut.com/phocadownload/Inedits/Ouvrages-­inedits/homo%20faber-­documents-­1907-­1941. pdf. Accessed 1 Nov 2020. Weber, L. (1913). Le rhythme du progrès. Felix Alcan. Willcox, O. W. (1930). Principles of agrobiology, or, the laws of plant growth in relation to crop production. Palmer Pub. Corp. Willcox, O. W. (1935). Nations can live at home. W. W. Norton and Cie. João Príncipe  is an assistant professor in the Physics department of the Universidade de Évora [University of Évora], Portugal. He is a researcher at the Instituto de História Contemporânea [Institute of Contemporary History]. He has a PhD in Epistemology, History of Sciences and Techniques from the University of Paris VII, with a thesis directed by Olivier Darrigol. He has published texts on Abel Salazar, António Sérgio, Ernst Cassirer, Henri Poincaré, Pierre Duhem, etc., in a perspective that values the history of ideas and the interaction between scientific thought and philosophy.

Chapter 3

The God of Artefacts: Vico’s Principle and Technology Hermínio Martins

Abstract  (added by the Editor)  In this chapter the author argues that modern technology rests on the axiom formulated by Giambattista Vico, the famous verum ipsum factum, verum factum convertuntur – we only understand that which we do or realize, or only fully understand all that we do or realize, to the precise extent that we actually do it or realize it. This is a reason-based concept, in the tradition of which we find thinkers such as Vico, Marx, Dewey and Bachelard, asserting the epistemic value of the maker’s knowledge. In this text, Hermínio Martins searches for the epistemological foundations of technical reason, arguing that in the age of cybernetic technologies and bio-engineering, the human being has become the “god of artefacts”. Keywords (added by the Editor)  Verum ipsum factum · Second god · Artificial nature · Scientific-industrial societies · Technogenic knowledge · Maker’s knowledge · Ultra-technology

Editor’s note: An extended version of this essay was published in Portuguese in the author’s book entitled Experimentum Humanum: Civilização Tecnológica e Condição Humana [Experimentum Humanum: Technological Civilization and the Human Condition] (Relógio D’Água, Lisboa, 2011, chap. 3, 70–143). There is a longer version of this book published in Brazil in 2012, by Fino Traço. The choice of this essay by Martins, who wrote very extensively on technology, is due to the fact that I regard it as one of his most significant reflections on the foundations of modern technological rationality. Martins’ writings are often long, with convoluted sentences, endless footnotes and extensive annexes. In its printed version, this text is 74 pages long (including footnotes, annex and references).The version offered here includes the most substantial part of the text relating to the topic announced in the title. The omission of the introduction and some sentences, highlighted with square brackets, does not affect the main argument. For further research into Martins’ thought, the English-speaking reader is directed to the festschrift Time, Science and the Critique of Technological Reason: Essays in Honour of Hermínio Martins, ed. J.  E.  Castro, B.  Fowler, and L.  Gomes (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), in particular the chapter “Hermínio Martins’ philosophical sociology of technology: A short introduction” by J. L. Garcia. I am grateful to Hermínio’s wife, Margaret Martins, for the grant of copyright for publication of the essay in English.

H. Martins (Deceased) (*)

© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 H. M. Jerónimo (ed.), Portuguese Philosophy of Technology, Philosophy of Engineering and Technology 43, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-14630-5_3

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H. Martins I can only understand what I can build. (Richard Feynman)

3.1 Vico’s Principle Among the philosophical or theological-philosophical principles which have implicitly or explicitly legitimated and to some extent even defined the modern technological adventure is Vico’s principle or axiom, the famous verum ipsum factum, verum factum convertuntur (the inter-convertibility of the true, on the one hand, and the accomplished or produced, on the other, given that the Latin term facere has the two meanings), or simply verum factum: we only understand fully what we do or accomplish (or in its weaker version: we understand or may, in principle, understand fully all that we do or accomplish), precisely because we do it or accomplish it.1 Reciprocally, we cannot understand, we cannot have valid knowledge of that which we cannot produce, remake or create: this version has been interpreted as a variant of modern scepticism, a current of thought which was so significant in the Renaissance and in the seventeenth century (even if the scope of the Pyrrhonian crisis of the time was exaggerated and despite the fact that in any event that crisis affected empirical knowledge and reason more than faith). But while it was relevant in the case of the epistemological critique of the pretensions of natural science, whose capacities for technical invention were still very limited, in the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries it was no longer applicable, to the extent that we were remaking the natural world, making it artificial, that we became increasingly the “god of artefacts”, given that the artifactual, the anthropogenic, started to take up an ever-increasing portion of the human world. For Vico, God, as the Author of all things, and to whom all things belong, was necessarily the only being who knew or could know the infinite totality of the world, as its sole creator, the non-­ created creator (given the gratuitous nature of Creation, even before creation ex nihilo, verum and factum came together in divinity), of the world and of time. Men, as secondary creators of the civilian world within historical time, might in principle know the world they had created, being its immediate creators, given that in the final instance it is God who is the author of all things. All the great philosophical principles are war machines, always involving attack and defence, as was demonstrated by the British philosopher Bryce Gallie in his agonistic approach to the history of philosophy, in which he emphasized the form of

 There are very few occurrences of the expression verum factum in Vico (1968 [1744]), just as the expression “the invisible hand” occurs very few times in Adam Smith, even though it is by far the best known expression in that writer’s corpus. In both cases, however, these expressions acquired considerable resonance, indeed immense resonance in the case of “the invisible hand”, but it has been cited far more often in recent times than in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. As with the Cartesian cogito, so with verum factum a great deal has been written on its antecedents and (mostly theological) pre-figurations, as is to be expected. For the history of the verum factum philosopheme, see Mondolfo (1969). […]. 1

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those concepts which he called “essentially contested”, like art, power, justice, democracy (Gallie, 1964), and the gnoseological principle of verum factum is no exception.2 In Vico’s version, that principle was in the first instance conceived in opposition to Cartesianism, which, according the critics of Cartesian doctrine, despised historical and linguistic knowledge as being essentially inferior. Its paradigm of genuine, apodictic knowledge was made up of a priori deductive physics, while Vico’s gnoseological principle defended the epistemic, moral and educational value of human history, which deals with that which we have accomplished (res gestae) or, more precisely, all that we do and suffer, in Aristotle’s words, but which might be interpreted as a general defence not only of history but of the humanities, of the hermeneutic sciences or sciences of the mind (Geisteswissenschaften), as a whole (for Hobbes, the two genuine sciences were Euclidian geometry and political science, based on the criterion that we can only know that which we are able to build).3 The principle provided legitimacy for the epistemic authority of history, for knowledge of actions and works, documents and monuments, made by us in terms of praxis and poiesis, and which reveal to us the permanent structures of the human mind in a qualitatively analogue way, although to a lesser degree than mathematics, or rather the arithmetic and synthetic or Euclidian geometry which we built in the Platonic way, with rule and compass.4 The natural world, created directly by God ex nihilo, could only be fully understood by its artifex and not by us, who would only know it indirectly, partially and painfully, in so far as our experiments (the effective ones, not just the ideal or thought-derived ones) and technical inventions reproduce natural processes. The Cartesians’ deductive a priori chain of thought did not offer the via regia to knowledge of the natural world, the view based on mathematical knowledge of Nature being condemned to failure (not to mention the hubris it revealed). In this perspective, Cartesian contempt for history and philology was doubly unjustified: on the one hand, the path to physical knowledge was much less promising than the Cartesians claimed and, on the other hand, the human world was accessible to its

 Bryce Gallie reflected on conflict and struggle not only in the intellectual or cognitive field, in his discussion of “essentially contested concepts” as the major concepts in political philosophy (he had previously written about the opposition between liberal and socialist conceptions of justice, a hot topic in the period of the Labour government of 1945–1951 in the UK), but also of war in itself (he fought in World War II as an officer in the British army). […] 3  In Bauman’s book on hermeneutics and the social sciences there is no chapter, and not even a single paragraph on Vico: his name simply does not appear – a truly surprising omission. 4  The most illuminating quotation on this issue is that which appears in paragraph 331 of the first version of the Scienza Nuova, published in 1744: “But in this dense night of darkness, which enshrouds earliest antiquity so distant from us, appears the eternal light, which never sets, of this truth which is beyond any possible doubt: that the civil world itself has certainly been made by men, hence its principles can, because they must, be rediscovered within the modifications of our own human mind. And this must give anyone who reflects upon it cause to marvel how the philosophers have all earnestly endeavoured to attain knowledge of the natural world which, since He made it, God alone knows, and have neglected to meditate upon this world of nations, or civil world, knowledge of which, since men had made it, they could attain” (Tagliacozzo 1983: 65–66). 2

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direct creator: man as secondary artifex represented a kind of microtheos (Leibniz), “a small god”, a “second god”, a “created god”, of artists and artisans in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries or, as Vico himself wrote in his reiteration of this master topos of Christian humanism, “man is the god of artefacts”, in his 1710 text entitled On the Most Ancient Wisdom of the Italians (1988 [1710]: 97). It should be noted, however, that Vico’s analysis of technics in this anthropogenic context was not systematic. He makes references to the great technical inventions of modern times, including some of the inventions in the art of war, the “noble art” par excellence (as it was conventionally called at that time), in part to assert the epistemic superiority of the classical mathematical style of the theorems on which they were based, as contrasted with the supposedly practical sterility of Cartesian analytical geometry (mathematics as a domain of human construction, by means of “genetic definitions” or construction rules, Euclidian geometry being the model of rigorous, demonstrable knowledge for Hobbes, who discovered it quite late in life). Here it is appropriate to say something further on the topic of the “god of artefacts”. Theological-technological parallels had for centuries been part of Latin Christianity (the metaphor of God as the great Clockmaker was the most widespread exemplification of these parallels), but they were reinforced with the Renaissance and continued well into the era of modern science, up to the end of the eighteenth century and the first decades of the nineteenth (it is even legitimate to talk about theological-scientific-technological parallels). Artists and artisans brought up comparisons with the Divine: certainly only God could create ex nihilo, but as in the cosmology of Timaeus, one of the best-known and admired works of the Platonic corpus at the time, the artisan, artist or engineer (major artists could also be military engineers, like Leonardo da Vinci) is able to create like a demiurge, using pre-existing materials, increasing the power available to Man and creating objects of unheard of beauty. The Italian Renaissance, to an extent unprecedented in the history of Christian civilization, exalted the artist as a kind of “cultural hero”, whose search for immortality as perpetual fame, through his creations and his legacy of masterworks, became legendary. This opened up the path for employing the rhetoric of creators and “little gods” by those who also created works of great value by reason of their technical invention, even if it remained associated with manual labour, which was viewed with disdain by the dominant elites, despite the fact that they already prized the distinction between “artisans” and “engineers”. The Christian culture of the Renaissance highlighted the image of the Divinity as “creator of all creators”, despite the obvious incommensurability of the forms of creation involved; the topic was addressed in various historical periods, recently in the Christian theology of technology, as in Teilhard de Chardin, and previously in Bergson’s philosophy of creative evolution. It has been taken up by the transhumanists, who believe that, amongst our creations, intelligent machines will surpass and transcend us as creators. According to Francis Bacon and those who shared his vision of the Great Instauration, among the human creators who should be most appreciated were those who invented new techniques or new foundations for the development of new techniques, thereby contributing to the restoration of the world as it was before Original Sin, when Man, on account of his innate constitution, was endowed in his body and

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mind with extraordinary powers both physical and cognitive (the theological, salvational motif of “felix culpa”), which he would recover through scientific and technological knowledge.5 In the nineteenth century Vico was mainly read in an ontological rather than epistemological way, as the precursor of metaphysical historicism, in which Man, devoid of a basic and irreducible nature, like homo apertus, is undefined, and so is subject to an infinite number of definitions (and therefore also of negations, according to the scholastic and Spinozan maxim: omnis determinato est negatio), as moreover had already been argued with particular reference to the ex-centric status of Man in the Great Chain of Beings in Italian Christian humanism. In the epideictic rhetoric (a rhetorical method which favours hyperbole, whether positive or negative and often ironic, as in the most famous text using this type of rhetoric, Erasmus’ In Praise of Folly) of Renaissance humanists, like Pico della Mirandola, the nobility of Man lay in the fact that, not having a pre-determined place in the scheme of Creation, he creates himself as a moral or intellectual being or becoming, because as body and soul he was clearly not self-created (to stay within the irreducible minimum of Christian belief). Was Vico an example of a philosophe au masque, as the historian of ideas Maxime Leroy said of Descartes (whose expression larvatus Deo seemed to support this interpretation), or as Leo Strauss suggested generically in his “basic theorem of the sociology of Western philosophy”, contained in the essay of the same name in his book Persecution and the Art of Writing (Strauss, 1952)? That “theorem” is fairly obviously valid for Jewish thinkers of Christian Europe, subject to endless persecution and suspicion from the 16th to the eighteenth century, but despite the shadow of the Inquisition in Naples, it does not seem to me to apply in the case of Vico, who was a practising Catholic and probably did not regard himself as heterodox in his philosophical speculations. In any event, for metaphysical historicism the radical historical process, the only one which is supremely intelligible, is our own production.6 Conversely, for idealist metaphysical historicism “nature has no history” or “there is no dialectic in nature”, just as for Lukács’ Marxist historicism in its early phase. For theological historicism in Berdyaev or Tillich, to mention just relatively recent thinkers, Being and Nothingness, the ontic and the meontic, are related, and their ontotheology is more correctly to be seen as neo-ontotheology. Expressions like “Man makes himself” (the title of a work by the Australian archaeologist V. Gordon Childe, who at the time was a committed Marxist, widely disseminated in the 1950s and 1960s in Portugal and other Western countries) are not examples of that idealist historicism:

 On the topic of felix culpa, which was important at least in the seventeenth century, and crucial in Milton, and which is still used today as an eschatological justification of technology by a Catholic thinker such as Walter Ong, see the classic article by A. O. Lovejoy, included in an edition of his collected essays on the history of ideas (Lovejoy, 1962a, b). […]. 6  Perhaps the best and most succinct discussion of generic theories of historicism as metaphysics, ontology and theology (or ontotheology) is Emil Fackenheim’s, in his little book Metaphysics and Historicity, a brief but richly dense study which should be required reading for the study of historicism (Fackenheim, 1961). 5

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what the title sought to express above all was a negation of any providentialism, and of any spirituality or metaphysical idealism. Even so, when he wrote “man makes himself” he was not anticipating biological or specifically genetic engineering of human beings, the transgeneticization of our species, the production of genetically modified human beings. Those who shared that vision looked forward to building a society without poverty, without exploitation, without classes, as the final goal of human self-realization, even though the open notion of “full communism” which would follow, but which, in principle, it was impossible to characterize with any certainty or specificity or in advance (somewhat like the Singularity anticipated by today’s post-humanist writers) might encompass Man’s self-determination as a biological, biogenetic or biopsychic being, as already expected in the near future by some socialist geneticists. It was possibly Marx, as the heir to metaphysical historicism in its most radical version, post-Kantian German idealism, in the longest and best-known note to his first volume of Das Kapital (the only volume published in his lifetime) in 1867, one hundred and fifty years after the Scienza Nuova, who first suggested that Vico’s main pronouncement applied to, and indeed was especially relevant to the history of human technology.7 We understand fully our “exosomatic instruments” (in the much later words of the biophysicist A. J. Lotka), machines, technological systems, etc., because it was we who built them. On the other hand, the “natural technology” of living beings – their endosomatic instruments – would belong in naturalist schemes for explaining biological evolution (by parity of reasoning, everything covered by the concept of Dawkins’ (1982) “extended phenotype”), the same note mentions “Darwin’s great book” – although Marx’s ambiguities in relation to the theory of natural selection are well-known. It is somewhat surprising to note that an economist as prominent as R.  Goodwin describes Marx’s vision of the economy and

 Marx’s note (note 89), in chapter “Machinery and large-scale industry” in the first volume of Das Kapital: “Spinning machines had already been used before his [John Wyatt’s] time, although very imperfect ones, and Italy was probably the country where they first appeared. A critical history of technology would show how little any of the inventions of the eighteenth century are the work of a single individual. As yet such a book does not exist. Darwin directed attention to the history of natural technology, i.e., the formation of the organs of plants and animals, which serve as the instruments of production for sustaining their life. Does not the history of the productive organs of man in society, of organs that are the material basis of every particular organization of society, deserve equal attention? And would not such a history be easier to compile, since, as Vico says, human history differs from natural history in that we have made the former, but not the latter? Technology reveals the active relation of man to nature, the direct process of the production of the social relations of his life, and of the mental conceptions that flow from those relations. Even a history of religion that is written in abstraction from this material basis is uncritical. It is, in reality, much easier to discover by analysis the earthly kernel of the misty creations of religion than to do the opposite, i.e., to develop from the actual, given relations of life the form in which these have been celestialized. The latter method is the only materialist, and therefore the only scientific one. The weaknesses of the abstract materialism of natural science, a materialism which excludes the historical process, are immediately evident from the abstract and ideological conceptions expressed by its spokesman whenever they venture beyond the bounds of their own speciality” (Tagliacozzo, 1983: 316). 7

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society as being essentially Darwinian – a characterization which is wrong in so far as Marx never thought that the mechanism of natural selection was the main explanatory mechanism for economic change, although it is true there have recently been some sophisticated attempts to reconstruct key Marxist arguments along Darwinian lines.8 It is plausible to read this text as a reflection of a technological historicism in which Man’s self-production and self-manifestation – the core theme of the earlier metaphysical historicism – is assessed and demystified for a second time, as it were, (the first time being in the philosophical anthropology of Feuerbach, the master of all the Young Hegelians of successive generations, like Bruno Bauer, Moses Hess, A. Cieszkowski, Karl Marx, Ernst Kapp) with the coming technological world “in which nature becomes history and history becomes the universal history of the world” and “all thought in the future will essentially be technical”, this future of course being full communism as the final post-historic state of human society (Axelos, 1961: 299). What interests us here, however, is not Marx’s alleged technological historicism, which was much more visible in the work of another, less well-­ known Young Hegelian, Ernst Kapp,9 but his epistemological optimism in relation to human technology, his confidence that technical objects and systems are transparent and could be domesticated, that the technological society could be rationally managed, in a future in which all thought and action would be essentially technical (demystified), and in which the disjunctive categories of “thought” and “action” would lose their meaning, as suggested in the famous Thesis XI on Feuerbach.10 There has been far less notice and discussion of this conviction than of his belief in the long-term irrepressible growth of productive forces throughout history as the engine of history. This master thesis was recently revived as the hard core and nomological heart (of the “functional laws”) of historical materialism by the “analytical Marxism” school. Note that in its classic works this school showed no systematic interest in environmental impacts and their retroactive effects on society, as a result of the ecological collapse of cultures and civilizations, nor in the under-­ production of risk and uncertainty by techniques and technology, which is a feature of our time. It did not therefore question the central theses of Viquian Marxism which held that technical objects and systems could be transparent, controllable and domesticated. As with other Marxist writers for whom productive forces  It is curious that despite his brilliant note in Das Kapital, Marx only mentioned Vico three times in works published during his lifetime, manuscripts, and correspondence, although the significant interest in the connections between these two authors’ thought accounts for the fact that a collection a few hundred pages long entitled Vico and Marx (Tagliacozzo, 1983) was published a few years ago. Nevertheless, that note, which is in any event significant, attracted many Marxist writers to Vico (from Lukàcs to Bernal), but few of them openly and unequivocally adopted the line followed by Sorel in interpreting science as essentially techno-science, no doubt mainly on account of the Leninist orthodoxy set out in Materialism and Empirio-criticism, which became the great epistemological manual of the Marxist-Leninist vulgate […]. 9  On Kapp see Martins (2011a). 10  “Philosophers have merely interpreted the world in different ways; the issue, however, is how to transform it”. […]. 8

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(essentially technology, or technical progress or better still in today’s language, technological progress) emerge as the primum movens of history, they did not take the philosophy of technology into account as a domain of relevant thought (and do not even appear to have taken advantage of, or even read, any Marxist, whether thinker or historian, Western or not, in any language, from Marx to Althusser). In the West “ecological Marxism” or “green Marxism” only truly came into its own from the 1980s onwards, finding legitimacy partly in certain observations by Engels on the destruction of ecosystems on a regional scale as a result of unrestrained capitalist exploitation, and in pre-capitalist orders, observations in which Engels even set out a maxim of ecological prudence when he wrote that each conquest of Nature by Man would be followed by nature’s revenge, and partly in Marx’s reflections on soil degradation in the capitalist economy of his time (Parsons, 1977). These salutary warnings, especially Engels’ maxim of ecological prudence, counted for nothing, however, in the environmentally disastrous economic practices of Marxist-Leninist regimes, for whom natural resources were regarded as free goods for economic planning purposes, in the “destruction of Nature” in the USSR and Mao’s China (Shapiro, 2000), in the mania for gigantism in the dams they built (the most recent example being the Three Gorges in China, after the transition to market Leninism), amongst other technological undertakings. Some of the eco-Marxists are particularly concerned with energy systems as the core complex of the relationship between Nature and society (although that was already present in Bogdanov’s Marxism), whereby the “metabolism” of Man and Nature operates primarily as “techno-­metabolism”, in addition to the biological metabolism he shares with all other species in the biosphere, evoking Marx’s idea of the “metabolic cleavage” brought about with the environment by the capitalist industrial economies (Foster, 2000). But all those writers focus on criticising contemporary capitalism, rather than displaying a broader sociological concern with the interrelationships of technology, ecology and society in different economic systems (Benton, 1996; Burkett, 1999; Foster, 2000).11

3.2 Vico’s Principle After Vico in Sociological Thought 3.2.1 Sorel and “Artificial Nature” Georges Sorel has long figured in the manuals of the history of European ideas as an auteur maudit, one of the great protagonists of the revolt against positivism, of the resurgence of irrationalism at the end of the nineteenth century, with his acclamation of myth as the great mobilizer of the masses, his celebration of violence (a

 The clearest and most astute discussion of the reciprocal implications of classical Marxism and today’s environmental thinking seems to me to be that of the philosopher Jonathan Hughes (2000), which deserves to be better known and studied. 11

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word which became fashionable because of the contrast it outlined between bourgeois “force” and proletarian “violence”), of “direct action”, of permanent rebellion against the established order, especially in the form of the “general strike” (of which he became the most famous harbinger). Nonetheless, after Marx it was Sorel, admirer of Vico and follower of Marx, who revisited Vico’s and Marx’s thought from 1896 onwards, as it applied not only to human technology in general, as if it were a kind of philosophical-anthropological theory (or speculative paleo-­ anthropology, as in Engels’ article on the role of work – work with tools and utensils – in hominization and sapientization, work which is engendered by the properly human hand, the “tool of tools” as Aristotle said12), but very particularly to modern experimental and industrialized science. Sorel contrasted “natural Nature” with a second type, the “artificial Nature” of the laboratory and the new industrial world, stressing the productive and creative character of modern science which engenders this “artificial Nature”, and radically distinguished it from the natural philosophy and scientific style of the Ancients (comparisons of modern science and Greek science, which was so successful in certain aspects, even inventions, during the Hellenistic period, were very much in vogue between 1890 and the First World War, an important facet of reflection on modernity in this period). The growth of our scientific knowledge derives not only from our greater powers of observation, made possible by observation and measuring instruments of all kinds, or from a greater speculative understanding of that which exists independently of ourselves, but our ability to make, realize and create phenomena, beings and processes which not only imitate pre-human or non-human nature, but generate an enormous wealth of substances and structures which “increase” ordinary Nature, like the transuranium elements, which did not previously exist outside the laboratory, not to mention phenomena of which, by design or otherwise, we acquire knowledge in the laboratory for the first time, because they had never been observed in “natural Nature” outside the research laboratories. In a way this writer, a polytechnicien and engineer of roads and bridges (and only those with the highest marks at the École Polytechnique were admitted to the School of Roads and Bridges) set out the implications of Viquian Marxism: scientific knowledge of Nature advances concomitantly with our technological ability to act upon, use, manipulate, transform and manufacture things and, in a way, derives from it. Only by creating “artificial Nature”, and to the extent we are successful in that endeavour, with our instruments and factually based scientific and technological experiments, with our factory-­ laboratories, do we truly advance scientific knowledge, the correct understanding of “natural Nature”. In fact, according to Sorel, it is only by active, manipulative study of artificial Nature under controlled laboratory conditions that we are able to formulate and verify reliable laws and assure ourselves of scientific determinism through experiments (a theory which ties in with the current arguments of philosophers of science that laws in the natural sciences should be seen as ceteris paribus laws).  For Anaxagoras, the hand had created Man, for Aristotle, Man had generated the human hand. For Engels, work had humanized the human hand. On the history of philosophical thought on the human hand, see Brun (1961). 12

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Other Marxist thinkers independently, but in a similar fashion, explained the history of the exact and natural sciences, in particular mechanics, physics and chemistry, as an effort to understand, improve on and develop techniques, rather than as an explanation of the phenomena of natural Nature as such. In this connection we may recall the works of Boris Hessen, in particular his essay on the social and economic factors which shaped the construction of physics in Newton’s time, which had a very considerable impact on the history of science, Franz Borkenau, Henryk Grossman and Edgar Zilsel, all originally published in the 1930s and 1940s, on mechanics and physics, especially those of the 16th and 17th centuries. These studies diverge on many important points, but have a common emphasis on this theme. The factory-laboratory was already a prominent institution on the scientific-­ industrial scene of the time, there being at least seven or eight which were world-­ famous for their large scale and the scientific prestige of their leaders. These factory-laboratories, examples avant la lettre of the Big Science which arose out of America after the Second World War, are characterised by the following aspects: (i) major capital investment (demanding funding from industry, the state, and philanthropic millionaires); (ii) a large labour force, including highly qualified workers, technicians, research assistants, etc.; (iii) a complex division of labour; (iv) production processes requiring industrial-type technology (tools developed for the industry often modified in the laboratory itself); (v) managerial-type leadership, from true chief scientists (each one with their management style).13 In an impressive manner, they revealed the operation of science as work, as production and, in a way, as power. Amongst other examples we might mention Koch, Pasteur and Pavlov (but in fact, the majority were Germans). Large industrial enterprises built factories which, as Sorel said, looked like laboratories on account of the extremely controlled conditions and the profusion of instruments inside them, essential for quality control of production. The laboratories which looked like factories in terms of the characteristics listed, being clear examples of Big Science at the time, were often called “workshops”, a term which has pleasanter associations. For Sorel, the “essential continuity” of technological advance was one of Marx’s greatest lessons; for him, this is the truly intelligible thread of history, the “rational enchaînement” (concatenation) par excellence, as Cournot states in his theory of history. To a certain extent, we might view this approach as a methodological version of historical materialism; in general terms, the interpretation of historical materialism as “the research canon” was already present in the neo-Kantian social democrat F.  A. Lange, well before Croce made the phrase famous. But now this “rational concatenation”, this path of reason, or at least of technical reason or Viquian reason through history, is no longer simply subordinate to the tumult of wars between states and civil wars, and revolutions or, in the methodological language of Cournot, to historical accident and chance, to “calamities”, as Sorokin would say (wars, revolutions, famines, epidemics in general, in multiple

 This is a paraphrase of the introduction to Daniel P. Todes’ book on Pavlov’s physiology factory-­ laboratory (Todes, 2002). 13

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combinations according to the workings of the law, or at least the empirical rule, whereby “the solidarity of calamities”14). Now this rational concatenation of technological advance, increasingly self-supporting or autonomous and, still in Cournot’s words, independent of historical accidents (small or large, like wars), manifests itself ever more strongly in modern economies, in capitalist “scientificindustrial societies”, increasingly developing through interaction and mutual assimilation of factories and laboratories, which in turn become more and more alike in their working conditions and the proliferation of measuring instruments and apparatus (a very interesting Sorelian observation for the beginning of the twentieth century, one which has been repeated since then, as if it were a novelty, decade after decade, even though the scientification of industry and the industrialization of science have both advanced considerably since then). Note that this continuity of technological advance, which was not and would not be interrupted by the actions of the anarcho-syndicalist proletariat (its “irrationalism” was generally in no way technophobic or Luddite, for Sorel was clearly against industrial sabotage) does not imply for this very Puritan thinker, who was an ethical anti-utilitarian who also rejected psychological hedonism and professed an “ethics of virtues” (as might be said today), an adaptation of “civic republicanism” to transnational proletarian solidarity, the unlimited improvement of the conditions of human life, an increase in wellbeing. The reasons for this are, on the one hand, that these techno-economic advances, a kind of “law of growing productivity”, imply a “a law of increasing effort” (in the words of Durkheim, another anti-utilitarian, whose sociological thinking here, exceptionally, converges with Sorel’s), with increasingly rigorous and demanding work, in an ever more specialized division of labour and that, on the other hand, the growing conveniences and facilities of daily life are cancelled out by other impacts. There seems to be no doubt that Sorel would agree with Proudhon’s “law of poverty”: our life does not become less hurried and tiring with the abundance and technological advances in the means of transport and communication, and in many cases, in fact, journey times between home and workplace in urban centres have not reduced over the last one hundred or so years, despite the increase in motor vehicle speeds and the building of endless bridges, tunnels and motorways to improve vehicular traffic.15

3.2.2 Bachelard and the Principle of Sufficient Construction Bachelard, in his doctrine of “rational materialism”, or “applied rationalism”, adopting the very words of Sorel, argued in one of his doctoral theses that “artificial Nature”, produced under experimental conditions in the laboratory, explained

 On this topic, see Martins (2011b).  Proudhon was one of his greatest masters. On Proudhon’s law of poverty, see Martins (2011c). For empirical data which confirm this “law”, see Grübler (1989). 14 15

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“natural Nature”, a theory which he dubbed at some point the “principle of sufficient construction” (in other words, a reformulation of Vico’s principle in the domain of the natural sciences). In addition, according to this philosopher of science and techno-science (“science becomes industrialized from start to finish”), artificial Nature enriches prodigiously and profoundly transforms imperfect, incomplete and stagnated natural Nature (biological evolution is very slow, and chemical evolution is barely perceptible on the human scale16) outside the laboratory, with new transuranium elements and hundreds and thousands of chemical products never found in natural Nature. It can be seen that some writers view the concept of technoscience as being equivalent to, and may be derived from, the Bachelardian concept of “phénomènotechnique”; however, this concept in turn owed a great deal to the Sorelian idea of “artificial Nature” and to the Sorelian perspective on modern science and technology in general. The link between Sorel and Bachelard on these issues, which is clearly visible in the work mentioned, deserves greater recognition. In any event, this point of view underestimates the dependencies of our extremely rare and special circumstances on a cosmic scale (without wishing to subscribe to the strong version of the Anthropic Principle) which, as we know today, are highly vulnerable circumstances of planetary natural Nature variously affected by the artificial Nature we have built in the Anthropocene era, and above all by certain states of the biosphere. These circumstances had already been analysed by the physiologist L. J. Henderson in his pioneering 1913 book The Fitness of the Environment, an approach pursued by Vernadsky in his conceptualization of the “biosphere” around 1923, other Russian thinkers, and lately taken up again in James Lovelock’s and Lynn Margulis’ Gaia hypothesis. We need only think of the invention of CFCs (chlorofluorocarbons) which for several decades appeared to be problem-free, one of the wonders which Bachelard so complacently called “chemical engineering” (odourless, non-combustible, versatile, absolutely reliable, etc.), until the discovery of their totally unexpected and unforeseen impact, decades after they had been introduced on a large scale into daily life, on the ozone layer, which is so essential to life (the said hole in the ozone layer was reduced as a result of the successful campaigns to reduce or prohibit their use, particularly in the West). The Bachelardian generalization, to the effect that the products of scientific-industrial chemistry, which he called “chemical engineering” in broad terms, had exactly their intended effect and nothing more significant or certainly damaging to the conditions of human life, was refuted − as was the myth of the “magic bullet” of biomedicine  These theories were commonplace at the time, and Cournot had already made these points. It continues to be asserted today that biological development has stagnated, and that it falls to humans to induce it rationally, according to the best interventionist techniques. However, biotic evolution is proceeding rapidly at the micro-biological level, with superbugs regularly emerging in the space of a few years, or in one or two decades at the most, in response to antibiotics and anti-virals (with a pseudo-Lamarckian rate of mutations which have already been dubbed “hyper-mutations”) which are being invented, and superweeds in response to the biocides (pesticides, fungicides) which are being applied in agriculture in crazy quantities. A recent study on this topic offers many examples (Palumbi, 2001). […]. 16

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inspired by the success of Koch and Ehrlich. Bachelard never applied his point of view to contemporary biology, even though the great breakthrough in molecular biology, the double helix, a major portent of the information revolution in biology, which opened the door to a new world of biological engineering, was achieved while he was still active. François Dagognet, a philosopher, admirer and commentator, if not an actual disciple of Bachelard, has celebrated biotechnologies and their unbridled development, devaluing any reference to “natural Nature” as being indispensable, irreplaceable, or endangered.

3.2.3 Dewey: A Promethean Sorel’s sympathy for the American pragmatist movement is no surprise because one of the general tendencies of classical pragmatism was to assert the eminently plastic, incomplete and open nature of reality, and sometimes even to subscribe to Pythagoras’ maxim that Man is the measure of all things, especially in the work of F. C. S. Schiller, who also merits his place in the history of the philosophy of technology (previously Kapp had evoked that maxim in his philosophy of technology, and adopted it more literally in his theory of “organic projections”17). In Dewey the Viquian inclination is certainly visible, as Arthur Child showed in his study Making and Knowing in Hobbes, Vico and Dewey (Child, 1953). For the great theoretician of instrumentalism (as he thus designated his own philosophical inclination), science and industry are two sides of the same coin. Platonic or Aristotelian noetic contemplation, natural history, and disinterested natural classical philosophy have only aesthetic value and absolutely lack cognitive value, because cognitive values, truth values, are essentially “verific” or “verificient” (verum ipsum factum!) so to speak, oriented towards action, manipulation, controlled change, the future and the possible, a radically futuristic, forecasting attitude, even when they apparently refer to the irrevocable and irreversible past, such as historiographic, archaeological, geogonic, cosmogonic pronouncements, as with the Big Bang, in the final analysis those which belong essentially to what Whewell called the “palaeontological sciences”. According to Dewey, scientific progress consists literally in the use, invention and construction of physical instrumentalities to bring about, record and measure changes, and there are no differences in logical principles, but rather only practical differences, between the scientific method and the technological method (Dewey, 1929: 84). In his view, instrumentality is fundamental, irrefutable and practically co-extensive with human life in society. Natural language itself is characterised as an instrument, a point of view shared by various schools of linguistic thought and by philosophy. However, Cournot in the third quarter of the nineteenth century had already demonstrated that, while language-as-instrument might explain, for

17

 See Martins (2011a).

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example, how English was already felt to be the universal language of the future, natural language involves the “mechanical”, the rationalizable, the mechanizable and that which can be perfected, and the “organic” involves expressiveness, particularism, the recording of feelings, the historical record, the “irrational” or hard to rationalize, given the spontaneous nature of the life of natural languages. It is true that political factors have played a significant part in this, including, in addition to prohibiting languages (like Catalan in Franco’s Spain, to cite a recent example) the spelling reforms promulgated by governments, the imposition of forms of address by radical regimes, the prohibiting by Academies of foreign expressions, and especially the attempts by totalitarian regimes to encourage new forms of language [novilínguas] (Newspeak in Orwell’s term), but spontaneity prevails in the life of natural languages (a canonical example of Hayekian “spontaneous order”). Artificial languages, built to be universal instruments, as many logicians since Leibniz dreamed of or were attracted to, even in the twentieth century (examples are Couturat and Carnap, with their liking for Esperanto), in the conviction that they would be instruments of peace and universal harmony, would always have a very limited role in the human world. For Dewey, the scientific attitude and the aesthetic attitude are mutually incompatible both systematically and psychologically: we either approach things with a scientific attitude – which is prospective, manipulative and productive – or with an aesthetic attitude – which is contemplative and reflects enjoyment of objects (in a very broad sense of the term, covering Brentano’s intentional objects), in their qualitative immediacy as complete and finished objects. But we will never be able to merge or harmonize the two attitudes, at least in our scientific-industrial societies (this was possible in Greek science, where knowledge was governed by aesthetic “categories” of description and explanation like harmony, proportion and symmetry. Even in Galileo, the aesthetic and metaphysical conviction of the perfection of circular motion was an epistemological obstacle to his astronomy). Despite the recent emergence of an “environmental pragmatism” movement (Light & Katz, 1995), Dewey’s dichotomy runs counter to a considerable environmental current which precisely seeks, at least in certain areas, a form of knowledge which is both scientific and responsible, scientific and aesthetic, in some domains. In any event, and without prejudice to the predictive power of tested scientific ecology, which is actually rather weak, that movement attempts to rehabilitate natural history as popular art with an empathetic understanding of Nature, which is “among the most precious and extraordinary qualities justifying human existence”, as an ethical foundation for protecting the biosphere from harmful anthropogenic effects and for the quality of human life (Peters, 1991: 176). This theory also runs counter to a widely disseminated position of scientists like Bernal and his contemporaries Steven Weinberg, D. Hills, M. Calvin, and J. Doyne Farmer, amongst others, physicists, biologists, mathematicians, computer scientists who proclaimed a Principle of the Techno-scientific Meaning of Life: that which justifies human existence, essentially, is techno-scientific knowledge, that is to say, active, technogenic, productive knowledge, and its indefinite pursuit without limitation. As a corollary to this principle, it may be said that as we approach our

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epistemic limits, the frontiers of our knowledge abilities, our existence as a species will no longer have any meaning. What is left to us, as final justification, is to prepare our legitimate succession as epistemic or techno-scientific subjects. This, fortunately, is now, for the first time in History, within our reach, with computational technologies. Certainly we will have to choose between this Techno-scientific Principle of the Meaning of Life, and the principle set out by the scientific ecologist cited above, R. Peters, that the empathetic understanding of Nature “is among the most precious and extraordinary qualities which justify human existence”. This of course does not exclude techno-scientific knowledge, and “instrumental activism” (the expression adopted by Parsons, who offered it as the societal correlate of philosophical pragmatism: Parsons, 1951) in general, the praxialism of the firmament of values, and the repertoire of the many qualities which justify human existence.18

3.3 The Limits of Vico’s Principle in Technology: Brief Considerations on the Epistemology and Ontology of Technology This tradition running from Vico to Dewey, and from Marx to Bachelard, asserts the epistemic value of the maker’s knowledge: the maker knows the work he creates precisely because he is its author, the artifex fully possesses the artefact.19 Technical objects often fulfil unexpected purposes, revealing significant properties or functionalities which were not deemed relevant at the design stage. This is true for both their successes and failures. According to the “law of change of use”, formulated in 1880 by the German engineer E. von Harting in relation to mechanical instruments, all instruments are used for unanticipated ends and undergo constant changes which may eventually lead to the creation of new types of instruments. The unforeseen emergence of large complexes of instruments can be explained in the same way. I mention this largely forgotten writer by way of a discussion of Richard von Mises, a member of the Vienna Circle and aeronautical engineer (as Wittgenstein almost became) and the main frequentist theoretician of probability, at least in the first half of the twentieth century (in actual fact, the logical empiricists’ contributions to and interest in the philosophy of technology were minimal, except for Mises and ­especially Neurath, also an economist, who accepted historical materialism as a heuristic and was by far the most socially and politically committed member of the social democrats and of the civic government of Vienna). In the light of his discussion of the “law of change of use”, Mises20 even gets repeatedly to compare this

 A useful source for a systematic understanding of Dewey’s thoughts on technology is found in the works of Hickman (1990, 2001). 19  On the topic of maker’s knowledge the key works are those of Amos Funkenstein and Antonio Pérez-Ramos (Funkenstein, 1986; Pérez-Ramos, 1988). 20  Not to be confused with his brother, the neo-liberal economist Ludwig von Mises. 18

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process in the history of technology with the development of language itself, a comparison which is shocking for linguistic theoreticians in that it is essentially expressive of, and ontologically heterogeneous with, the prosaic world of tools. In natural languages too, continual changes, “the infinity of small adjustments”, new lexical or grammatical conventions or changes of use would be the main mechanism of development. In this way he announces a gradualism, a uniformitarianism, to quote Whewell in his analysis of the paleotiological sciences, which he uses to resolve against the linguistic nihilism of Mauthner, the difficulty that all that we can say of language has to be said using language itself (Mises, 1950: 19–21, 34–35). For this author, with languages developing in this way, every use of a word or idiom, whether spoken or written, changes the language for all those who receive the message, producing a constant flow of semantic and even syntactic “uncertainty” in the life of natural languages. Something similar might be said of for the dynamics of implemented technology: every one of an endless number of small changes in technical objects changes the overall technological situation of a given society, or at least generates uncertainty for all those who receive this techno-semiotic message for each small change of use, as producers, users, spectators or victims (Mises, 1950: 44). The sociological principles of the Scottish Enlightenment also come into play here, perhaps in particular those formulated most clearly by Adam Ferguson and later picked up by the Austrian School of economic and social thought (Carl Menger, Ludwig von Mises, Hayek), on the unintended, unforeseen and unplanned effects of human action to explain social traditions and institutions by “explanations of the invisible hand”. Technical objects, moreover, have their own story, which is not simply the result of ad hoc deliberate constructions, but also of serendipitous factors and inadvertencies: technological taxa have greater affinity with biological species than with logical classes perfectly defined by their properties at any given moment, because we have to take into account, as with biological species – for example in the approach of biologist M. Ghiselin, in which they are described as historical “individuals”, as inter-temporal entities, in his explanation of genealogy – the impact of the past (this is a point of view which justifies applying evolutionary epistemology to the history of technology (Basalla, 1988), complemented in some aspects by an emphasis on hysteresis or the lock-in effects of technical objects in Arthur (2010). Monod said that all organisms are living fossils. Something similar may be said of technical objects: recall the early decades of the motor car, which retained features of the earlier horse-drawn carriages (as late as the twentieth century many of them still had a space, transferred from those carriages, where one could put the whip for a non-existent horse. Up to the 1950s the running board or step-up on cars derived from the stirrups used to mount horses, and their power was measured in the picturesque language of “horsepower,” which became a standard measure of energy). Archaeologists have always been more aware of this historicity in sequences of artefacts, and formulated the concept of skewmorphism precisely to identify the emergence of new artefacts which have the appearance or forms of the past. This

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concept has been revisited in the study of modern technologies (Basalla, 198821; Martins, 2009). Generally speaking technical objects are a blend of engineering and cobbling things together, of “opportunist” or ad hoc invention and adaptation, and so do not exist in Bachelard’s “absolute present”. Hammers and wheels in general do not exist and could not be invented or reinvented in themselves, but only as defined types of hammer or wheel with their geographical areas and historical trajectories, each specific type excluding other variants. The English saying which uses “reinventing the wheel” to describe that which is the most redundant thing there is, fails to take into account that in fact it is not possible to reinvent the wheel generally, just as it is not possible to reinvent the hammer generally. It has to be a specific type of hammer, even without considering the existence of civilizations without the wheel – apart from toys – or of those which abandoned the wheel for the camel in the very region where it had been invented, partly due to the invention of the saddle, which gave them military advantage (Basalla, 1988; Bulliet, 1975). Complex technological systems are clearly not the work of any one maker in particular, with their dozens or hundreds of components at various levels of clustering, although they may be tightly coupled and potentially highly vulnerable to extreme risks (Perrow, 1999). Modifications are never designed by any random super-engineer, nor are their latent, potential, highly incalculable or unimaginable interactions, particularly those arising from variations in the natural, human and technological contexts or environments in which they are used. Claude Bernard, in his great book Introduction à l’Étude de la Médicine Experimentale, stated that the principle of isolation from the external or “macrocosmic” environment, and the relative stability of the internal or “microcosmic” environment, later called “homeostasis” by the physiologist W. B. Cannon, was a property of both living begins and of machines (like the steam engine he specifically mentions) or, as he says, of “living machines” and “rough machines” created by man: “in both cases the perfection of the machine consists in its becoming ever more free and independent, so that it is less and less subject to influences from the external environment” (Bernard, 1966 [1865]: 148). Cybernetics in the 1940s followed Bernard’s principle, which already applied to machines in its \original formulation (the extension of the principle to social phenomena by Durkheim with his concept of the “interior social milieu” was a greater novelty), modelling and building increasingly “organismic” machines in this sense, designing modes of machine behaviour oriented to ends, to error correction, to learning, especially by “trial” and “error,” etc. In fact, the steering wheel of the steam engine was already a cybernetic negative feedback mechanism, defining a significant class of machines which were different from the clockwork type with its rigid determinism. Alfred Russell Wallace, the co-developer of the theory of evolution by natural selection, had already used the metaphor of the steam engine’s steering wheel for natural selection as the mechanism which explained biological  Related, moreover, to the concept of “pseudomorphosis”, which Marx mentioned in passing, and which Spengler, Lewis Mumford, and E. Panofsky, amongst others, drew on considerably in their studies of the morphology of cultures, the history of technology, and the history of art, respectively (Martins, 2009). 21

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evolution, although “natural selection” itself is already a metaphor (which no-one will do without). This is of interest, given his status as co-developer, together with Darwin, of this theory of evolution through this mechanism. While organisms are seen today as “Darwin’s machines”, information processing systems acting and interacting in an environment where natural selection prevails in the choice of who will survive, we might, by combining Darwin’s and Wallace’s metaphors, call evolution by natural selection the Darwin-Wallace machine (especially taking into account that it was Wallace who emphasised the crucial role of the exclusivity of natural selection as the mechanism of evolution until Man emerged). The operational principles incorporated into self-controlling war-making machines invented in the First World War (gyroscopes, servo-motors, automatic controls) had inspired one of the two or three great Marxist theoreticians of technology and precursors of Ludwig von Bertalanffy’s general systems theory – Alexandr Bogdanov – to formulate a socialist plan which would overtake advanced capitalism by adopting sophisticated cybernetic technology in a system of workers’ self-­ management, against the centralized socialist programme with its top-down “transmission belts”, with an essentially Taylorist and Fordist techno-economic plan of Lenin’s: at the time there was an understanding that the much acclaimed and feared “Amerikanismus”, which they wished to emulate and at the same time domesticate and subordinate to national cultural values, consisted essentially of the conjugation of two practices (Hughes, 1989: 284–294). As I have noted elsewhere,22 it is even possible to design a machine to be as independent as possible, not only of the natural and technological environments but also of us, for human ends such as war and other purposes. In any event, the reliability of a technological system is not necessarily down to the makers’ or users’ perfect understanding, according to the most demanding methodological canons of science, of the work done or to be done, given that we are able to build better than we know without realizing it, as Hayek insisted in the case of social institutions – which he preferred to call “social formations”, asserting in this case (and rightly) that through ignorance of incomprehension it is possible to destroy in a very short time institutions which have been formed over decades or centuries. In relation to the more advanced computers, an eminent thinker in the computer sciences has often stated that they are strictly incomprehensible, or at least outside the range of our comprehension according to the conventional criteria of the exact sciences (Weizenbaum, 1992). In many cases, at least temporarily, technological objects or systems are used as if they had the properties of “black boxes” or “grey boxes”, operating in regular and predictable fashion within certain definable parameters, but out of range of full comprehension of their internal causal mechanisms or boundary conditions: a banal example would be the extrapolation

 Editor’s note: In the original version of this text, Martins writes here “(Martins, 1998)”, but, inadvertently, does not provide the reference. However, taking into consideration the topic and the year at stake, the reference should be Martins, 2011e (this text was originally published in two parts: the first in December 1997/January 1998 and the second in June/July 1998). 22

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from normal civil engineering drawings, which has been the cause of many notorious disasters involving bridges and buildings (Petroski, 1994). Technological objects have stimulated significant developments in mathematics and science in the attempt to explain their properties or the phenomena they use (computer science, mathematical theory of communication). This would not be the case if they were transparent ab initio, as if they were conscious, deliberate applications or “materializations” of previous well-understood theories, established with full rigour and precision. This is precisely what Popper once suggested, referring to tools as the only entities for which “methodological essentialism” was valid, this critique being for many of his faithful disciples his most crucial finding. He was being ironic about the instrumentalist theory of scientific knowledge, and defending scientific theoreticism and realism: in this perspective tools are perfectly transparent “white boxes”, and serve strictly defined specific purposes, while hypotheses, theories, theorems, etc. are rich in potential implications, and always subject to refutation or at least to rational criticism. Popper was inconsistent in seeing “essences” (in the sense of closed essences, definable for ever) in technical and scientific tools. On the other hand, scientific and technical tools, technical objects in general, and complex technological systems self-evidently belong to world 3 (previously labelled the “Objective Mind”). They certainly do not belong fully to world 1, the physical world, since they are anthropogenic, and do not belong to world 2, the world of the human psyche, because they are material realizations (as is well-known, Popper was a strong critic of reductionism in the philosophy of mind, the identification of mind and brain, in any of its versions). They are mixed entities, belonging simultaneously to the physical world and to world 3, as human creations, creations of the human mind (at least in the first instance), as material realizations of world 3 and, in principle not intelligible outside world 3, inasmuch as they operate for and with human beings (Popper, 1972). Note that Popper subsumed the domain of living beings in world 1, perhaps for convenience, because he always allowed for the possibility of admitting more worlds to his metaphysic.23 This is particularly important in that many technological objects today, and many more in the future, will be made up of living material and physical and technical materials, microchips at least, together with meatware and software intimately associated with each other (a type in which

 Popper found the term “ontology” repugnant. It was only “naturalised” very late in analytical philosophy by Quine, taking on the meaning which philosopher of science Émile Meyerson had given it, of a more general conceptual schematization of things as they are, and not in the traditional sense of an a priori discourse on being and beings. 23

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we may include certain cyborgs), to the extent that an analyst is able to speak of the “biolytic revolution” in contemporary technology (Kempf, 1998).24 Technical objects, like all other entities in world 3, especially the “purest”, so to speak, mathematical and axiomatic theorems, scientific theories, blends of worlds 3 and 1 are in a constant interplay of unexpected consequences and implications in various timescales and interfaces with other regions of world 3, not to mention the other two worlds, the physical and biological world and the world of our minds. Even to the extent that measuring instruments, for example, may be regarded partly as “materializations of theories” (as they were by Bachelard, amongst other philosophers of science), scientific theories are quintessential world 3 objects par excellence, laden with unforeseen and even unforeseeable consequences and implications, for good or for evil, as Popper demonstrated in many debates. Certainly for good, in many cases, but be that as it may, typically extending into ends not foreseen in the initial design or conception of the inventions, like serendipity in the theoretical domain. In Popper’s formulation, there may be an “undesigned scope of hypotheses”, as there is in explanatory theories (Popper, 1935): but the same may be said for inventions, for materials technology and pharmacology, which may lend themselves to unanticipated purposes and even come to be used mainly for those purposes which were not anticipated in their initial design, the focal ends of the process of invention. There are even inventions which may be described as “solutions in search of a problem”, for evil ends too, as CFCs (chlorofluorocarbons) remind us. This too is increasingly common. All this without examining the impact of the interaction of technological systems with the circumstances of our existence as a biological species. Broadly speaking, approaches to the global environmental crisis are normally classified as anthropocentric or bio-centric (or eco-centric). The first of these, the so-called anthropocentric view, takes into account human well-being not only in its material sense but also our ideals and aesthetic and spiritual interests as the supreme criterion for assessing our practices and their effects: in so far as it is argued that preservation of the maximum jointly possible biodiversity (species, habitats and ecosystems) is in our long-­ term interest, bearing in mind all the satisfactions which future generations may

 This is a technological aspect of great interest to contemporary artists, who always love technological novelties. However, decades before the biolytic revolution many artists had shown a very particular interest in the symbioses of the organic and the inorganic, of human beings and machines, as images of the future or revelations of reality. This was true of the Italian Futurists, Nazi Germany and the USSR in the first decade after the October revolution, when avant-garde artists were fascinated by the aesthetic-revolutionary possibilities of “fusion”, symbiosis, or the union of “flesh and steel”, of the body and the machine (starting out with synaesthesia, the feeling that, for example, in the heroic era of aviation before 1914 the pilot felt “as one” with his plane). This became a rhetorical figure for artists, and later an apocalyptic image of a new type of almost-human being, a mechanical-biological “chimera”. In the Soviet case there was a fashion for defining it as a duty of industrial workers to imitate machines and their rhythms, to achieve greater productivity. This was preached by propagandizing poets in extended campaigns throughout the vast territories of the USSR. Even ballet was inspired to do this, although machine ballet was in fact not very successful (all this preceded Chaplin’s satire in the film Modern Times). 24

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enjoy, we might name this variant “enlightened anthropocentrism”, while if the intrinsic value of all forms of life is acknowledged, as even some strong critics of “deep ecology” do, we might speak of “very enlightened anthropocentrism”. Or else we regard all living beings and even other entities such as landscapes, mountains, etc. as possessing “moral considerability”, intrinsic values which “very enlightened anthropocentrism” may allow but which we should no more count in the axiological balance than any other biological species (the principle of biospheric egalitarianism), acknowledging values which are independent not only of human values beings but also of the human conscience itself, our moral obligation, in addition to our duties to the disadvantaged, being to limit and even minimize the scope of our harmful impact on the non-human biotic world. In general terms, this precept of minimizing in the long-term by means of molecular nanotechnology (Lewis, 1992), might converge with what we have called “very enlightened anthropocentrism”, but for the critics, this radical de-centering involves less of a search for “the point of view of the universe” (in the famous phrase of the utilitarian H. Sidgwick) and more of a misanthropic attitude (and, favouring the species qua species, it is opposed to the theory of the rights of animals as individuals whose suffering we ought to mitigate). Although this dichotomy can be nuanced, the opposition persists in all discussions over ethics, philosophy and even environmental policy (Ehrenfeld, 1978; Lewis, 1992; Norton, 1991). However, agreement or disagreement on public policies are not always necessarily a reflection of parallel philosophical conflicts over ontology (atomism/holism, physicalism/anti-physicalism) scientific methodology (reductionism/emergentism, long-standing contrasting points of view in ecology as a branch of the life sciences), axiology (values dependent or not on human conscience, values inherent or not in living beings, or even non-living natural monuments, existence-based values as opposed to use or exchange-based values) or teleology (atheism/pantheism allegedly in the manner of Espinoza, which finds strong echoes in advocates of deep ecology and eco-feminism, or panentheism). In actual fact, this much commented dichotomy in discussions of environmental ethics, between anthropocentrism on the one hand and eco-centrism (or bio-­ centrism) on the other, is not exhaustive. There is a third approach, the techno-­ centric, for which the pursuit of the technological or techno-scientific project which humanity has adopted until now, up to its full potential, is the top priority. Other actors and other mediums may become involved in this project, and in this way it may emerge as another alternative to anthropocentrism. This point of view is clearly identifiable in authors such as the computerologist Marvin Minsky, who condemns “speciesism”, in the sense of favouring the human species (“meat machines”) as the highest standard of value, but for other reasons – arguing instead for the creation of entities which may become equivalent in, or even overtake, the intelligence of human beings –, while for the advocates of deep ecology the human species is to be disenfranchised in relation to other species of living beings and other components of the biosphere. Speciesism is thus condemned both in the techno-centric and the eco-centric approaches, which in themselves are, in principle, completely opposed to the other! It is not a question merely of arguing for technical advance as the indispensable element for assuring our future under any circumstances, as something

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strictly instrumental in relation to common ends (as dictated by an anthropocentric approach), but of achieving the technologically possible, the creationally possible, as an absolutely irrefutable value in itself, with no limits, and which, without reduction or domestication of technological advance could be beneficial, and our species is only viable as the vehicle (for now) of technological advance. In this line of techno-centric thinking, one possible answer to our existential crisis, put forward quite seriously by scientist prophets, is precisely to transcend our animal, biological condition. In this conquest of ourselves, we would gradually become mechanical, electronic, chemical, etc. entities, beings not only super-intelligent but with fantastic sensory and locomotive equipment, trans-human and eventually trans-earthly beings, travelling through the cosmos, forever seeking greater and greater know-­ how and capabilities until the End of Time. This was the vision of the crystallographer and Marxist analyst of the social function of science J. D. Bernal, for whom the essential meaning of human history and of human beings themselves was the maximization of scientific or rather, techno-scientific knowledge, necessarily tied to our capacity for action and the transformation of things (Bernal, 1929).25 In this technodicy – technodicy, because in this approach the justification for human existence is essentially its participation in the techno-scientific knowledge and power project not just on an earthly scale, but in cosmic terms too – our biological identity as an animal species and our earthly condition are completely contingent, to be overcome and eventually regarded as undesirable in that they are obstacles to techno-scientific progress. The techno-scientific project to understand and dominate the universe (we understand it, in a way, because we have dominion over it), transcends the vision of homo sapiens sapiens which has been its major medium until now and is to be continued by his successors, homo sapientissimus and those who are clearly post-­ human (our successors would be members of the new ontological taxon, the machina sapientissima) in their global cosmic or cosmogonic adventure. This adventure would continue up to the extinction or consummation of the scientific logos-techne and its dissolution into pure light (Bernal, 1929), Teilhard’s Omega Point or the modernized, deific Omega Point of Absolute Knowledge or Total Information, in the neo-Teilhardian eschatology of the cosmologist and contemporary philosopher Frank Tipler (1995). David Deutsch, one of the great thinkers in quantic computing, also subscribed to this view, in atheistic form, in the End of Technological Times (Deutsch, 1997).

 See Martins (2011c). Generally speaking, this is by no means an idiosyncratic view among today’s scientists, other than in the details, but it is impossible to say to what extent it has been disseminated by the Nobel Prizes for Science, for example, or among the more influential ranks of the Academies. A topic possibly to be addressed by surveys in “experimental philosophy”, a branch of philosophy much in vogue. 25

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3.4 Ultra-Technology A perhaps simpler techno-centric alternative would be put forward by mathematician I. J. Good for construction of an Ultra-Intelligent Machine which would take on the role of leader of the future development of technological knowledge and power after us, or at any rate without us. Despite being our own work, an Ultra Intelligent Machine, by definition would be incomprehensible to us, which would refute Vico’s principle as applied to technology, QED: rather, it would be the object itself which would understand and overtake its maker. So it would no longer be a case of the maker’s knowledge but of knowledge by the work itself, which would, in a way, have a soul (even so, the maker’s works help him to know himself better, in discovering what he can do). By extension, I attribute the name “ultra-­technology” to plans to bring about a shift in technology to a stage or level of development at which the technological production of knowledge will go beyond our cognitive abilities (including ultra-intelligent machines and other systems of that kind), in a non-Viquian or post-Viquian phase where factum and verum, facere and verare will be disassociated, no longer tied together, or rather, will no longer be inter-convertible. Many computer scientists make similar prophesies, albeit without anticipating deliberate creation, which comes close to “singularity” (the mathematical idiom they use instead of eschaton), along the lines that something will be with us within a few decades as a result of computational procedures engendered by an auto-­ catalytic technology which is accelerating exponentially, or even super-­exponentially or hyperbolically, especially following the emergence of non-Neumannian computer architecture, of distributed or parallel processing. That something may be cyber-intelligent beings, maybe a world brain (a version of the “world-brain” prophesied by H. G. Wells decades ago), a “hive mind”26 on a planetary scale, an information super-organism, or a planetary “collective intelligence” (Pierre Lévy) which is reticular or hyper-reticular – to replace us, something which in a way we have designed ourselves but which we will not be able to understand, transcending us epistemologically, in both distributive and collective terms, going beyond both our individual minds and the scientific community as a whole (see, for example, the computer scientist W. D Hillis in Brockman, 1995: 385). It is therefore the computer scientists themselves who assert that the consummation of human technology will be to produce works which we will be radically incapable of understanding, and whose cognitive abilities will by far outstrip our own. This is a completely anti-­ Viquian theory, even though it is based on the latest in the computer sciences and technologies.

 A term coined by the writer W. Gibson, much used by enthusiasts of the globalizing implications of information technologies. For many progressive publicists of the nineteenth century, the hive served as an excellent model for the collective in action, as evidenced by the titles of various publications. 26

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On the other hand, when we stop being the god of artefacts, after all a relatively modest role, if we think about artefacts from the time of Vico or even the Marx of Capital (on the borders of paleo-technics and neo-technics), we will be like God insofar as we carry out the divine prerogative not only to create, but to create creators (a phrase of Bergson’s, among others). But while in the indoctrination of Process Theology (adopted by thinkers, philosophers and theologians from the second half of the twentieth century onwards, such as Charles Hartshorne, but with which we may also associate the philosopher of technology and life Hans Jonas in his later writings, although he does not refer directly to its exponents), free and creative actors, above all human actors, enrich the divine life, they do not go beyond it, in this quasi-Theology of the (human and eventually post-human) Global Technological Process, the creators we have created will exceed us, overcome us and transcend our understanding, so we will be cognitively subordinated by the creations of our creations. While the theologians of process are generally panentheists (everything lives in God), it is true that for these quasi-theologians of the technological or techno-onturgical process, divinity is yet to come, because the growth of information and in particular of computational power, for the time being following Murphy’s law of doubling every eighteen months, is a clear manifestation of the “nisus towards Deity”, to paraphrase that metaphysician of emerging evolution, Samuel Alexander, in the 1920s, a nice phrase from what we might call prospective theism (in his case, Einsteinian space-time was the prius). Alexander was of course referring to humans’ overcoming of themselves by themselves, with no particular thought of technological progress, in a kind of naturalized Hegelianism, but in more recent instances, all evolutionary: creative evolution takes place predominantly and/ or even exclusively with and by technology (and really not for technology), an allegedly joint human-technological process of co-evolution involving “symbioses” (a very fashionable word) or ever more sophisticated inter-penetrations of the human and the electro-mechanical-technological-computational to the point where even the boundaries between them practically disappear. Eventually it is all so post-­ human that everything in this process happens as if driven by a technological or technological-evolutionary nisus towards the Divine. Other thinkers and prophets of Artificial Life believe that the creation of super-­ intelligent artificial organisms and minds will open up new, completely unforeseeable bio-evolutionary and psycho-evolutionary pathways, even theoretically; in any event, these will be works outside our control, a point of view they adopt with perfect equanimity and even enthusiasm (perhaps thinking of the etymology of the words: “to be full of god”). How far we have come from the dream of Humanity controlling its own development in a rational manner (and which might decide, for example, not to follow certain potential evolutionary pathways). As for the projected and incipient transformation of the human genome, improving our species’ genetic capital (which, for a start, is nothing more, in fact, than the improvement of the genetic capital of some, possibly without wishing to share the advantages with others, pivoting to a splitting of the species between the “gene-rich” and the “gene-­ poor”, a trans-speciation suggested by geneticists) represents for now a second version of classic negative eugenics, propagated by so many biologists, doctors and

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students of physical anthropological throughout the West from the end of the nineteenth century to the 1940s, but this time in the form of market micro-eugenics, individualist and not collective (in terms of both social class and “races”), an “engineering of desire” – in this case the desires of parents, in collaboration with doctors  – in what we might call the emerging “republic of germinal choice”. This republic encompasses even more, and more technicized, choices than the normal “republic of choice”, in which the consumer subsumes the citizen, who in the final analysis is a consumer of political goods, selected in the political market, not to mention the role of parents, since economic analysts have long since treated children as “consumer goods”, in which individual “preferences” – that magic word! – increasingly override standards or “valencies” (“vigencias” in Ortega’s term) and compact or diffuse traditions. “Genetic supermarkets” (the term is Robert Nozick’s, who recommended it, as the good anarcho-capitalist that he was) flourish or will flourish in the republic of germinal choice, and will offer the chance to buy and sell alleles and super alleles (according to some bioethicists, we have a strict moral obligation to provide the best genetic legacy to our children, with the inheritance of pre-selected genetic assets the new mode of inheritance designed to impact social stratification, or at least rigorous embryo selection in medically assisted procreation, and not just the elimination of those who carry defective genes). Undoubtedly it will go hand-in-hand with a universal body shop (Kimbrell, 1993), a global market in human organs, tissue and blood (there are already some bio-ethicists who argue for the right to sell organs, a right they believe should not be restricted by the State, even for the poor, for whom genuine informed consent would be difficult or impossible to obtain (Taylor, 2005), and for the strict moral obligation, not just as a good thing, a supererogatory duty – to donate organs, where the market in organs is prohibited, today practically a legal obligation in certain countries), a market in procreation in others’ wombs by means of artificial insemination, a market in human eggs. [...]27. [...] Here we should point out two anti-Viquian paradoxes. First, these worshippers of technology (or “technolatrers”) explicitly and deliberately contemplate the consummation of technological history, in the same way as the production of great uncertainties, unlike some technocratic visions in which the telos of technology would be the establishing of a perfectly organized society from a rational techno-scientific point of view, or benevolent Total Management of the planet as a whole (Earth, and the ways of analysing the Earth System, are viewed through the optic of computational modelling and data generation by space satellites, not to mention the datasphere under construction (Elichirigoity, 1999)), perhaps by a Great Planetary Corps of Geo-engineers, or by minimizing technological uncertainties, or educating us to accept well-documented rational technological risks, for which they supply calculations and decision-making procedures, in place of the irrational, technophobic fear of “normal accidents” and highly unlikely

27

 On this topic, see Martins (2011d).

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technological disasters, on a scale which we in our day-to-lives take little note of.28 Secondly, the fact that the mechanization of (natural) life is proceeding apace through bio-engineering techniques does not necessarily mean that the current state of biological knowledge as a whole meets the strict requirements of advanced scientific knowledge according to the generally accepted criteria (which are obviously not consensual in every detail or in very case) of the philosophy of scientific understanding. It may happen that our stupendous, unprecedented and ever growing powers of biotechnological intervention will overtake our strictly scientific understanding of life, and that biology, as the science of natural life, will remain an “instrumental science”, a much better reflection of our special human interests and of our cognitive and computational limits than the physical sciences, as is argued by the philosopher of science and biology Alexander Rosenberg (1994). […]. […] In any event it seems clear that the Viquian era in the philosophy of technology, the era of verum and factum being interchangeable, the axiom of the epistemic superiority of the creator’s full knowledge of his work, of the artefact by its maker, of Bachelard’s “principle of sufficient construction”, has been brought unceremoniously to a close. Vico’s “god of artefacts”, Leibniz’s microtheos, is ready to give up his epistemic sovereignty and maybe even more, the artefacts of his artefacts: in a not too distant future, surviving humans will be in relation to the cyber-intelligent beings emerging in Techno-genesis (an extra-human “Second Creation”29 by technology or techno-science, revised and improved compared to the First), as “dogs trying to imagine general relativity” (Farmer, 1995: 370). We who are about to die salute you, oh cyber-intelligent beings! […]

References Arthur, W. B. (2010). The nature of technology: What it is and how it evolves. Penguin. Axelos, K. (1961). Marx penseur de la technique: De l’aliénation de l’homme à la conquête du monde. Éditions de Minuit. Basalla, G. (1988). The evolution of technology. Cambridge University Press. Benton, T. (Ed.). (1996). The greening of Marxism. The Guilford Press. Bernal, J. D. (1929). The world, the flesh and the devil: An enquiry into the future of the three enemies of the rational soul. Kegan Paul & Co. Bernard, C. (1966 [1865]). Introduction à l’étude de la médicine expérimentale. Flammarion. Brun, J. (1961). Les conquêtes de l’homme et la séparation ontologique. PUF. Bulliet, R. W. (1975). The camel and the wheel. Harvard University Press. Burkett, P. (1999). Marx and nature: A red and green perspective. St. Martin’s Press. Child, A. (1953). Making and knowing in Hobbes, Vico and Dewey. University of California Press.

 See Martins (2011e).  “Second Creation” has served as the title of various works by today’s scientists, for example the biologist whose name became associated with the most famous animal clone, Dolly. 28 29

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Perrow, C. (1999 [1984]). Normal accidents: Living with high-risk technologies. Princeton University Press. Peters, R. H. (1991). A critique for ecology. Cambridge University Press. Petroski, H. (1994). Design paradigms: Case histories of error and judgment in engineering. Cambridge University Press. Popper, K. (1935). The logic of scientific discovery. Hutchinson. Popper, K. (1972). Objective knowledge. Clarendon Press. Rosenberg, A. (1994). Instrumental biology or the disunity of science. The University of Chicago Press. Shapiro, J. (2000). Mao’s war against nature: Politics and the environment in revolutionary China. Cambridge University Press. Strauss, L. (1952). Persecution and the art of writing. Free Press. Tagliacozzo, G. (1983). Vico and Marx: Affinities and contrasts. Humanities Press. Taylor, J. S. (2005). Stakes and kidneys: Why markets in human body parts are morally imperative. Routledge. Tipler, F. J. (1995). The physics of immortality: Modern cosmology, god and the resurrection of the dead. Doubleday. Todes, D. P. (2002). Pavlov’s physiology factory: Experiment, interpretation and laboratory enterprise. Johns Hopkins University Press. Vico, G. (1968 [1744]). The new science (T.  G. Bergin & M.  H. Fisch, Trans.). Cornell University Press. Vico, G. (1988 [1710]). On the most ancient wisdom of the Italians: Unearthed from the origins of the Latin language (L. M. Palmer, Trans.). Cornell University Press. von Mises, R. (1950). Positivism. Harvard University Press. Weizenbaum, J. (1992 [1976]). O poder do computador e a razão humana: Do juízo ao cálculo. Edições 70. Hermínio Martins  (1934–2015) was professor emeritus at the University of Oxford (St. Antony’s College) and honorary researcher at the Instituto de Ciências Sociais, Universidade de Lisboa [Institute of Social Sciences, University of Lisbon]. Martins was born in Mozambique, a Portuguese colony at the time, in the city of Lourenço Marques (Maputo today). In exile from the Salazar dictatorship, he headed to England, where he obtained his undergraduate degree at the London School of Economics, where he studied sociology and the philosophy of science and scientific knowledge with Karl Popper, political philosophy with Michael Oakeshott, and had his post-graduate work supervised by Ernest Gellner. He was professor at the universities of Leeds, Essex, Pennsylvania, Harvard and Oxford. Among his publications on the philosophy of technology, the following stand out: Hegel, Texas e Outros Ensaios de Teoria Social [Hegel, Texas and Other Essays of Social Theory]; Experimentum Humanum: Civilização Tecnológica e Condição Humana ([Experimentum Humanum: Technological Civilization and Human Condition], Relógio D’Água, 2011; Fino Traço, 2012); The Technocene: Reflections on Bodies, Minds and Markets (ed. S. Ravi Rajan and Danielle Crawford, Anthem Press, 2018). (Editor’s note)

Chapter 4

Technique, Readiness-to-Hand and Development Álvaro Vieira Pinto Abstract  (added by the Editor)  In this chapter, the author seeks to define the essence of technique on the basis of the key concept of “readiness-to-hand”, derived from phenomenology. His explicit aim is to enable developing countries, like Brazil, to generate an internal dynamic which will raise them to higher planes of cultural life and human well-being. It is readiness-to-hand which establishes the relationship between consciousness and reality, in that the world presents itself to human beings as a space of possible actions through objects which “are to hand” and can be handled. For Vieira Pinto, however, understanding readiness-to-hand involves moving in the direction of materialism. Objects which are “ready-to-hand” are manufactured objects, the result of work. The way of doing – technique – is essentially doing in a new way, a new way of producing. For an underdeveloped country therefore, development depends on technical advance, in other words on a higher degree of readiness-to-hand. Keywords (added by the Editor)  Readiness-to-hand · Work · Technique · Development Editor’s note: This text is part of a longer chapter published in Portuguese under the title “Consciência ocupada e desenvolvimento” [Development and working consciousness] included in the first volume of the author’s book Consciência e Realidade Nacional [Conscience and National Reality] published in 1960. That chapter is made up of 9 sections, running from section (a) to section (i) (vol. 1, Rio de Janeiro, Instituto Superior de Estudos Brasileiros, 67−81). The chapter included here is a translation of sections (f) to (i), numbered 1−4 to provide consistency with the editorial criteria for this collection. The title of this chapter is my own responsibility, but I retained the section subtitles. The selected sections focus on the term amanualidade, translated here as “readiness-to-hand”, a key concept for understanding Vieira Pinto’s approach to technique which he ties to the notions of work and development/under-development. Vieira Pinto’s notion of readiness-­to-hand has a clear connotation to Heidegger. It emerged as a translation of the concept of Zuhandenheit by Francisco Soler, a Spanish philosopher and disciple of Ortega y Gasset and Julián Marías, and one of the first translators of Heidegger’s work into Spanish (Tiempo y Ser, in Filosofía, Ciencia y Técnica, 5th ed., 2007 [1984], Santiago do Chile, Editorial Universitaria, 287−320, especially p. 295). In English, Zuhandenheit appears as “readiness-to-hand”, in the glossary of Being and Time (translated by J. Macquarrie and E. Robinson, 1962, Oxford, Basil Blackwell),

A. V. Pinto (Deceased) (*) © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 H. M. Jerónimo (ed.), Portuguese Philosophy of Technology, Philosophy of Engineering and Technology 43, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-14630-5_4

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4.1 The Concept of Readiness-to-Hand: The World as Given and the World as Made My earlier reflections argued that, for developing countries to achieve economic emancipation, there is a need for a philosophy whose central assertion is as follows: it is work which reveals reality, to the extent that it constantly changes that reality. If we plan to transform the country, on the basis that the present state of affairs is unsatisfactory, and if we are aware that an ideological framework is necessary to this end, we must put together the ideology of that change, rooting it in a deep understanding of the essence of work as an existential category. Because they are directly contrary to the national interest, all forms of speculation should be discouraged which distract our attention from that decisive concept, creative work, and which direct our minds to abstract, quintessential, literary thinking and to cold, rigorous logical analyses which may be coherent, but are sterile. Once the key notion of work and its role in defining practice have been understood, it becomes a philosophical topic of prime importance, and we need to research its several varieties and the way they determine individual consciousness. In this way the actual content of practice will be revealed, and the logical implications and categorising ideas it defines will be strictly induced from real lived experience, thus avoiding what would be a methodological inconsistency, namely seeing practice in general terms, as all the types of material activity carried on in society, as revealed most significantly in the field of the class struggle. It is of vital importance to provide a conceptual framework which co-relates the emergence of different types of awareness of the national reality with personal practice, basically the nature of work carried out by the individual. The proposed research will, moreover, elucidate and allow us to correct a useful concept brought to light by existential philosophy and which only in this way will achieve objective meaning. This is the idea of “readiness-to-hand” [amanualidade]. Those who subscribed to this line of thought saw that the world presents itself to human beings as a space of possible actions through objects around them, to be taken up as tools. So their most immediate determination is that they are confronted with something which “is to hand”, and it was this characteristic which gave rise to

but this does not mean that Vieira Pinto’s concept of amanualidade fully matches the interpretation of Zuhandenheit in Heidegger. For the English-speaking reader wishing to understand Vieira Pinto’s thought, there are few references to draw on, but I can mention two relevant works: (a) Costa, B. A., and Martins, A. E. M. (2020). Álvaro Vieira Pinto on the concept of technology: an introductory discussion. O Que Nos Faz Pensar 29(47), 108−123, available at: http://www.oquenosfazpensar.fil.puc-­rio.br/index.php/oqnfp/article/view/725; (b) Grohmann, R. (2016). Humanist and materialist perspectives on communication: The work of Álvaro Vieira Pinto. Triple C Communication, Capitalism & Critique 14(2), 438−450, available at: https://www.triple-­c.at/ index.php/tripleC/article/view/743. These articles, and the essay by Vieira Pinto included here, which is not under copyright, were suggested to me by Rodrigo Gonzatto and Luiz Merkle, the leaders of the Rede de Estudos Álvaro Vieira Pinto [Álvaro Vieira Pinto Study Network] (http:// www.alvarovieirapinto.org/). I thank them both for their invaluable assistance.

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the concept of “readiness-to-hand”. In effect, the objectiveness becomes accessible to Man through the readiness-to-hand of circumstantial entities [entes] which precede action. It is with these, thanks to their inherent readiness-to-hand, and in a broader context the fact that they are accessible to our sense perception, that the representation of the world develops in our consciousness. This is the immediate, primary cycle of that representation, while in the background lies the horizon of that indeterminate objectiveness which only gradually takes shape as our ability to apprehend grows – or rather, our ability to “grasp” the entities that are there, “to take hold of them with our hands”. This is a fertile concept which was extensively explored by the existential phenomenologists, although they produced a confused, idealistic, metaphysical interpretation of it; it seems to me that one of its most important aspects was not properly emphasized. In many cases, objects which are shown to be things by virtue of their ‘ready-to-hand’ nature, are in truth manufactured objects. Humans can handle them, but to that end they first had to be produced. And they could only be produced because the materials they are made of, and all the other ingredients, were available for the action of the creative agent involved, according to a more primitive form of handling, that of rough substances. The nature of readiness-to-hand implies a gradation of the types of handling. Contrary to what the theory leads us to believe, there is no single type or form of handling. But what lies behind this gradation of the “ready-to-hand”? Work. It is one thing to play with some clay, quite another to hold a bowl to drink, and yet another to hold it up and handle it to appreciate the beauty of the design and colour given it by the art of ceramic workmanship. In these three imaginary situations, we have examples of the same material, but three distinct types of handling, representing three ways of being, with all that this implies for the particular meaning of each one; and the difference between each of these three ways is the operation of the worker, who in each case impresses on the original rough substance the properties which determine the various possible ways of handling it. In effect, it is work which raises the objective reality from one level of readiness-to-hand to another, and with that elevation to another level the object concomitantly takes on new characteristics. In analysing the perception of most of the things which constitute our world, it is essential to emphasize this feature, because it is almost always forgotten: that these things were made, that they had a cost in the form of work. This is the essential element in their make-up, and must be included when we are assessing their true nature. It is precisely this element, however, which is missing in the concept of readiness-to-hand. It is noted as a property, without taking into account the evidence that in many cases the object was manufactured: it is attributed to the world in general, without considering the distinction between the material and the artefact when examining the perception of the real. This equates to reducing all objective reality to the objective reality of original Nature. The external world thus appears to be a primitive natural world, when in fact much of it – precisely that field in which civilized life is increasingly taking place, is produced by man’s creative action. The concept of readiness-to-hand may conceal a significant aspect of the reality of things, in omitting the fact that many of them are the products of art, and thereby

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attributing a misleading uniformity to objectiveness. Nevertheless the concept, once duly corrected, should be welcomed, because it takes us to an active rather than contemplative conception of reality, showing that the work done on the world “which is to hand”, our world, is what effectively transforms it. Existential philosophers look at man’s presence in the world as it is and as he will face it, as if it were purely and simply given, when in truth it is mostly made. If indeed it is made, that means two things: first, that it has been made by work and secondly, for that very reason, it is historic. Both these aspects are overlooked when formulating the concept of readiness-to-hand, which thus remains an item of abstract epistemology, and is not incarnated in actual properties, meaning concrete things. We should therefore rectify the concept so as to incorporate these new features in it, so that it will gain greater significance as an epistemological category. In incorporating the first of these, the idea of readiness-to-hand enters into the realm of practice, and brings with it the very objectivity of the world. The readiness-to-hand of the object is seen as being the result of an act of work, at the conclusion of which that thing is given because it has been made. The “made” quality imbues the object with the full sum of the work it cost to make it – not the work of blind, fatal forces of Nature but rather of human effort. And it is from this last that the readiness-to-­ hand of the manufactured object derives. If, as the theory goes, it is this “being to hand” which enables us to know the essence of the object, it can then be said that the object is the product of the hand that made it, given to the hand which knows it. The objectiveness is thus charged with existential meaning, the thing is Man making it in material form. The notion of the economic value of the object as being derived from the amount of work applied to it is just one particular aspect of this broader concept, which sees in the reality of the artefact a manifestation of the human being. This very conclusion leads us to the second aspect mentioned above. In discovering the ready-to-hand meaning of the object as manifestation of productive effort, we at the same time discover its necessary definition in historical time. The existential view of readiness-to-hand needs to be tied constantly to the dynamics of history. The readiness-to-hand of the world is above all the readiness-to-hand of that set of tools which a given stage of the cultural process has managed to produce. Forgetting the correlation of the “being-to-hand” character of things and our interest in them, which is an effect of the collective way of being aware of the world, meant that it was practically necessary to transform the concept into an abstract category. And this is indeed what happened to many of those who engaged in speculations on it. The readiness-to-hand of the entity is historically variable: that which is practised at a given moment in time is that which enables the people of that time to grasp the objectiveness of the world, as it actually is in that particular stage of historical development. It depends strictly on the type and quantity of objects manufactured in that stage of the culture. In effect, it is as a function of already possessed knowledge of things that other things are discovered or produced; but knowledge means trade between human beings and the inner entities of the world, it means “concern” and practical manual familiarity with a certain type of surrounding world, through

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handling the objects in that world. The emergence of any new object, through the revelation of its presence “to hand”, thus presupposes an ever-increasing wealth of perceptions, which is culture itself as a historical fact. Every individual finds the world populated by the objects which the age into which he was born was able to produce, at the stage in which the economic and cultural life of his community finds itself. The revelation of the world, through the readiness-to-hand of things, takes place by always bringing the historical character of manufacturing into play, and relates to the then existing forces of production, relations of production, and degree of intellectual progress. As Man manufactures an ever-increasing number of things, through civilizational progress, these artificial things come to constitute the world in which he operates, while natural things are gradually left further behind, in an imprecise backdrop of amorphous materiality. For primitive man, who manufactures little, the world is not revealed as history, in truth it is pure Nature, because he only manipulates objects which he finds existing in their natural state. He is limited to apprehending the properties of those objects by hand and using them. But this “use” leads progressively to the possibility of manufacturing things which were not given to him in Nature. With this, artefacts start to be produced until, in the current stage of civilization, these are so numerous and so significant for life that it may be said they constitute the immediate field in which objectivity becomes real. When in thinking about a theory of knowledge we take a table or bed as an example of a “thing”, as an ancient thinker did, we inadvertently bind our speculations to a manufactured object, without considering the implications of that attitude. In taking the table as an example, we believe we are representing an object in general terms, but this is not true at all. It makes a difference whether we take a table or a stone as our example, to the extent that, in ignoring this distinction, we draw conclusions on the thinking process which we believe to be the only legitimate conclusions, whereas in fact they are not. The modern world is increasingly a world of manufactured goods. The ready-to-­ hand becomes predominantly the artificial object. However, everything produced is what it is by virtue of the production processes and knowledge existing in a given society, in the degree of historical advance it has achieved. If today’s society has succeeded in manufacturing such a large number of products that these are the dominant element in the forms of human life, the world revealed through them is much more the world of history than the world of Nature. As a product of history, the result of cultural progress, this world is the world created by human work. Thus when Man develops his vital practice, primarily through work, starting out from a given position in the social space, that position is the result of the work of earlier generations. We may conclude also that in this second aspect, of practice being conditioned by social position, it too is dependent on work. In fact, the essence of practice is work, in the dual meaning of individual work and historically accumulated work. Each man’s practice is defined not only by his own efforts, but by the cumulative effort of all those who preceded him, and which produced the configuration of the collective situation in which he will occupy a particular position, out of which he

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operates against the resistance of what will be his “environment”, which is merely the remainder of the common life to which he belongs.

4.2 Industrialization and Knowledge of the World Bearing the above in mind, it is necessary to highlight an aspect relating to the historicity of the ready-to-hand nature of things which seems to us also not to have been studied. Knowing that the readiness-to-hand which reveals the material world is a function of a moment in history, we may immediately see that readiness-to-hand depends on each nation’s state of development. Since all countries are not on the same level in terms of progress, the historicity of the ready-to-hand character dictates that this take on a different meaning according to whether we are dealing with a developed or underdeveloped country. In a less developed country, the objective context is poorer in products manufactured by humans, because at its stage of development it has less scientific and technological know-how and is less wealthy. For the inhabitants of this country, the ready-to-hand is mostly made up of natural entities and roughly manufactured objects. The world seen from this aspect is necessarily different to the world seen by one who looks at it from the point of view of a highly industrialised society. When a community enters the historic phase in which the most valuable part of production is devoted to making objects, it not only changes its way of life, but alters the knowledge of the world. Because the world reveals itself through the objects it makes available for handling. This is the crux of our understanding of the effects on humanity of industrialisation in underdeveloped countries. Empirically we already knew that the transformation of an industrializing community is complete and that it extends to all the ramifications of life and behaviour. Now however, we are able to define the philosophical principles which explain why this happens. The establishment and progress of industry produces a qualitative change in the context of human life, providing it with an ever closer and more pervasive quantity of manufactured things, rather than just natural things, so that the readiness-to-hand of being increasingly becomes that of the entities produced by industry; and because the world is known through the practice based on that readiness-to-hand, it is clear that awareness of reality will be different now to that which existed previously, when the ready-to-hand was mostly purely physical circumstance. The world thus constituted will define for Man the possibility of practice, leading to conscious subjectivity, and from here it is clear that industrialization, comprising a universe of hitherto absent beings, will lead the individual and the community to a qualitatively different stage of consciousness from that which they might have when they were still parked in the primary phases of development.

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4.3 Overcoming Underdevelopment by the Accumulation of Work It was important to emphasize this change in consciousness by demonstrating that for under-developed countries, readiness-to-hand which applies to a set of objects produced by a less advanced stage of the manufacturing process uncovers a world which is different from that which is revealed to economically more powerful peoples. But this vision of the less wealthy consciousness contains a significant operative factor. Even though the reality unveiled to Man in the underdeveloped country is something derived from his own surroundings, it includes a perception that the historical environment to which he belongs is surrounded by another which is economically and culturally superior to it. When one understand this difference, naturally the question arises as to why it exists, and the search begins to find ways of eliminating it. Now, those who reflect on the world’s historical development, in the attempt to shed light on why some nations are more advanced than others, are likely to conclude that development is the result of a process of accumulation of work. Once this is accepted, we have an answer to how to replace the less developed stage with the more advanced stage: it is imperative that underdeveloped countries embark on a plan to accumulate work, this being the only way to raise them up to the higher planes of cultural life and human well-being. And what does this useful accumulation consist of? To answer this question, we need to distinguish between types of work accumulation, given that not every attempt to increase the effort of work will produce development. Only that accumulation of work effort which has the dialectical characteristics of a “historical process” will do that. In effect, the mere reiteration of work generates mere quantitative accumulation. This does not have the characteristics of a historical process. The millennial repetition of identical ways of tilling the soil, of moulding and baking clay to make domestic utensils, of weaving essential cloth, of casting metal to make weapons and tools – is not a useful way of accumulating work, because it merely repeats the same formative acts on the same raw materials. Its outcome is only the quantitative multiplication of products, not their qualitative improvement. The great significance of the different types of work accumulation lies in discerning that the first type, which increases the goods manufactured by the community in number only, cannot be qualified as process, which only occurs when the work of a given society is consciously applied not to producing “more”, but to producing “new”. In this second sense, accumulation consists of taking advantage of a given outcome of the work as a means of obtaining a new result, thanks to a resourceful effort of invention and to work of a different kind – a new result which has an unprecedented effect, and is something qualitatively different from the previous product. When this occurs, the two forms of work in question, the old and the new, cease to be a repetition of the other. There is now a dialectical relationship between them, of means and ends, which renders the sequence of these two forms not just chronological but also historic. A qualitatively original form of work signifies a higher stage, and the community which is now able to carry it out is more

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highly developed than the other community which persists in the routine work of traditional procedures. This analysis of the dialectical nature of work and the discovery of each type of process attaching to its ways of accumulation is of capital importance for our objectives. This is because one of the modalities of poorly advised consciousness is that which deems it possible to correct the inferior status of the country by simply working harder, arguing for “increased productivity” as the solution for national development – a solution which is very convenient for those who exploit the work of the working masses. By way of a simplistic diagnosis, this argument arrives at the ingenuous idea that, in the Brazilian case, our backwardness is due to the people’s congenital laziness and indolence. This is a wholly inadequate notion, as we shall see below, not only because of its naivety, but also because it is not the quantitative accumulation of work which generates development but the qualitative, which uses the results of the common, socially prevalent methods of production to achieve other, different results. This “new” aspect of work is what produces development. It is thanks to this that a community rises to a higher historical plane. As, however, it is always a question of obtaining material products, we have here to touch on the question of the nature of that qualitative change in work, inquiring as to the characteristics which endow a given human operation with a value which is substantially “greater” than that possessed by another, used for the same purpose. Now, that which qualitatively defines a way of doing is what is called technique. And this brings us to the question of the philosophy of technique.

4.4 The Philosophy of Technique: The Inertia of Technique, and Technique as Invention Even based on the little that has been stated so far, it is legitimate to expand on this much-discussed topic. It seems to us that the essence of technique, that which gives it the quality of process, is the qualitative accumulation of work. In effect, we have to differentiate between its two meanings: one, according to which technique is know-how, the way of doing something well, in the form of carrying out the acts required for the pursuit of a certain result, with the greatest possible economy of time and resources. In this first sense, technique is the careful repetition of approved and learned acts, as being the most effective for producing a useful effect: this is equivalent to technique as human mastery of “doing well”. In social terms, it is advantageous to disseminate and cultivate this aspect of technique, because it is the method which makes it possible to establish the relations of production for a time and provides consistency to the social structure. It is because of this aspect that technique becomes an instrument for quantitative increases in production. It is the conservative aspect of technique, seen as maintaining the ways of doing which were shown to be the most suitable, it is technique as social memory of doing things well.

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While the function of technique in this form may be useful, it should be noted that there is inertia in technique, in the sense that generally agreed procedures and methods which have been approved as being the most advantageous and productive tend to become established and to resist changes aimed at achieving better results. In this respect, technique has a reactionary aspect, and may even become a regressive factor if it obstinately refuses to yield to innovation. Such resistance is understandable in terms of social awareness, if we recall that the progressive, qualitative transformation of technique involves abandoning a whole arsenal of machinery, a world of familiar objects, ideas and ways of handling which have been learned and have become habits, in favour of new tools and processes which upset economic life and demand mental effort. It is not by chance that so-called technicians, as qualified members of the middle class, are some of the most respectable representatives of that naïve consciousness, and belong to the most reactionary sections of the community. The essence of technique is not, however, in “doing well”, but in “doing new”. In effect, the word “technique” is merely a translation of the Greek term which meant to produce, in general terms. In this second sense, technique is essentially the creation of a new way of doing, invention by nature. It is inventive because it seeks to achieve something better by better means. It is precisely this analytical trait, this “better way” which uncovers the heart of technique. Because there is no a priori “better way”; no method or process is anything other than what it is, no one method is essentially or absolutely and definitively “the best”. Every procedure allows for speculation as to the possibility of transforming it, with the intention of finding another which may be “better”. Technique is finding this other, because it is a new way of producing. At the same time as a new method of manufacturing emerges, so too that which it produces emerges as new. How does this substitution of the old by the new take place? It takes place through the motion of the creative spirit which, based on knowledge of the old procedure, jumps to the new way of doing. What appears to be the old way is in fact the established way of working, it is that which society, in its state at that moment, knows as the best way of arriving at the sought-after result. Consequently technique will affect that existing work method and put the new and more perfect way on top of it. So it is literally an accumulation of work, in a form different from the reiteration of the method of production: it becomes the invention of original and better procedures. It is a historic sedimentation of qualitatively different overlaid ways of working, revealing the nature of the “process” of technical development. A qualitative change has taken place in the world of work, with clear social benefits. “Technique” is recognized as such only through the suggestion of another, beneficial way of doing things, benefits which are defined by some type of value. Another analytical field opens up here, in the understanding of how the social acceptance of “technique” as “novelty” binds to current values, and the extent to which the imperative need for the new practical procedure, which must be adopted, forces society to change its traditional standards of value. Despite the significant issues raised, these topics will not occupy us here, however, because they are for the time being collateral. It is the notion of technique as invention which concerns us

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here, and merits being explored further. It is self-evident that invention happens on top of that which already exists. If it were not so, it would be creation ex nihilo. Invention consists, therefore, in a change to something which already exists, namely the effect of current ways of being and producing in a given society. This analysis boils down to examining the bond between that which exists, out of habit, and innovation. A present given fact is preserved by repetition of existing ways of producing it. While repetition preserves the status quo, it also stimulates the human imagination to change it and dialectically provides the means of severing it because, in carrying out or observing this work, man is naturally led to seek the same result by more efficient means. He yields to the game of trial and error, in which imagination enters into dialogue with reality until, in the course of that confrontation and tension, intelligence grasps the new property of the real, or a new and hitherto unknown potential for agency. In handling objects, a moment arises when the surface of the real cracks: it loses the wholeness it has in ordinary representations and reveals a new aspect or meaning which is immediately understood by the intelligent mind. This would not be discovered by abstract analysis, because it is only by dealing with things experimentally, with a view to transforming them, that the opportunities arise for reality to open up in this way, and for the intelligence then to penetrate the resulting gap. Outside the realm of the formal or the imaginary, invention is necessarily the fruit of working on things, of using them, of that conscious attitude which we generally call “wanting the world”. Such terms help us to understand the desire to make the world, to be the creators of the world, and not just contemplate it. The original source of technique is therefore this “wanting the world”. In operating on the real, we open up a new perspective on making it, and making it in line with that new perspective is the new technique. If this new technique then gains social acceptance, it becomes established and generates a qualitative accumulation of work in relation to the old procedures. The same situation will be repeated as this new procedure in turn becomes an old procedure, until the day comes when, just as it replaced the old by negating formerly prevailing methods, its very disappearance will generate the new way of doing which replaces it. It is obvious that this is a movement which can only be correctly understood with help of historical categories. In this text we hope to have drawn attention to a relatively little discussed side of the discussion on the nature of technique and its effects on society. Technique is fundamentally a historical process. As such, it should be understood using the concepts which shape that which is called a “process”, in other words, as an element in the totality of the situation of society at any given moment. It is not right to talk of technique in general, without placing it in a social context, a given system of production, and in a given historical moment. A set of actions and procedures can only be considered technical in relation to the overall status of a society, which is why that which on one society is regarded as “technique” is not so considered in another. Only in particular contexts do those actions take on the more eminent meaning of technical acts, being distinct from others which may achieve the same result but are seen as trivial. Milking cows has been a human act since time immemorial, but provided it is performed with due regard for certain antiseptic rules

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or even by pneumatic machines, it becomes a technique in which society sees a superior mode of production. Viewed in this way, technique cannot be confused with the horizontal distribution of pragmatic knowledge in society. It is above all the effort which the community makes in order to improve a method of manufacturing of necessary goods, by changing its usual procedures. Creating the new out of the old is therefore development. We establish this fact, through which the theory of development summarily comes down to us, and which we may express in the following proposition: the historical process of national development is constituted by developing technical processes of production. That is why national development is necessarily dependent on technical advance. Underdeveloped countries can only hope to attain the level of the more advanced countries if they are not condemned to repeat the historical chain of events which enabled the latter to arrive at the point they now are. Of course, if they had to repeat it, the time lags would be the same, and the flow of history would never raise the standard of living of the more backward nations. But it is a property of technique that it determines the increasing acceleration of the rate of invention: the ease with which each new technique increases production brings with it a shortening of the time during which it remains in force, not only because large-scale handling of raw materials and tools leads to quicker discovery of new properties in them, but also because beating the competition depends on discovering new processes. Hence the rapid ageing of each particular technique. Technical know-how spreads increasingly quickly throughout the world, so the more backward countries can benefit by incorporating them in order to shorten the distance which separates them from the more prosperous countries. In this way the prosperous countries, in attempting to distance themselves even further, contribute to those coming after them getting closer to them faster. In fact, they can only progress in their development by creating techniques which increasingly perfect production. The dominant centre seeks to have the peripheral regions consume that improved production, but this leads to the dissemination of the productive processes and thus spares the backward countries the work of having to discover them for themselves – in turn giving them the means to overcome their state of underdevelopment. It can thus be seen that national development is closely tied to the possibility of directing the country onto a path of technological revolution. There can be no other foundation for the right educational policy for nations wishing to shorten the time taken to achieve economic emancipation. They need to redouble their efforts to take possession of fruitful techniques as fast as possible, with full awareness that they should do this because acquiring that know-how is the most effective path to development. These countries will not be able to overcome their economic backwardness other than by clear and determined political action directing the community to undertake a huge effort of capital accumulation to fund technical progress. Increasing low-quality productivity will not take it out of underdevelopment, if it is not accompanied by changes in methods of production. In effect, an increase in production volumes may momentarily ease social pressure, but it will not alter living standards. The people will only consume more of the sub-standard product they already

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consume. It is necessary to change the method of production, thus providing the country with a higher level of economic life. The required change is qualitative, not just quantitative. *** These thoughts were suggested by the concept of readiness-to-hand, which we encountered in attempting to clarify the meaning of practice in the emergence of a national consciousness. It has been useful to develop them in order to specify aspects which might have gone unnoticed by those who would limit themselves to absorbing those ideas uncritically and under the influence of an addictive a-­historicity, which turns them into ideals. To talk of the “ready-to-hand” nature of the world, but not to mention which historical world this refers to, is to remain at the level of abstract gnosiology, which speaks of the real but does not do so realistically. The philosophy of existence, in this respect, is nothing more than habitual, classic empiricism, in the idealistic manner of conceiving the relationship between thought and reality. For both these conceptions, knowledge is based on external experience, and is derived from it, from the world which is “is there”, as “brute existence” and which, those schools believe, we come to know in the act of apprehending it or taking our representations from it. They lack the understanding, however, that that world is always a country, with a certain social structure, at a particular stage of development of its culture and economic resources, at a given moment in history. Álvaro Borges Vieira Pinto  (1909–1987) qualified in medicine in 1932 at the National Faculty of Medicine, and studied Sciences (including Physics and Mathematics) at the University of the Federal District in the mid-thirties, both in Rio de Janeiro. In 1950, he defended his thesis on Cosmology in Plato and became professor of the history of philosophy at the Faculdade Nacional de Filosofia [National Philosophy Faculty], and was invited to attend the Sorbonne. In 1955 he was head of the Department of Philosophy at the then recently established Instituto Superior de Estudos Brasileiros (ISEB) [Higher Institute of Brazilian Studies]. In 1962 he became executive director of the ISEB. The ISEB was abolished following the military coup of 1964, and Vieira Pinto went into exile in the then Yugoslavia and later in Chile. He translated works such as those of Arnold Toynbee, Arthur Clarke, Parmenides, Immanuel Kant, Karl Jaspers, Noam Chomsky, Jean Piaget, and Claude Lévi-Strauss, Bronislaw Malinowsky, and Ludwig von Bertalanffy, among others. His publications include:  Ideologia e Desenvolvimento Nacional ([Ideology and National Development], MEC, ISEB, 1956], Consciência e Realidade Nacional ([Conscience and National Reality], ISEB, 1960, 2 vols.], Ciência e Existência: Problemas Filosóficos da Pesquisa Cientifica ([Science and Existence: Philosophical Problems in Scientific Research], Paz e Terra, 1969]), Sete Lições sobre Educação de Adultos ([Seven Lessons on the Education of Adults], Cortez Editora, 1982) and the two posthumous volumes of O Conceito de Tecnologia ([The Concept of Technology], Contraponto, 2005 [1973–1974]). (Editor's note)

Chapter 5

Three Essays on Technique, the Artificial and the New Human Vilém Flusser Abstract (added by the Editor)  This chapter brings together three short articles, written at different times, which have not been published in English. The first essay, “The living and the artificial”, gives an account of the convergence of two trends: the production of artificial objects which mimic human behaviour and the artificial programming of human behaviour. Both are outcomes of Western culture and of a conception of the object-world of a transcendent subject. Both move in the direction of an object which is artificially alive and to the artificially mechanised man. This, involving the “materialization of the spirit”, threatens to do away with the “transcendent subject” and annihilate humanity. The second essay, “Towards the new man”, examines the issue of technological domination and the subsequent alteration and decline of values. This “absurd” replacement of models of behaviour by modes of operation, by pseudo-values, by technocracy, by the absence of decision-making and engagement, of post-humanity, raises the prospect of a “new man”, he who will live and consume, a passive and patient being, lacking agency, indecisive, without values. The third essay, “Technique as argument”, reflects on the paradox of our living in a world which is produced by a specific type of “magic” – technique –, but in which at the same time the faith in that magic is profoundly undermined. This is because we no longer believe that the operation of technique is due to the “wisdom” of the “pure science” which sustains it, and also because the potency of the novelty it may bring has been used to maintain the existing structures of a hollowed out civilizational project. Today technique is a mere argument, one which is apparently progressive but in fact conservative. Are we able to read into these three essays of Flusser’s an appeal for a technique which might offer us a true vision of the new? Keywords (added by the Editor)  Artificial · Programmed artifice · Programmed man · New man · Death of humanism · Miracle of technique · Faith in scientism Editor’s note: This chapter includes three short, separate essays hitherto unpublished in English. Publication details are in the subsequent footnotes. I would like to thank Rodrigo Maltez Novaes for this information and for having translated the essays. The three essays cover topics to which Flusser attached major importance. They put forward arguments which are quintessentially representative of his thought. Essays reproduced with the kind permission of Flusser’s son, Miguel Flusser. V. Flusser (Deceased) (*)

© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 H. M. Jerónimo (ed.), Portuguese Philosophy of Technology, Philosophy of Engineering and Technology 43, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-14630-5_5

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5.1 The Living and the Artificial1 Two tendencies are converging today: one that produces artificial objects, which imitate human behaviour progressively better, and another that is programming human behaviour so it becomes an artificial, predictable and manipulable motion. At the point where these two tendencies converge, which is already not very distant, any distinction between artificial motion and living motion, between object and man, will become inoperative. It is already difficult to distinguish between work produced by robots and human agents, and between artificial and human intelligences. In addition, the interlocking cogwheels of artificial motion and human motion have become so complex that to say automated apparatus function for men and men function for apparatus, amounts to the same thing. Seen from this angle, there is no doubt that the theme the living and the artificial, the Festival’s theme, is one of the greatest concerns, and one of the greatest challenges for today. The two currently converging tendencies spring from the very bottom of Western culture, from the depths of Westerner’s being-in-the-world. What characterizes the world in which we Westerners find ourselves is that it is a transcendent world; a world that allows itself to be contemplated and manipulated from without; an object-­ world for a transcendent subject. Such a worldview is inscribed in Greek and Jewish myths (of the demiurge and of the Creator), and when these two myths were synthesized in Christianity, they became the West’s program. The transcendent space originally occupied by the Divine demiurge is becoming accessible to man, so that he can, from there, know and modify the objects of the world. Such a transcendent space becomes the place for philosophy, science, technique, politics and art. The West’s program is to know and modify all objects in the world, including man and society, which are themselves becoming objects of knowledge and of modifying action. The transcendent subject is programmed by our culture to objectify everything, including himself, and the current convergence of tendencies towards animated objects and the programming of human behaviour can be seen as the ultimate achievement of the Western program. End game. For most non-Western cultures, man is not a subject of the world, but an intra-­ worldly presence. His spirit, his soul, is but a rarefied aggregate of mundane matter, a shadow, a spectre (spiritualism, metempsychosis). For Western culture, the human subject is dialectically opposed to the objective world, there is no intermediate stage between them; there is only the realization of the subject and the idealization of the object in the form of work. The set of works, culture, is, for Western man, the only possible and desired materialization of the spirit and spiritualization of matter. The  Editor’s note: This section reproduces the essay O Vivo e o Artificial [The Living and the Artificial], published in  French in  the  catalogue of  the  conference Le Vivant et l’Artificiel at  the  Avignon Festival in 1984 (Marseille: Sgraffite, 1985) and in Portuguese in Revista Shalom (July 1984). 1

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current convergence of the two tendencies shows that we are approaching such a programmed goal: robots and artificial intelligences are our shadows, and we, who think and act like such intelligences and robots, are becoming spectres. And it does not make much sense to want to distinguish between shadow and spectre from now on. Both are materialized spirit and spiritualized matter. The gloomy and spectral climate surrounding the emerging circumstance (and which clearly emanates from the technical images and the automatic functioning of the gigantic apparatus, as are the State, political parties, multinationals or the unions) can be grasped if we consider the thermo-nuclear war that threatens us. These are several interlocking super-apparatus, within which intelligent and robotic artificial objects, and programmed human functionaries are co-implicated, and which move automatically towards the annihilation of humanity. The annihilation of humanity is inscribed in the super-apparatus program so that it will necessarily take place, although it will happen by chance. The same goes for all automatic apparatus and for all programmed human behaviour: they are all systems that function according to the principle of chance and become a necessity. Materialized spirit and spiritualized matter are automatic things, that is to say: they move without deliberation, at random, but necessarily. The two tendencies that currently converge towards the ultimate realization of the Western program were not, at the beginning of our culture, experienced as converging. They were taken to be tendencies independent of each other. The tendency towards the production of objects imitating the living was seen as technique and art. The tendency towards the manipulation of men to behave automatically was seen as political or socio-psychological. The invention of the lever or the steam engine was considered to be ethically neutral, the invention of feudalism, capitalism or socialism to be ethically charged (positively or negatively). Certainly, it was always known that one tendency influences the other: steam engines and capitalism are interconnected. And there was always intermediate ground: that of manipulating non-human living beings. It was always known that to create animals and plants is to artificialize the living. However, the thought that steam engines, dairy cows and workers in the production line were all products of a development towards the vivification of the inanimate and towards the artificialization of the living did not prevail in the past. The invention of large-scale automatic apparatus, and the subsequent miniaturization of such apparatus, with the consequent transformation of workers into functionaries, however, made it clear how much technique, art, politics and psycho-sociology are co-implied, and that vivifying the artificial implies artificializing the living. And above all, there were two automatic apparatus that raised awareness of the convergence of both processes: Auschwitz and computers. Auschwitz showed how a programmed apparatus could annihilate not only men programmed as objects but even their own programmers. And the computer showed how an apparatus programmed to mimic human decisions could make those of its programmers redundant. Henceforth the thought that the tendency towards automation is manifested in both artifices and men, and that it manifests itself simultaneously in both, becomes a heavy burden on our shoulders.

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In order to converge in the direction of the tendency towards the programmed artifice and the programmed man, towards the artificially living object and the artificially mechanized man, it is necessary to achieve transcendence far removed from the concrete world. Transcendence that allows us to conceive, imagine and manipulate the world, not as a set of solid objects, but as a set of specific elements that can be calculated and computed. Since it became possible to break down objects into elementary particles, living beings into elementary genetic information, gestures and movements into elementary acts, and human thoughts into elementary bits, it has also become possible to manipulate such elements, to compute them and program them. It has become possible to produce programmed artificial objects (for example chemicals), programmed artificial living things (for example viruses), programmed artificial gestures (for example robots), and programmed artificial thoughts (for example computers). For at such a level of transcendence the difference between the living and the non-living disappears. Broken down into specific elements, everything becomes computable, automatable, be it an inanimate object, animal, plant, man or society. Both tendencies converge. To compute means to join together clear and distinct elements, to integrate the intervals, to project the elements onto lines, surfaces, volumes, and processes. And such a joining of elements is basically a probability calculation; to join elements and make them result, at random, in improbable forms; to inform the chaotic set of elements and the fields of virtualities. To compute is to make improbable situations arise within the field of virtualities. For example, photography is the computation of the effects of photons onto silver nitrate molecules in a way that results in an improbable situation: an image. Another example: a strike is the computation of elementary gestures of a given social group to result in an improbable situation: factory stoppage. In both examples, the functioning of the computed program is evident: the transformation of the accident (photon, molecule and human gestures) into information that is improbable, but calculable (predictable). And in both examples, it is evident that the distinction between inanimate and living objects (photon and man) is no longer operative. Both tendencies converge. Certainly, one can argue that the transcendent human subject, although eliminated from the world (from individual and social behaviour), remains within the program’s program: the end of politics, but the beginning of the free game of world programming. The strike programmers are free, not the workers on strike. The programmers of the war apparatus are free, not humanity, threatened with thermo-­ nuclear death. However, programmers themselves, when programming, obey certain programs, and to look for the ultimate programmer behind the ultimate program is a metaphysical search in the pejorative meaning of the term. So that the convergence of the tendency towards the automation of artifices and of men, being thus the ultimate materialization of the spirit, will end up eliminating the transcendent subject, the foundation of the West. End game. However, we are not there yet, we are not yet confusing the artificial and the living. We still transcend, no matter how much, the functioning of apparatus and functionaries, encompassed by such apparatus. We can still distinguish, albeit with certain difficulties, between word-processor and shorthand, between apparatus

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decision (State, military, or computer) and human existential decision. And may such transcendence we have left become the place for the Avignon Festival, so that we may, at the eleventh hour, retake the reins of both tendencies that point towards the stupid necessity of the accident.

5.2 Towards the New Man2 Within the multiplicity of tendencies at work in our situation, one stands out: that which points to the increasing domination of the scene by technology. If we define technology as the application of scientific theories and scientific methods to the field of values, then increasing technological domination implies the modification of values. As the values of the recent past are derived from a structure called humanism, the increasing technological domination implies a modification, or perhaps overcoming, of humanism. Our perplexity is due to our inability to grasp intellectually and imaginatively a post-humanist situation; although we know that we are moving towards it. We are modern men, that is, men in the process of being overcome, and we are unable to grasp the new man, let alone sympathize with him. The present considerations are intended to illustrate the problem. I will first draw a distinction between technology and ideology. Let us say technology is the manipulation of operational (scientific) models and ideology the manipulation of behavioural models (values). Technology’s models are provisional and replaceable, ideology’s models are considered valid and permanent. Technology’s models are universally accepted; ideology’s models have opponents and adherents. Technology’s provisional and universal character is opposed to ideology’s static and polemic character. The victory of technology would be (and probably will be) the death of ideology. And, more specifically, the death of ideologies that are inspired by scientific models, but which transform such models into valid and permanent, as well as presenting their apologia; in other words, the death of scientising ideologies, because they are humanism’s type of ideologies (for example the various liberal ideologies and Marxism, and, in a caricature sense, also fascism). The victory of technology would be (and probably will be) the death of humanism. Secondly, I will try to consider the difference between operational and behavioural models a little more closely. Operational models say how something can be done. Behavioural models say why and what something should be done for. Operational models are indicative, behavioural models are imperative. This is why they are found in different existential climates: operational models are found in the climate of functionalism, behavioural models in the climate of engagement. The technologist is a functionary, the ideologist an engagée. Technology’s victory is the functionary’s victory and the engagée’s death. A measure of development would be  Editor’s note: This section reproduces the essay Rumo ao Novo Homem [Towards a New Man], published in  Portuguese in  Policampus (internal document of  the  Universidade de Campinas, Brazil) in 1969. 2

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this: the greater the development of a society, the greater the number of functionaries in relation to the number of engagées. I will consider, thirdly, the process by which technology invades the field of values, that is, the process by which operational models replace behavioural ones. The process is dialectical in the following sense: as technology is applied, it acquires a pseudo-imperative character, that is, technological models become established as pseudo-values. And to the same extent, behavioural models become devalued. The result of this process is the increasing decay of values and the growing sense of the absurd. Absurd is a situation in which every act is gratuitous, as it requires neither decision nor engagement. The process by which technology invades the field of values is the process that transforms acts into absurd acts. The same fact can thus be articulated: the advancement of technology eliminates decision as a factor in the field of action and activity. In other words, activity becomes automated. It is instructive to glance at the political scene (which is an important aspect of the field of values) to see how far this process has already evolved. We will find that although it appears a lot of decisions still seem to be made, in reality, activity is obeying far more automatic factors introduced to politics by technology. Although in developed countries ideologues still hold de jure power, power is de facto largely in the hands of technology. A proof of this is in the growing similarity between the behaviour of de jure societies that have different ideologies. Another proof of this is the growing dependence of every decision on the technological stage and the obvious gratuitousness of decisions opposed to technology. In other words, ideologues tend to rule in a vacuum, which is sovereignly ignored and despised by technology. This argument seems to indicate that the near future will be characterized by technocracy (which is the de jure taking over of power by technology) and that the new man will be the functionary, in the sense of a specialized technician. But this conclusion does not stand up to a more careful analysis. It cannot be sustained because of its lack of radicalism and due to the automaticity of functionalism, which gradually eliminates decisions in the continuity of progress, gradually eliminating the functionary as an agent. Technocracy is not government exercised by technicians, but government exercised by technique (by the governing machine, to quote Wiener). And the functionary’s acting and producing function is gradually transferred to automatic machines, and the human patient and consuming function gradually grows in importance. The new man will be the consumer, that is, a retired functionary. And the new society will not be the society of specialists, but the society of consumerism. The new man will be a passive and patient being, who will not make decisions, because he will not have values and because every decision would be gratuitous, and he will live only experiencing and consuming. Hippies and LSD point to the future. Our impulse is to rebel against this vision of the future because, being old men, we are still engaged, that is, engaged in acts and decisions, engaged in the old man. The old man is our ideology. But I believe our engagement is desperate. Let us, therefore, try to grasp the new man, although we cannot sympathize with him. After all, hasn’t he achieved the supreme goal of history: happiness? And isn’t our underdevelopment that which makes happiness appear to us as nauseating?

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5.3 Technique as Argument3 Technical objects (apparatus and machines, gadgets and instruments) represent a considerable part of our daily environment so that we become aware of their presence when they cease to function properly. But relatively little effort is needed to lift the lid of the habitual that covers and trivializes them to see how miraculous the world we inhabit is. We press a button, and the light goes on, and another, and the coffee grinder starts. Our daily bread is the miracle of technique, without which we would perish. Technique is a miracle that has several curious aspects. Technicians admire it more than laymen, scientists more than technicians, philosophers more than scientists. Anyone who crosses a motorway bridge does not even think to admire something. The builder who calculated the bridge let out a sigh of relief when he found it behaving as calculated. And the philosopher who contemplates such a finding is unable to digest the miracle that the calculations done by the builder on paper are translatable into reinforced concrete and that they behave as if they had never been numbers. The layman admires aspects not admired by the technician (for example, the speed of the telegraph) and the technician aspects not admired by the layman (for example, the increasing efficiency of combustion engines). The philosopher admires aspects not admired by the technician (for example, the simulation of decisions on computers) and the technician admires aspects not admired by the philosopher (for example, the possibility of using certain materials for specific purposes). The miracle of technique is not one: there are several, and they are so thanks to those who admire them, and one miracle may eliminate another. Some admire the coffee machine, others do not, and even others admire the lack of admiration of the former. However, these are not the aspects of the miracle intended here, but the curious shift in admiration that occurred recently. Originally, science was admirable: it was considered as the method for attaining true knowledge of nature. Technique was nothing more than the application of such knowledge, and proof of its veracity – it was miraculous in the second degree. Nowadays, technique is precisely the admirable thing: it works even though the enunciations of science that provide its foundation cannot be considered true in the sense originally intended. Technique became a miracle of the first degree because when it works it gives meaning to the scientific enunciations that it applies, and with this, technique is becoming magic in the exact sense of the term: originally, technique was proof of the truth of scientific enunciations, and nowadays scientific enunciations tend to be formulas that explain (prove) the functioning of gadgets. The inversion of the science/technique relation, which is at stake, is not always obvious, because the knowledge/power dialectic is difficult to penetrate. Originally, science was a discipline that aimed at knowledge, and in this it was distinguished  Editor’s note: This section reproduces the essay A Técnica enquanto Argumento [Technique as Argument]. It has never been published and was written in the mid-1970s. 3

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from magic (astrology, alchemy etc.), which aimed at power. Renaissance astronomers did not aim, like astrologers, to influence the destiny of men, but to correctly describe celestial phenomena. That such descriptions resulted in sea and space travels far more modifying of the destinies of astrology was an unintended consequence of the truth of the enunciations of astronomy. To pretend that the mechanics of the Baroque aimed to build machines for the nascent bourgeoisie would be to falsify the facts: they aimed to correctly describe phenomena of the type free fall, and that this resulted in machines that ended up producing much more gold regardless of alchemy, was an unintended consequence of the truth of the enunciations of mechanics (a consequence desired and financed by the bourgeoisie, nonetheless). Originally, then, science purported to be pure, but confusingly so. Many of the Renaissance astronomers were also astrologers, and many Baroque mechanics were also sorcerers. Nevertheless, in order to know, one had to do science, and in order to make, one had to do sorcery. Currently, the opposite tends to be the case: science is no longer expected to lead to knowing in the originally intended sense. In fact, how can we suppose that the enunciations of science structured mathematically and logically (therefore, through highly artificial codes) can articulate something that does not come from this very (a priori Kantian) structure? How can we expect science to be able to discover deep in nature something that has not been put there previously by science itself? Even so, science is expected to lead to power, that is, to the technique that determines the destiny of humanity. In short, although the builder’s numbers can no longer be believed to mean the thing, the bridge is expected to hold up. Simultaneously (and interestingly), there are those who begin to suspect that there is knowledge hidden in magic, alchemy, and kabbalah; knowledge to be uncovered, although no one expects such disciplines to work. To summarise, nowadays, in order to make, one has to do science, and in order to know, one even considers the analysis of magic. This could lead to the belief that faith in pure science has been lost over the centuries, but that faith in the miracle of technique has been strengthened. Thus, those currently engaged in science should resort to technique as the ultimate argument for its continued validity (a pragmatic argument in a magical meaning of the term). However, this would not be a correct description of the situation we are in. The faith in scientism that characterizes the masses, and the continuous faith in science by orthodox Marxists compensate for the loss of faith in pure science on the part of a philosophical elite (phenomenologists, structuralists, logical analysts, etc.) and on the part of certain scientists (mainly nuclear physicists and linguists). And it does not matter that scientism is unscientific, nor that the term science does not mean for Marxists what it meant for philosophers and scientists of the late twentieth century. On the other hand, as for faith in the miracle of technique, it is true that everyone believes that the limits of the technically possible still lie beyond the horizon (if we believe in such limits). However, such a belief in technique’s practically limitless possibilities is mitigated by the growing doubt about technique’s ability to solve problems, including the problems it has itself created. And there are those who believe that any future progress in technique will make it less interesting (the law of

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diminishing returns) and that the peak of technical evolution was surpassed a few decades ago without humanity realizing it. The paradox of our situation is, therefore, this: we live in an environment dominated by technical products, we would die if they stopped functioning and do not believe this is a good thing, we are used to them functioning and therefore do not admire them, but when meditating on them we are amazed because we can no longer believe that their functioning is due to the wisdom of pure science. Such a description of our situation can be reformulated as follows: we live in a world largely produced by a specific type of magic called technique, and we are in the process of losing faith in such magic, both in respect to the specific myth that sustains it called pure science, as well as in respect to the specific ritual to which it resorts called technological manipulation of the world. The above formulation of our situation does not, of course, lead to overcoming our crisis. The theoretical question remains open, how can technique work, even though science cannot capture the thing? And the practical question remains, what can we do but develop more technique in order to solve the problems technique confronts us with? Although the above formulation does not resolve such questions, it helps to place them within a broader context, namely, within the context of lost faith. It is possible to say that the technical world surrounding us is the product of specific magic, comparable to the magic producing the worlds surrounding the Kra and or the Mbuti; that it is about three comparable faiths supporting three comparable worlds, and what would characterize our faith in comparison with the other two would be its linearity: we believe the world flows from the past towards the future, therefore, that being is becoming, and, that to live is to progress towards death. This linear structure of our faith took on several forms: Judaism, Christianity, humanism, Marxism, etc. But the ultimate form of such a structure is the discourse of pure science, because in it the structure is entirely articulated as a clear and distinct calculation. The universe projected by scientific discourse has the structure of our faith: it is mathematically and logically structured. Technique works in such a universe (and nowhere else). And the faith that projected such a universe is exhausted in its project because it collapses on itself, redeems itself (sich zurücknimmt), in the form of functioning. The difficulty of such a contextualised vision is precisely what compels comparisons: if I say that pure science is a kind of myth comparable to the Kra or Mbuti myths, or that Western technique is a kind of ritual comparable to the rain or fertility rituals, I am not above the compared entities, hovering in the air, transcendent. On the contrary, I am operating with Western categories, and therefore imperialistically attaching the Kra and Mbuti to the West, from which I am unable to escape, although I have lost faith in it. The West binds us to all its participants, like a cage, and faith embraces us even after it has been emptied. This is nothing more than a reformulation of Wittgensteinian discovery. However, such a comparison exercise is not futile, because it makes it possible to relativize what has hitherto been considered absolute. No longer is science the producer of knowledge, but the producer of knowledge more valid than that of the Kra

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and Mbuti myths. And no longer is technique manipulation suited to the world, but more suited to the world than the rain ritual. Such relativizing, if effectively achieved, will be an important step towards overcoming the crisis because the perfect is the enemy of the good, and if science is accepted as being perfect magic, and technique perfect ritual, we will have opened up horizons beyond presently emptied faith. Technique will cease to be the reactionary argument that it is today in favour of maintaining existing structures, and new views will open up, certainly terrible and terrorising (because they can no longer be framed), but nevertheless liberating. In short, the miracle of technique currently obstructs the vision of the new, because it is used as an argument, apparently progressive, but effectively reactionary, in favour of continuing progress towards the realization of an empty project. Vilém Flusser (1920–1991) was born in Prague in 1920. He fled Nazism in 1940 and was exiled in Brazil, where lived for 32 years and thus some of his most important works were published in Portuguese. His sister, his parents and grandparents were killed in a Nazi concentration camp. He studied philosophy at the Caroline University (Czech Republic) and later at the London School of Economics and Political Science. During the 1960s and 70s he worked as a journalist, mainly for the O Estado de S.  Paulo. He also worked for the Revista Brasileira de Filosofia [Brazilian Philosophy Review], taught and lectured at the Instituto Brasileiro de Filosofia [Brazilian Institute of Philosophy] and was Professor of the Philosophy of Science at the Escola Politécnica da Universidade de São Paulo [Polytechnic School of the University of São Paulo] and of communication theory at the Fundação Armando Álvares Penteado. Flusser died in 1991. His work has been translated into several languages. (Editor’s note)  

Chapter 6

Technology and the Lifeworld in Miguel Baptista Pereira Pedro Xavier Mendonça Abstract  The aim of this article is to address several technology-related topics in the work of Miguel Baptista Pereira, a Portuguese twentieth-century philosopher. This chapter does not claim to offer a complete analysis of this subject-matter in his work. It is based on three core articles of his, and it is hoped this will offer a good introduction to his views in this domain. In addition to providing a brief biography and an overall view of his varied research work, this chapter identifies the common ground on which Pereira’s built his view of the technological world, based on these three articles. That common ground is the notion of lifeworld, in which Pereira finds a counterpoint to technology. The lifeworld is the ethical and foundational locus of human life, and is endangered by modern technology. This view is closely tied to the phenomenological tradition and the work of important twentieth-century philosophers. In his appeal to the humanities and social sciences, i.e. the tradition of non-calculation, as the only disciplines that can protect the lifeworld from modern technology, we may discern definite activist intent in his work and, although he belongs to a tradition, he has his own singularities. These are more than enough to give him a prominent place in a history of philosophy in Portugal and to help to build a corpus for a Portuguese-language philosophy of technology. Keywords  Miguel Baptista Pereira · Lifeworld · Technology · Phenomenology

6.1 Introduction Many regard Miguel Baptista Pereira as one of the leading thinkers in Portuguese twentieth-century philosophy. He was born in Vila do Conde, a city in northern Portugal, in 1929, and died in the university city of Coimbra in 2007. He understood the role of time – or rather, of long time – in the construction and recognition of philosophical thought. Apparently Pereira was never concerned with visibility, citations or media attention, his focus was on something much more important: the work of thinking, of slowly gathering together the strands of the time in which he P. X. Mendonça (*) Centro Nacional de Cibersegurança, Lisbon, Portugal e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 H. M. Jerónimo (ed.), Portuguese Philosophy of Technology, Philosophy of Engineering and Technology 43, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-14630-5_6

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lived, in order to create an encompassing and carefully developed vision. It may be for this reason that many of his contemporaries are not aware of his work today, although the media and the general public often take philosophers to heart. Pereira was a significant presence at the Faculty of Letters of the University of Coimbra. In the department of philosophy, he embodied a paradox: he was a shadow which illuminated philosophical trends and discussions – “a shadow”, because he may have taken up others’ space; “which illuminated”, in as much as he enriched and guided a thinking collective. As a topic, technology was a significant presence among many − not for its centrality, but because it undoubtedly cut across the disciplines, reflecting the importance of the topic in philosophers he judged to be essential, like Martin Heidegger, or on account of certain areas of thought he chose to examine, such as the role of science and information in modern society. This article addresses a number of technology-related topics in Pereira, while not claiming to offer a complete analysis of this subject-matter in his work. It is based mainly on three articles (Pereira, 1992, 1995, 1996), the core themes of which are aspects of technics. It is hoped that this will serve as a good introduction to his views and to his essential contributions to this domain. The next section contains a brief biography, shedding light on some aspects of his life which are relevant to an understanding of his work. We will also provide an overall view of his diverse interests and philosophical approaches, technology being an unavoidable aspect in many of the issues he addressed. The subsequent section provides an interpretation of the three articles mentioned above, seeking to show the erudition, originality and current relevance of Miguel Baptista Pereira’s work for defining a Portuguese-language philosophy of technology.

6.2 Biographical Notes and Main Works Pereira began his studies in a seminary in the city of Braga, where he was ordained as a priest, but did not pursue the vocation. He then went to the University of Comillas in Santander, Spain. He completed his bachelor’s degree in Philosophy at the University of Coimbra, where he also obtained his doctorate. He pursued his research career partly in Germany, becoming fluent in German, which was to be a significant factor in his work. This trajectory ultimately led him to becoming professor at the University of Coimbra, teaching philosophical anthropology, history of philosophy and history of culture, as well as leading seminars on phenomenology and hermeneutic philosophy. Known as an inspiring teacher, he defended students against the Estado Novo dictatorship in Portugal in the demonstrations of the 1960s. This on occasion adversely affected his professional career. He also took up some institutional positions, as director of the Philosophical Studies Institute at the University of Coimbra and counsellor to the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation (Pereira, 2014). His work reflects a great variety of interests in the philosophical field. There are many different sub-disciplinary fields in his research, like medieval philosophy,

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modern philosophy, contemporary and hermeneutic philosophy. His most important published works are probably Modernidade e Tempo: Para uma Leitura do Discurso Moderno [Modernity and time: Towards an Interpretation of Modern Discourse] and Modernidade e Secularização [Modernity and Secularization], both dating from 1990 (Pereira 1990a, b) and providing clear evidence of his interest in rationalization processes in modern societies and their consequences for human life and culture. “Technology” as such is hard to find in the titles of his works, but its impact on modern life and modernization is clearly implicit in the historical and philosophical scope of his research. The Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation has published Pereira’s essays in recent years. From these publications it is possible to categorize his philosophical interests and to obtain an overall view of his vast opus, made up of articles in academic journals and books such as those mentioned above. The first volume of this compendium (Pereira, 2014) contains his work on the major sixteenth-century Portuguese philosopher Pedro da Fonseca, the subject of Pereira’s undergraduate and doctoral degrees in the 1960s. The second volume (Pereira, 2015a) brings together his work on modernity and secularization. The third (Pereira, 2015b) covers phenomenology and hermeneutics. Three other volumes (Pereira, 2014) are planned, but are as yet unpublished: one entitled Antropologia, Linguagem e Comunicação [Anthropology, Language and Communication]; another, Mentalidade Técnico-Científica e a Crise da Razão [The Techno-Scientific Mentality and the Crisis of Reason]; and finally, Pequenos Escritos [Short Texts]. This classification helps us to perceive not only his main interests, but also the considerable presence of work involving science and technology. His writings evidence the enormous weight of his interest in modernity as a historical and philosophical moment, and of German and French phenomenology, with occasional intersections with hermeneutics. Information and communication technologies (ICT) are also a significant element, in conjunction with science, as a domain which involves the transformation of the lifeworld. The volume entitled Mentalidade Técnico-Científica e a Crise da Razão is the one which most directly relates to the questions raised in this article, but a previously published article which is to be included in Antropologia, Linguagem e Comunicação has also been drawn on here. This study addresses the issues in the chosen texts which combine the question of the lifeworld with a major tradition in phenomenology and information technology, the media and techno-science, a connection which we see as being fundamental to constructing an analytical approach which can be incorporated into a philosophy of technology. As already mentioned, three articles are in focus here, providing particularly relevant insight into a philosophical topos. They are Do Biocentrismo à Bioética ou da Urgência de um Paradigma Holístico [From Biocentrism to Bioethics, or the Urgency of a Holistic Paradigm] (Pereira, 1992); A Crise do Mundo da Vida no Universo Mediático Contemporâneo [The Lifeworld Crisis in Contemporary Media] (Pereira, 1995); and Informática, Apocalíptica e Hermenêutica do Perigo [Informatics, Apocalyptics and the Hermeneutics of Danger] (Pereira, 1996). Many other possible topics will necessarily fall outside the scope of this article. It is our belief, however, that the selected articles are the most

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relevant ones in Pereira’s thought on technology and a suitable introduction to it, offering important clues for future research on this author.

6.3 Aspects of Technology in Miguel Baptista Pereira’s Thought The line of thought which cuts across these writings, representing a specific mindset in this writer, clearly falls within the spectrum of Western Philosophy and is also a way of understanding a certain philosophical perspective developed at the University of Coimbra. That line is characterised by a clear awareness of the existence of a lifeworld and its central position in human existence, perceiving it from the phenomenological and hermeneutic point of view, and comparing it with the calculating and instrumental nature of science; in addition, it is of interest when considering media and information systems as hegemonic powers in modern societies, endangering not only the authenticity of life, but also all the possibilities for survival on this planet, even those which, ironically, threaten the biology and ontology of humanity. In Do Biocentrismo à Bioética ou da Urgência de um Paradigma Holístico (Pereira, 1992), the author appeals to the urgency of an all-embracing framework to deal with the many changes arising from technological development. Like many other writers, he is against anthropocentrism, emphasizing that this philosophical bias is the cause of insensitivity to the suffering of animals and the degradation of Nature. He believed that an axiological hierarchy of living and non-living beings, as suggested by some to provide ethical guidance and assist political decision-making, is not sufficient and is ethically ambiguous. In his view, the root of this problem is techno-scientific reasoning, because it simultaneously contains arrogance, the tendency towards totalization and the unrestricted use of the instrumental potentialities of technological applications. It could be said that Pereira (1992) fetches a Trojan horse, quantum physics, from physics, “the science of the hard sciences”. Quantum physics shows that even within a discipline which is traditionally deterministic, on account of its mechanical and calculating character, it is possible to find indeterminacy, in a principle of uncertainty, like Heisenberg’s, and observer interference in the object observed, as in the social sciences, which have long acknowledged it. This type of approach represents a re-enchantment of the physical world – a counterpart to the world’s loss of enchantment, as pointed out by Max Weber (1946), and is a major reversal for science’s notorious capacity for forecasting events, the basis of its social success, and for scientists’ claimed objectivity, which underpins peer legitimacy, affecting the relationship with Nature and the integration of consciousness and human physicality. Pereira (1992) evokes an esprit de corps, a spirituality which undermines the materialistic determinism imposed by classical science and its rationalising application by means of technology. He is highly sensitive to the idea of a material

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metaphysics which destroys any mechanical vision of human corporality and hence of the spiritual possibilities of the machine. In the 1992 essay, Pereira appeals to science to recognize how little control it has over Nature, but great responsibility for the consequences of human action on the biological environment. That which appears to be a contradiction is in fact an acknowledgement that scientists are not totally in control of the effects of their actions – on account of the indeterminate nature of physical reality – and that those actions often have unintended consequences in the world. For Pereira (1992), physical indeterminacy requires thinkers to accept the existence of Nature’s metaphysical spontaneity, which partakes of the spirituality mentioned above, because it operates as a counterpoint to modern instrumental rationalization. The future of Nature, like that of Humanity and Humanity in Nature, is open. This is the background which bioethics as a discipline should consider as far as its inclusion in institutionalized ethics is concerned. For Pereira, this discipline must acknowledge an otherness in Nature, an enigma reflected in the indeterminacy of some of the most fundamental natural processes, a transcendence which requires cognitive distancing, and has ethical consequences. The otherness of Nature challenges us, as transcendence to be venerated. Bioethics should institutionalize and incorporate in the lifeworld the idea of Nature as a home for living beings, a home which cannot be appropriated, in puerile fashion, by humanity or by the dynamics of its mechanized world. To this end bioethics requires a non-hermetic and non-­ utopian type of reasoning, readily available to society as a whole and realistic in establishing its objectives – in a way committing to a total relationship with life on its own terms. From this point of view philosophy cannot live tucked away in its own world, nor deal with problems disconnected from living. Bearing in mind biotechnology’s unintended consequences and the complexity and indeterminacy of the changes brought about by human beings in the biological world, bioethics should analyse each new case in isolation, using the effective need for suffering as a way of evaluating each biological transformation. The greater the suffering, the less legitimacy there is in each situation, the criterion adopted being the principle whereby unnecessary pain is to be avoided. Left behind is egocentric, Cartesian Reason, the res cogito, with its focus on the subject and distant from Nature, the res extensa. Into the space left by the retreat of this type of reasoning, responsible for the techno-scientific development of the modern world, a different, more holistic type of Reason must be placed. Pereira (1992) draws on Hans-Peter Dürr (1988) for the suggestion of a T-based model for the construction of knowledge: T represents a type of knowledge which is both deep and wide, cutting across several topics but not neglecting the need to go deeper into each one. Pereira states that “fragmentary reasoning, or confusing the rationality of ends with axiological rationality, is at the root of our technical age and is the deepest cause of the ecological crisis and the problems of governance in modern societies” (Pereira, 1992: 42). This statement reveals the influence of Max Weber, and of his familiarity with German philosophy in general. In this connection, it is essential to define the types of rationality which transform the world and make choices which

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place the instrumental nature of the rationality of ends at the service of axiology and its holistic capabilities. For Pereira (1992), the quantitative is over-valued in modern life, but technological artefacts are indifferent to the qualitative character of Nature. In contemporary thinking, approaches to human life governed by the dominion of quality and contemplative interpretation are signally lacking. Rhetoric, as a hermeneutic discipline with a trace of the humanities, has something to say in relation to the significance of this vital sphere. Despite the critiques to which it is subject, in reality its ambiguities are a symptom of humanity, and this should extend to historical and philosophical interpretations which include Nature. On this point, Pereira (1992) includes Nature in the lifeworld. Here is his categorical affirmation of Nature as the core axiological principle, with the lifeworld as the vector in which Nature relates to day-to-day human life. This is a philosopher who addresses the core topics of his age, in line with those forms of philosophical reflection which revisit rationalist optimism and the benevolent view of technology. It is fair to say he is among those whom Hermínio Martins would call “Faustian”, seeing Nature as something almost holy, to be respected and held incorruptible rather than being conquered and moulded by the emanations of Bacon and others. With a certain practical and political sense, Pereira attributes limited functions to Bioethics, appealing for action to stop technical processes, rather than embarking on more or less melancholic contemplations. Having defined the problem, he appeals for action to deal with it. The lifeworld concept became even more important in the essay entitled A Crise do Mundo da Vida no Universo Mediático Contemporâneo (Pereira, 1995). Here the author is interested in the role of phenomenology in describing the essential forms of living in greater depth. The essay analyses the issues this theme raises in connection with media, echoing the work of Jürgen Habermas (2009 [1968]) and his comparison of the lifeworld and the system in the modern public sphere, warning of the dangers which communicative rationality faces from strategic rationality, which is an element of the system of production. Pereira (1995) takes this opportunity to explain his vision of the lifeworld. Like Habermas, he alleges that this is a domain which has been damaged, and that ICTs are one of the main instruments of that damage. It is easy to perceive this echo of the German writer and of the philosophical school to which he belongs. The critique of the development of the instrumental sphere, the fruit of enlightenment Reason, is a tradition which runs from Marx to the Frankfurt School by way of Weber. Habermas, as an heir to that tradition, keeps a place in this thought for symbolic interactions as a domain of ethics and hope, asserting a later modernity rather than a decadent post-modernity. Pereira is perhaps less optimistic than Habermas as far as the virtues of communicative rationality are concerned, but he is certainly close to him in clearly identifying an endangered space and a rationality and its practices which threaten it, drawing on the output of phenomenological studies to specify that original locus of the human. ITCs are not the only danger threatening the lifeworld. For Pereira there are other threats of the same type, such as nuclear weapons, ecological decay and biotechnology. This diversity of threats demonstrates the many variables which, for Pereira, interfere with the lifeworld, a consideration which extends to possible descriptions

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of what that lifeworld may be. It is not just the fundamental day-to-day or private life or the better-known forms of socialization – it is rather society as a whole sphere of symbolic interactions and Nature as simultaneous home, telluric order and enigma. While technology is a multifaceted reality, it is not so diverse as to prevent it from being more or less cohesive, and this too corrupts that multiple lifeworld. Pereira, in referring to his own times, asserts that “Man’s world, in which he exists, lives and thinks, is replaced by a technical medium of information in circulation and vigilant watchfulness” (Pereira, 1995: 217). This medium transforms the experience of the world in phenomenological terms. Virilio’s dromology (2006 [1997]) is a point of reference here, in that the speed at which ITCs become established in the realm of symbolic interactions creates a human being stripped of his ability to live, to be and to think – an ironic sentence to inertia and to being surrounded by prostheses, as if he had made his own choice to be disabled. Experience of the body is reduced to an exchange of data. Cybernetics, as a science of information, is the ideological edifice in which this social reality resides, projecting into the lifeworld a set of conditions which we may describe as a “techno-image” (Garcia, 2009), which distances us from the world and establishes a merely performative dynamic. Pereira (1995) often emphasises that Philosophy should be oriented towards knowing how to live, like the old philosophy schools of the Hellenic period. It should be able to know how to think the lifeworld from a perspective which values interaction. He draws on the framework enabled by the notion of “game”, seeking to define this approach more precisely. In this he is influenced by writers like Paul Ricouer (2010 [1983]), Jean Paul Sartre (1972) and Hans-Georg Gadamer (2005 [1965]), as he explores the heuristic vitality of this word. Pointing once again to the virtues of quantum physics in building his argument, he establishes a relationship between science and game. The effect of the observer on the object observed is not relativistic subjectivity, but rather that of a player in the game, interacting with other real players. In Pereira’s discourse (1995), there is a certain idea of Man, a gun ready to fire at mechanical views of life  – Man as world explorer, player of the game, essayist, nomad. He says, however, that twentieth-century Man has lost “the mysterious density of play”, yet, we might also say, he has not lost the playful attitude. For Gadamer (2005 [1965]), for example, in Truth and Method, the idea of game is very important for an understanding of hermeneutics and the history of the social sciences, in the sense that the type of knowledge on which these areas draw rests far more on interaction and a context which defines a set of relationships, rather than on a merely positivist construction of “the truth”. This idea is also significant in Sartre (1972), where he sees Man’s place in the world, in existence, as being defined by a game of point and counterpoint of the varying circumstances of life. Pereira asserts that “the relationship between Man and game, life and game, society and theatre, takes us into a lifeworld which has many forms of play and many scenarios” (1995: 232) – a theatre in which Man is an actor in a drama. This ever so Heideggerian close involvement of Man in the world diverts Pereira’s attention away from the Husserlian origins of this tendency. However fundamental

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Husserl’s Phenomenology (2012 [1965]) may be, it does not accommodate a broader interpretation of the lifeworld, because it is too focused on the self-awareness of a transcendental and disinterested individual, still a Cartesian principle, which does not place human beings in a prior relationship with the world, before he becomes aware of it and even of himself, as we find in the French tradition which we will discuss further below. With the aim of leaving Husserl behind, Pereira brings into this domain the Greek notion of “oikos”, meaning “home”, place of origin, root and matrix of a territory, even though, according to Pereira, the Greeks necessarily rejected the notion of the lifeworld. Husserl’s Phenomenology (2012 [1965]), focused on the subject and on immanence, was reinterpreted by the French phenomenological tradition, opening it up to the Other and his otherness. Emmanuel Levinas (2011 [1961]) is a point of reference in this respect. Otherness, for him, is related to the desire for transcendence, in which the Other may not be reduced to a representation, because that is always a reduction to sameness, that is to say, there is confusion between that which he represents and that which it is intended to represent. Levinas stresses the importance of this transcendence, not in the subject, but outside him, which makes him discover an Other before he discovers the Same. For this reason, “phenomenological reduction gives way to the presence of externality” (Pereira, 1995: 248), a metaphysical phenomenology and not an ontological one like that of Heidegger or Sartre. Here Pereira’s thought is marked by a religiosity which precedes the conception of phenomenology as science, as preached by Husserl (2012 [1965]). It is part of a line of reasoning which conceives of “truth” as being more origin-related rather than tied to a correct definition of an object. Husserl (2012 [1965]) is still tied to the tradition of representation. The Other’s transcendence is respected when his or her significant role is acknowledged in the domains of affection, emotionality and the body, which are enigmatic loci for the rationality of caring. Through this disposition one may discover the self-manifestation of essence as a presence which cannot be fully interpreted and which requires reverence. That is also what is at stake when danger is mentioned, given that the perpetrators of danger represent an appropriation which reduces self-manifestation to the individual’s own discourse, and thus to a manifestation of the reader and not of that which is read. Pereira points out that despite abandoning the subject and assuming otherness, the new French phenomenologists, with the exception of Merleau-Ponty, persist in forgetting Nature. Husserl denounced a calculating reason and Levinas denounced the forgetting of the Other – the time has come to put Nature at the heart of this philosophical warning, rescuing it as something which was in fact left behind in the shadows and margins of thought. In this context it is essential to make a clean break with modernity by introducing Nature as a fundamental pillar of the precedence of the Other, of home and of the game, the foundations of a deeper hermeneutic circle and of a total relationship with all that is included in the lifeworld. Like other authors (see Breton, 1994; Martins, 2011), Pereira (1995) sees in cybernetics and in Norbert Wiener more than just an academic or scientific movement. Cybernetics, with its belief in information and technology which electronically enables connection, circulation and production, represents the modern

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materialization  – with its specific type of complexity  – of ancient dreams of the autonomous machine, tied to the calculating principles of mathematics and legitimizing production-oriented knowledge, instead of committing to a relationship with Nature and a transcendent Other. According to Pereira (1995), Wiener is ostensibly unaware of the ontological differences between Man and machine, reducing them to what he considers important: the various levels of complexity in information exchange with the environment. In highlighting the utopian character of the cybernetic movement, Breton’s thesis (1994) is crucially important for sustaining this vision. Wiener’s vision describes Man as being outside himself: instead of keeping faith with an original religiosity, that vision projects him into an externality of prostheses. Pereira emphasizes that “speed contracts distances, denies space, devalues the territory in favour of the projectile, turns penetration into destruction (…) destroys the world as field, distance and matter” (Pereira, 1995: 274). The bodily self is also lost, because this speed immobilizes it, paralyzes it in an absolute lack of effort. We have lost the notion of the journey, which is essential to the search for meaning. Pereira (1995) argues for the need to bring into the philosophical discourse the visions of the likes of Hans Jonas (2006 [1979]) and Karl Popper and Condry (1999 [1994]). Jonas, in particular, gives Nature a central place in the concerns of phenomenology, creating a philosophy of biology and demonstrating, contra Cartesian dualism, how mind and organism may be viewed as a single entity. Pereira concurs with this familiar mingling of the two domains, avoiding seeing Man and Nature in a dualistic way. Popper, on the other hand, argues that media should be educated, criticising television for being appropriated by the means of violence. It is dangerous, in his view, because it has the power to construct meaning. He places himself among those who take the effect of technics in constructing subjectivities seriously, that is to say, the way ITCs transform the lifeworld. In sum, according to Pereira (1995), Jonas and Popper point to a way back to greater awareness of the true value of the lifeworld: the former, by calling for a place for the Natural, and the latter by calling for greater attention to the cognitive transformations brought about by the relationship with the world through the technologies of electronic mediation. Almost as a consequence of the earlier essay, the reader encounters in Informática, Apocalíptica e Hermenêutica do Perigo a new level of appeal and a terrifying beginning. Pereira says that “an interminable procession of victims traverses the lifeworld, which I in another essay regarded as a place for festivities, dancing…” (Pereira, 1996: 3). This strong statement sets the tone for a discussion of the nuclear danger and how that threat obliges humanity to have an all-encompassing total vision, on account of the global nature of the danger, which in turn appeals to the hermeneutic philosophy already mentioned. The potential for total destruction emphasizes consciousness of the whole. Pereira (1996) ties that potential to computer science because, in fact, it was birthed by microphysics, like the nuclear field. In this point of view, computer science and nuclear research are Siamese twins, produced according to the same principles and having similar consequences. Once again the problem of the lifeworld is at the heart of Pereira’s concerns. He argues that we must acknowledge the precedence of the biological realm over the

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mechanical, given that there is no mechanics (the ancestor of the computer and nuclear weapons) without the biological – and this is a way of showing how the lifeworld is the foundation for everything else. For example, reducing information with the aim of stripping it of personal informality cannot prevent natural language from continuing to be a condition for any explanation, and even for that very reduction. The autonomous processes put forward by science and technology are unable to answer the deeper questions which only philosophical inquiry and living human beings in the lifeworld can answer. Without such an attitude, it is as if Man wished to replace the primary engine with his own engines, but without taking with him that which distinguishes him ever since he has known himself: the attribution of meaning (which, if teleology were combined with the original engine, would make him a God). The fathers of informatics  – Wiener, Neumann and Turing  – brought with them the dream of autonomous modernity. The ideological and, we might say, imaginary-utopian element permeates technical construction and is thereby reproduced in subject-matter and socio-technical effects. Heidegger’s influence on Pereira is clear on this point. In order to combat the process of never-ending automation, our reflection must take finitude into account. Human awareness of finitude is part of this lost lifeworld and is the factor which makes it possible to restore questioning and origin. None of this exists in a computer. The computer doesn’t die, or is not aware that it dies, it does not question, or does not spontaneously question. Pereira (1996) recalls a story told by Günther Anders (1961) about the pilot who launched the atomic bomb over Hiroshima, Claude Eartherly, with whom he corresponded. Even though he was regarded as a hero, Eartherly did not see himself as such, and in fact fell into states of pathological depression and great suffering, out of a feeling of guilt, in sharp contrast to the way American society saw him. According to Anders (1961), it is society’s indifference which is pathological, and the pilot’s pain is the outcome of his mental and above all moral sanity. In a way, Eartherly’s conscience allowed him to see the true scope of the destruction he had helped to produce. Society’s apathy in relation to that horror is the result of distancing, which is both anti-ethical and indifferent. That is why humanity must promote its own ability to feel and perceive the reach of its destructive power. For Pereira (1996), victims must be given a voice, to ensure that historic memory opens itself up to collective suffering and takes it on as a task – a summons obeyed, for example, by the Frankfurt School (Horkheimer & Adorno, 2002 [1944]; Marcuse, 1968). This memory is significant not simply as knowledge of fact, although that in itself is important, but as an image which warns us of the dangers of the present. A past that should operate as transformational trauma, in the sense that what terrifies us is also the only thing that can save us from repetition and perpetual reoccurrence. Telling stories is the best way of giving substance to this memory. As Ricouer (2010 [1983]) would later state, narration is fundamental for constructing and interpreting historiography and the humanities. Pereira says that “past times which narration opens up to us demand that the real world be transformed by the imperatives of justice, interpreted counter-intuitively in the memory of the victim, which today is not just the human victim, but also nature and life

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itself” (1996: 52). Once again this appeal stresses the value of non-positivist, hermeneutic disciplines, which promote understanding of the human and integration of the human in the experiencing of the lifeworld. Pereira (1996) campaigns for the seriousness of philosophical work, which for him is a supreme responsibility, beyond the sciences and instrumental rationality, a teleological project which places in the hands of those who practice philosophy the power to build bridges between scientific conquests, theological defeats and existential pressures. A task which Pereira also takes on for himself and which makes thought responsible for its own act of thinking, involving the philosopher in the world. For a topic such as technology, this injunction partakes of an immediate, pressing urgency, in that all our senses are daily assaulted by a material and cognitive reality threatening changes which must be discussed, in order to critique their widespread general acceptance.

6.4 Final Notes The ground covered in this text can scarcely do justice to Pereira’s work and to his handling of this topic. Nonetheless, we think that by using the writings selected and analysed here, it is possible to uncover important “geological” layers among those which constitute his overall approach to technology. We should also acknowledge that his concerns remain relevant today, even if the topics to which they refer have changed – as for example in connection with the digital world, inasmuch as new forms of digital sociability have emerged, together with new applications of artificial intelligence – or have woken up out of a deceptive slumber – like the nuclear question, which as result of new political developments is once again on the agenda as an imminent danger. Also relevant today is the importance Pereira attaches to transformations in the lifeworld deriving from technological intensity. Because it is ubiquitous, the digital sphere is reshaping our existence. A multi-faceted view of the lifeworld enriches our understanding of human beings and their place, but it also multiplies the perception of threats, as a result of the diversity of technical devices. Pereira incorporates into the sphere of the lifeworld not only the thing suspended by its transcendent subject, but also otherness, affection, our original home and Nature. And so he includes the scope of technical effects in these domains as well. A line of thought which draws on the German and French phenomenological traditions: Husserl, Heidegger, Gadamer, Jonas, Sartre, Levinas and Ricouer. Here we have a writer who thinks with other writers, and in this aspect he is a bit like Hermínio Martins, but perhaps further from the abyss and less interdisciplinary, more schematic but not so much as to yield to academic schematization. Always with unusual brilliance, he puts forward an embodied philosophy which is not dualist, but spiritual and telluric and with feeling, not overly formal, which sees in technics a problem for the inner heart of humanity – the earth in which the philosopher should get his hands dirty – because

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he recognizes in pragmatics a fundamentally valuable topic to be considered in phenomenology. So it is in the lifeworld that Pereira discovers a counterpoint to technology, a divergent albeit weakened sphere. The lifeworld is the ethical and foundational locus par excellence  – to which everything returns and whence everything originates. He appeals to the humanities as the field capable of having an impact in this fight. To philosophy, and also to the social sciences, he might say, falls the work of the hermeneutics of danger. There is a note of philosophical activism in this thought. A philosophy of technology must drink from the well of the humanities the tradition of non-calculation, of uselessness, of “non-making”, but which also understands what has to be salvaged, so that in the final analysis we do not lose sight of that which makes any form of desire possible. Within the field of philosophy of technology, Pereira can be tied to a significant branch of phenomenology. For example, when Albert Borgmann (1984), inspired by Heidegger, denounces the “device paradigm” as a technical structure which occupies day-to-day life and subverts human beings’ authentic, direct and telluric relating to their world, he is close to Pereira’s appeals in favour of the lifeworld. Don Ihde (1990) is another writer in this line of thought. Also inspired by phenomenology, especially Husserl’s, he analyses humans’ bodily relationship with technology, highlighting key tendencies in the types of interactions which arise. This is an approach which helps to understand the far-reaching range of the use of modern technologies, and their non-neutrality, inasmuch as they interfere directly in Man’s integration with the lifeworld, an aspect so dear to Pereira. Although our author belongs to a tradition, he is also a unique voice. The sensitivity he displays to the problems of his time, a certain Hellenism in the value he places on philosophy oriented to the lifeworld, his attention to actual, lived conditions, the rejection of mechanistic and positivist thinking, while not falling into the obscurantist trap of rejecting the body – quite the opposite, he finds authenticity in it – all these are aspects which constitute a voice fully deserving of its rightful place in the history of philosophy in Portugal and helping to build the corpus of a Portuguese-language philosophy of technology. Valuing philosophy from this point of view is not a reflection of some mere ingenuous nationalism. To do so is to acknowledge and collect the unique contributions of one language to the realm of thought. It is important that today’s Portuguese writers acquire the ability to liberate themselves from the need to think only on the outskirts of other languages. While not giving up on philosophizing, while fully respecting the history of philosophy, we should boldly go forward into the ocean and risk developing our own unique conceptual framework, liberating ourselves from mere coastal navigation. Perhaps Pereira could have travelled further, but he undoubtedly left many safe havens from which others could embark onto the high seas. Great responsibility falls on Philosophy today in its varied forms. Each language must mobilize its own unique thought instruments, contributing with its own hermeneutic vision to wide-ranging interpretations which draw on a full range of cultural resources. ITCs persist, and continue to leave their mark in all domains. The

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dangers they pose to the lifeworld have greater media visibility today, especially as far as protection of privacy is concerned, and the Internet’s security vulnerabilities. Writers like Pereira help us to locate this “everyday effervescence” in deeper issues which have ontological consequences. Knowing how to address these issues in the Portuguese language is a working hypothesis which we should convert into something real and concrete.

References Miguel Baptista Pereira’s Essays Pereira, M. B. (1990a). Modernidade e tempo: Para uma leitura do discurso moderno. Minerva. Pereira, M. B. (1990b). Modernidade e secularização. Almedina. Pereira, M. B. (1992). Do biocentrismo à bioética ou a urgência de um paradigma holístico. Revista Filosófica de Coimbra, 1, 5–50. Pereira, M. B. (1995). A crise do mundo da vida no universo mediático contemporâneo. Revista Filosófica de Coimbra, 8, 217–281. Pereira, M. B. (1996). Informática, apocalíptica e hermenêutica do perigo. Revista Filosófica de Coimbra, 9, 3–52. Pereira, M. B. (2014). Obras completas de Miguel Baptista Pereira. 1° vol.: Pedro Fonseca: dissertações de licenciatura e de doutoramento, ed. A. M. Martins and M.S. Carvalho. Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian. Pereira, M. B. (2015a). Obras completas de Miguel Baptista Pereira. 2° vol.: Leituras da modernidade e da secularização, ed. A. M. Martins and M. S. Carvalho. Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian. Pereira, M.  B. (2015b). Obras completas de Miguel Baptista Pereira. 3° vol.: Pensamento da tradição e discurso crítico, ed. A. M. Martins and M. S. Carvalho. Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian.

Other References Anders, G. (1961). Burning conscience: The case of the Hiroshima pilot Claude Eatherly, told in his letters to Günther Anders. Weidenfeld and Nicolson. Borgmann, A. (1984). Technology and the character of contemporary life: A philosophical inquiry. The University of Chicago Press. Breton, P. (1994). A utopia da comunicação. Bertrand. Dürr, H.-P. (1988). Das netz des physikers: Naturwissenschaftliche erkenntnis in der verantwortung. Verlag. Garcia, J. L. (2009). Tecnoimagem, iconografia e cultura visual: No rasto da metáfora do fogo nos media. In J. L. Garcia (Ed.), Estudos sobre os jornalistas portugueses: Metamorfoses e encruzilhadas no limiar do século XXI (pp. 257–272). Imprensa de Ciências Sociais. Gadamer, H.  G. (2005 [1965]). Verdade e método: Traços fundamentais de uma hermenêutica filosófica. Editora Vozes. Habermas, J. (2009 [1968]). Técnica e ciência como ‘ideologia’. Edições 70. Horkheimer, M., & Adorno, T. W. (2002 [1944]). Dialectic of enlightenment: Philosophical fragments. Stanford University Press.

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Husserl, E. (2012 [1954]). A crise das ciências europeias e a fenomenologia transcendental: Uma introdução à filosofia fenomenológica. Forense Universitária. Ihde, D. (1990). Technology and the lifeworld: From garden to earth. Indiana University Press. Jonas, H. (2006 [1979]). O Princípio da responsabilidade: Ensaio de uma ética para a civilização tecnológica. Contraponto and Ed. PUC-Rio. Levinas, E. (2011 [1961]). Totalidade e infinito. Edições 70. Marcuse, H. (1968). One-dimensional man: Studies in the ideology of advanced industrial society. Beacon Press. Martins, H. (2011). Experimentum humanum: Civilização tecnológica e condição humana. Relógio D’Água. Popper, K., & Condry, J. (1999 [1994]). Televisão: Um perigo para a democracia. Gradiva. Ricouer, P. (2010 [1983]). Tempo e narrativa. Martins Fontes. Sartre, J.-P. (1972). Situations IX. Gallimard. Virilio, P. (2006 [1977]). Speed and politics. Smiotext(e). Weber, M. (1946). From Max Weber: Essays in sociology. University Press. Pedro Xavier Mendonça has a degree in Philosophy from the Universidade de Coimbra [University of Coimbra], a master’s degree in Communication, Culture, and Information Technologies, from ISCTE-Instituto Universitário de Lisboa [ISCTE-Lisbon University Institute], and a PhD in Social Sciences-General Sociology, from the Instituto de Ciênciais Sociais, Universidade de Lisboa (ICS-­ULisboa)  [Institute of Social Sciences, University of Lisbon]. Presently he works at the Centro Nacional de Cibersegurança [Portuguese National Cybersecurity Centre], where he is the coordinator of the Cybersecurity Observatory. He is also a researcher and professor at the Escola Superior de Comunicação Social, Instituto Politécnico de Lisboa (ESCSIPL) [School of Communication and Media Studies, Polytechnic Institute of Lisbon]. His research interests are mainly in the social studies of technology and in the role of human behavior in cybersecurity.  

Chapter 7

Amílcar Cabral: Agriculture, Technology and Colonialism Teresa Duarte Martinho Abstract  Amílcar Cabral (1924–1973) was an agronomist and one of the main African thinkers involved in the liberation struggle. In the 1960s and early 1970s he was the leader of Guiné-Bissau and Cabo Verde’s movement for independence from Portuguese colonial domination. Intellectual and political activity was central to his life, in which he sought always to tie together knowledge and social action. This chapter focuses on the writings of Amílcar Cabral on agriculture, soil erosion, mechanization and colonialism, covering the period between 1949 and 1955, which has been less researched, but which prepared the ground for the flourishing of the second phase. His thought and academic work in the field of agricultural engineering includes various articles on Cabo Verde, the work he did to complete his undergraduate degree, and the texts he wrote when he worked as an engineer in Guiné-Bissau. These texts show how Cabral consistently drew attention to the limitations of technological mastery of the land, mainly apparent when that mastery disregards the particular features of the cultural contexts in which it is applied and the fact that it increases the power of some men over others. Even before the social sciences had as yet not incorporated the notions of sustainable agriculture, risk and uncertainty, Cabral discussed the implications of importing the new technologies of industrial societies into Black Africa. This form of discourse, which encompasses contextual knowledge, protection of the land, careful technological choices and social development, stands out forcefully in the writings of Amílcar Cabral the agronomist. Keywords  Amílcar Cabral · Agriculture · Colonialism · Technology · Black African systems of land cultivation

T. D. Martinho (*) Instituto de Ciências Sociais, Universidade de Lisboa, Lisbon, Portugal e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 H. M. Jerónimo (ed.), Portuguese Philosophy of Technology, Philosophy of Engineering and Technology 43, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-14630-5_7

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7.1 Introduction Amílcar Cabral (1924–1973) was an agronomist and one of the main African thinkers involved in the liberation struggle. In the 1960s and early 1970s he was the leader of Guiné-Bissau and Cabo Verde’s movement for independence from Portuguese colonial domination. Intellectual and political activity was central to his life, in which he sought always to tie together knowledge and social action. He left a significant and diverse theoretical legacy, enabling us to acknowledge him as a prominent thinker on national liberation, colonialism and development. According to Tsenay Serequeberhan (1991), he represented the peak of twentieth-century African revolutionary praxis, on account of the very widespread influence of his ideas on political, social and cultural action in Africa. He was born in Guiné-Bissau in 1924, the son of Cape Verdean parents.1 In 1932 he left for Cabo Verde, living first in the rural environment of Santiago island (Sousa, 2011). He finished high school with distinction in 1944, on S. Vicente island. In 1945 he settled in the capital of the Portuguese colonial empire, Lisbon, where he qualified in agronomy at the Instituto Superior de Agronomia (ISA) [Higher Institute of Agronomy] of the Universidade Técnica de Lisboa [Technical University of Lisbon]. He sat the final exam for his degree in 1952. He worked in Portugal, Guiné-­ Bissau and Angola, and from the end of the 1950s onwards devoted his life to the anti-colonial struggle as secretary-general of the Partido Africano para a Independência da Guiné e Cabo-Verde [PAIGC – African Party for the Independence of Guiné and Cabo Verde]. He died in 1973, assassinated in circumstances which are still not fully understood (Rudebeck, 1974; Chabal, 1983; Dhada, 1993; Sousa, 2011; Fistein, 2014). His thought and academic work in the field of agricultural engineering reveal his interest in the relationship between agriculture, development, technology and colonialism (Cabral, 1988). Ever since he was a young man he had been influenced by Marxism, like so many others in the anti-colonial struggle and anti-fascists of his generation. But he interpreted the Marxist perspective in his own way, an approach which looked at the relations between man’s intervention in agriculture, social development and colonialism, distancing himself from a view in which Western technology and industry were imposed without regard for cultural specifics, their consequences for society and environmental hazards. The basis for this chapter is the writings of Amílcar Cabral on agriculture, soil erosion, mechanization and colonialism, covering the period between 1949 and 1955. The first part looks at his articles on Cabo Verde, dating from 1949 to 1952, in which he first addresses the topic of engineering the use of rainwater to fight soil erosion. The second part dwells on the work he did to complete his undergraduate degree, between 1950 and 1952, in which the question of soil erosion appears once  His father was a teacher, and took an active part in the debate on social and economic conditions in Cabo Verde. His mother, a factory worker and seamstress, provided for the family and made it possible for Amílcar Cabral to go to secondary school. 1

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more, but this time linked to types of property ownership, with reference to the Alentejo, in south central Portugal. His writings from 1952 to 1955, which are analysed in the third part, represent the period during which he worked as an engineer in Guiné-Bissau and once again reveal his concern with soil erosion, which he felt was a threat deriving from the growing of the peanut crop, mechanization and colonial domination. This article also contains a section on the place of agriculture and the land in his political speeches as leader of the PAIGC. The chapter concludes with reflections on Amílcar Cabral’s thought on the connections between agriculture, technology and colonialism, based on a comprehensive reading of his various writings.

7.2 The Power of the Rains and Soil Erosion In 1945 Amílcar Cabral left Cabo Verde, an archipelago formed by ten volcanic islands in the central region of the Atlantic Ocean, and moved to Lisbon to start at university. In its natural and social aspects, Cabo Verde was a scene of desolation: long periods of drought and arid soils, very sparse agriculture, widespread poverty, high mortality rates, and massive emigration in search of survival. The name of Cabo Verde was also associated with the Tarrafal concentration camp on Santiago island, set up by the Salazar dictatorship to isolate and punish those who carried on the political struggle against the regime. As Cabral wrote in 1949, the atmosphere in Cabo Verde was haunted by the “spectre of hunger” and left “minds constantly startled” (Cabral, 1988: 60). As the Second World War came to an end, Portugal under the Estado Novo, a dictatorial regime which lasted from 1933 to 1974, experienced a time of intense social and labour agitation (Sousa, 2011), and Amílcar Cabral was among the scholarship students admitted to the Instituto Superior de Agronomia (ISA) of the Universidade Técnica de Lisboa. He was an agronomy student, but also attended classes in the specialized colonial agronomist course (Cabral, 1988: 15). In Amílcar Cabral’s view, higher education in Portugal enabled Africans from the Portuguese colonies to reinforce the black man’s awareness of his position in the world and of their fundamental concern: “to serve the cause of negro emancipation, and thus to serve humanity” (Cabral, 1976, I: 31–32). Amílcar Cabral went back to Cabo Verde  in 1949, during the holiday period. There were signs of change: “abundant and promising” rains had returned; a new governor had been appointed with the main mission of rendering it “possible for life in Cabo Verde to be normalized” (Cabral, 1988: 61). Regeneration through water, and the best ways of using it, are the subject-matter of Amílcar Cabral’s first writings on agriculture, the soil and the cultivation of the land within the colonial system. Following his article “Some considerations on the rains”, which he wrote and published in 1949, came five articles under the common title “In defence of the land”, between 1949 and 1952 (Cabral, 1988: 59–79).

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These articles reveal the main lines of his thinking about how to take advantage of the rains for the benefit of the land. They set out his modus operandi for dealing with the problems, including those derived from the antagonistic effects of natural phenomena such as, for example, the action of the rains. How to receive the rain – which was one minute regenerative, the next destructive – was a problem for Cape Verdeans. The very name Cabo Verde (literally Green Cape), seemed inappropriate to him at the time, on account of the fact that in those islands the colour green had become more of a memory or passing mirage than a stable tonality. The best strategy, Amílcar Cabral argued, was to acquire knowledge of man and the environment and set out a plan of action and projects in order to take advantage of all possibilities, capabilities and familiarity with other experiences. To study and intervene in a conscious manner. To be practical and organized, always aware of the potential paradox inherent in nature and social reality. Thus would arise, in his eyes, the possibility of “emerging victorious from that next struggle, which we cannot avoid” (Cabral, 1988: 66). Belief in the promise of the rains and in the chances of fortune was not enough. Human and intelligent intervention was needed, only in this way could the perpetual cycle of a life beset by hunger be broken, as he wrote in his first article about Cabo Verde. His advocacy of planning and rationalization, instead of action guided by chance, also reflects his engineer’s ethos, which combines a rigorous approach to the natural world, informed by a knowledge of the hard sciences, and the subordination of knowledge to the common good2 Amílcar Cabral saw technics as the “practical application of scientific knowledge” (Cabral, 1988: 234). He argued that defending mankind and ensuring a dignified life for the Cape-­ Verdean was the first measure to be adopted. Since agriculture was “the mainspring of the economic system” in Cabo Verde (Cabral, 1988: 63), protecting the land was the most effective way of safeguarding mankind. Cabral saw the focal point of the disease, the source of the general malaise: a “curse” from time immemorial, a “very serious” problem and one of the main enemies of man and of the Cabo Verde landscape: soil erosion. Human action, rainwater, wind and sea currents were wearing down and destroying the rocks and the arable layer of the soil. Man himself was the main party responsible for soil erosion – for the destruction of vegetation and the use of techniques which were not suitable for that environment, operating in a “disorganized and poorly thought out manner” –, so it was necessary to employ the “weapon of intelligence” to make Cabo Verde rise again. He pointed to the examples of the United States and South Africa, where governments were increasingly committed to fighting soil erosion. Individual efforts in the struggle against soil erosion were of little effect, Cabral argued, and only an “overall plan, based on serious studies, carried out in loco and  According to the prospectus for the undergraduate Agronomy course at the ISA, where Amílcar Cabral obtained his degree, the agronomist should “concern himself with ecology and social responsibility. (…) The agronomist has a fundamental part to play, because it is he who will put forward solutions and guide farmers with regard to best practices, such as the rational use of natural resources, with a view to producing in greater quantity and quality, but always responsibly” (https://fenix.isa.ulisboa.pt/qubEdu/cursos/lea) 2

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implemented under government supervision, with collaboration of all” would provide the effective answers. For his part, Amílcar Cabral, with the authority of an engineer endowed with scientific and contextual familiarity with Cabo Verde, put forward various solutions, such as using and taking advantage of rainwater, building dykes, lakes, dams and cisterns, reforestation, the rationalisation of agriculture, building terraces and strip cropping (Cabral, 1988: 67). In the technology field, he recommended a cautious and informed approach: “[technology] is a tireless generator of wealth, but every project demands prior study, precise and detailed knowledge of all the conditions in which it is to be implemented. No fantasies or plans hatched at a distance or as a result of superficial observation” (Cabral, 1988: 67). The contributions of writers such as Hugh Hammond Bennett and Pierre Cazenave reinforced and supported the writings of Amílcar Cabral at this time and the warnings he gave to the authorities on the need for informed and well-planned action. Bennett was a North American researcher who embarked on intensive study of the soils from the beginning of the twentieth century onwards, in both the United States and other countries, and had a pioneering role as leader of movements for protection and conservation of the soil. In 1950 Cabral translated parts of an article by Cazenave, described as a historical commentator in La Tribune des Nations,3 entitled “Les hommes et leur nourriture” [Men and their Food], highlighting his incisive perspective of the overall scene of devastation of the earth over time, which he saw as being in line with his own ideas on soil erosion in Cabo Verde (Cabral, 1988: 77–79). Cazenave concluded his article by mentioning four programmes to combat soil erosion in the USA (Tennessee Valley), in Palestine (Jordan Valley), in the USSR (semi-desert zones) and in India (the Punjab, which British agricultural engineers had made into the ‘country’s breadbasket’). Regardless of the differing political systems, the success of these various programmes for protecting the soil stressed the key role of government intervention. In a totally self-governing system, where each man was ruler of himself, a “purely liberal” system, such action would be inconceivable, and the destruction of the earth unstoppable. Cabral agreed with this point of view, explaining that it was up to “man (collectively)” to protect the vegetation and the soil, even though it was “man (the individual)” who was primarily responsible for wearing them out and degrading them (Cabral, 1988: 79). The cycle of writings on soil erosion in Cabo Verde concluded, in 1952, with the idea that the balance between man and the land embodied aspects beyond geology and climate. Amílcar Cabral adopted an interdisciplinary view of agriculture. In observing who owned the land and who worked it, he stressed the topic of property rights; the analysis of how costs and revenues from land cultivation were distributed placed the focus on forms of exploitation; the choice of plants to be grown and the best system to grow them reflected cultural systems and cultivation practices (Cabral, 1988: 179). If they wished to protect the land and defend man, the students of agriculture had to know how to solve technical problems (cultivation practices) without separating their work from culture, politics and economics. This was a point

 International weekly published between 1934 and 1984.

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of view which had matured in Amílcar Cabral’s mind during his research in Portugal on the soils of the Alentejo region, which is analysed in the next section.

7.3 Property Rights and Soil Erosion: The Agrarian Problem in a Centre-South Region of Portugal Amílcar Cabral questions the principle whereby improvements in agriculture arise exclusively from the introduction of new agricultural techniques, drawing attention to the central role of the farmer as the active subject with an interest in the advance of agriculture (Schwarz 2002). It was not necessary for the farmer to be reduced to being the instrument for the destruction of the soil dictated by the social system.4 This is what appears in the final paper of his degree examinations, which Amílcar Cabral completed in 1952, entitled “The problem of soil erosion. A contribution to its study in the region of Cuba (Alentejo)” (Cabral, 1988: 81–176).5 The Alentejo is a region situated in central-south Portugal, approximately the same size as Guiné-­ Bissau; it stands out from the rest of Portugal’s regions by reason of its agrarian organization, characterized by the predominance of the large latifundio or landed estate. The measures which Amílcar Cabral considered to be urgent in order to defend the soils of Cuba, a small town in the Alentejo region, depended for their success, in his view, on the enlightened will and participation of those who worked the land (Cabral, 1988: 154). Several factors were involved in his choice of topic for the final paper of his degree course. First, the ignorance surrounding the problem of soil erosion, which was notorious in Southern Portugal, and its “increasingly serious consequences for the Portuguese economy”, according to Joaquim Botelho da Costa (1910–1965)6 (in Cabral, 1988), were of particular concern to the agronomy technicians responsible for devising a technical solution to the issue. Secondly, the intellectual atmosphere at the Instituto Superior de Agronomia may also have influenced Cabral’s choices.  Amílcar Cabral quotes Bennett and his perspective on the limited role of farmers, in General Aspects of the Soil Erosion Problem. Soils and Men (1938): “farmers do not wilfully destroy their land; they are the tools through which society operates” (in Cabral, 1988: 109). In the nineteenth century, the German chemist Justus von Liebig (1803–1873) criticised the capitalist development of agriculture, arguing that agricultural land should be returned to a condition of fertility as a form of permanent guarantee for the farmer, a guarantee which was under threat from the system of exploitation of high English agriculture (Nascimento, 2007). 5  Having concluded his coursework in 1950, Amílcar Cabral undertook the obligatory internship for obtaining his degree and the official title of agronomist. This took place at the Estação Agronómica Nacional (National Agronomic Station). 6  An expert in the study of the soils and Amílcar Cabral’s former tutor, he was chosen as his supervisor for the final paper. According to Ário Lobo de Azevedo (1921–2015), also his former tutor at the ISA, his work on soil erosion in the Alentejo led to “unfair attacks” on Amílcar Cabral for having chosen that supervisor, not in line with the academic hierarchy (Azevedo in Cabral, 1988: 11). 4

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Since the 1930s, agrarian economists at the ISA had undertaken a series of studies to assess and improve the living conditions of the rural population.7 At that institution of higher learning, during the time of the Estado Novo, rural sociology had become established as a “relatively autonomous field, in epistemic and institutional terms” (Ágoas, 2010). Henrique de Barros (1904–2000), professor of Rural Economics at the ISA, played a key role in this process, having authored, amongst other works, an Economic and Agricultural Survey, the first volume of which also dealt with the parish of Cuba (Barros, 1934) in the Alentejo. This study is often cited by Amílcar Cabral in his final paper, in particular when he mentions data collected by Barros on the structure of property ownership (Cabral, 1988: 123). Amílcar Cabral showed that he was familiar with the particular characteristics of the Alentejo landholding structure and aware of the agrarian and social problems of the “breadbasket of Portugal by force of circumstance” (Cabral, 1988: 122), referring here to the fact that the erratic climate and the nature of most of its soils were contra-indications for the region’s main crop, wheat. The “Gordian knot” of the Alentejo agrarian problem lay in the structure of property ownership, Cabral concluded. The Marxist critique of agriculture is readily recognizable here, and in many other passages of his writings, by reason of its focus on land ownership in particular and the private appropriation of nature as the basis for the exploitation of human beings. As is apparent in the following excerpt from Amílcar Cabral’s final degree paper: The owners of the large properties are mostly absentees. The farmer’s sole objective is to obtain ever greater profits, with a minimum of expense. Cultivation practices are at a minimum, and offer no protection to the soil (…). (Cabral, 1988: 122) Once man has opened up the path to erosion, its ever-increasing consequences are clear: movement and destruction of the soil in every rainy season; lower production; (…); an increase in the areas unfit for cultivation; impoverishment of small farmers; reduction of work, as a result of the increase of areas lying fallow (…). (Cabral, 1988: 125) The Gordian knot of the agrarian problem in the Alentejo lies in the structure of property ownership. Both the poor use of the land’s resources and the destruction of the soil may be regarded as consequences. This leads to one certain conclusion: achieving suitable land use, and defending the soil – objectives which cannot be delayed – are indissolubly tied to the structure of property ownership. (Cabral, 1988: 155)

While in the introduction he wrote that agriculture’s vocation and contribution involved responding to the “need to obtain from each parcel of soil the maximum possible, without prejudice to its conservation” (Cabral, 1988: 86), at the end this vocation was more broadly defined. Beyond contributing to obtaining from each soil the maximum its capacity would allow, without prejudice to its conservation, the best use of the land was proportional to the greatest number of individuals who would thereby benefit, to the widest possible social utility (Cabral, 1988: 152). The larger the number of those who benefitted, the greater the possibility for rational use of the land, he argued. However, without education it would be hard for workers on

 In this connection, see Ágoas (2013).

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the land to understand that the soil is an asset which belongs to all the generations. Drawing on the 1940 statistics for the Beja district, Amílcar Cabral drew a more sombre picture than that which appeared in the official figures: 76% of the working population in agriculture did not know how to read; this made the task of building awareness of the need and importance of defending the land much harder (Cabral, 1988: 154). This point of view was in line with rising concerns with the balanced use of natural resources, the limitations of ecosystems, and social development. Close familiarity with the difficulties of Alentejo day-labourers, salaried employees who worked for farmers on demand, who were both dependent on and alienated from the land, enabled Amílcar Cabral to draw a possible parallel. Maybe this increasingly politicised student saw commonalities in the Alentejo and Cabo Verde besides their geology, even if he did not expect there to be any natural and effective affinity between the less favoured in metropolitan Portugal and the African national liberation movements. The colonized and the wronged of the Estado Novo were not just the natives of the “overseas provinces”. In some shape or form they had an affinity with those in inland Portugal who most struggled with an oppressive agrarian system which neglected protection of the land and thus the defence of man. In 1960, when he was already dedicated to the struggle for the independence of Guiné-Bissau and Cabo Verde, Amílcar Cabral described Portugal as “an underdeveloped country with a 40% illiteracy rate”, which had “the lowest standard of living in Europe”.8 He concluded that it would be “a miracle” if such a country could exert “civilizing influences” (Cabral, 1976: 59, vol. 1). In his political speeches he always made a distinction between the Portuguese people and colonialist Portugal, with the latter being the precise target of the PAIGC struggle. Cabral argued that Portugal, with its “backward” economy, culture and civilization, had since the time of the Methuen Treaty of 1703 continued to behave as a “semi-colony” of Great Britain. It was the “imperialist interests” of that great isle which ensured the survival of Portuguese colonialism. Portugal, whose colonial ambitions were sponsored by Britain, was an unqualified tutor, obliged to grant privileges to the English, including having absolute rights over corporations in the overseas provinces, as happened in Mozambique (Cabral, 1976: 70, vol. 1).

 These remarks are part of an article in English written under the pseudonym Abel Djassi, in a brochure published by the Union of Democratic Control in June 1960 under the title “The facts about Portugal’s African colonies” (Portuguese version in Cabral, 1976: 57–100, vol. 1). 8

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7.4 Western Power and Black African Tradition: The Adverse Impact on Soil Erosion of the Peanut Crop and Mechanization A new chapter in the life of Amílcar Cabral opened up in 1952, when he rediscovered the Africa of his birth, a time shaped by his academic studies and the political awareness he had acquired. He rediscovered today’s Guiné-Bissau, which he had left at the age of eight Senegal to the North and with Guinea (also known as Guinea-­ Conakry9) to the South and East. As an agronomist in the service of the colonial government, he was appointed director of the Experimental Agriculture Post at Pessubé, near Bissau. With his team of co-workers, he organized research work on the situation of agriculture in Guiné-­ Bissau, culminating in the publication of the Agricultural Census of Guiné in 1954. The work was the outcome of a commission from the Portuguese government, which had undertaken to submit this study to the United Nations agency responsible for food and agriculture.10 In a manner similar to that which he had tried out in his research in the Alentejo, this study enabled him to deepen his knowledge of the geography, climate and agriculture of the territory and of the deprivation of the people of Guiné (Neves, 2005). This experience, the acquiring of familiarity with Guiné, was the precursor to the preparatory work the PAIGC undertook before the start of the armed struggle in 1963, investigating local conditions, including the borderlands, and seeking to attract the support of those ethnic groups best able to support and sustain the work of the party (Woollacott, 1983). The functions assigned to the Experimental Agricultural Post at Pessubé are precursors of the constant inclination of Amílcar Cabral, then 28 years old, to conceive, encourage and direct collective work projects, regardless of size, with had potential impact in multiple fields – scientific, social, political and cultural. Amongst other initiatives, he published an Information Bulletin [Boletim Informativo], in the Ecos da Guiné newspaper, containing various articles promoting a “life of permanent awareness-building, and unceasing knowledge of the environment” (Cabral, 1988: 18111). In the 4 issues of the Boletim, published in 1953, and in writings from the year 1954 in the Portuguese Guinea Cultural Bulletin [Boletim Cultural da Guiné Portuguesa], he expounded on the situation of Guinean agriculture in the colonial framework. Amílcar Cabral’s thought and concerns focus on the complexity of two main topics: i) the threat of the destruction of the soil through the spread of the peanut crop (mancarra, in Guinean creole), incentivised by the commercial interests of European and Europeanized entities and ii) the consequences of the mechanization of agriculture for the soil and for social and economic relations. Amílcar Cabral did not believe that “an era of well-being and progress in Guiné” (Cabral,  The territory ceased to be a French colony in 1958.  FAO – Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. 11  Four issues (issue 4/5 was a double number) were published in the newspaper Ecos da Guiné in 1953. They are reproduced in Cabral (1988). 9

10

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1988: 239) would be achieved through the mere transposition of the “successes of science and technology” by the European colonizer (Cabral, 1988: 248) to Black Africa, while denying its traditional and contextual know-how. According to Carlos Schwarz, the main characteristics of Guinean agricultural production in 1950 were rice for the subsistence of the rural population, and the peanut crop for export.12 The growing cycle for the peanut started out in the Buba zone and then followed an itinerary which included Bolama, Bafatá and Gabú; this was identified by the erosion and deterioration of the soils which it caused in Guiné (Schwarz, 2012). For Saico Baldé, pressure on Guinean soils during the colonial period was made worse by the intensive cultivation of forestry resources and the monoculture of the peanut which had taken place in the Sahel region, covering ten African countries including Guiné-Bissau, which suffered successive droughts (Baldé 2008). Armando Mango also notes how the intensive cultivation of the peanut from 1888 onwards on Bolama Island had the effect of wearing away the thick covering of vegetation in the region’s natural soil, so that it remained in a state of degradation (Mango, 2001). These were the export crops brought in by the colonial system, the main one being the peanut, which enabled the native people to obtain the currency with which to pay the various levies (licences, taxes, fines) introduced by the colonial power (Mango, 2001). The broader framework for this issue was outlined by Amílcar Cabral in “Acerca da utilização da terra na África Negra” [On the use of land in Black Africa], published in 1953. This was a warning against what he regarded as the catastrophic consequences of the threat from colonialism to the ecological equilibrium which traditional African agriculture had achieved over a thousand years (Cabral, 1988: 248). Even if the system of itinerant agriculture in Black Africa and sub-tropical regions  – the right solution for the prevailing environmental conditions  – had its disadvantages, it was impossible to overcome these simply by replacing a “centuries-­ old system” with “new techniques”. Disregard or ignorance of ancient know-how, for the sake of growing products for export, was catastrophic – as sharply illustrated in neighbouring Senegal and “Senegalization”, an expression which stood for the devastation of the African soil (Cabral, 1988: 248). [the European] grows products for export, or has the African grow them for him, (…). He changes the mode of production without changing the system of land cultivation (…) this intensifies the merely latent disadvantages of the original system of itinerant agriculture. Increasingly large areas are taken from the forest, and the time in which the land is under cultivation increases. Periods when the land lies fallow are shorter. More than this: the land is cultivated until it is completely depleted. Meanwhile, erosion destroys the body of the soil and once it has been abandoned, it will never be restored. (…) colonialism brought into Africa a new system of production, exemplified in the ‘économie de traite’ [the economic relations associated with the marketing of agricultural products sold by African farmers,

 In 1898, total exports of peanut from Guiné amounted to 1609 tons. Between 1908 and 1917, average exports rose to 15,989 tons and in 1927 exports reached 20,985 tons. Between 1935 and 1944, annual peanut exports ranged from 16,000 to 34,000 tons (Mango, 2001). According to Amílcar Cabral’s research, in 1954 44,050 tons of peanuts were acquired for export (Cabral, 1988: 316). It is estimated that in 1980 exports were running at 25,000 tons (Lusa, Bissau). 12

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products for export]. It retains the system of cultivation of the land by itinerant agriculture [to which it applies, or tries to apply], the European agricultural practices it is convinced are superior, failing to take into account the differences in mesological conditions. (…). The powerless black man assists or takes part in his own destruction. With his life thrown out of balance (…) he starts to feel he has been uprooted, and then emigrates or is obliged to emigrate. (Cabral, 1988: 248)

A study which Amílcar Cabral carried out in 1953, in the Quinara region in the Fulacunda district specifically documented the depletion of the land. From a survey of some 300 family farms he established that the increase in the burnt area compared to the land allowed to lie fallow was greatest among those of the Mancanha ethnicity which used larger areas of land for peanut cultivation, which it then sold to local traders who in turn exported it as raw material. He concluded that some measures were needed to improve agricultural production and preserve the potential for exploiting the soil and to improve the lives of the native farmers. The acceleration of land burning at a rate higher than the time it lay fallow heralded the devastating effects on the soil brought about by the “empire of the peanut”, as he stated in a lecture in Senegal, in 1954. He once again stressed that the peanut cycle was not eternal and that this crop was not the most suitable for Guiné’s agriculture and climate (Cabral, 1988: 459). There is an echo here of Marx’s words in volume one of Das Kapital: “all progress in increasing the fertility of the soil for a given time is progress towards ruining the more long-lasting sources of that fertility” (Marx, 1976 [1867]: 638). From 1953 onwards, according to Armando Mango, peanut production declined, and there was a recession; the decline was more severe in the 1960s, made worse by adverse weather conditions (Mango, 2001). In 1965, agronomist Helder Lains e Silva recommended that the cashew tree be used in Guiné to recover the fertility of lands degraded by the cultivation of the peanut (Temudo, 2009). Cashew cultivation became increasingly significant and became Guiné-­ Bissau’s main export from the 1990s onwards.13 Even though Amílcar Cabral probably did not follow closely the theoretical developments surrounding the revision of Marxist doctrine during the 1950s, his thought follows the lines of those debates, which focused on topics like development, liberation, oppression, the push for Western technology and their consequences. One of the emerging debates within Marxism was that which focused on underdevelopment (amongst others, see Sweezy, 1942; Baran, 1957). Some writers argue that Amílcar Cabral’s insistent warnings throughout the 1950s on the disastrous results of intensifying peanut cultivation, subordinated to the interests of the metropolitan countries, prefigured the conclusions which Samir Amin presented in his Neo-Colonialism in West Africa, a 1973 study which focused on the situation in Senegal (McCulloch, 1981). While the story of peanut cultivation in Guiné reflected the colony’s dependence and economic exploitation, the issue of mechanization of agriculture further  Lusa, Bissau. Since the mid-1980s, the movement of world market prices encouraged increased cashew production in Guiné; but the later decline in those international market prices prevented the product from becoming a significant source of foreign currency for Guiné (Galli, 1994: 138–139). 13

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highlighted the constraints of colonial dominion; according to Amílcar Cabral, it needed to be prudently assessed rather than immediately adopted. It was to this underlying debate that he contributed the article entitled “A Propósito da Mecanização da Agricultura na Guiné Portuguesa” [On the Mechanization of Agriculture in Portuguese Guinea], which he published in 1954 (Cabral, 1988: 233–239). This was viewed as an “assessment of the impact of technology”, on account of his having addressed in it the possible repercussions on ecology, human life, society and economy, of the introduction of mechanized cultivation (Barreto in Cabral, 1988: 44). Discussion of the suitability of mechanization of agriculture in Guiné-Bissau follows the pattern Amílcar Cabral had consolidated since his studies of soil erosion in the Alentejo, reflecting on the questions of agriculture and the soil in the light of the relationship between technical aspects and economic and social conditions and the reciprocal effects of agriculture, climate and culture.14 Starting out with a question – did the economic organization of the territory as it stood in 1954 justify the mechanization of agriculture?  – he develops his arguments and seeks to demonstrate that in his view it was wrong to suppose that the lack of a mechanized system of cultivation was the source of “all Guiné’s misfortunes”. While Frantz Fanon (1925–1961), who may be regarded as an anti-colonialist thinker, associated advancing technology with cultural decline (McCulloch, 1981), Amílcar Cabral saw certain advantages of Western technology, believing that if the machine was “truly put at man’s service”, it could “transform and dignify him”. But he adopted a critical distance from this somewhat Promethean position, which can be traced back to Marx, and this enabled him to discuss “the mechanization complex” (Cabral, 1988: 233), arguing that in Guiné, it was not the primary condition for progress and increased production. Mechanization was suitable when it led to “suitable economic and social arrangements”, instead of being applied “by the force of the interests behind it” (Cabral, 1988: 237). Amílcar Cabral warned that the advantages of the mechanization of agriculture were highly likely to turn into potential problems in Guiné. He pointed to a series of “technical” aspects, starting with the fact that mechanization implied more intensive land cultivation. Taking the poverty of the soil in tropical regions into account and the characteristics of the climate, it was easy to predict that mechanization would accelerate soil depletion. Secondly, while mechanization would enable more work and faster execution, it would not increase unit production. It would be the “perfect adjustment to the environment of the species cultivated and the processes of cultivation” which would “truly” lead to increases in unit production (Cabral, 1988: 235). Thirdly, mechanization would require more specialized labour (tractor drivers) and

 In the mid-1950s, Álvaro Cunhal, leader of the Portuguese Communist Party, wrote his Contribuição para o Estudo da Questão Agrária (Contribution to the Study of the Agrarian Question), showing how the subject of land use embraced technics, economics and politics. Amongst other things, he demonstrated how technical progress and increased productivity in Portuguese agriculture had failed to improve living conditions for the rural population. In this connection, see Garcia (2013), Ágoas (2013) and Baptista (2013). 14

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would lead to big differentials in demands for benefits as between the “specialized” worker and the manual labourer. It was also impossible to ignore the fact that the viability of mechanization depended on the form of economic organization, a factor which acquired even more significance because of the “prominence” of the role of agriculture in the Guinean “economic complex”. Thus his concerns transitioned into the social and economic problems of mechanized cultivation, a type of “content” which merged with the technical. Multiple issues needed to be addressed, showing how complex the question was and how its specific characteristics affected the debate on technological change, in particular its consequences for employment of labour. Given that there were two types of farm – the native (belonging to the community) and the non-native or Europeanized (owned by an individual or corporation) – would mechanization be applied to both? This uncovered the “true problem, [which] lies in knowing whether mechanization will apply to native agriculture, the backwardness of which is  – or should be  – well known” (Cabral, 1988: 238). If the financial and cultural position of the native farmer did not enable him to buy the equipment needed for the mechanization of family farms, it was up to the state to plan and carry out the mechanization of native agriculture. Which form of agricultural organization should the government select from among the types put forward by Cabral in “A Propósito da Mecanização da Agricultura na Guiné Portuguesa”: family, cooperative or state-directed agriculture? There were other choices to be made downstream, one of the most important of which was whether to apply mechanization to the whole of native farming activity or to mechanize only the cultivation of export crops, like the peanut. Jock McCulloch notes that more than technology itself, Cabral’s interest was in how the farms were owned; the only way of preventing the destructive effects of mechanization was to ensure a state monopoly (McCulloch, 1981: 508). Amílcar Cabral’s main conclusion on the mechanization of agriculture in Guiné-­ Bissau was that technology which adopted motorised transport would lead to “radical change in the life of the indigenous population”: [mechanization] would create a new type of rural worker, with new needs. It would demand a change in the social relations between the different layers of each native people and between each native people and the wider society. Whether in the social, cultural or even political arena, it would be necessary to face up to and solve new problems. When the machine is placed in man’s service, but truly in man’s service, it can transform and dignify his existence. As is well known, most of the native population of Guiné occupies its time, at least for a few months of the year, in farm labour. (…). Mechanization would greatly facilitate the work of agriculture and would reduce the need for native manual labour in carrying out those tasks. Now it is precisely that advantage which creates a crucial problem for the mechanization of native agriculture. In the current economic, social and cultural environment in Guiné, how would the thousands of natives laid off or dismissed from farm work as a result of mechanization occupy their time? (…) This questioning reveals, in all its majestic scope, the importance of the economic and social organization of a given environment in how land cultivation practices evolve. (Cabral, 1988: 238–239)

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7.5 Agriculture in the Politician’s Discourse In the urban life of colonial Guiné, there was a group of Africans, made up of “senior and middle-ranking employees”, who would sometimes visit Amílcar Cabral at the Pessubé Experimental Agriculture Station, and advise him: “‘You, son of so-and-so, we know who you are, you’re getting yourself into trouble, you’re ruining your career as an agronomist, we want to give you some advice, there’s nothing we can do for ourselves against the tugas,15 we are all Portuguese’” (Cabral, 1976: 121, vol. II). Although, according to Amílcar Cabral, most members of this petite bourgeoisie suffered with the tugas, who took the best positions both in competitive situations and professional contexts, they remained “Portuguese” because they feared the consequences of challenging colonialism (Cabral, 1976: 121, vol. II). In 1954 and 1955, Amílcar Cabral tried to set up the Clube Desportivo [Sports Association], in Bissau, to be the base for the Guiné independence struggle (Sousa, 2011). The club was banned, and Cabral had to leave the territory in 1955, also because he was ill (Chabal, 1983). Ário Lobo de Azevedo, his former professor, notes that the persecution to which he had begun to be subjected when he carried out his research in the Alentejo, got worse during his time in Guiné, and became “truly fierce” when he returned to Lisbon (Azevedo in Cabral, 1988, 12–13). Up until 1960, his working life was divided mainly between Lisbon and Angola, in which he was assisted by Lobo de Azevedo and Joaquim Botelho da Costa. In Angola, he mapped the soils and worked on the rehabilitation of salty soils. Lobo de Azevedo praised the quality of his work as a researcher and agronomist, stressing the appropriateness of the measures suggested by Cabral.16 With Amílcar Cabral’s growing involvement in political activity, from the time the PAIGC was firmly established to the beginning of the armed struggle in Guiné, he renewed his study of agriculture and its problems. A direct and strategically repetitive tone permeates his political writings. The leader did not extinguish his experience as an agronomist, but the register changed; the informed technician gave way to the assertiveness of both the politician and diplomat who sets out the options, including his preference for cooperative use of the land, and the leader who also devises content for the PAIGC media and supervises its propaganda (Martinho, 2017). His concern with educating the people is the strongest thread of continuity in the two phases of Cabral’s biography. In effect, the importance he attaches to agriculture ties in with one of the most persistent ideas in his speeches and writings: the need to overcome illiteracy and make progress in education, this concept embodying the condition that “all the harmful influence of the colonial culture” be resisted

 “Tugas” was a shortened form used to designate the Portuguese, the colonizers. It spread mainly among Africans involved in fighting for the independence of territories colonized by Portugal, as a label for the enemy in the anti-colonial struggle. 16  Although, in one of the studies mentioned by Lobo de Azevedo, “businessmen’s narrow-­ mindedness” prevented their being widely applied, because a longer period of time was needed to determine how effective they were (Azevedo in Cabral, 1988: 13). 15

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and that Guineans and Cabo Verdeans should be endowed with “a new idea which is patriotism, love for our country” (Cabral, 1974: 195). In a speech in 1969, at a seminar for PAIGC cadres, Amílcar Cabral emphasised that apart from agriculture “we have nothing else in our country”. The advance of agriculture depended on reinforcing the “political consciousness of our farmers, showing them that the path of agriculture is the primary path for the success of our people”. He defended the Guiné farmer, repeating that agriculture could open up to “our people the opportunity to develop industry tomorrow” (Cabral, 1974: 195). It was a priority, Amílcar Cabral maintained, to succeed in extracting “the due amount of income from our agriculture” [and in this way to change Guineans’ attitudes: agriculture could not continue to be used for mere survival, or exploitation by the tugas]; “In our land, because of its backwardness, there are hardly any small farmers”. The prospective cooperative system was “the shortest path” to the development of Guiné’s agriculture and economy,17 for a new mode of production (“the level of productive forces and property ownership”) and a new stage in the historic progress of the peoples whose way of life had been uprooted by Portuguese colonial dominion, which was entangled in a web of diverse imperialist interests (Cabral, 1976: 203–205, vol. 1). Amílcar Cabral identified as “a simple African, fulfilling his duty in his own country, in the context of our time” (Cabral cit. in Caldeira et al., 2000: 3). But this is a somewhat abbreviated introduction, given that this “simple African” belonged to a very small African minority which had both the willingness to contest colonialism politically and a higher education degree in agronomy. As for the “duty” he felt, a more nuanced interpretation would focus on the meaning Cabral attributed to the work of “raising the standard of living of the rural population”. Amílcar Cabral advocated this not only as a strong foundation for “developmentalist nationalism” (Chilcote, 1981), it was also a “fundamental principle” of the ethics of the agronomist’s profession; it was a job to be done “diligently, against all obstacles” (Cabral, 1988: 535). This perspective elucidates the choices he took and consolidated from 1955 onwards, giving continuity to that which was already visible in him as a young man. The ethics and the work of his agronomist profession were even more important when colonialism was seen as the heaviest obstacle to improving social and economic conditions. His scientific and professional knowledge, in combination with his political thought, placed Amílcar Cabral in a very special position to perceive and fight for the primary need to remove the political yoke of colonialism, as he set up and led a party to defend the interests of the Guiné and Cabo Verde peoples. A party whose watchwords were: “to hope for the best, but be prepared for the worst” (Cabral, 1974: 15). In his own words, “our armed struggle (…) is a form of political struggle, which seeks to free our land from exploitation” (Cabral, 1974: 299).

 See Cadernos CIDAC, n.° 1. 1979. “Contubel: An agricultural co-operative in Guiné-Bissau”. The story of the founding and activities of Contubel underlines his arguments in favour of the co-­ operative system and his view that the meachnization of agriculture was not suited to Guiné. 17

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Amílcar Cabral’s academic writings and political speeches and essays reveal a permanent attention and interest in the contradictory nature of natural and social phenomena, shaped by writers in the Marxist tradition. Long periods of drought assailed the land, the vegetation and the soil; but the rain, which was apparently positive and nutritious, had its opposite aspect: if it was not properly channelled it could destroy the soil. Agriculture too contained an “inherent conflict”, which he summarised in one article as follows: “Man, by cultivating the land, destroys its fertility and, in conjunction with other factors, destroys the very body of the soil. The solution to that conflict (…) is vital for determining how this situation will evolve” (Cabral, 1988: 246). The “solution”, the ability to use the land responsibly and preserve the soil as a common good, was in the hands and minds of men, who could not be separated from nature, as Engels had observed. A contradictory impression is conveyed by the picture of a smiling Amílcar Cabral, armed at the waist and walking through Guiné’s tall vegetation,18 already the leader of the armed struggle. The war itself was contradictory, embodying different meanings. In an article for the PAIGC Pilot School bulletin Blufo, an anonymous writer – most likely Cabral, because he was active writing and editing content for PAIGC newspapers, bulletins and radio programmes  – equated it to slash-and-burn in agriculture (Martinho, 2017). The purpose of the armed struggle was to “destroy the bad things”, just as the technique of removing vegetation by burning was effective in “clearing the fields for ploughing” (Blufo 1966, n° 02). Once the land had been regenerated, the party would only grow new small plants, the “children”, who could grow up healthy in a land ploughed and irrigated “with the blood of our fighters” (Blufo 1966, n° 02). In today’s Guiné-Bissau, the present continues to run counter to the goals of social regeneration which Amílcar Cabral set for this struggle to uphold his country, and is still far from the reflections which permeate his writings on agriculture and colonialism. Political Independence ended the armed struggle against Portugal, but Guiné-Bissau failed to overcome the political and institutional instability which persist to this day, with a succession of military coups and changes in government. Regarded as one of the poorest countries in the world,19 it is a clear example of the need to think in reciprocal terms of the care of the land and the protection of man, as Amílcar Cabral insistently noted. While he saw agriculture as “an opportunity to develop industry tomorrow” (Cabral, 1974), today he would observe that this did not happen: the potential implications of technological change for working practices, property ownership, education and the environment, remain unknown.20

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VSBUT0aDSRY  https://www1.wfp.org/countries/guinea-bissau 20  The following features stand out from a more complex social background: agriculture dominates the economy, contributing over 90% of export revenues, but only 50% of arable land is exploited. The result of this is low productivity (Fonseca, 2018); Guiné-Bissau exports unprocessed cashew (the cashew nut), and is thus dependent on large international buyers and world market prices; internal production of rice, the Guineans’ staple food, covers only 30% of the country’s needs (Carvalho & Barros, 2014). 18 19

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7.6 Conclusion This chapter examined the first period of Amílcar Cabral’s life as an agronomist, a period which has been less researched and is less well known, but which prepared the ground for the flourishing of the second phase, opening up the pathways, according to those who accompanied him (Cabral, 1988: 13). Analysis of the first phase is essential for understanding how he constantly valued education and culture as elements in a nation’s power to assert its identity. The lack of education and schooling hindered emancipation and the ability to see that the land belongs to humanity. As a common asset which was vital for all seasons, the land needed both detached ownership as well as in-depth knowledge and responsibility in taking care of and working it, because of the consequences of any interference with it. Culture, on the other hand, as a set of shared values and customs, was a major unifying force, even if not in an exclusively material form. Running through the whole of Amílcar Cabral’s thought is the principle that agriculture and soil conservation need more than technology. As far as African territories are concerned, he stressed that “Black African systems of land cultivation” should be linked with the benefits of “European techniques” in such a way as to prevent “the disorganized and greed-based exploitation of the land” (Cabral, 1988: 249). The time in which agronomy was the central topic in his thought and writings, as well as in his professional work, and the way he approached these topics, are together a significant contribution towards a deeper understanding of Portuguese colonial dominion by means of culture and technology and in particular their influence on the people of the territory of Guiné.21 The value he places on the application of scientific knowledge of nature and the responsible use of intellectual achievement is a characteristic of Amílcar Cabral’s focused writings, the output of an agronomist who thought deeply about social and economic development. Despite the Marxist influence on his academic and agricultural work,22 he did not subject his thought and work to any vision of the d­ evelopment of the forces of production at any price. Amílcar Cabral did not have an “infinitist” view of the technological mastery of nature as a means of perfecting and emancipating humanity (Martins, 2012). Cabral’s work echoes Engels’ idea, in The Dialectics of Nature, that man and the land are inseparable. Engels, it should be recalled, argued that neglect of the land and the ways of using it as the conquest of “a foreign people” went counter to the principle that humanity is part of nature like “flesh, blood and brain” (Engels, 2007 [1883]: 261). Engels added that the correct measure of man’s dominion of the land was his knowledge of the laws of nature and their proper application (Engels, 2007 [1883]: 261).

 The people of Guiné are: Fula, Mandinga, Mancanha, Balanta-mané, Balanta, Baiote, Beafada, Felupe, Nalú, Banhun, Cassanga, Bijagó, Manjaco, Mansoanca, Pajadinca, Papel, Saracolé, Sosso (Cabral, 1988: 265). 22  In this connection, see Neves (2017). 21

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Amílcar Cabral consistently drew attention to the limitations of technological mastery of the land, mainly apparent when that mastery disregards the particular features of the cultural contexts in which it is applied and the fact that it increases the power of some men over others, even if good intentions are present. Even before the term sustainable agriculture was widely known and the social sciences had as yet not incorporated the notions of risk and uncertainty, Amílcar Cabral discussed the implications, which he saw as catastrophic, of importing the new technologies of industrial societies into Black Africa and the social, economic and technical problems he foresaw with the introduction of mechanized cultivation of the land. Cabral pointed to the example of neighbouring Senegal (Pessis, 2013) to illustrate the accidents of soil devastation in Africa, accelerated as it had been by loss of control of the inconveniences of the itinerant system which black African agriculture had specialized in dealing with and working around for centuries. (European) colonialism and the complex of factors introduced into the life of black Africans, including a new system of production called “économie de traite” (Badouin, 1967), upset the environmental and social equilibrium (Cabral, 1988: 248). This form of discourse, which encompasses contextual knowledge, protection of the land, careful technological choices and social development, stands out forcefully in the writings of Amílcar Cabral the agronomist. Acknowledgements  This text was  translated by Richard Wall  with the  support of  the FCT  – Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, I.P., through its strategical project UID/SOC/50013/2013.

References Amílcar Cabral’s Works Cabral, A. (1974). PAIGC – Unidade e luta. Nova Aurora. Cabral, A. (1976). Obras escolhidas de Amílcar Cabral. A arma da teoria: Unidade e luta (2 vols.). Seara Nova. Cabral, A. (1988). Estudos agrários de Amílcar Cabral. Instituto de Investigação Científica Tropical/Instituto Nacional de Estudos e Pesquisa.

Other References Ágoas, F. (2010). Saber e poder: Estado e investigação social agrária nos primórdios da sociologia em Portugal (PhD Dissertation in Sociology). Faculdade de Ciências Sociais e Humanas da Universidade Nova de Lisboa. Ágoas, F. (2013). ‘Abaixo da linha de miséria’: Anatomia de um gesto científico-social em contribuição para o estudo da questão agrária. In J. Neves (Ed.), Álvaro Cunhal: Política, história e estética (pp. 135–149). Edições Tinta-da-China. Azevedo, A. L. (1988). A propósito da dimensão humana de Amílcar Cabral. In A. Cabral (Ed.), Estudos Agrários de Amílcar Cabral (pp. 11–13). Instituto de Investigação Científica Tropical/ Instituto Nacional de Estudos e Pesquisa.

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Badouin, R. (1967). Où en est la réforme de l’économie de traite en Afrique noire? Revue Tiers Monde, 32, 1209–1216. https://www.persee.fr/doc/tiers_0040-­7356_1967_num_8_32_2415_ t1_1209_0000_2. Accessed 3 Apr 2019 Baptista, F. O. (2013). Socialismo e agricultura: A questão agrária de Álvaro Cunhal. In J. Neves (Ed.), Álvaro Cunhal: Política, história e estética (pp. 103–118). Edições Tinta-da-China. Baran, P. A. (1957). The political economy of growth. Monthly Review Press. Barreto, L. S. (1988). As preocupações ecológicas. In A. Cabral (Ed.), Estudos agrários de Amílcar Cabral (pp. 43–44). Instituto de Investigação Científica Tropical/Instituto Nacional de Estudos e Pesquisa. Barros, H. (1934). Inquérito económico agrícola (vol. 1) (Freguesia de Cuba), Universidade Técnica de Lisboa. Bennett, H. H. (1938). General aspects of the soil erosion problem. In Soils and men (pp. 587–588). USDA Year Book of Agriculture. Blufo – Órgão dos Pioneiros do PAIGC, n° 02, Fevereiro de 1966, CasaComum.org. http://hdl. handle.net/11002/fms_dc_44468. Accessed 20 Nov 2018. Caldeira, A., Cabral, I., Santos, C., Pessoa, J., Mesquita, V., Jordão, C., & Mouzinho, G. (2000). Sou um simples africano…. Fundação Mário Soares. Carvalho, C., & Barros, M. de (2014). Forum sociedade civil, soberania e segurança alimentar e nutricional. Instituto Marquês de Valle Flôr – PDSA II (Programa Descentralizado de Segurança Alimentar e Nutricional nas Regiões da Guiné-Bissau II) e RESSAN-GB (Rede para a Segurança e Soberania Alimentar na Guiné-Bissau). Chabal, P. (1983). Amílcar Cabral: Revolutionary leadership and people’s war. Cambridge University Press. Chilcote, R. H. (1981). Issues of theory in dependency and Marxism. Latin American Perspectives, 8(3–4), 3–16. Cunhal, A. (1976). Contribuição para o estudo da questão agrária. Edições Avante. Dhada, M. (1993). Warriors’ at work. Colorado University Press. Engels, F. (2007 [1883]). The part played by labor in the transition from ape to man. In The origin of the family, private property and the state. International Publishers. Fistein, D. (2014). The diplomatic achievements of Amílcar Cabral: A case study of effective leadership in a small African state. In B. G. Jallow (Ed.), Leadership in colonial Africa: Disruption of traditional frameworks and patterns (pp. 69–100). Palgrave Macmillan. Fonseca, P. D. (2018). Em nome da paz. Um olhar da população e dos actores sociais e políticos da Guiné-Bissau. Relatório Final. Consulta Nacional Sobre Paz, Reconciliação e Desenvolvimento (2019–2017). Instituto Padre António Vieira. Galli, R. E. (1994). A ausência de capitalismo agrário na Guiné-Bissau durante o regime do Estado Novo. Soronda: Revista de Estudos Guineenses, 17, 124–127. Garcia, J. L. (2013). ‘Forçar a natureza a dar o que espontaneamente jamais daria’: Notas sobre acção, técnica e natureza em Álvaro Cunhal. In J. Neves (Ed.), Álvaro Cunhal: Política, história e estética (pp. 119–133). Edições Tinta-da-China. Lains e Silva, H. (1965). Plano de desenvolvimento da cultura do cajueiro na Guiné Portuguesa. Comunicações, 49, 19–58. Mango, A. (2001). Os Brames da Guiné-Bissau (Séculos XVIII-XX): História e antropologia. Dissertação de Mestrado em Estudos Africanos. Faculdade de Letras da Universidade de Porto, https://catalogo.up.pt/exlibris/aleph/a23_1/apache_media/ TY4XRX7MJ91I6LCBHGGG6Q9XQMNQY2.pdf. Accessed 12 Apr 2019. Martins, H. (2012). Experimentum humanum: Civilização tecnológica e condição humana. Relógio D’Água. Martinho, T. D. (2017). Amílcar Cabral, the PAIGC and the media: The struggle in words, sounds and images. In J.  L. Garcia, C.  Kaul, F.  Subtil, & A.  Santos (Eds.), Media and Portuguese empire (pp. 291–307). Palgrave Macmillan. Marx, K. (1976) [1867]. Capital: A critique of political economy (vol. 1). Penguin Books.

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McCulloch, J. (1981). Amílcar Cabral: A theory of imperialism. The Journal of Modern African Studies, 19(3), 503–511. Nascimento, H.  M. do (2007). Visão agrário-ecológica marxista: Uma introdução. Campo-­ Território: Revista de Geografia Agrária, 2(3), 55–78. Neves, J. (2005). Marxismo, anticolonialismo e nacionalismo: Amílcar Cabral, a imaginação a partir de baixo. 4° Congresso Marx/Engels. CEMARX/UNICAMP. Neves, J. (2017). Ideologia, ciência e povo em Amílcar Cabral. História, Ciências, Saúde  – Manguinhos, 24(2), 333–347. Pessis, C. (2013). Les sols sénégalais malades de l’arachide, 1944–1952. Monde(s), 2(4), 127–144. Rudebeck, L. (1974). Guinea-Bissau: A study of political mobilization. Scandinavian Institute of African Studies. Schwarz, C. (2012). Amílcar Cabral: Um agrónomo antes do seu tempo. http://www.adbissau.org/ wp-­content/uploads/2013/01/AMILCAR-­CABRAL-­final.pdf. Accessed 12 Jan 2019. Serequeberhan, T. (1991). African philosophy: The essential readings. Paragon House. Silva, A. E. D. (2006). Guiné-Bissau: A causa do nacionalismo e a fundação do PAIGC. Cadernos de Estudos Africanos. http://journals.openedition.org/cea/1236. Accessed 9 Nov 2018. Sousa, J. S. (2011). Amílcar Cabral: Vida e morte de um revolucionário africano. Nova Vega. Sweezy, P. M. (1942). The theory of capitalist development. Oxford University Press. Temudo, M. P. (2009). A narrativa da degradação ambiental no Sul da Guiné-Bissau: Uma desconstrução etnográfica. Etnográfica, 13(2) http://journals.openedition.org/etnografica/1341. Accessed 12 Jan 2019 Tomás, A. (2007). O fazedor de utopias: Uma biografia de Amílcar Cabral. Edições Tinta-da-China. Woollacott, J. (1983). A luta pela libertação nacional na Guiné-Bissau e a revolução em Portugal. Análise Social, XIX(77/79), 1131–1151. Teresa Duarte Martinho is a Research fellow at the Instituto de Ciências Sociais, Universidade de Lisboa (ICS-ULisboa) [Institute of Social Sciences, University of Lisbon], where she was previously a Post-doctoral and Visiting fellow. She holds a PhD in Sociology from the ISCTE-Instituto Universitário de Lisboa [ISCTE-Lisbon University Institute]. Her main field of research has been the culture sector, focusing on policies, professions, mediation and the consequences of digitalization. In addition, her areas of interest are biographical research related to, among other topics, post-colonial studies and the contribution of women to social theory.  

Part II

Technology, Risk and Values

Chapter 8

Riscophrenia: The Risk Fallacy and the Repression of Uncertainty Helena Mateus Jerónimo

Abstract  Contemporary society has elevated the concept of risk to the status of dogma. That this concept may be converted to a mathematical-probabilistic measure supposedly offers security and control over contingencies and random events. Probabilistic risk is part of the current societal obsession with quantification for grasping realities and making forecasts. The disproportionate use of the notion of risk places many different phenomena under the same conceptual umbrella, subjecting them to the reductionist criteria of rule by calculation. I put forward the concept of riscophrenia to describe this tendency. This chapter criticises riscophrenia, that is to say, the inflated use of the notion of risk and the fallacy that chance can be eliminated, knowing that such efforts are inglorious, neglect the prudential principle, and may produce new unpredictabilities and uncertainties. Risk analyses are unable to question the fundamental reasoning embedded in the instrumental vision which permeates modernity. They not only adjust themselves to the model which produces those problems, but also legitimise, justify and ratify it. Keywords  Risk · Repression of uncertainty · Riscophrenia · Calculating reason · Contingency · Precaution

H. M. Jerónimo (*) ISEG School of Economics and Management, Universidade de Lisboa & Advance/CSG, Lisbon, Portugal e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 H. M. Jerónimo (ed.), Portuguese Philosophy of Technology, Philosophy of Engineering and Technology 43, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-14630-5_8

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8.1 Introduction The idea that it is impossible to eliminate uncertainty, contingency or chance has come into its own in the first quarter of the twenty-first century, contradicting the devotees of calculability and the sophisticated forecasting tools of today’s societies. A succession of crises – from the terrorist attack of 9/11 to the world financial crisis of 2007–2008, the covid-19 pandemic in 2020 and the war in Ukraine which began in February 2022 – remind us insistently of humanity’s vulnerability, the inescapable unpredictability of human action and decisions, and the intrinsic randomness of the natural world. The eagerness of attempts to counter uncertainty has a long history, which is tied in with the notion of risk. The modern world has had a propensity to live in an illusory bubble of anthropocentric control. Many of the ills of the world began to be seen as avoidable, controllable and tameable, and so it has continued down to the present day. The concept of risk was seen as promising to bring order to the unpredictability of the natural world through the prism of probabilities. To interpret the world in terms of risk meant liberating it, as Prometheus did, from the whims of nature, the gods, destiny – the triad which provided comfort for feelings of insecurity in the face of dangers and threats in the middle ages (Bernstein, 1996). Dressing risk up in probability made it possible to abolish the idea that there are certain dynamics in the world which do not depend on human beings, to make progress with forecasts, and above all to provide the foundations for a culture of control and management by decision-making bodies. Many of the forward-looking choices made under cover of this idea did lead to improvements in life and to achievements of which humanity is justly proud, but also had unforeseen consequences, some of them catastrophic. The concept of risk, with its double-sided Janus face, lends itself to this appropriation, given that it both reflects opportunity and sees danger, something undesirable and to be avoided; it may reveal an anticipated moment (an expectation) or something which is feared (loss or danger); it is both promising and fateful in aspect. Risk is a sort of game of chance, reminding us of the word’s etymology, deriving from the Italian risicare, which means “to dare” and involves a choice. To recognize that uncertainty has always been with us, however, and derives as much from the indeterminacy associated with human action as from the unpredictability of the natural world, and then to reduce it to the idea of calculable risk, becomes a problem. Reality must be interpreted as a whole, made up of interactions, some of which may be properly formulated, understood and even foreseen, but others arise in a random mix. There is a dense, complex and unpredictable meshwork of causes, events and circumstances, which produces “the accident”, a word used in philosophy and day-to-day speech to designate unpredictable events. This meshwork is indeterminate because it may take on different forms and cannot be known or foreseen with any certainty until its effects are felt (Schedler, 2007; Silver, 2018). Limits on the ability to imagine future eventualities have to be acknowledged, the (Fernando Pessoa is a major Portuguese poet, hailed as “Whitman reborn” by the literary critic Harold Bloom in his The Western Canon. This was his last sentence, written in English on 29 November 1935, the eve of his death at the age of 47)

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“ignorance of ignorance” of the parameters of a complex world, and the potential for “surprises” produced by technological and economic development itself. Living with contingency, as the German philosopher Odo Marquard wrote, “is our historical normality” (2000 [1986]: 142). To remove the contingent is to remove that which in the human being is too human, or like removing philosophy from philosophers (2000 [1986]: 128). On the other hand denying it, trying to forget that it exists, converting it into mathematical formulae which dampen the difficulty of dealing with it, help to face the fear which rules day-to-day existence and to increase confidence in the rationality of risk analyses. The notion of risk re-centres the emphasis on the future, on actors, and on how to make decisions in situations of uncertainty. That is why the concept of risk has taken on the characteristics of “one-­ concept-­fits-all”, used to think about and describe very disparate phenomena which are not susceptible to quantification and which are full of random and contingent elements. This hegemonic and monolithic tendency to use of the language of risk, which elevates the concept to a central dogma of certainty, based on an image of alleged safety and control over the random and the contingent, may be called riscophrenia, as I have suggested elsewhere (Jerónimo, 2014). Riscophrenia is the critical keystone in the rejection of uncertainty, which appears tameable, but does not allow itself to be tied down. It opens up a critical reflection on the inflated use of risk, which modern-day societies have adopted in order to operate and get organized. It has two inter-related aspects: (a) the promise of safety which derives from the enchanted aura of numbers; and (b) the “moral relief” function and ratification of the current standard based on anthropocentric bias, reflecting the utilitarian, extractive and hyper-industrialized nature of modern societies. In the first place, trust and the image of safety, which underlie risk analysis, are a perfect fit for the culture of refusal of unpredictability, encouraging us to take risks which we would otherwise not take on. A close examination needs to be made of this veneration for supposed risk control and the desire to eliminate chance, knowing as we do that those attempts are vain and lead in turn to new instances of unpredictability and uncertainty. Secondly, risk analysis does not allow for questioning the embedded foundation of the very instrumental vision that strongly permeates modernity. Not only does it adjust to the model which produces those problems, it also legitimates, justifies and ratifies them. I argue that these elements keep us from considering that human existence and life in society possess inherent unpredictability and uncertainty, and that uncertainty is inescapable. It is necessary to reflect on the underlying assumptions of a risk-based or uncertainty-based interpretation of reality, and on what we accept, tolerate or reject in those assumptions.

8.2 From Uncertainty to Risk (and Back Again) Since the earliest days of modernity the adventure of civilization has been “a kind of odyssey of domestication”, which went from a “celestial utopia” or “utopia of escape” to a “worldly utopia”, in the words of Lewis Mumford, in The Story of Utopias (2007 [1922]: 58, 148). This new “worldly” compass, anchored now in the concept of risk, finally enabled reason to unravel the contingency of the world and

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the enigmas of our historical future to come. Risk thus became the secular version of the goddess Fortuna (Beriain, 1996; González  García, 2006), a version which stresses human self-assertion and planning. In its origins, the idea of risk is associated with global navigation and maritime undertakings, a truly risky context on account of being subject to various natural hazards and uncertainties, giving it the meaning it still has today – the idea of choice or voluntary decision which weighs up losses and benefits. The notion of risk, and above all the emergence of the insurance system, reduced situations to their probabilistic value, which in calculating the ratio of gains and losses made it possible to confront fears for a future decided in the present. In the words of Peter Sloterdijk, insurance was like a mechanism whereby “philosophical techniques of certainty” were replaced by pragmatism and mathematical procedures (Sloterdijk, 2008: 103). Faced with a much less onerous and much more practicable alternative, modern societies made a clear choice not to use metaphysics for ultimate justification. “Insurance defeats evidence: this statement encapsulates the fate of all philosophy in the technical world” (Sloterdijk, 2008: 103). Insurance wins in the field of evidence through the potentialities of the risk formula, a device for rationalizing, quantifying, measuring and reducing indeterminacy (Beriain, 2000, 2007). Risk discourse expanded from its application to strictly limited situations such as losses deriving from the hazards inherent in maritime trade (e.g. shipwrecks) to increasingly complex problems which were difficult, if not impossible, for insurance companies to deal with by means of financial compensation or by anticipatory control of negative consequences. It thus reflected a growing catalogue of the dangers, disasters and risks which torment societies, from ancient famines, epidemics, wars, earthquakes and their aftermaths to chemical risks, the nuclear threat, aerospace technologies, specific environmental problems, climate change, bio- and nanotechnologies, and transnational terrorism networks, amongst so many others (e.g. Wynne, 1992, 2005; Strydom, 2002; Beck, 2002). In all these domains, the concept of risk is used to contemplate the future in the light of a decision to be made in the present on the various alternative forms of action. That which began as an attempt to domesticate and deal with uncertainty ended up subsuming, devaluing or completely eradicating uncertainty. A group of modern social thinkers, however, including Vilfredo Pareto, Max Weber and Georg Simmel did not go along with this. For these important figures contingency was never neglected, as demonstrated in their concepts of “non-logical actions”, the “paradox of consequences” and the “tragedy of culture”. They argued repeatedly that uncertainties in the life of humanity and society cannot be domesticated. Even in the realm of economic thought, which is associated with an objectivity-pursuing epistemology, perceptive minds such as those of Frank H.  Knight (1921) and John Maynard Keynes (1921, 1954 [1936]), who made categorical conceptual distinctions between risk and uncertainty, were fully aware of the irreducible role of uncertainty in economic life and in the behaviour of economic actors. For those philosopher-economists, who disdained classical theories based on overestimation of market stability and the adoption of deterministic and probabilistic laws as guides for explaining economic life and decision-making, risk applies to situations in

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which individuals are aware of the possible results of their actions and the numerical probability of their occurrence, while uncertainty applies to situations in which it is impossible to calculate such probabilities (e.g. Bernstein, 1996; Reddy, 1996; Martins, 2011 [1998]; Dupuy, 2002). Despite the differences between risk and uncertainty in concepts and worldviews, it was the notion of risk which took pride of place, animated by faith in rational behaviour and the power of calculation (Reddy, 1996). Risk analysis spread to many sectors, from engineering to environmental and health hazards, and the language of risk became omnipresent in politics and the media and among the general public, as well as in the academy, where nearly all the disciplines have made contributions and offered specific approaches to the different types of risk (in the social sciences and philosophy, see, e.g., Krimsky & Golding, 1992; Löfstedt & Boholm, 2009; Hansson, 2012). Risk in fact became a key descriptor in modern-day societies, which came to be viewed as “risk societies”, an expression popularised by the German social theorist Ulrich Beck (1992 [1986]). Beck, however, applies the risk label to a society which he in fact describes as a society of uncertainty, the designation and epithet that Martins (2011 [1998]) rightly suggests should be applied to contemporary societies. This terminological ambiguity does not sit well with the assertiveness of Beck’s diagnosis of the radicalization of modernity on the basis of its successes and dynamisms, with the examination of the assumptions and limitations of his own model, and with the euphemistic conversion of uncertainties into calculable risk dependent on human action and decision-making (Martins, 2011 [1998]; Martinez-Alier, 2006). Uncertainty in relation to the future is inescapable, given that “the future is yet to be created” (Dequech, 2000: 41). The attempt to forecast that which it is hoped will happen in the future under certain given conditions inevitably brings value judgments, inferences and assumptions into play, to which we must add human cognitive limitations (e.g., the ability to remember and the role of emotions in the cognitive sphere) which give rise to various forms of bias and errors, such as retrospective bias (the tendency to overvalue a posteriori the probability of an event which has actually occurred), and confirmation bias (the tendency to interpret information in such a way as to confirm pre-existing beliefs or hypotheses), and bias associated with the law of small numbers (excessive confidence in inferences based on small samples) (Yuengert, 2012). The creativity of present and future responses to uncertainty by individuals as a whole means that the future is open and therefore unpredictable. A “fundamental uncertainty” subsists, in which not only do we not know all possible events, because there are limits to knowledge, but there is also a context of creative possibility and structural change which is not predetermined (Dequech, 2000, 2004). Uncertainty is thus interwoven with epistemological and ontological aspects. In other words, an ontological vision of reality, subject to undetermined structural changes and unexpected and unpredictable events, will always involve an epistemological counterpart represented by shortcomings of some type of knowledge. In the same way, individuals’ cognitive and epistemological capabilities are limited only by the encounter with the complexity of the reality in which they operate and in relation to which they wish to make decisions (Dequech, 2004).

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In the final analysis, many so-called “risks” are contingencies that one cannot predict with certainty. Analytically, contingency has a triadic architecture, in that it involves the notion of indeterminacy (y could be different  – the idea of possible worlds alongside the actual world), mobilizes claims of conditionality (y could be different because it depends on causal conditions x), and carries uncertainty (y is unpredictable to the extent that its causal conditions x are unpredictable) (Schedler, 2007). But the same idea is always present at heart: faced with incalculable risks, societies insist on converting them into something manageable by means of the myth of calculability (Reddy, 1996). Even when the epistemological aspects of uncertainty are reduced, other problems, hitherto ignored, often arise. Niklas Luhmann is right to highlight that “the more we know, the better we know what we do not know, and the more elaborate our risk awareness becomes. The more rationally we calculate and the more complex the calculations become, the more aspects come into view involving uncertainty about the future” (Luhmann, 1993: 28). The probabilistic notion of risk focuses on the analysis of what we may call “arbitrary-contingency”, that is to say, what might be otherwise and we are therefore able to change. But this concentration makes us forget the “fate-contingency”, which might be otherwise but which we cannot change or escape, such as the blows of destiny, illness or death. For Marquard (2000 [1986]), who has developed these concepts, this is a programme for making the human being absolute, removing and replacing God with human beings and their choices, intentions and decisions. Against this programme we find the reality of human beings, who are always rather more their contingencies and causalities than the result of their choices. And even those choices are contingent, because they could be different if based on other choices. The indeterminate (Apeiron), that which is not calculable or graspable by rationality and knowledge, is part of the ontology of life in society and of nature. The more we try to cast uncertainty out from the world, the more the world perversely takes us towards it (Berian, 2007). The tendency which I call riscophrenia is for that reason a kind of Freudian “return of the repressed”. Uncertainty not only ceases to be an ontological reality, but also reappears constantly and paradoxically when human action attempts to destroy it, even though it is denied or repressed by a world which seeks control. Riscophrenia is the neurotic symptom of psychic and social repression of the contingency associated with human action and with the world.

8.3 Measurement as Abracadabra and Calculating Reason The enchantment of the concept of risk is understandable in a culture deeply committed to denying chance. Risk finds a solid foundation in the “magic of numbers”, argues the Italian philosopher Evandro Agazzi (1996 [1992]: 193). This magical credibility reflects the belief that epistemological certainty derives from one type of knowledge alone – mathematics. It provides the illusion of exactitude and hence of certainty. And exactitude is all the more highly valued because it gives us the

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impression of emerging from situations of uncertainty (1996 [1992]: 195). In addition, the language of mathematics, which is highly organized and synonymous with rigorous discipline, uniformity and universality, is a “technology of distance”, as Theodore Porter describes it (1995: ix), because it facilitates communication beyond the frontiers of the local and the community. So it is not by chance that the concept of risk and a whole catalogue of evaluation techniques of the mathematical-probabilistic type have come to dominate the institutions and general procedures of risk analysis in many areas. Many events and situations have been named and analysed using this conceptual prefix – environmental risks, financial risks, public health risks, digital risks, insolvency risks, legal risks, political risks, terrorism risks, etc. Alongside this omnipresent risk discourse there arose a practical arsenal, a “risk industry” (Power, 2007), with organizational norms and accountability  – “risk identification”, “risk assessment”, “risk management”, “risk communication”, “risk governance”, “risk regulation”, “risk perceptions”, “acceptable risks”, “high/moderate/low risk level”, “risk groups”, “risk-based decision-making”, “risk matrix”, “risk committees”… This dominant tendency for use of the language of probabilistic risk, bordering on the frenetic, is in perfect contradiction to most of our decision-making as a civilization. Few decisions in real life are taken on the basis of probabilities known with a high degree of certainty. As the Swedish philosopher Sven Ove Hansson (2009) rightly says, typical situations in real life are more like the decisions of an explorer in an unknown jungle than those of a gambler at the roulette table in a casino. In other words, we deal with dangers with unknown probabilities of occurring, and often we do not even know the very nature and existence of those dangers. In many areas, where it is epistemologically and ontologically impossible to make sure estimates of the future, we act as if we were in possession of well-founded, solid and complete calculations and probabilities. Even when events are viewed in the light of the idea of uncertainty, they are generally restricted to an epistemic uncertainty deriving from insufficient scientific knowledge. The lack of conclusive empirical evidence of the harmfulness of a given phenomenon (or epistemic uncertainty) is often wrongly associated with ignorance and absence of risk. In other words, it is assumed that the “lack of evidence of harm” is equivalent to “evidence of lack of harm”. We trust that with suitable tools for measuring and regulating, risks can be assessed and above all managed and controlled. The concept of risk is thus used to designate problems which go beyond its canonical conceptual definition, interpreted as the probability of a given adverse event’s occurrence multiplied by the intensity of the potential harm it will cause. The very concept of risk, however, possesses the limitations inherent in the logic of measurement, which is neither compatible with nor suited to analysis of all situations. Funnelling the understanding of events into a risk perspective has the drawback of neglecting its complexity, its multiple layers and significant political, psychosocial and ethical aspects. The rationality of risk assessments collapses because they see events as physical entities which exist independently of individuals and institutions which analyse and experience them (Wynne, 1987). Recognizing those limitations does not mean ignoring the fact that probabilities, measurement

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and statistics are cognitively important for ascertaining patterns and defining laws, but it does involve acknowledging that the logic does not extend to all matters in the social, political and natural realms. Thinkers like Beck who argue that the risk society has become “reflexive”, in the sense that it has come face to face with the foundations and limitations of its own model, might broaden reflexivity to cover the concept of risk itself, making it an object of inquiry in its own right. Our Weberian disenchantment with the constant crises and catastrophes we face in the natural and technological world requires nothing less. There is a real need to examine this veneration for alleged risk control and the desire to eliminate chance, knowing as we do that such attempts are vain and in turn produce new uncertainties and even more unpredictability. The cult of the concept of risk seems to have raised it to the level of a central dogma of certainty, based on the image it offers of supposed safety and control over the random and the contingent. The spurious precision of risk analyses gives a false feeling of security and confidence regarding the future, but this roadmap is wrong because it cannot encompass the full range of genuinely irreducible uncertainties in the natural and social worlds. It may reduce anxiety, it may comfort decision-makers and society in general, but the world perceived by probabilistic risk analysis is not the world we live in. Hence my suggested concept of riscophrenia (Jerónimo, 2014). The excessive use of probabilistic risk assessment, which puts very different things under the same conceptual umbrella and subjects them to the reductionist criteria of the calculating machine, means that prudential notions are neglected. This inflation takes place for a metaphysical reason  – the hubris of control  – which in its eagerness relegates uncertainty, contingency and chance to ontological insignificance. The concept of riscophrenia echoes the term “quantophrenia” coined by Pitirim Sorokin (1976 [1956]), a Russian-American sociologist who has undertaken major studies of collective human calamities (wars, revolutions, epidemics). In the 1950s he denounced American sociology’s obsession at the time with quantitative methods and the use of the logic of measurement in interpreting social facts. For Sorokin, this “metrophrenic abracadabra” or “cult of numerology” (1976 [1956]: 107, 115) rests on three dogmatic assumptions: (a) the quantitative approach is the only method, or rather the best and safest method, for uncovering laws in psychosocial phenomena; (b) results can be generalized and expressed in quantitative formulae as universal laws; (c) those numerological operations make it possible to define categories, entities or relations which are not clearly definable in precise and quantitative form. For Sorokin, when phenomena contain measurable elements, mathematical analysis may indeed produce important and valid results, and identify regular patterns, which have high cognitive value even if they are somewhat limited and contextually defined. In this connection he offers the example of demographic censuses and the importance of that type of knowledge of the population over time. These mathematical analyses “are a sort of a rough map guiding us through at least a large area of the unknown psychosocial jungle” (1976 [1956]: 116). The problems arise when social scientists “forget these limitations and begin to believe in the infallibility of the counting and the various mathematical operations, in the unrestricted validity of their formulae, and in claims that their numerological procedures have a

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monopoly for valid and precise cognition of the psychosocial world” (1976 [1956]: 116). This enthusiasm  – or obsession  – with the discovery of statistical patterns in social life was already a strong trend at the beginning of the nineteenth century, and is part of the genealogy of probability, as philosopher Ian Hacking shows in his book Taming of Chance. The prevailing belief was that the systematic and regular collection of data, in a kind of “avalanche of printed numbers” (Hacking, 2002 [1990]: 2), and drafting a new type of laws analogous with the laws of nature but applied to society on the basis of the idea of “the normal”, it would be possible to improve and control the deviant elements of the population (e.g. suicide, crime, madness, prostitution, illness). These new laws were expressed in terms of probabilities, so that “society became statistical” (2002 [1990]: 1). This in turn required technologies and bureaucracies in order to classify and enumerate social data, which would make it possible to determine what was “normal” and what was “deviant”. Society had to become numerical, in other words, “contemplated in such a way as to be counted”, thus strengthening the “imperialism of probabilities” (2002 [1990]: 5). The “avalanche of numbers” persists today. Unlike the beginning of the nineteenth century, when statistical thinking was mainly a management tool of the State, today nothing escapes statistics and probabilities, and everything is discussed, announced and internalised in those terms  – pleasures and vices such as sport, drugs, etc., but also public fears like cancer and earthquakes. This is true to such an extent that, in the final analysis, “there is nothing to fear (it may seem) but the probabilities themselves”, as Hacking suggests (2002 [1990]: 4–5). Algorithms take statistical thinking one step further: today they are a phantasmagorical attempt to control uncertainty. José Luís Garcia and Filipa Subtil (in this volume) draw attention to the fact that algorithms construct and organize our reality and are “a way of acting in the world”. In addition, they “silently structure our lives” (Martin, 2019: 836), whether in hiring decisions, judicial decisions, consumer choice and targeted marketing, or in the governance of countries. The power of algorithms in the imaginary of today’s societies “reflects calculative rationalities that seek to optimize various aspects of social life and human interaction by subjecting reality to technical expertise and systems regulation in an attempt to make it measurable and knowable through the production of data. Data, in turn, enables human action and interaction to become subject to prediction, intervention, optimization, and ‘enhancement’ as it is routed through predictive algorithms that anticipate and shape future behaviors and actions” (Means, 2018: 105). The same could be said for the imaginary of risk.

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8.4 Ambiguity in the Imaginary of Risk: “Moral Relief” and “Statistical Panic” The notion of risk and its underlying probabilistic reasoning fulfil an important function of providing “moral relief” (Agazzi, 1996 [1992]: 173), which comes from the deceptively comforting belief that it is technology’s role to control or eliminate risk, in a much more effective way than moral or ethical principles. Attributing this task to technology expresses a “terrestrial” view of life, in as much as it places “destiny” in human hands, rather than in some superior providentialist design or in telluric or cosmic forces. In drawing on operational knowledge and capabilities, however, technology ends up reducing risk analysis unduly to the sphere of those risks which can be controlled and eliminated by technology, leading to neglecting the fact that seeking to suppress the aspect of risk in human life is dehumanizing, given that the human being is the only one capable of incurring risks and who is inevitably subject to risk. In this way technology absorbs moral concerns, because it is able to identify, control and even eliminate risks, and in doing so marginalizes practical rationality, which deals with the must-be of ends, in favour of technical rationality, or the must-be of means (Agazzi, 1996 [1992]: 138 ff.). The aim of risk assessments, and particularly of cost-benefit analyses, is to find the means which, hypothetically and instrumentally, will enable certain ends to be achieved. It is not within the scope of these analyses to ascertain whether these ends are truly worthy of being pursued, or if there are alternative ends which should be taken into account, or even if the means are compatible with values or not (Agazzi, 1996 [1992]: 141). Risk assessments cater to the claims of rationality and legitimacy of a system which seeks to project an image of safety, the basis for which, as we have seen, is the exactness and certainty which only numbers and probability can provide. An optimistic note is intended here. We tend not to hesitate to join in when the probability of something promises progress and happiness. But, as Kathleen Woodward (2009) points out in recalling an argument of Adriano Sofri’s, when the probability is misfortune, accidents, damage or death, we suspect they will not happen, if only because those possible scenarios are abstractions, aggregated data, where there is always room for the exception. In these cases, we hope that the worst projections will be wrong. There is accordingly a certain romance with risk, and also an erotics of risk, the desire to succeed against all the odds (as happens in sport or in winning the lottery) (Woodward, 2009). This optimism and space for the exception evaporate when the probability of something bad occurring relates to our life and individuality. Here the experiential dimension of probabilistic risk becomes “statistical stress” or, in its more extreme form, “statistical panic”. The panic derives from uncertainty regarding the future, and the feeling that that future is represented by probabilities, by various scenarios but, paradoxically, it is not governed by a statistical roll of the dice. Risk has a political aspect, to adopt the language of Langdon Winner (1986) in relation to technology. Just as artefacts may be deliberately designed and built with a purpose (as with algorithmic systems), so risk is politically significant in itself

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because it lies at the heart of a host of events and of political decisions regarding them, incorporating specific forms of power and authority, which lead, for example, to the “promotion” of some risks and not others, to tolerating some and not others, to “imposing” them more forcefully on one group of citizens than on others. Continuing to draw on Winner’s argument, use of the concept of risk on the one hand draws a map of the world based on a probabilistic design, which tends to become fixed in political and economic decisions and, on the other hand, shapes the whole set of social, psychological, environmental and contextual circumstances and human relations. There are particular political and normative angles to the world order mapped by risk. By virtue of its probabilistic nature and the ratio of gains to losses, it involves believing that we possess sufficient knowledge to make valid decisions, that control is possible, and that uncertainty can be tamed. But uncertainty is also a specific way of viewing the world, as I have outlined elsewhere (Jerónimo, 2014). Uncertainty presupposes acknowledging the existence of elements which are unexpected, unforeseeable and random as a result of human actions and decisions and natural contingencies. It is to see the world in its complexity, accepting that there are “risks” which we don’t know about, and above all there are “risks” which are unknowable. This step reveals the limits of scientific prediction and control. In terms of the political script, risk goes with a logic of prevention, while uncertainty is tied to the precautionary principle (e.g., EEA, 2001, 2013). Prevention and precaution are both prudent attitudes in the face of the uncertain. While the former generally leads to mitigation, negotiation and acceptance of risks, the latter constitutes an appeal for caution in relation to damage from dangers uncertain, and may even lead to rejecting certain techno-economic decisions and actions. Risk analyses incorporate forms of power, not least because they are one of the main tools of political power, which needs them as much as it does in order to understand the implications of each of its possible actions (or inactions) and to provide a basis for its decisions. Risk analyses are seen as a kind of universal standard of rationality, which is necessary in a context of fear and strong public mistrust. A decision based on probabilistic or numerical reasoning “has at least the appearance of being fair and impersonal. Scientific objectivity thus provides an answer to a moral demand for impartiality and fairness. Quantification is a way of making decisions without seeming to decide. Objectivity lends authority to officials who have very little of their own”, writes Porter forcefully (1995: 8). Governments quite often only put forward public policies for regulation after perceiving that certain decisions have caused harm. This ex post attitude obliges them to a “reversal of the precautionary principle” (Curran, 2018). In such cases, social risks are systemically increased and democracy is eroded, because it is left to the large corporations to design innovations, in the knowledge that they will seek to maximize their profits, while the role of the State increasingly becomes that of the “ex post bearer of excessive risks and the agent responsible for attempting to clean up private risk crises while respecting the sovereignty of business over its products and processes” (Curran, 2018: 220). Beck (1992 [1986]) calls this process “subpolitics”, a kind of “policy of faits accomplis” in which awareness of their impact only takes place after

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the technological innovations have been implemented. It operates on the margins of institutional politics, in response to the demands of the market, the need for innovation and the freedom to conduct research, and it underestimates public discussion and consultation, because it rests on a belief in progress, the consequences of which are unknown and in relation to which it is heretical not to see them as being benevolent. In observing decision-making patterns and acceptance of risk, we are able to infer a society’s values, worldviews, differing degrees of trust in science and in control mechanisms, as well as different ideas on the principles to be applied in controversial situations. Risk analyses promise confidence and convey an image of safety: this encourages us to run risks which we would not otherwise take on. Today we have more sophisticated methods of foretelling the future, like algorithms and neural networks, which seek to uncover patterns which will predict outcomes. Inevitably, however, they suffer from the same weaknesses as conventional probability theory – in being unable to enter future data, because it is inaccessible, the raw material of these forecasts is always data from the past (Bernstein, 1996: 335). In addition to this, social and cultural circumstances generate interests and lead to “sedimentation” in relation to certain risks, for two sets of reasons. On the one hand, on account of a “chain gear effect of acceptance/validation of technology” (Martins, 2002), in which the legitimation and acceptance of a technology is based on past acceptance of similar technologies. On the other hand, a paradox arises whereby some technologies can only be tested under actual conditions, given the lack of historical experience of their use. In the giant experimental risk technology laboratory that the world has become, this logic of “do it first, and then see” coincides with the level of possible control in the different phases of technology development, as expressed in David Collingridge’s “dilemma of control” (1980). In the initial phase of any technology, imposing controls on its development and dissemination is seen as unjustified and unnecessary, because little or nothing is known about its possible consequences for the social and natural environment. In later stages, as undesirable effects come into view, control becomes disruptive (difficult, slow and expensive) because society has already adopted and internalised that technology, other technologies have been created to complement it, and there is already an established network of interests and interconnections. In this sense, the concept of risk and its assessment practices are aligned with a metaphysics of control over all life and the conversion of everything into utility, and that is why they adjust so well to the reality which produces these problems, not questioning the foundations or the various trends embedded in the instrumental and utilitarian vision of modernity. They not only adapt to the model which produces those problems, but also legitimate, justify and ratify it. That is why they can be regarded as devices for ratification of techno-scientific and economic norms which have prevailed in the most diverse societies and political regimes of the modern world (Jerónimo, 2014). This process is only possible because predictability is itself a commodity. Given that uncertainty has costs associated with lack of safety, greater predictability equates to less risk (Woodward, 2009: 270). The lower the probability of something, the more contingent and unexpected is the consequence, if it occurs.

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Knowing the human appetite for increasingly accelerated techno-economic innovation, and its promises of gold, we are also familiar with the Midas touch, in a series of escalating side effects (Thiele, 2011). We are accustomed, maybe even addicted, to looking for “technological fixes”, and are almost incapable of thinking outside that box. Underlying many of those “fixes” are risk analyses and the probabilities of acceptable thresholds of risk, which we approach with an “optimism bias” (Sharot, 2011), or in other words, overestimating the likelihood of positive events. This way of absorbing information predisposes to acceptance. Psychology and behavioural economics long ago clarified that we react differently according to whether information is framed in a negative or positive light, because we are far more sensitive to losses than to gains (Kahneman & Tversky, 1979). It reassures us to know that the risks associated with a nuclear power plant are minimal, indeed infinitesimal. We live therefore by hiding away uncertainty, in the sense that we use numbers to tame it and render it abstract, and finally by trivialising risk, because it comes to be of a size which creates distancing and opacity with regard to technical objects. Numbers, which seem real, lead to abstraction and depersonalisation. Their aura obscures the magnitude of the problem, disguises tragedy, dissolves each person’s drama in “statistical fatalities” (as has occurred with deaths brought about by SARS-CoV-2). Numbers render life abstract, make that which is real less material and, when repeated, may even trivialise reality. In the final analysis the world, even under the disenchantment which Weber diagnosed, is still largely opaque, and uncertainty seems to be always arising, never having really gone away. Philosophical thought must include reflection on the expectation that contemporary societies’ relationship to the future will be based on the calculation of risk and the concomitant devaluation of everything outside the scope of this probability. Risk assessments are “riskless knowledge about risk” (Krohn & Weingart, 1987: 53). On a more concrete and cautionary note, historian Scott Knowles (2014: 780) explains that “disasters bring the abstractions of risk calculations into shape”. If the tenor and language of this kind of assessment were different, if instead of analyses of cost-benefit ratios there were a language of profit and loss, then we might better understand the moral difficulty of granting the notion of “benefit” the importance of something which we should pursue, as well as the limits of a strictly utilitarian ethics (Agazzi, 1996 [1992]: 185). All the harmful and unpredictable consequences which impact human and social life awaken in us the fear of “small numbers” (or low probabilities). In Le Destin Technologique, the French philosopher and historian of science Jean-Jacques Salomon (1992: 34–35) asked whether the attempt to tame chance is not a fantasy of industrialized societies or a new avatar for the Cartesian project, explaining that, on the one hand, if we wished to ensure ex ante against all possible negative consequences, most of the major technical innovations of our time would never have overcome the obstacles of regulations and mentalities, but, on the other hand, it is necessary to acknowledge that the acceptability of risk is not a neutral question, and we must always take into account Albert Hirschman’s principle of the ‘hidden hand’, in that an initiative may be successful not because we measure all the risks inherent in it, but precisely because we underestimate them.

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8.5 Concluding Remarks From the arguments set out above, it cannot be inferred that modernity, in repressing contingency, also denies the openness that it implies. This would be a paradox, because the modern world and human beings are open to change, to renewal, to “being reborn every day”, in Hannah Arendt’s phrase. It cannot therefore be ignored that it is contingency which, despite the problems it brings, enables the world to avoid being deterministically fixed from the outset. The probabilistic approach and the ambition of foreseeing all things restricts this non-determinability of the world. The way to deal with contingency is not to deny it, not to turn it into risk, not just to choose the most effective methods. The state of riscophrenia is not the same as the Aristotelian ethical virtue of phronesis. As philosopher Pierre Aubenque (2014 [1963]) reminds us in interpreting Aristotle, it is not enough to decide on the best ends nor on the most effective means, because that is a matter of will. In a world facing the various crises of the so-called anthropocene, it is necessary to decide on the possible means and to take all the more or less foreseeable consequences into account, in order to select the ethical and effective means of doing good.

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González García, J.  M. (2006). La diosa Fortuna: Metamorfosis de una metáfora política. A. Machado Libros. Hacking, I. (2002 [1990]). The taming of chance. Cambridge University Press. Hansson, S. O. (2009). From the casino to the jungle: Dealing with uncertainty in technological risk management. Synthese, 168, 423–432. Hansson, S.  O. (2012). A panorama of the philosophy of risk. In S.  Roeser, R.  Hillerbrand, P. Sandin, & M. Peterson (Eds.), Handbook of risk theory: Epistemology, decision theory, ethics, and social implications of risk (pp. 27–54). Springer. Jerónimo, H.  M. (2014). Riscophrenia and ‘animal spirits’: Clarifying the notions of risk and uncertainty in environmental problems. Scientiae Studia, 12, 57–74. Kahneman, D., & Tversky, A. (1979). Prospect theory: An analysis of decision under risk. Econometrica, 47, 263–291. Keynes, J. M. (1921). A treatise of probability. Macmillan. Keynes, J. M. (1954 [1936]). The general theory of employment, interest and money. Macmillan & Co Ltd. Knight, F. H. (1921). Risk, uncertainty, and profit. Houghton Mifflin. Knowles, S. G. (2014). Learning from disaster? The history of technology and the future of disaster research. Technology and Culture, 55(4), 773–784. Krimsky, S., & Golding, D. (Eds.). (1992). Social theories of risk. Praeger. Krohn, W., & Weingart, P. (1987). Commentary: Nuclear power as a social experiment – European political ‘fall out’ from the Chernobyl meltdown. Science, Technology & Human Values, 12(2), 52–58. Löfstedt, R. E., & Boholm, A. (Eds.). (2009). The Earthscan reader on risk. Earthscan. Luhmann, N. (1993 [1991]). Risk: A sociological theory. Walter de Gruyter. Marquard, O. (2000 [1986]). Apologia de lo contingente: Estudios filosóficos. Institució Alfons el Magnànim. Martin, K. (2019). Ethical implications and accountability of algorithms. Journal of Business Ethics, 160, 835–850. Martinez-Alier, J. (2006). Conflitos de distribuição ecológica num contexto de incerteza. In M. V. Cabral, J. L. Garcia, & H. M. Jerónimo (Eds.), Razão, tempo e tecnologia: Estudos em homenagem a Hermínio Martins (pp. 411–439). Imprensa de Ciências Sociais. Martins, H. (2002). A liminaridade da clonagem reprodutiva humana, ou elogio da sabedoria da repugnância. Interact: Revista On-line de Arte, Cultura e Tecnologia, 6. www.interact.com.pt/ interact6/ensaio/ensaio1.html Martins, H. (2011 [1997−1998]). Risco, incerteza e escatologia: Reflexões sobre o experimentum mundi tecnológico em curso. In Experimentum humanum: Civilização tecnológica e condição humana (pp. 173−231). Relógio d’Água. Means, A.  J. (2018). Learning to save the future: Rethinking education and work in an era of digital capitalism. Routledge. Mumford, L. (2007 [1922]). A história das utopias (I. D. Botto, Trans.). Antígona. Porter, T.  M. (1995). Trust in numbers: The pursuit of objectivity in science and public life. Princeton University Press. Power, M. (2007). Organized uncertainty: Designing a world of risk management. Oxford University Press. Reddy, S. G. (1996). Claims to expert knowledge and the subversion of democracy: The triumph of risk over uncertainty. Economy and Society, 25(2), 222–254. Salomon, J.-J. (1992). Le destin technologique. Gallimard. Schedler, A. (2007). Mapping contingency. In I.  Shapiro & S.  Bedi (Eds.), Political contingency: Studying the unexpected, the accidental and the unforeseen (pp.  54–78). New  York University Press. Sharot, T. (2011). The optimism bias. Current Biology, 21(23), R941–R945. Silver, S. (2018). Contingency in philosophy and history, 1650–1800. Textual Practice, 32(3), 419–436.

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Sloterdijk, P. (2008 [2005]). Palácio de cristal: Para uma teoria filosófica da globalização (M. Resende, Trans.). Relógio D’Água. Sorokin, P. A. (1976 [1956]). Fads and foibles in modern sociology and related sciences. Henry Regnery. Strydom, P. (2002). Risk, environment and society. Open University Press. Thiele, L. P. (2011). Indra’s net and the Midas touch: Living sustainably in a connected world. The MIT Press. Winner, L. (1986). The whale and the reactor: A search for limits in an age of high technology. The University of Chicago Press. Woodward, K. (2009). Statistical panic: Cultural politics and poetics of emotions. Duke University Press. Wynne, B. (1987). Risk management and hazardous waste: Implementation and the dialectics of credibility. Springer. Wynne, B. (1992). Uncertainty and environmental learning: Reconceiving science and policy in the preventive paradigm. Global Environmental Change: Human and Policy Dimensions, 2(2), 111–127. Wynne, B. (2005). Risk as globalizing ‘democratic’ discourse? Framing subjects and citizens. In M. Leach, I. Scoones, & B. Wynne (Eds.), Science and citizens: Globalization and the challenge of engagement (pp. 66–82). Zed Books. Yuengert, A. M. (2012). Approximating prudence: Aristotelian practical wisdom and economic theories of choice. Palgrave Macmillan. Helena Mateus Jerónimo received her PhD from the University of Cambridge (UK). She is full time tenured assistant professor at the Instituto Superior de Economia e Gestão, Universidade de Lisboa [ISEG School of Economics and Management, University of Lisbon], Portugal, and researcher at Advance/CSG. Her research interests and publications are in science and technology, sustainability, risk and uncertainty, and in human resource management and organisational behaviour. Helena served on  the Executive Board of the Society for Philosophy and Technology (SPT) from 2013 to 2017. She is currently a member of the UNESCO World Commission on the Ethics of Science and Technology (COMEST). Her books includes Queimar a Incerteza: Poder e Ambiente no Conflito da Co-Incineração de Resíduos Industriais Perigosos ([Burying Uncertainty: Power and Environment in the Conflict of Co-Incineration of Hazardous Industrial Waste], Imprensa de Ciências Sociais, 2010), and co-edited Razão, Tempo e Tecnologia: Estudos em Homenagem a Hermínio Martins ([Reason, Time and Technology: Studies in Honour of Hermínio Martins], Imprensa de Ciências Sociais, 2006) and Jacques Ellul and the Technological Society in 21st Century (Springer, 2013).  

Chapter 9

Four Visions of Technology Ivan Domingues

Abstract  I present four visions of technology that prevail in contemporary philosophical discussions: the instrumental, the metaphysical, the systemic and the socio-critical. In previous studies, I outlined four paradigms for describing and evaluating them, focusing on the impact of technologies on the human world: Prometheus, Daedalus, Faust and Cyborg. In this chapter these visions will be examined in light of their main representatives, namely (i) Bacon, Descartes and Marx (instrumental, which is the most popular and whose roots go back to Aristotle); (ii) Heidegger, Plato, and Aristotle, opening up two ways of introducing the metaphysical approach: focusing on the ontological structure of technical objects, e.g. Aristotle and Scholastics; focusing on our attitude to them, e.g. Plato and Heidegger, an attitude of dependence, with Heidegger taking modern technique as a Gestell (device) and a kind of prison; (iii) Jacques Ellul, Max Weber, Arnold Gehlen, Simondon, McLuhan and more recently Langdon Winner and Don Ihde, on the trail of Husserl’s Lebenswelt (technique = way of life) – all of them with their different systemic vision, in today’s main rival to the instrumental view and characterized by three variants, linked to anthropological, cybernetics and genetic engineering approaches: extensionist (McLuhan), fusionist (Donna Haraway, Bruno Latour) and eugenics or perfectionist (human enhancement: Harris and Savulescu); (iv) Feenberg, the heir to Marcuse, who argues for a critical vision of technique, alongside Michel Foucault and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. My intention is to extend these paradigms and visions of technology to new research on ethical, epistemic and ontological aspects of biotechnology as applied to human beings. Keywords  Philosophy of technology · Paradigms and visions of technique / technology · Instrumental, Metaphysical, Systemic and Socio-critical views · Variants of systemic view

I. Domingues (*) Faculdade de Filosofia e Ciências Humanas, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Belo Horizonte, Brazil e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 H. M. Jerónimo (ed.), Portuguese Philosophy of Technology, Philosophy of Engineering and Technology 43, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-14630-5_9

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9.1 Introduction My purpose in this chapter is to put forward four visions of technology. Their consideration will have two outcomes sequencing studies, in the broader framework of an ongoing research plan.1 On the one hand, thinking up anthropological implications of biotechnologies in their human, medical and non-medical applications, on the basis of four paradigms: Prometheus, Daedalus, Faust and Cyborg. On the other hand, approaching technical regulation in the political and the legal plans, as well as in the moral or ethical one, which, although having a direct connexion with the regulation issue, actually it goes further and can, in certain fundamental points, be up to the individual and a question of conscience. Now going towards the four visions, they will be considered as pure types, when being approached from an abstract, philosophical-conceptual point of view, while there may be in concrete reality more than one combination or component fusion. In simple terms, elements of one vision may combine with those of another and take on different forms under different paradigms, giving rise to more or less pessimistic approaches that depend on individual and collective moods and beliefs. The strategy followed here involves regarding technique as a category of action, equipping and empowering it, and as such, associating it with human needs and inventiveness. As a whole, it may be viewed as a cultural response to the human needs and gaps of nature, and as the fruit of the union of intelligence and astuteness. An emblematic example, better than the offerings of philosophers and engineers, appears in Aesop’s fables as “The Crow and the Pitcher”. A CROW, half-dead with thirst, came upon a pitcher which had once been full of water; but when the Crow put its beak into the mouth of the pitcher he found that only a little water was left in it, and that he could not reach far enough to get at it. I have tried, and tried, but at last I had to give up in despair. Then a thought came to him, and he took a pebble and dropped it into the pitcher. Then he took another pebble and dropped it into the pitcher. Then he took another pebble and dropped it into the pitcher. Then he took another pebble and dropped it into the pitcher. Then he took another pebble and dropped it into the pitcher. Then he took another pebble and dropped it into the pitcher. Then he took another pebble and dropped it into the pitcher. At last, he saw the water mount up near him, and after casting in a few more pebbles he was able to quench his thirst and save his life. ‘Little by little does the trick.’ (Aesop, 2001)2

It is easy to conclude from this fable that technique comes together with an instrumental view of things and encourages a utilitarian relationship between means and ends, human ends in this case, without however forgetting that animals themselves are technical beings and use different devices to achieve results. This is undoubtedly the most popular view, followed by a multitude of engineers, scientists and philosophers, as well as the one adopted by most individuals and users of technical

 For these researches, see Domingues (2016: 21–49; 2018: 31–82; 2020: 43–44), especially the former study that presents the first version of my four visions of technology, while the second and the third add the paradigms of Prometheus, Faust, Daedalus and Cyborg.  2  Portuguese version cited in Domingues (2014: 330); I owe the example to Diego Parente (2010). 1

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artefacts. However, it is not the only or most exclusive view. There are at least three other rival views, one of which on the verge of unseating, as will be explained below. I propose to discuss these visions and their variants in detail, regarding their philosophical implications.

9.2 The Instrumental, Metaphysical, Systemic and Socio-­critical Visions of Technology  As well documented, technique is as old as humanity, going back in time to the Palaeolithic period. During its course it has been associated with empirical knowledge, being firmly rooted in experience, when seen as a tool and means of action. Even though it is precarious and rustic, the use not only of flint as a technical instrument with different purposes, but of the human body itself, dates back to this time, as noted by the anthropologist Marcel Mauss (1872–1950), who views technique as being the first tool of all (Mauss, 1968 [1950]: 365–386).3 It began, as biologists and historians have pointed out, when the humanoids descended from the trees, walked on both feet and stood with their upper limbs free, making the hand the first tool and even the tool par excellence, the tools’ tool, as Aristotle subsequently noted. Since then the process never ceased, the link between technique, man and empirical knowledge becoming consolidated in the modern era, until reaching our days. Without breaking it, modernity amplified and transformed this link into something more complex and even more complicated. Thus, by the eighteenth century, technique would be associated with science, resulting in technology. Since then it has seen its scope of action and its power broaden to create a world of devices and technical apparatus. Once recognised these aspects, as did the Greeks establishing the link with poiesis, more than like a category of experience, technique / technology can be seeing as a category of action, being a tool being a machine or a precision instrument. Moreover technology, in all its extensions, includes technique, devices, operations, operators and knowledge – knowledge linked to action which is practical: know-how, savoir-faire and téchne. This perspective leads into the four visions of technique: (1) instrument or tool; (2) essence and metaphysics; (3) system and way of life (in the phenomenological and bio-cybernetic variants); (4) critical and socio-historical. The works of two authors are relevant here in terms of language and ideas, which will give us the thread. The first is the French polymath André Leroi-Gourhan (1911–1986), who coined the term ensemble technique in his two fundamental books, L’ Homme et la Matière (Leroi-Gourhan, 1971) and Milieu et Technique (Leroi-Gourhan, 1973). His thinking on the relationship between téchne and

 This work was re-edited several times, with a special highlight to PUF in 1968 that presents an important study by Lévi-Strauss, entitled “L’introduction à l’oeuvre de Marcel Mauss”; for the techniques, see especially sections 2 and 3 in Mauss’ work. 3

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anthropos is a rich source, allowing us to go back to the Palaeolithic period and advance to the modern age: thus, in this vast perspective, the undivided unity of man and instrument will be established, including the body itself and encompassing the whole of nature, defined as means (milieu according to Leroi-Gourhan), object and instrument. The idea of ensemble is mentioned in the introduction to L’Homme et la Matière, where the author puts forward a set of classifications enabling him to catalogue over 40,000 items (Leroi-Gourhan, 1971). This includes the matrix marking the starting point from which an investigation of the palaeoethnology of technique will develop, encompassing technologies of acquisition (animal husbandry, agriculture, mining [pp. 19–20]), manufacturing technologies (metallurgy [p. 41], ceramics and navigation [p. 39]) and consumer technologies (clothing, food and housing [p. 20]). In the same vein, at the conclusion of his introduction, Leroi-Gourhan expresses his dissatisfaction with other possible classifications which affect the degree of technical sophistication, such as rustic and semi-rustic [p. 41, note]. This choice falls at the end of pre-craftsmanship, proto-craftsmanship, isolated craftwork and grouped and industrial craftsmanship. The latter are associated, in one way or another, with the three preceding them, although there is an obvious change of scale when moving from craftsmanship to industrial technologies [pp. 41–42; note]. In the light of this, he proposes a series of broader abstract concepts that are taken up again at different times throughout the work, with inflections and updates, such as [i] ensemble technique, which covers the action of making or acquiring something, as well as knowledge at its different levels of development (p. 41: taken as a whole, “[...] il n’y a pas des techniques, mais des ensembles techniques commandés par des connaissances mécaniques, physiques ou chimiques générales,” and [ii] groupe technique, in which one can see its synonym, specifying that the set of techniques “ne peut être séparé de la société totale” (p. 41). However, Leroi-Gourhan fails to provide a clear or comprehensive definition of ensemble techniques, content to note their provisional nature, once the need for ad hoc adjustments throughout the research have been recognized, the best of these definitions being the one, and perhaps the only one, that appears at the beginning of Milieu et Technique: Après avoir reconnu que l’agencement des grandes ensembles techniques était forcément arbitraire, on a adopté un schéma suivant lequel l’homme, disposant de moyens élémentaires d’action sur la matière, se livrait à la fabrication des objets qui devaient lui permettre l’acquisition de produits dont la consommation assurerait sa nourriture et son confort. (Gourhan 1973: 13)4

Arnold Gehlen [1904–1976] on the other hand, in his Man in the Age of Technology, outlines the three ends of technique, associating them with the body, its organs and  The context is the technologies of acquisition, but the formulation is broader and includes the others, followed by the additional information that it is a conventional scheme that satisfies the logics or the need for thought, not corresponding to any historical reality, past or present: a mental scheme, in short, that “assure une prise progressive sur les faits”, unauthorizing any deductions of the linearity or historical progression of one technology concerning all the others, e.g. in the relationship between hunting and rearing (Leroi-Gourhan, 1973: 13). 4

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its functions, which according to his analysis are transferred to the instrument and machine, resulting in the substitution, dismissal and surpassing of organs. Gehlen writes: Thus, among the oldest artifacts we find weapons, which are not given to man in the form of organs; fire should also be thought of in this connection, having come into use both for security and for warmth. From the beginning this principle of organ substitution operated along with that of organ strengthening: The stone grabbed to hit with is much more effective than the bare fist. Thus, next to replacement techniques that allow us to perform beyond the potentials of our organs, we find strengthening techniques that extend the performance of our bodily equipment – the hammer, the microscope. The telephone reinforces natural abilities. Finally, there are easing techniques, operating to relieve the burden upon organs, to disengage them, and finally and to save effort – as when using a wheeled vehicle replaces the dragging of weights by hand. If one flies in an airplane all three principles operate – the plane supplies us with the wings we do not possess, outperforms all animal flights and relieves us of making any contribution whatever to our own motion over vast distances. (Gehlen, 1980: 88–89)5

Following in Gehlen’s footprints we note that, in addition to the instrumental function, which is real and of enormous scope, other functions come into play and define technical activity, as well as functions involving means and ends, but above all organic and systemic functions: substitution, dismissal and surpassing of organs, as noted by the philosopher. The list could add many more such as the adaptive, integrative and transforming functions of nature, including the transformation and enhancement of the human being, as will be observed below. This link between organ and function is clear in the analogy between technical artefacts and the human body, giving rise to the well-known idea, formulated by Ernst Kapp (180–1896) late in the end of nineteenth century and shared by Arnold Gehlen, that artefacts are extensions of our body when they are integrated into the: • • • •

Motor apparatus: an extension of hands and feet Sensory apparatus: an extension of eyes, ears and skin (touch) Control and control apparatus: the brain Apparatus for the production of motive energy: the human body = source (can be released: transferred to the slave or the beast of burden).

Thus, besides the instrumental vision – the most popular, but not the only one – other views of technique also come to light. Some focus on the human being’s substantial bond with technique, others on the systemic dimension, with technique decoupling and gaining autonomy, as if it were an immense automaton and an end in itself. Others, concerned with automation and the threats they pose or imply,

 On facilitation techniques, there is the following note from the translator of the book: “We translate the German Entlastung as “facilitation”. Entlastung is a key term in Gehlen’s philosophical anthropology. It characterizes the human being, as compared to other animals, the “burdened” (belasten) with the necessity of making arrangements for their own survival, due to the insufficiently tight fit between human physical equipment and the environment. It is “thus the task of those arrangements to embody or facilitate (entlasten) man’s existence” (Gehlen, 1980: 88). 5

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introduce a critical view and advocate control and regulation. So, with no prejudices to other possibilities, besides rearrangements, we thus have four visions: The instrumental vision  – Authorized by prior comments, I will be brief in its consideration. First and foremost, this is a concept of technique/technology that focuses on instruments and tools, from which the engine or source of energy is the man, as well as machines source of energy is nature, from beasts of burden that rotate the device, to fossil, hydraulic energies and others. As with prosthetics, instruments and tools are seen as a neutral means for the service of human beings and may be used for good or evil, but it is within our power to use them to our advantage and to interrupt the game if the artefact threatens to escape our control or endanger our existence. Unlike prosthetics, which merely compensate for deficits, the instrument grants power and is a means of enhancing the power and action of men and women – therefore, sometimes, the idea of threat accompanies the use of instruments, in contrast to the more general tendency to view technique as an axiologically neutral device. From antiquity, Aristotle provides us with an excellent example of the instrumental vision in the following passage from Ethics to Eudemus: Since there is the same relation between soul and body, craftsman and tool, and master and slave, between them there is no association; for they are not two: rather, the first is one and the second belongs to the one. Nor is the good to be divided between the two: rather, that of both belongs to the one for the sake of which they exist. For the body is a natural tool, and the slave is a part and detachable tool of the master, a tool being a sort of slave inanimate. (Aristotle, 2014, 1241: 222)

In modernity, this is also the view of Bacon and Descartes, with the difference that, in addition to associating technique and science – a step Aristotle did not take –, they saw in instruments, science and technology a means of power, able to control nature and human beings. Bacon, in a prophetic text  – the Magnalia Naturae  – anticipated biotechnology and the agenda of human enhancement. This is equally, albeit less laudatory than Bacon’s analysis, the vision of Karl Marx and of countless thinkers who highlighted homo faber and conceived prostheses, machines, and tools as means for human ends. These ends may not be noble where they lead to the exploitation and debasement of one segment of humanity by another. They are, however, considered reversible in other contexts and situations where uses can be rightened, thus opening the way to a supposedly more efficacious route, as envisaged within the communist system. In all perspectives, the relationship between human beings and technique is not meant to be a problem, and the results of the relationship are viewed as positive, even in those contexts where the power of the instrument seems to escape us and threatens to turn against us, as in the Sorcerer’s Apprentice. Simply put, those who define the ends are humans: if the instruments work poorly or no longer are good for us, they may be set aside. The assumption could not be clearer: we set the rules of the game both in our relationship with nature and in our relationship with technology, and the tools we manufacture, and ourselves as their creators and users, cannot remain on the same level. In other words, we are the agents, not the instruments, and we  – not the hammer, the plough or the machine  – define the ends and choose the means.

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The essentialist and metaphysical view – This is the vision of both ancient and modern philosophers and may affect the ontological status of technical objects or the way to put forward the metaphysical issue. On the one hand Aristotle, in Nicomachean Ethics, distinguishes between objects that exist in nature and those created by human artifice. On the other, Descartes, in the fourth part of Principles of Philosophy (Descartes, Oeuvres, 1996, 283, AT IX, p. 120), advises us to think that there is no ontological difference between them, since they are nothing but res extensa. Alternatively, in addition to the object, this view may focus on the bond between nature and the human being, as in Plato, who leads to a different way of seeing things. Thus he contends in Cratylus: “Psyché derives from physéche, which means: that which sustains and moves nature. Téchne is derived from hex noû, which means to be master and owner of your own mind [Psyché]” (Cratylus 400b; 414b–c). Moreover, in a deeper investigation of the bond, he contends, in the The Symposium, that technique is a human response to the gaps in nature and the needs of man himself: the human being – as Eros –, the son of “Poverty,” the mother, and of “Resource,” the father, finds in technique the companion and ally which allows him to overcome the shortcomings and limits of nature. It should be noted, however, that even employing metaphysics and emphasizing their beneficial applications (to overcome shortcomings), Plato strikes a somewhat pessimistic note in relation to technique, focusing on the ambivalence of Pharmakon – evil and remedy – in which he highlights the nexus between the metaphysical and the moral. Technique is then defined as: evil and remedy; remedy for an evil; the evil of the remedy itself or generated by the remedy itself, as if it were an involuntary and unforeseen side effects. Such is the case of the orthographic technique evoked in the myth of Theuth (Phaedrus), where technique is blamed for undermining memory. Such is also the case of metallurgy, which Plato associates with the myth of Hephaestus (Plato, The Symposium, 197–197b),6 from which we get countless artefacts benefiting human beings, while the extensive use of which as weapons of war is, however, condemned in the Republic for undermining the moral virtue of courage. When investigating thinking on technique, there is a trend, from the Platonic perspective, much more so than the Aristotelian, to focus not on the object, the instrument or the tool, but on the aim and attitude of each one of us in relation to technique and its products. According to Plato, if there is an order of the essences, it is not full, through and self-sufficient as the substance of Aristotle or the being of Parmenides, round and without cracks. Instead, it is empty and divided and has gaps, and thus makes it possible to speak of an ontological deficit, at least in the sensible world, and together with this deficit, to neutralize or compensate for this, the conquest and acquisition of technique and artefacts, rather than in their possession and mastery, once that is not something at hand or pre-existing. This point is essential and it means another way to put forward the metaphysical issue, as I said.  In fact, the association of Hephaestus with metallurgy is a classic topos of Hellenistic culture, found for example in Homer, Iliad, 18. 136; 18. 368–19. 23, when referring to the shield of Achilles, manufactured by the astute God. 6

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In the modern era, we find a similar view expressed by Heidegger, also relating to our attitudes, but supported on other grounds. This contributes to a different, even surprising perspective, as it will be seen below. Heidegger begins by focusing his analysis on the metaphysical link underlying the manipulative and calculating relationship of technique and nature, marked by the search for advantage and profitability  – an attitude and aim that have been consummated in modernity, when technique steps ahead and becomes a privileged way of “objectifying” nature and humanity. From then on it is no longer possible to question the use and application of technique when speaking of engineering and applied knowledge, but to inquire about its “essence” and its origin: its origin is experience and its essence an unmasking, enabling a virtuality or a possibility of things to come to light and become real. So we may say with Heidegger that there is an essence of technique and that it resides somewhere, below the tool or the instrument, in the sense of something more fundamental, as a way of seeing things and a way of inhabiting the world. In sum, ways which instrumentality and utilitarian attitudes are not the cause, but the consequence, bringing on the well-known inversion: nature is not natura mater, the beneficial supplier of ancient times, but a reserve fund and raw material to be extracted, processed and consumed – the forest is wood and charcoal; the river is water pressure and power channelled to drive turbines. To quote Heidegger’s statement, for the modern technician and engineer it is not the power plant that is in the river, but the river which is in the power plant.7 Convinced that he had seen further and had reached the original and fundamental ground where téchne and technical attitude are rooted, Heidegger allowed himself to speak of technique’s “essence” and to say that it was not “technical” – a set of operations and an engineer thing, but “metaphysics”.8 In other words, ontological, a matter of fundamental ontology that will give us the determination (essence) of its two components: 1 – Nature = a reserve fund, at-hand matter or at one’s disposal; 2 – Man = a means and manageable raw material, as the chemist Kuhn observed (Heidegger, 1958b: 110), and not the subject or the end of the process, as tradition required. Thus, by modelling nature and man, technique is not a tool or a mass of artefacts, but a system or rather something like a Gestell, as Heidegger prefers. This is a preference for yet another one his Germanisms, giving the term an air of mystery, as if it were untranslatable. However, as “Enframing” in English, it may be found in the Portuguese equivalent in terms such as “framework,” “base,”  For the complete quotation, see Heidegger’s famous essay “The question concerning technology” (1958a: 21–22). 8  Heidegger maintained an ambiguous relationship with metaphysics throughout his career, leading him to refer to its new beginning, as Being History, founded on the ontological difference between Being and beings (entities), as in Dépassement de la Métaphysique (Heidegger, 1958b: 82, 84, 90). However, in other passages of this essay he gives the impression that metaphysical time is over, referring to Nietzsche as the last metaphysician and saying technology is just the last manifestation of metaphysics, the time of its full realization (Heidegger, 1958b: 114–115). For essence, i.e. technical essence, it is crucial to distinguish the quid, common gender and essentia of ancient metaphysics, understood as thing and hypokeimenon, in the sense of substrate, from permanence or duration over time adopted by Being History (see Heidegger, 1958a: 40–42). 7

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“disposition”, or “composition”, as many have suggested. Perhaps better yet, the idea is also present in “frame”, in the double meaning of structure, as in a roof frame, or as a coercive and subjugating force, encompassing nature and humanity within its scope of action and apparatus: nature is thus a reserve or stock, in contrast to humanity, which is defined as a means or raw material, technique being the device (Gestell) that comes lodged between them (Heidegger, 1958a: 27, 31–38). This way of seeing things represents a pirouette in the studies of technique, which were never the same after Heidegger, with the instrumental approach being put in check at its conceptual core, namely: the idea of technique as an instrument or tool, having as its end or télos the purpose of establishing control over nature and the human world, in whose different variants the craftsman = human being = the subject of technique, was the master of situation and could change the rules of the game if he/she wanted to or were facing a threat. From the Heideggerian perspective, the opposite occurs, the spell can turn against the sorcerer and the subject can become object, with the technological system capturing the man and establishing the greater servitude.9 In conclusion, in my research on the philosophy of technology, I analyse the ontological aspects of technical objects, with the aim to explore other directions and possibilities. On the one hand, along the lines of Aristotle’s artificalia, which puts into question the well-known dualities of philosophical tradition, such as body and soul, highlighting their cancellation and fusion, as I showed in my study Biotechnologies and the Great Oppositions - Ontological Aspects: Establishing and Cancelling, where, following Bachelard, I claim that “technology (...) is a reified theory (materialized spirit) and also (...) its inverse: spiritualized matter” (Domingues, 2012: 84), using the computer chip as an example, “which is physics injected in silicon” (Domingues, 2012: 84). On the other hand, in my recent research

 In speaking of essence and metaphysics, Heidegger gives the impression, as several scholars have noticed, that he sponsors a fatalistic and dystopian view of technique. The proof is found in his statements on planetary technique, transforming technological domination into destiny, and establishing, at its ontic level, that the greatest danger of technique comes not from weapons, not even from nuclear weapons, but from the facilities and utensils to which we are accustomed and which we do not want to give up. Moreover, Heidegger contends that technique is not diabolical, given that the destiny of its planetary realizations goes together with freedom, depending on our choices, and its nature is therefore ambivalent. Furthermore, not only is it ambivalent, but it is also founded on the ‘Being and beings’ dyad, on the lines of the forgetfulness of Being and the empire of the ontic or beings that filled the void. Finally, in the famous interview he gave to Der Spiegel in 1976, he conveys a negative message, stating that Man cannot control the technical empire and “Only God can save us”. Previously salvation was to be found in art and non-conceptual and non-­ representational thought, but this is no longer so, with Philosophy depreciated and vanquished by Science, as the philosopher argues (Heidegger, 1981: 209). To complete the framework, it is necessary to recall that Heidegger was always against the instrumental view of technology and the perspectives of philosophical anthropology, the ontological ground of which is the rational animal and its partner homo faber. Heidegger’s point of departure is the relationship between our Being (Dasein) and the Essence (Wesen) of Technique, in fact a triangulation of Man, Technique and World, thought of in terms of objectification (beings) and hiding (Being) (see Heidegger, 1958a: 9, 10–12). 9

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on the Dutch School, I follow an opposite direction, focusing on the dual nature of techno-artefacts, in terms of matter and form (knowledge) composition, along the line of the studies of Meijers and Kroes, that claim a “relational ontology” to handle its duality (Meijers, 2000; Kroes & Meijers, 2006; Houkes & Meijers, 2006). The systemic view  – This vision  considers technique and technology as an immense system, capable of gaining autonomy and overwhelming the human being, leaving him/her dependent on its advantages and conveniences, while generating a whole way of life adapted to it. Recalling Heidegger’s vision, but without the heavy metaphysical burden of his Philosophy, this is the view of Max Weber, Jacques Ellul, Gilbert Simondon, Oswald Spengler, and Langdon Winner. As we shall see, these are authors who, despite this common ground, have different understandings and convey different messages. Going straight to the point, the systemic view of technique is the great rival of the instrumental vision. In its different aspects, technique is viewed as being more than a means or an instrument. It fashions a world apart – the system of technique, in accordance with Ellul’s expression –, in the sense it is something with an end in itself, having in the human being a means and a provider. However, differently of metaphysics, it isn’t the order of the essences and first substances that is at stake. Rather, it is the massive reality of an extensive and integrated system of artifices, users, and “second” substances (the artificialia). In this sense, something built can be remade and undone, as contended by the representatives of the constructivist variant of this vision, who insist that the system is open and defend its relativity (Bruno Latour’s current thinking is a case in point). However, there are also those who doubt this possibility, such as Max Weber, who more pessimistically spoke of modern Western society and, by extension, of technique and its Ratio, one of its vectors, as an “iron cage”. There are also those who have apologetic or at least optimistic views, such as McLuhan and his “global village”, or harshly critical and dystopian views (Ellul, for example). Thus, total care stands for little when constructing comprehensive frameworks. In addition to the main currents, variants need to be considered. Going on with the inventory, Langdon Winner (1944–...), in a passage from Autonomous Technology (1979), states that the importance of technology is not in the physical structure of the apparatus, but in being a form of life, a pattern of human conscience and conduct, adapted to a rational and productive end. Hans Jonas (1903–1993), in turn, positions himself against the fatalistic view, proposing the regulation of technique and an ethics of responsibility, which is also in contrast to his old master, Martin Heidegger, who maintained that ethics always comes late. A technique that acts on a planetary scale and an ethics that is based on a Philosophical Biology and focuses on the idea of life – present from the amoeba to the human being –, opening-up a new perspective on deontological and anticipatory moral philosophy, whose imperatives may precede technological change. This approach, while sanctioning medical techniques that diminish human suffering, would also blame the enhancement technologies (eugenics or race purification) typical of

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genetic engineering, contending that these should be prohibited or subject to moratoria.10 Gilbert Simondon (1924–1989) is another prominent author who upholds the systemic view of technique. Considered by many to be the thinker of Humanities with perspective closest to engineering, Simondon argues for a neutral view of technique in more than one positive aspect. He believes strongly in bridging the gap between the two cultures, the philosophical-humanistic and the scientific-­ technological.11 His idea of technique as a system is marked by feedback, internal correlations and evolutionary lines, and is thus very close to Leroi-Gourhan’s idea of ensemble technique, that is to say, of unity of the human and technical from the outset of human life. However, in a paper published in Brazil in 2015, Feenberg recognized in Simondon’s philosophy of technology, beyond the major thesis about the autonomous technology, a set de constructivist aspects, similar to Bruno Latour’s thesis (Feenberg, 2015). This point deserves special consideration, leading Feenberg to speak with caution in quasi-constructivism, when approaching Callon’s and Latour’s perspective. The systemic view, therefore, contends that it is a whole way of life that is constituted, and runs through human relations with technical objects. These are integrated systems, networks of mediation and orders of dependencies. The human being is undoubtedly faced with a dense and coercive ontological order, not a vicarious and substitutive order, peopled by artefacts and objects of a secondary order [artificialia in Latin] as in certain lineages of instrumental and metaphysical conceptions. Besides Winner, this vision of technique is present in the main books of Don Ihde, who defends a phenomenological approach of technique (way of life) (Ihde, 1990) and an instrumental realism in an epistemic plan (Ihde, 1991) That is another possibility of variants and fusions of perspectives commented before. Such a way of life may have a biological, social, existential and even artificial (artificial life) content. However, in the phenomenology of technique, as implied here, the distinction between the social and the biological does not seem to matter much, and the scholar must take them as a set, as in bio-cybernetic visions, by

 Hans Jonas was classified among those who favoured the systemic vision, because he thinks about planetary technique, but his philosophical views enable us to place him among the metaphysicians, with an ambitious plan to establish an Ethics of technology on the foundation of Philosophical Biology, and by extension on the Philosophy of Nature. See Jonas’s books published in 1984 (chap. 2 and 3) and 1966 (chap. 9, focusing on Homo Pictor), and the articles published in 1982 and 1998. 11  For Simondon, see Du Mode d’Existence des Objets Techniques, in its origin the minor thesis of his PhD, defended at Sorbonne in 1958, which rapidly became a classic (Simondon, 2001); see also L’Invention dans les Techniques (Simondon, 2005), essential to clarify the notion of invention before, during and after industrial revolution, as well as for the analysis of various technical devices as tools, instruments and machines. On this, it is essential to remember that Simondon had a Technical Lab at the Sorbonne, today Paris V, full of pieces and devices and that, at the same time, it was common to mount and dismount some of them in his classes, such as motorbike engines, causing discomfort in his students in the Humanities. 10

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replicating natural life in artificial or synthetic life. Here and there, the distinction between them should not be understood as a break, but as expansion or extension. Returning to Gehlen’s scheme, mentioned above, while it is true that it is not always possible to observe the link between the technical device and the human body, as in the case of techniques used to produce fire and radar technology (the latter actually created by analogy with the bat sensor), it is still possible to state that the three functions listed by Gehlen (dismissal, substitution and surpassing) are also found in the systemic view. Some variants of the systemic view should be mentioned here: Variant 1: Extensionism  – Sponsored by communications and transport technologies, extensionism has as its best known protagonist the previously cited Canadian Herbert Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980), author of Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (McLuhan, 1964). Although in his explorations he might have framed his vision of technique in the instrumental conception, he in fact broke with it. Thus he contended that technological artefacts (the telephone, television, airplane, etc.) are more than tools we use or do not use, they are rather extensions of the human body and parts of our lives, designed to overcome the shortcomings and limitations of nature and expand human capacities. As such, they may be considered as “extended humanity” itself. Variant 2: Fusionism  – Sponsored by Cybernetics and having expanded into Biology and the Humanities, fusionism has different protagonists. It holds that, rather than extensions, artefacts are co-originators jointly with human beings. Moreover, so close is the relationship and dependence between human being and technique that individuals today are completely fused with mechanical and electronic devices, under wide-ranging conditions of hybridity. This unprecedented situation allows us to speak of socio-technical or anthropo-technical systems whose protagonists are actor-networks, described as hybrids made up of actors and actants – live and non-living – and in constant interaction. As examples of this variant may be cited the French Bruno Latour (1947–...) and Michel Callon (1945–...), as well as the American Donna Haraway (1944–...), who in their famous manifesto put forward the anthropology of the Cyborg (literally, a cybernetic body that is nothing other than a body-machine hybrid), speaking of the postgeneric and the like (Haraway, 1991). Variant 3: Perfectionism [Enhancement]  – Sponsored by genetic engineering and otherwise compatible with the instrumental approach to technique, the enhancement variant is part of the broader framework of the systemic and holistic view of biotechnologies, with the purpose of understanding humankind’s relationship with technique rather than the individual. Encouraged by successful experiments in the genetic modification of plants and animals, advocates of this current of thought speak of the enhancement or improvement of human specimens and even envisage the possibility of superseding organs (not just replacing them), as the so-called trans-humanists and post-humanists intend. The means for this would not be empirical or random, as in the past, but technological and planned with the help of the tools of Science.

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The model that everyone has in mind when it comes to enhancement is not and could not be Donna Haraway’s Oncomouse, from 1988, at Harvard Labs, and programmed for the acquisition of certain cancers and medical research – a restrictive and negative experiment (Haraway, 1991). It would be rather a genetically modified super or mighty mouse, as created in 2007 in Cleveland, at the Case Western Reserve University Laboratory in the United States, such a specimen being endowed with the characteristics of a marathon champion, sexual athlete and an armoured super-­ body, resistant to diseases such as cancer, in addition to having greater longevity than ordinary mice. This case exemplifies the enhancement of positive features, which are extended, reconfigured and transmitted, in contrast to being negative, unwanted and suppressed. As widely known, although it’s not covered here, the other name for enhancement is eugenics, with all the burden of distrust that the term carries. In its extreme versions, enhancement does not exactly take the systemic view characterized by holism and integrated circuits. Unlikely, it adopts something like a Faustian view of technique and as such is marked by hubris or excess, leading to the search for the forbidden, the absolute, the unlimited and that which is beyond the human being. In their less extreme and more balanced versions, ICTs and Bioengineering are in concert with this view and can be seen as enhancers of the human species, not so different than plants or cattle, which in the end will be adapted to environment and adjusted to nature. It is, however, in its human applications, as many have already been observed, without even saying the name, a new Demiurge, in which the human being no longer defines him/herself as a creature or a created being. Differently, the human being is now virtually the radical creator of him/herself and is able to do so in an instant and with the click of a mouse that which nature took millions of years to produce, sometimes badly and imperfectly, bringing good luck to some and the misfortune of this world to others: the corrections and suppressions of this lottery of life will then be supplied by biotechnologies and especially by enhancers who, according to their defenders like Julian Savulescu (2009), will be, strictly speaking, the moral and self-empowering forces of man, not the immoral and servile.12 The critical and socio-cultural view – Sponsored by Humanities and Social sciences, this view does not focus on a specific technology, but on the whole. In this sense, it is an idea of technique aligned to a systemic vision. It drifts away, however, from the Cybernetic and Biotechnological mainstream in which the natural and artificial bios are positioned at the centre. In contrast, the critical and socio-cultural view stresses the modes of cultural and social life and questions the Cybernetic and

 For the systemic view as a whole, see Winner (1979); concerning the anthropological implications, see Winner (2005). For biotechnologies and their modalities, see Domingues (2012), where I quote Gray, Mentor and Figueroa-Sarriera (1995), who cites four types: restorative (prosthetic), normalizing (pacemakers), reconfiguring (drugs) and improvers (supermouse) [the last two being my examples]. I add that in this set there is, strictly speaking, only a better biotechnology, namely eugenic, now sponsored by genetic engineering, and deserving of the accusation by its critics that geneticists are playing God. 12

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Biotechnological perspectives from the inside out. It is therefore a critical and destabilizing vision, characterized, in its main currents, by a bias towards Philosophy, Sociology and other Humanities subjects, rather than Engineering and the Natural sciences. In broad sense, it is at stake the critical function that characterizes all intellectual activity, not only the philosophical one, but its adoption by the philosopher may imply putting the various uses and applications of technology to the check, as we will see below. To fully understand the critical point of view of Humanities, including the Philosophy, we ought to consider that the question of technique/technology, in their different approaches, may give rise to apologetic visions in their utopian and technocratic aspects, as well as to negativist and dystopian ones, placing technophobes and technophiles of different observances in opposition. Common to the two extreme visions, accompanying the attitudes of reverence and fear, is a technological determinism that is a kind of fatalism, according to which what can be done must be done and will be done. Such a deterministic view is founded, as many have already noted, on a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of technological activities – a misleading view, in sum, with an ontological rather than logical content. It is all the more serious because it is uncritical, ignoring the distinctions established by Aristotle between beings that exist by necessity and cannot be modified and beings that are contingent and random and that may be one way or another or simply be or not be. Such is the case of human action, which can be constant and predictable, but always depends on the choices and the wills of individuals, and notwithstanding they are rational and logical, so that they can be calculated and anticipated. In the same way, artefacts and technological processes which before being artefacts and processes were possible techniques and possibilities for action, and as such contingent, having the same ontological principle of action: terrain of contingency, where that which is, cannot be and that which is not, can be, it is thus an open order and inhabited by reversible entities. Accepting this, rather than the technophobic and technophilic perspectives, leading people to adopt extreme positions, some of them to total rejection, and yet others to unconditional adherence, there is room for a critical attitude. In sum, an attitude that is only possible within the larger framework of a systemic view, because it demands an evaluation of all technologies in terms of their relationship with nature and humanity and keeps an equal distance between reverence and anathema. Two excellent examples of this view of technique are Marcuse (1898–1979) and Feenberg (1943–...). The former, as the eminent representative of the Frankfurt School, was the first to advance the Frankfurtian critique of the culture industry and lay the foundations for the critical theory of technique in a way which contrasts with the work of Adorno (1903–1969). Both Heidegger’s pupils, but while Adorno, even more than Heidegger, had a technophobic trend, based on the need of things and technological processes, Marcuse in his essential work One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society (1964) founds technology on the action ambivalence and he sees in it the other side of contingency. Feenberg (2002, chap. 7; 2006 [1999], chap. 7; 2010, chap. 4), in returning to Marcuse, under whom he studied and whom he considered to be his master, would graft in the

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already much spoken about world of life, with its existentialist, phenomenological and pragmatist philosophical bias (according to later Wittgenstein: forms of life), a component decidedly socio-historical-cultural and derived from the Marxist and Frankfurtian heritage. The roots of this heritage – more than Marcuse’s – are already in Horkheimer, who in his critical theory had noted that in the Marxist approach, communist society was nothing but a great power plant and should therefore be critiqued and amended. Thus, in his important work Transforming Technology: Critical Theory Revisited, Feenberg contends that the values of a specific social system, as well as the interests of its ruling classes are embedded in the very design of rational procedures and machines, even before they are designated for specific purposes. Such values are therefore not merely a question of use or of a relationship between means and ends, as the partisans of instrumentality believe. Beyond values, there are technical and social norms in technological processes, resulting in what the philosopher calls technical codes, according to him coercive codes that establish routines and shape behaviours, although these may be open and modifiable. Against technological determinism, the essential ambivalence of technology comes up; and against the epochal destiny of Heidegger and the iron cage of Weber, the technological device is the scene of a struggle, a social battlefield within which the alternatives of civilization are in competition, with nothing being decided before (Feenberg, 2002: 14–15). This critical perspective is precisely, on the tracks of Marcuse, the Frankfurtian critical theory updated by Feenberg. He contends that it is not merely a banal contemporary technological artefact like the seatbelt, which consists of an entity that embodies and materializes value in its design, as if it were a value-based artefact. But one ancient and really popular artefact known as Minitel and existing in France until the 90s became obsolete, having been dethroned by the Internet and since then disappeared, as noticed Feenberg, who showed in its short history something else of its technical functionality pure and simple, when it was created. Summing up, at the time when it was used as a simple IT means from which people bought theatre and train tickets, used as a complement to the telephone and will be transformed by the French into a genuine ICT: this occurred, as was pointed out by the North American philosopher, when the ordinary citizen discovered a new use for the device and one not foreseen by engineers, opening the way that lead to the Internet, chat and social network sites, decades before its successor took over.13 Beyond Marcuse and Feenberg, other thinkers could be included in this current such as Foucault, with his hypercriticism, when he speaks of biopower and the disciplinary society. Habermas and Jacques Ellul may even be added, the former with his theory of communicative action being seen as one of the epigones of the Frankfurt school, although today it is distanced from its initial ideas, as shows their more recent work about human nature and genetic engineering. Yet Ellul, previously

13

 For Minitel, see Feenberg’s analysis (2006 [1999]: 125–129).

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appeared in the field of systemic vision, could be re-accommodated among the critics of technique who display a social bias, as previously noted. Once more, distinctions are not rigid or exclusive, having several ways of articulations and fusions, and therefore all analysed situations we stand before emphases and prevalences. Going further back, to the French Enlightenment, we might also include here Jean-Jacques Rousseau and his seminal Discourse on the Sciences and Arts, which was awarded the Prize of Dijon Academy. But in his case, an attitude without the object was at stake, once modern technology did not exist yet. Indeed, he faced the beaux arts and the empirical techniques, both called “arts” in French at that time. However, he opened one of the ways of critical thinking about the technique, alternatively to Bacon and Descartes views, and his influence was huge.

9.3 Conclusion Having set out the four visions of technique, it is important to state that the different techniques, and the technologies embedded in them, have the same manipulative structure (they handle things and processes), aim to satisfy human needs and fantasies, establish a relationship between means and ends, and are oriented towards finding solutions to humanity’s several problems. As engineers, scientists and philosophers have observed, the internal end of technique and technology, leaving aside the strictly human ends (the pursuit of comfort and the good life), is nothing more than establishing technical control over action, making it predictable and manageable. In summary, technology and action operate on contingent materials, shaping and stabilizing them, and are characterized by a diversity of forms including: process technologies (management and organization), material technologies (material applications, energy and natural forces), systems technology (information and communication), and the technology of living organisms (biotechnology). However, all have the same purpose: to install technical control and fulfil the same agenda of conquest, that is to say, conquest over nature (material technologies based on physics and chemistry), conquest of the human being, mind and body (traditional biomedical technologies, such as pharmaceuticals and new biotechnologies, through genetic engineering), and the conquest of society (social technologies). Social technologies are among the oldest forms, as Max Weber observed when addressing bureaucracy which, as he noted, dated back to ancient civilizations. In the contemporary world, however, technologies have gained enormous extension and power, shaped by the contributions of Law (the procedures and rules of bureaucracies), Mathematics (finance, taxes), Sociology, Administration, and, contemporaneously, Information technology.

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References ÆSOP. (2001). Fables, retold by Joseph Jacobs. Vol. XVII, Part 1, 55 – The Crow and the Pitcher. The Harvard Classics. P.F.  Collier & Son, 1909–14; Bartleby.com. www.bartleby.com/17/1/ [Date of printout]. Accessed 10 July 2017. Aristotle. (2014). Eudemian Ethics, 1241b. In Aristotle’s ethics, rev. and ed. J.  Barnes and A. Kenny. Princeton University Press. Descartes, R. (1996). Principes de philosophie. In Oeuvres de Descartes, AT IX. Vrin. Domingues, I. (2012). Biotechnologies and the great oppositions. Ontological aspects: Establishing and cancelling. In I. Domingues (Ed.), Biotechnologies and the human condition (pp. 61–89). Editora UFMG/Coleção IEAT. Domingues, I. (2014). Três visões da técnica. In A. L. M. Garcia & L. Angioni (Eds.), Labirintos da filosofia: Festschrift aos 60 anos de Oswaldo Giacoia Jr (pp. 323–348). Ed. PHI. Domingues, I. (2016). O trabalho e a técnica. WMF Martins Fontes. Domingues, I. (2018). Visões da técnica e suas implicações antropológicas. In I. Domingues (Ed.), Biotecnologias e regulações: Desafios contemporâneos (pp. 29–90). Ed. UFMG. Domingues, I. (2020). As novas biotecnologias e a questão antropológica: aspectos filosóficos. Filosofia Unisinos: Journal of Philosophy, 21(1), 36–46. Feenberg, A. (2002). Transforming technology: A critical theory revisited. Oxford University Press. Feenberg, A. (2006 [1999]). Questioning technology. Routledge. Feenberg, A. (2010). Between reason and experience: Essays in technology and modernity. The MIT Press. Feenberg, A. (2015). Simondon e o construtivismo: Uma contribuição recursiva à concretização. Scientiae Studia, 13(2), 263–281. Gehlen, A. (1980). The man in the age of technology. Columbia University Press. Gray, C. H., Mentor, S., & Figueiroa-Sarriera, H. J. (1995). Cyborgology: Constructing the knowledge of cybernetic organisms. In C. H. Gray, H. J. Figueiroa-Sarriera, & S. Mentor (Eds.), The cyborg handbook (pp. 1–14). Routledge. Haraway, D. J. (1991). A cyborg manifesto: Science, technology, and socialist-feminism in the late twentieth century. In D. J. Haraway (Ed.), Simians, cyborgs, and women: The reinvention of nature (pp. 149–181). Routledge. Heidegger, M. (1958a). La question de la technique. In Essais et Conférences (pp. 9–48). Gallimard. Heidegger, M. (1958b). Dépassement de la métaphysique. In Essais et Conférences (pp. 80–115). Gallimard. Heidegger, M. (1981). Augstein, Rudolf; Wolf, Georg (31 May 1976). Nur noch ein Gott kann uns retten (W. J. Richardson, Trans.). Der Spiegel: 193-219. In T. Sheehan (Ed.), Heidegger: The man and the thinker (pp. 45–67). Transaction Publishers. Houkes, W. & Meijers, A. (2006). The ontology of artefacts: The hard problem. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A, 37(1), 118–131. Ihde, D. (1990). Technology and the lifeword: From garden to earth. Indiana University Press. Ihde, D. (1991). Instrumental realism: The interface between philosophy of science and philosophy of technology. Indiana University Press. Jonas, H. (1966). The phenomenon of life: Toward a philosophical biology. Harper & Row. Jonas, H. (1982). Technology as a subject for ethics. Social Research, 49(4), 891–898. Jonas, H. (1984). Imperative of responsibility: In search of ethics for technological age. The University Chicago Press. Jonas, H. (1998). Herramenta, imagen y tumba: Lo transanimal in el ser humano. In Pensar sobre Dios y otros ensayos (pp. 39–55). Herder. Kroes, P. & Meijers, A. (2006). The dual nature of technical artefacts [Editorial]. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A, 37(1), 1–4. Leroi-Gourhan, A. (1971). L’homme et la matière. Albin Michel. Leroi-Gourhan, A. (1973). Milieu et technique. Albin Michel. Mauss, M. (1968 [1950]). Anthropologie et sociologie. PUF.

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McLuhan, M. (1964). Understanding media: The extensions of man. McGraw-Hill. Meijers, A. (2000). The relational ontology of technical artifacts. In P. Kroes & A. Meijers (Eds.), The empirical turn in the philosophy of technology (pp. 81–96). Emerald. Parente, D. (2010). Del órgano al artefacto: Acerca de la dimensión biocultural de la técnica. Editorial de la Universidad Nacional de La Plata. Savulescu, J. (2009). Genetic enhancement. In H. Kuhse & P. Singer (Eds.), Companion to bioethics (pp. 216–234). Wiley-Blackwell. Simondon, G. (2001). Du mode d’existence des objets techniques. Aubier. Simondon, G. (2005). L’invention dans les techniques: Cours et conférences. Seuil. Winner, L. (1979). Autonomous technology. The MIT Press. Winner, L. (2005). Resistance is futile: The posthuman condition and its advocates. In H. W. Baillie & T. K. Casey (Eds.), Is human nature obsolete? Genetics, bioengineering, and the future of the human condition (pp. 385–411). The MIT Press. Ivan Domingues graduated and obtained a Master’s degree in Philosophy from the Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais (UFMG) [Federal University of Minas Gerais], Brazil, and holds a PhD in Philosophy from University of Paris I, Sorbonne. He spent sabbatical years at the École Nationale Fontenay-Saint Cloud (France), University of Oxford (UK) and Notre Dame University (USA). Author of several books, such as O Fio e a Trama: Reflexões sobre o Tempo e a História ([The Thread and the Weft: Reflections on Time and History], Iluminuras, 1996, followed by the French translation Le Fil et la Trame: Réflexions sur le Temps et l’Histoire, 2000); O Trabalho e a Técnica ([The Labor and the Technique], WMF Martins Fontes, 2016]; O Continente e a Ilha: Duas Vias da Filosofia Contemporânea ([The Continent and the Island: Two Paths of Contemporary Philosophy], Edições Loyola, 2017, 2nd edition), Filosofia no Brasil: Legados e Perspectivas ([Philosophy in Brazil: Legacies and Perspectives], Editora UNESP, 2017); and Foucault, a Arqueologia e as Palavras e as Coisas: Cinquenta Anos Depois ([Foucault, Archeology and The Order of Things: Fifty Years After] Editora UFMG, 2020). He has been awarded the Fundep/ UFMG Prize in Humanities for his career achievements. He is currently a Full Professor at UFMG, where he has been active since 1978.  

Chapter 10

The Specificity of Technological Knowledge Alberto Cupani

Abstract  Philosophy of technology has increasingly emphasized the particular nature of technological knowledge, mainly the fact that it is different from scientific knowledge. This paper brings together several characteristics of technological knowledge which are scattered throughout the literature. Its aim is to contribute to a better understanding of technological knowledge as a whole and to resolve some questions on the nature of science, in particular its possible intrinsic relation to technology. Keywords  Technological knowledge · Technology as knowledge · Epistemology of technology

10.1 A Particular Mode of Knowledge Philosophical reflection on technology within the academy is relatively recent. In 1980, Mario Bunge, one of the pioneers in the subject, described philosophy and technology as “two neighbours who do not know each other”, calling attention to the breadth and wealth of issues that a philosopher could detect in the technological world (Bunge, 1980, chap. 13). Fortunately, the situation has changed considerably since then, and technology is now an object of study by philosophers of various orientations. Carl Mitcham, in a book that is probably the best introduction to this philosophical field, observes that technology can be addressed from four basic perspectives: as I reproduce here, translated by Jeffrey Hoff and with small modifications, my article La Peculiaridad del Conocimiento Tecnológico, published in Scientiae Studia 4(3), 2006: 353–371. Republished with kind permission of the publisher. A. Cupani (*) Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Florianópolis, Brazil e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 H. M. Jerónimo (ed.), Portuguese Philosophy of Technology, Philosophy of Engineering and Technology 43, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-14630-5_10

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certain types of objects (artifacts); as a specific class of knowledge (technological knowledge); as a set of activities (summarized in producing and using artifacts); and as a manifestation of a certain human will in relation to the world (technology as will) (Mitcham, 1994: 60). It is clear that these four perspectives cannot be separated, but it is possible to give preferential treatment to one of them. This is what I propose to do in this article, in which I present the traits that scholars have affirmed characterize technological knowledge, particularly how it is different from scientific knowledge. For this purpose, from among the various definitions of technology found in the bibliography, I chose that used by Mario Bunge: “the scientific study of the artificial”. Bunge explains his definition: “If one prefers, technology can be seen as the field of knowledge related to the design of artifacts and to the planning of their realization, operation, adjustment, maintenance and monitoring, based on scientific knowledge (Bunge, 1985a: 231). This definition seems to me to be more appropriate for analyzing the cognitive dimension of technology than others such as: “a form of human knowledge” aimed at producing “increasingly diversified objects, with increasingly interesting traits, in such a way that they are increasingly more efficient” (Skolimowski, 1983 [1966]: 43–44), which does not include an allusion to science; “knowledge of what functions” (Jarvie, 1983 [1967]: 55), which is too narrow; “practical implementations of intelligence” (Ferré, 1995 [1988]: 26), too broad; or “sciences of the artificial” (Simon, 1981 [1969]), which appears to presume its heterogeneity. This study has a dual purpose. The main one is to produce an overview of the principal arguments that I have found about the subject, given that the traits of technological knowledge that I join here are dispersed in the corresponding literature. This overall view (which is still not properly a synthesis) should help to understand the nature of technological knowledge as a totality. The second purpose is to use this overall view (which includes, as I will show, conceptual divergences and oscillations) to contribute to the search for responses to certain philosophical questions about science, such as: is science inherently technological?; what values do science and technology share?; does scientific truth prove technological success?; and does the word knowledge have the same meaning in both fields?

10.2 Not Merely Applied Science Technology, although it can apply science, is not the same as, or entirely, applied science. (Walter Vincenti)

The common association of technology with artifacts makes it difficult to perceive that it is also a specific form of knowing, which as such is not reduced to the mere application of scientific knowledge. For this reason, the recommendation of Vicenti (who was an engineer, and a theoretician of technology), to abandon the concept of technology as applied science and more suitably pay attention to the nature of technological activities, should be followed. The identification of technology with

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applied science is due largely to influential historical works, in line with the warning given by Edwin Layton Jr., another precursor of this philosophical field.1 He observes that it is a notion that involves a complete theory of the relationship between science and technology, which corresponds to a view of historians who identify technology with techniques and objects produced through them, ignoring the thinking processes involved in this production. Nevertheless “far from constituting an artificial modern formation, the link of technology with knowledge is very old”, Layton affirms (1974: 31). When we pay attention to the etymology we note that the obvious derivation of the term technology from the Greek word techne indicates a phenomenon that pertains to the realm of knowledge. In fact, techne was not a mere making, but a knowing how to make (something). Mitcham (1994: 118) recalls that in Plato, techne and episteme were closely associated and that Aristotle defines techne as a habit that implies a logos, differentiating it from episteme, which refers to what is changeless, whereas techne refers to what is always changing. Naturally, etymological considerations are unlikely to be probative, but often provide good clues. In any case, it is certainly safer to turn to historical and theoretical considerations to verify that technology is something different from applied science. If this were not so, we should remove from the domain of technology complex achievements of other eras, such as the pyramids in various cultures], Roman aqueducts and medieval cathedrals, all of which were constructions for which it was not possible to rely upon scientific knowledge in the modern sense of the term. We should also ignore the use of certain drugs (ephedrine, cocaine, quinine and curare) in the medicine of various pre-scientific cultures, as well as many equally pre-­ scientific industrial processes (cheese manufacturing, fermentation, dyeing...) (cf. Feibleman, 1983: 36). On the other hand, many inventions neither originated in the deliberate application of scientific knowledge nor were they produced by scientists. One of the best known cases is the invention of the steam engine, which was not the result of scientific research (James Watt was an engineer), although it contributed to the later development of thermodynamics. Perhaps the main difficulty in reducing technology to the pure application of science lies in the very nature of scientific knowledge. Peter Kroes (1989: 377) calls attention to the gap between the results of basic science and the knowledge needed for technological purposes, due to the wide-ranging nature of theories and the use of idealizations that require adapting scientific knowledge in order to facilitate its application. In turn, technologists develop theories of limited application, because – and here we note another difference – technological knowledge is specific to a given task, an aspect emphasized by Joseph Pitt (2001: 38). Nevertheless, to speak of the “adaptation” of scientific knowledge to technological purposes is  For example: Singer et al. (1954) and Daumas (1962). Layton observes that the works of U.S. historians (Lynn White, Derek Price, among others) are more sensitive to the peculiarity of technology, although they have not been able to prevent a certain emphasis on technique, with which technology is often identified, which also mars perception of the cognitive aspect of the latter (Layton, 1974: 33). 1

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insufficient, because technology always implies invention. Joseph Agassi emphasizes that applied science is “an exercise in deduction” based on pure science, but that “there is a gap between applied science and the implementation of its conclusions, a gap that must be saved by invention” (Agassi, 1974 [1966]: 52). The preceding observations correspond to the fact that technology is an activity addressed to the production of something new, and not to the discovery of something that already exists. For this reason, technological knowledge is an area with its own specific characteristics: those of the “sciences of the artificial”, explored by Herbert Simon in a now classic book (Simon, 1981 [1969]). The artificial is a system adapted to the environment in the light of a human purpose, an object (artifact) with desired properties, idealized and manufactured according to a design.2 For this reason, it may be called “prescriptive knowledge” (cf. Vincenti, 1990, passim) in contrast to the descriptive knowledge sought by science. In addition, as a productive activity, technology faces problems that do not affect basic science, such as those related to feasibility, reliability and the efficiency of inventions and cost-benefit calculations, etc. for which science does not offer ready solutions (cf. Kroes, 1989: 377). There are also specifically technological notions, beginning with the idea of a machine, from primitive instruments to automatic devices, concepts such as switch and optimization, and complete theories, such as cybernetics, hydrodynamics and network theory (Mitcham, 1994: 95). In connection with technological theories, Bunge points to the existence of two types: the substantive and the operative.3 Joseph Pitt (2000: 33ff) identifies another difference in asserting that scientific knowledge is theory bounded (an expression coined by W. Vincenti), while technological knowledge is task specific. While technological theories are different from scientific theories, the same can be said of the data with which technologists work, because these come mostly from non-scientific experience and are particularly important for adapting an artifact to its effective operating circumstances. Nevertheless, the singularity of technological knowledge is appreciated even more when we note that it requires data related to the technical, economic and cultural demands that the artifact must satisfy (Vincenti, 1990: 216–217). In addition to those differences, science seeks to establish laws that “govern” natural phenomena, while technology formulates rules of action to produce artificial phenomena or to use devices. Bunge affirms that rules are derived

 It should be clarified that, although the majority of scholars of technology refer to the artificial as if it were a field of objects, there are also artificial materials (such as plastics) and artificial processes (such as damming rivers). Bunge treats this variety quite carefully and defines the artificial as “everything, state or process, that is controlled or deliberately made with the help of some learned knowledge, and that can be used by others” (Bunge, 1985b: 33–34, my translation). 3  Substantive theories produce knowledge about technological action itself (for instance, a theory about the flight of airplanes). Operative theories refer to the actions on which the correct function of artifacts depends (e.g., a theory about the optimal decisions concerning the distribution of air traffic in a determined area (Bunge, 1969: 684). 2

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from laws [nomological statements] or are supported by them, through “nomo-­ pragmatic statements” (Bunge, 1969: 696).4 Another aspect in which science and technology differ is that the latter appeals much more to analogical and visual thinking than the former – without excluding, of course, abstract and verbal thinking (cf. Vincenti, 1990: 221; Baird, 2004: 62). Analogical thinking is particularly useful for using resources from an existing artifact to produce a new one, and “outstanding designers are invariably outstanding visual thinkers”, according to Vincenti (1990: 221). Simon (1981 [1969]: 18–21) describes technological production as “knowledge by simulation” (nowadays trivialized by the use of computers). Naturally, simulation is not foreign to scientific procedure, although technological models are different because the variables that must be considered and incorporated into the model are dictated by the goal to be attained, while in science the criteria for selection of variables are not as specific.5 Technological experiments are also different from scientific ones, although not because in the former there is no concern for knowledge, but because technology seeks a different kind of knowledge. Does the artifact work? Will there be, perhaps, theoretically unforeseen factors that will be experimentally detected? Etc. Such questions are a specific property of technological research. Technological explanations are also different from scientific ones. Kroes (1998: 3) notes that, as a physical object, a technological object possesses a structure, but its character as an artifact stems from the function assigned to it. For this simple reason, the explanation of a technological object cannot be equivalent to its causal explanation. The physical description of the structure of the object explains why it operates in the way it does, but not that it should have one function or another. It is the design that encompasses the technological explanation: it shows in what way, according to its physical structure, the artifact performs a certain function. This difference can also be highlighted by saying that technology implies functional descriptions, which are not deduced from structural descriptions (Kroes, 2001: 3–4). It is a difference that originates in the purpose of the technology: science aims at understanding reality, technology wants to control it. The very concept of knowledge seems to change in the field of technology. Skolimowski (1983 [1966]: 44) characterizes it as knowledge “of what is to be”, in  For instance the scientific law: “Magnetism disappears above the Curie temperature” supports the nomo-pragmatic statement: “If a magnetized body is heated above its Curie point, it loses its magnetism”, which entails the rule: “To avoid the loss of magnetism of a body, do not heat it above its Curie point” (Bunge, 1969: 684, my translation). Nevertheless, it should not be thought that the derivation of rules based on laws is obvious or mechanical. This would be to ignore the creative aspect of technology (cf. Kroes, 1998: 8). 5  The variables to be taken into account in the phenomenon to be explained in science depend on the discipline (physics, chemistry etc.), the theory (classical or quantum mechanics) and focus (structuralist, Marxist etc.). Variables, in turn, also characterize those three aspects. In terms of the general conditions for the production of artifacts (from which the interesting variables derive) Bunge (1985a: 226) mentions: not violating natural laws, being plausible, operating effectively and reliably, having a cost that does not exceed a certain amount and producing benefits that (ideally, at least) exceed the undesirable collateral effects. 4

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line with H. Simon (1981 [1969], chap. 1), who describes it as knowledge of the possible. Kroes (2001: 2–3) calls it “knowledge of a functional nature”, including knowledge of a physical nature, of relations of means and ends and of convenient action.6 The same author observes that for this reason, technological statements reveal whether they are true or false, unlike scientific statements. It can be said that an artifact performs its function well or poorly (with this being true or false as the case may be), while this affirmation is not valid for a physical structure. It means that, beyond descriptive statements, technological knowledge includes normative expressions (cf. Simon, 1981 [1969]: 8; De Vries, 2003). Due to the specificity of technological knowledge, some authors are inclined to abandon the traditional definition of knowledge as “justified true belief”. Joseph Pitt, (2000, chap. 1) adopts a pragmatic perspective, affirming that individual claims of knowledge must be recognized by a community, with success in action the criterion for the acceptance of these claims. Knowledge thus consists of information that is collectively accepted and effective. For Pitt (2001: 6), technological knowledge is therefore more reliable than scientific knowledge. The latter depends on theories, and changes as these theories change. Besides, a theory that limits the validity of scientific knowledge does not indicate what should be done with it. Technological knowledge, addressed to a specific task, has as a result types of solutions that are recorded in reference works by engineers. Although this type of knowledge is at times considered with disdain as “cookbook engineering”, Pitt affirms it is somehow superior to scientific knowledge in certainty and effectiveness.7 This pragmatic view of technological knowledge culminates in the analysis of Davis Baird (2004), who proposes a “material epistemology”, arguing that the objects (mainly the instruments) we produce embody our knowledge of the world, in a way that is analogous to words. For Baird a watch, a motor, etc. are bearers of knowledge, as are theories.8 The “material” truth of this “thing knowledge” is given by the satisfactory performance of the function attributed to the object. Baird is convinced not only of the reality and particularity of technological knowledge, but also that it provides access to our capacities for understanding reality in a way that is an alternative to language (Baird, 2004: 40). Although he sees that its material epistemology is related to the Popperian theory of “objective knowledge”,9 he  The link between the philosophy of technology and the philosophy of rational action (“praxeology”) is found here. 7  From a realistic perspective, however, Bunge considers technological theories to be richer from a practical perspective, although theoretically poorer (Bunge, 1969: 686). 8  Baird identifies three types of instruments: those that represent the known object, like the material models (from the “planetariums” of the nineteenth century to the helicoid model of DNA), those that encompass “working knowledge”, like the air pump or the particle accelerator, and those that constitute “encapsulated knowledge”, which are the measuring instruments, from a ruler to a spectrometer (Baird, 2004, chaps. 2, 3 and 4). 9  It is important to recall that K.  Popper (1902–1994) put forward an epistemological theory according to which ideas, problems and arguments constitute a “world” that is in some way objective, which would exist with a degree of autonomy in relation to the material world and to human minds (Popper, 1975 [1973]). 6

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believes it is correct to state that “thing knowledge” and “objective knowledge” are instances that both interact with the material and psychical worlds. Baird thinks that to comprehend objective knowledge helps to comprehend subjective knowledge (the beliefs of subjects) and vice-versa. Nevertheless, other authors stick to the notion of justified true belief for technological knowledge and identify its various forms or modalities. Synthesizing the contributions of various authors, Carl Mitcham (1994: 193–194) differentiates, within technological knowledge, between sensor-motor skills, technical maxims, technological rules and technological theories. Skills obviously pertain to the realm of know-how and tacit knowledge, and not of knowing that. They are acquired by training, imitation and trial and error. Technical maxims are empirical norms (a kind of recipe), which are characteristic of techniques and trades. Technological rules are based on scientific knowledge. Technological theories are the elements closest to the traditional notion of knowledge, although more clearly so in the case of “substantive theories” (Bunge, 1969: 684–685). In any case, Mitcham comments that the proximity of the modality of technological knowledge to the classic notion of “justified true belief” can be understood in the sense that “beliefs related to the fabrication and use of artifacts can be justified by referring to abilities, laws, rules or theories” (Mitcham, 1994: 194).10 Anyway, whether understood in a pragmatic sense or in a theoretical sense, technological knowledge seems to have a clearly synthetic or integrating quality, unlike the more analytical character of basic science (cf. Hummon, 1984: 70; Constant, 1984: 34). On the other hand, technological production is obviously far from being a casual activity. Bunge assimilates the technological method to the general scientific method (as he understands and defends it), resulting in a cycle that consists of: a practical problem – design – prototype – test – and eventual correction of the design or reformulation of the problem.11 Design, in a way, is the heart of the technological process, and Bunge explains that he does not affirm the existence of a method for designing: the idea that such a method exists seems to him “as absurd as the idea that all that one has to do in order to become a scientist is to master the scientific method” (Bunge, 1985a: 228). What Bunge affirms is that there is a minimum logical sequence in all activities that produce technology (as in scientific research). Moreover, Bunge emphasizes the scientific ingredient of technological design by defining it as “the representation of an artificial thing or process anticipated with the help of scientific knowledge” (Bunge, 1985a: 225). The challenges that arise from this activity were analyzed by Walter Vincenti in the now classic book What Engineers Know and How They Know It (1990), that I have cited a number of times. As an engineer, Vincenti highlights empirical, practical and unpredictable aspects of technological production as well as the various forms and circumstances in which  There are, Mitcham opportunely adds, different interpretations of this justification: the realist, the instrumentalist and the pragmatic. Technologists subscribe readily to the realist interpretation (Mitcham, 1994: 194). 11  Naturally, the later non-cognitive stages of technological production remain outside this comparison (mass production, monitoring, etc.). 10

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scientific knowledge (which is unavoidably necessary) must be adapted to practical difficulties, or have a different relevance for the technician and the scientist.12 Vincenti’s conclusions on categories of technological knowledge and knowledge-­ generating activities are particularly interesting. The categories he mentions are: (1) fundamental design concepts (like the “operating principle” that defines a technological device or the “normal configuration” of an apparatus)13; (2) criteria and specifications (the general and qualitative goals to be attained must be transformed into specific and quantitative goals that are technically defined): (3) theoretical tools (from mathematical theories and methods to purely theoretical concepts such as feedback); (4) quantitative data (that, unlike those used in science, are not purely descriptive but also prescriptive, that is, they establish requisites to be met); (5) practical considerations (know-how of different kinds, based on professional experience); and (6) design instrumentalities (procedures such as optimization, modes of thinking that prove to be effective and, above all, the ability to judge) (Vincenti, 1990: 208ff). Meanwhile, the knowing-generating activities are: (1) the transfer of scientific knowledge (which is always, in some way, adapted); (2) the invention of concepts (in terms of what is creative about this activity, not subject to programming); (3) theoretical research (which similar to scientific research except for its subordination to design); (4) experimental research (also similar to scientific research, although with greater specificity in terms of methods and resources)14; (5) the practice of designing, where problems and needs are discovered that stimulate the search for knowledge; (6) the production of the artifact, during which observations can be made (for example, of failures) that trigger new knowledge; and (7) the direct testing of the technological product by builders and users (not necessarily experts), which is different from the initial tests because it reveals problems or aspects to be improved on that can only be detected through ongoing experimentation. A technological design, whether simple or complex, begins with the identification of a problem. “Problem-solving is the major cognitive activity of the technology professional”, writes Rachel Laudan (see Laudan, 1984b: 84), who offers an interesting taxonomy of technological problems. A first type consists of problems triggered directly by the environment and still not resolved by any technology. To detect one of these problems is the opposite of perceiving the course of events as inevitable. Contrary to conventional assumptions, Laudan affirms, “the immediate

 The cases analysed by Vincenti correspond to his field of experience (aeronautic engineering) and to “normal” design. However, he convincingly argues for the plausibility of seeing in his conclusions aspects of design that are applicable to other technological fields. 13  Vincenti points here to an “important” difference between science and technology, because although scientific knowledge can help to understand an operational principle (for example, the principle of flight by the elevation produced by a rotor on a helicopter), scientific knowledge does not merely imply the principle. Certainly, this repeats Kroes’ observation that the characteristic of a technological device is its function. 14  At times resorting to ordinary experiments that have no place in advanced science, such as breaking things to verify the resistance of materials (Vincenti, 1990: 232). 12

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perception of difficulties rarely provokes a technological response unless there is already an extant technology that is directly applicable to the situation or that can be suitably modified” (1984b: 85). This occurs because humans live in an environment that has long been modified by technology. As a result, “we find the chief locus of technological change in the modification of existing technology” (1984b: 85). Another type of problem arose from the operating failures of current technologies. This typically occurs when an artifact or a system is submitted to demands greater than those for which it was designed or when it is applied in new situations. It should be added that the mere existence of a given technology does not prove that it functions perfectly. Technologies, Laudan affirms, are implemented by both their need and their performance, and she mentions the case of medical technologies prior to the twentieth century.15 A third type of problem arises from the extrapolation of characteristics of current technology. “The mechanician who has successfully built a spinning machine with 50 spindles is likely to see the production of a similar machine with 100 spindles as the next problem, even though there is no failure in the machines he has already built” (Laudan, 1984b: 86). A fourth “and very important” type of problem, responds to the perception of an imbalance between related technologies. One example would be the problem of stability of ships when moving from wooden sailboats to iron steamships. Finally, we have technological problems advanced by available knowledge, as when aerodynamic theory forecast that airplanes driven by piston engines would fail at altitudes and speeds higher than those practiced at the time. In any case, whatever the origin of the problems (natural, social or technological), the question of their solvability always operates as a filter. Individuals and communities tend to ignore problems that appear unsolvable.16 Solvability is almost obviously a function of past experience, and in the case of technological communities, of what may be called their “matrix”, the set of common professional convictions that configure a tradition of work.17 This leads us to another interesting aspect of technology in its cognitive aspect, which is the identification of technological “paradigms” similar to the scientific paradigms described by T.  S. Kuhn (1970 [1962]). Edward Constant (1984: 29) highlights the fact that technological communities and their traditions are “the primary locus” of technology and its progress. A tradition of a community of practitioners who recognize each other as colleagues, guided by common convictions that animate and define the meaning of devices and techniques, establish the criteria that define the way of belonging to a community and stimulate the creativity of inventors. Nevertheless, technological communities, and their paradigms and traditions  Without giving examples, Laudan seems convinced that “medical technologies, at least until the twentieth century, fall almost entirely within this class” (Laudan, 1984b: 86). 16  On a conventional level, the apparent insolvability of a problem causes events to be seen as a fatality and induces an appeal to social solutions. For example, a community that sees its village ravaged by a flood and cannot imagine means of avoiding this type of catastrophe may opt to move to another location (Laudan, 1984b: 84). 17  Cf. The “disciplinary matrix” of scientific disciplines (in Kuhn, 1970 [1962]). 15

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have their peculiarities. The “anomalies” (Kuhn), in particular, may consist not only of functional defects (when a system produced does not work under new or more demanding conditions), but also of “presumable anomalies” (Constant), which occur when science predicts that a current technology will not work in certain circumstances, or that a new technology will work better (Constant, 1984: 31).18 The opposite of this difference is found in another difference, located in “normal” practice: the meaning of obtaining “satisfactory” results (which in Kuhnian terms is successfully to solve a “puzzle” in the field) is more direct in technology, because the product should function as designed. In science, what is understood as a theory, a satisfactory explanation or test, may involve more examination and discussion (Constant, 1984: 37). Despite appreciating Constant’s analysis, Imre Hronzky (1998) believes that Constant did not recognize the role of “exemplars” in Kuhn’s theory, and for this reason did not come to highlight the importance, in the technological paradigms, of the practical knowledge related to a trade. Hronzky points out other differences between the technological and scientific paradigms. In the first case, another type of anomaly may arise from time pressure or a lack of tools, for which reason the technologists (once again unlike scientists) must limit themselves to the task they were assigned, instead of freely exploring possibilities. Science and technology are also different due to the presence in technological communities of actors who do not have a parallel in scientific communities, such as producers and users of artifacts. For this reason, the contribution to the production of new knowledge (and to an eventual change of paradigm) may originate from the intervention of lay people, who are not necessarily technicians. Another difference is that technologists commonly turn to all types of available knowledge (an aspect already mentioned by Vincenti): a technologist is a sort of “bricoleur” (or “one who cobbles things together”, a handyman). Hronzky adds that the technological community is more fuzzy than the scientific, which causes an anomaly to be perceived more directly (for example, by the failure of the artifact in the hands of users), while the demand for a change of paradigm is not as clear. Hronzky also observes that, although both scientific and technological communities are made up of individuals and social actors (such as firms and laboratories), the latter, as “vehicles and owners of specialized and tacit knowledge” may gravitate more forcefully towards technology than to science (Hronzky, 1998: 2). Technological revolutions also do not seem to be to the same as scientific ones. Constant (apud Gutting, 1984: 53) characterizes them as a new or redefined technological community adhering to a new technological tradition. Unlike the scientific revolutions in Kuhn’s model, which are simultaneously innovative and eliminatory, technological revolutions do not necessarily involve a radical choice, do not necessarily pre-suppose a new community, and are compatible with the continuity of “normal” technology. Constant’s main example is that the revolution caused by the  For instance, when the limits of piston-engine airplanes were foreseen, as previously mentioned. Constant addressed the issue in his most important and quoted book, The Origins of the Turbojet Revolution (Constant, 1980). 18

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introduction of jet airplanes did not suddenly eliminate the manufacturing of piston-­ engine planes. Rachel Laudan argues that a technological revolution does not always respond to the stagnation of a traditional technology (as demonstrated by the revolutionary transformation from alternating steam engines to rotary engines during the eighteenth century). She also states that environmental changes may trigger revolutions, as when the deforestation of England led to the development of coal mining technology (Laudan, 1984b: 99). On the other hand, technological innovations may bring about scientific revolutions. Baird (2004, chap. 5) mentions the transformation of analytical chemistry in the twentieth century, when qualitative analysis identifying substances by the separation of their components was abandoned for a quantitative analysis identifying by their physical properties, using various instruments and procedures (spectrophotometry, X-ray diffraction, polarography etc.). The development of these resources (and not a change of theory) was responsible for a revolution in analytical chemistry, because the very nature of the activity changed.19 Derek de S. Price stressed the importance of the role of technology in scientific revolutions arguing that the production and innovation of instruments played a more significant role in the origin of scientific revolutions than that of ideas. The “artificial revelation” produced by the instruments was, in his interpretation, a key factor for understanding scientific and technological changes (de Solla Price, 1984: 112).

10.3 Technological and Scientific Knowledge Recognition of the peculiarity of technological knowledge does not mean that it is not similar to scientific knowledge. Technological design (more specifically, the activity of simulating) is analogous to the activity of modeling (that is, imagining models of the mechanisms that produce phenomena), which is specific to science. In both cases, it involves verifying if the model will work (Cf. Simon, 1981 [1969]: 17ff). Hans Jonas (1983 [1966]: 336) suggested interpreting modern science as being dedicated to understanding “nature at work”, thus conceiving of science as inherently technological. Such a conception is defended in detail by Joseph Rouse (1994 [1987]), who affirms that there is continuity between scientific experimentation and technological applications. Hugh Lacey (1998) sees modern science as being based on “materialist strategies” that focus on phenomena only in terms of the properties that render them susceptible to control. This tendency finds its extreme version in authors who see science as a form of technology. This is the case of James K.  Feibleman (1982), who understands science as “the kind of technology that  A revolution, Baird clarifies, not in the line of T. S. Kuhn (there were no anomalies or “incommensurability”), but in that of authors like Cohen (1985) and Hacking (1987), because it was something seen as such by the scientists themselves, had an impact on treatises and text books, was judged by historians to be a revolution, implied conceptual changes, gave rise to new institutions and even produced social changes. 19

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addresses itself not to practical problems but to theoretical ones”.20 Less radical, Kroes (1989: 379), after indicating the differences between science and technology, expresses his opinion that there is a gradual transition from scientific to technological knowledge. Ferré (1995 [1988]: 44) sees in science and technology “non-­ identical twins of the same parents”, because both respond to the human capacity to think (intelligence), of which there are two kinds: practical intelligence (the ability to survive by solving problems) and theoretical intelligence or reason (the ability to understand the world). Since Modernity, Ferré argues, reason has been systematically placed at the service of the ability to survive, thus giving rise to “theoretically supported practical intelligence”. In reality, together with claims for the peculiarity of technological knowledge, attention is currently being given to the similarity of science and technology (as in some of the previous references) due to the growing interlinking of both activities and their apparent fusion in so-called “techno-science”. Ramon Queraltó (2001) asserts that technology has become a mediation between science and reality, and is no longer a mere instrument of science. This character is perceived in the growing predominance of applied science over pure science, and of “pragmatic truth” (what is the use of an object?) over “theoretical truth” (what is this object?). Queraltó adds that a reciprocal conditioning takes place between theory and tests. In the past, a test was completely subordinated to the ideas to be tested. Today, the available technological means condition what will be tested. The author exemplifies this point with the case of the particle accelerator: the material particles are destroyed in the accelerator in order to study them, which generates new “objects”. Finally, technological manipulations now enter decisively into the elaboration of the “object of knowledge”, mainly because the properties to be known are reduced to those linked to those manipulations (note the resemblance with Lacey’s thesis). The similarity of modern science with technology is also revealed in the ambiguity of certain disciplines. Alberto Cordero (2001: 130) mentions cases like that of “Darwinist medicine”, materials science and nanotechnology to show that it is now difficult to classify certain new disciplines.21 While acknowledging the difficulty of distinguishing between science and technology in terms of their objectives, methods and contexts (in many current studies it is difficult to account for any difference), the author rejects, however, the “pantechnological temptation” to adopt technology as a complete explanation for science.22 Cordero observes that science and  “Beginning with tools and instruments constructed for their usefulness in practical tasks, it was only a short logical distance to instruments invented for what they could discover about the nature of things” (Feibleman, 1982: 8). 21  Schummer (2001) shows that preparative chemistry, which corresponds to more than 90% of research in the field, must be considered as a technology, because 95% of the substances known today are artifacts. Moreover, to improve the ability to produce new substances has become an end in itself in chemistry. 22  A trend stimulated by the epistemology of John Dewey, according to Cordero, (2001: 133). Nevertheless, not everything in this epistemology can be criticized, Cordero warns, and he uses Dewey’s ideas to put forward his own interpretation of the relationship between science and technology. 20

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t­ echnology share similar goals and criteria for the selection of results, although “the values or weights attached to those common elements manifestly differ in the two forms of activity” (Cordero, 2001: 135). This means, for example, that the search for knowledge is not exclusive to science, and that the search for success is not unique to technology. But in technology, the criteria for success generally emphasize the satisfaction of non-epistemic desires or needs. Science seeks to satisfy epistemic requisites (such as truth and justification). This is because a primary object of science is the acquisition of knowledge, which in technology is rare (if it ever occurs at all). Moreover, science is “epistemically more ambitious”, considering itself successful when it achieves something that deserves to be considered as true or approximately true knowledge. “Technological disciplines can be (and usually are) satisfied with much less” (Cordero, 2001: 136). Finally, differences in emphasis also exist in the plane of ethics: while the honesty of informational reports is very important in science, in technology there are many more acceptable reasons to lie. Cordero’s examples (such as lying piously to a patient in medicine) do not seem to be related to the cognitive aspect of technology. Nevertheless, we can imagine socially acceptable reasons for lying (to hide, disguise, etc.) the purpose of technological projects, such as that of protecting economic interests or avoiding social consequences caused by the inopportune disclosure of a project. Industrial secrets, the patenting of inventions etc., are subjects related to this difference of ethos between science and technology. These differences, for Cordero, “are matters of a moderate degree or emphasis only”. In short, for Cordero, the scientific and technological disciplines tend to cluster around different “valuational cores” and for this reason, the kind of the understanding of the world varies in the two activities. In addition, he clarifies that he does not conceive of this difference as something a priori or fixed, but as something historical. Science and technology “have been rationally led to a state of profound complementarity – being now more interdependent than even before”, although this does not mean that they have always been so, or that they should continue to be so (Cordero, 2001: 137).

10.4 Conclusion With no claim to have exhausted the issue, some conclusions may be drawn from what has been presented here. To begin with, there appears to be no doubt that technology is a specific mode of knowledge and it is first of all a specific way of resolving certain cognitive problems. As Gary Gutting says, it is not synonymous with applied science; although it can also not be reduced to techniques (as sophisticated as they may be) without cognitive value, but constitutes “a body of practical knowledge” (Gutting, 1984: 64). In principle, the aim of technology is not to obtain knowledge for the value that it has in a purely theoretical context. It certainly seeks useful knowledge. Although this does not prevent it from producing forms of knowledge that are not immediately useful.

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In any case, the knowledge produced by technology is more “amorphous” and less “self-contained” than that of science (Weingart, 1984: 115ff.). Technological communities are less autonomous from a cognitive perspective than scientific communities, because by the nature of their defining goal (the production of artifacts) they are marked by different types of “orientation complexes”23 of a diverse type: scientific-technical, economic, political and cultural. It is precisely this diversity that defines this “amorphous” character (I would say ambiguous or complex) in all elements of technological knowledge, allowing them to satisfy various demands, of which truth is only one.24 Another way of pointing to this fact is to show that the relationship between cognitive values and social values (in a broad sense) is different in science and technology. Technology clearly has its own dynamics, its own operating logic. This means that, however significant the requirements made of a technological product (and especially the economic and political requirements), there are always technical constraints that cannot be ignored (Vincenti, 1990: 204–205). Laudan observes, very acutely, that if this is not perceived, the way in which technologists react to economic and social pressures, or how their work affects society, cannot be understood (Laudan, 1984a: 4). This also means that specifically technological values (such as facticity or economy of resources) can only be adapted to social pressures up to a certain point. Technology should also not be reduced to knowing-how and to its tacit exercise, as if the only moments of explicit and descriptive knowledge correspond to the scientific ingredient in technological production. Since the Industrial Revolution, Laudan observes (1984a), the quantity of explicit technological knowledge grew considerably (as attested to by the creation of engineering courses). As we have seen, it is impossible to ignore the existence of specifically technological theories and explanations. If they cannot substitute tacit and practical knowledge, this is for the same reasons that science also does not exclude the latter forms of knowledge. Technology is clearly not only an extension of pure or applied science. Some of the thinkers discussed above suggest we therefore have an obstacle to conceiving of science as inherently technological. The complexity of motivations and influences present in technological creations makes it difficult to understand them as mere manifestations of a knowledge of the world produced by the “will to power”. It is plausible to say that basic science, in modern times, emphasise those aspects of reality that make it controllable (Lacey, 1998), in such a way that if most of the knowledge that we have today does not represent applied science, it is probably applicable science. It is also plausible that technological development (which includes a

 These “complexes” that guide research include codes of professional ethics, disciplinary convictions, definitions of fields of research and even sets of problems, according to Weingart (1984: 116). 24  On the other hand, usefulness is not the only value used in identifying technological problems. Aesthetic and intellectual motivations are also important at times, as Laudan recognizes (1984b: 8–9). 23

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technological way of thinking and living)25 increasingly encourages the development of scientific knowledge which can be applied. None of this excludes the formulation of theoretical questions by pure curiosity, or as a consequence of knowledge that is already available, nor does it invalidate the fact that there are also findings, theories and explanations that do not have a perceivable application or practical interest – that is to say, knowledge that is not yet seen as being adaptable to a practical purpose. This seems to me to be decisive for understanding science and technology without confusing them. A final note on the term “technoscience”, which is increasingly used in relation to that science which is part of industrial civilization. Strictly speaking, the term applies to mega-projects (of an industrial or political nature, or warmaking) of which scientific research is just one more element, albeit an essential one (see Echeverría, 2003). Careless use of the term “technoscience” may lead to error in relation to the various aspects of knowledge as analysed here. We should therefore distinguish between science and technoscience, because technoscientific projects (big science) do not yet exclude science, despite their increasing number.

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Echeverría, J. (2003). La revolución tecnocientífica. Ed. Fondo de Cultura. Feibleman, J. K. (1982). Technology and reality. Martinus Nijhoff. Feibleman, J.  K. (1983 [1961]). Pure science, applied science, and technology: An attempt at definitions. In C. Mitcham & R. Mackey (Eds.), Philosophy and technology: Readings in the philosophical problems of technology (pp. 33–41). The Free Press. Ferré, F. (1995 [1988]). Philosophy of technology. The University of Georgia Press. Gutting, G. (1984). Paradigms, revolutions, and technology. In R.  Laudan (Ed.), The nature of technological knowledge: Are models of scientific change relevant? (pp. 47–66). D. Reidel. Hacking, I. (1987). Was there a probabilistic revolution 1800–1930? In L. Krüger, L. J. Daston, & M. Heidelberger (Eds.), The probabilistic revolution (Ideas in history) (Vol. 1, pp. 45–55). The MIT Press. Hronzky, I. (1998). Technological ‘paradigms’: Cognitive traditions and communities in technological change. Paideia. http://www.bu.edu/wcp/Papers/Scie/ScieHron.htm Hummon, N.  P. (1984). Organizational aspects of technological change. In R.  Laudan (Ed.), The nature of technological change: Are models of scientific change relevant? (pp.  67–82). D. Reidel. Jarvie, I.  C. (1983 [1967]). Technology and the structure of knowledge. In C.  Mitcham & R. Mackey (Eds.), Philosophy and technology: Readings in the philosophical problems of technology (pp. 56–61). The Free Press. Jonas, H. (1983 [1966]). The practical uses of theory. In C. Mitcham & R. Mackey (Eds.), Philosophy and technology: Readings in the philosophical problems of technology (pp.  335–346). The Free Press. Kroes, P. (1989). Philosophy of science and the technological dimension of science. In K. Gavroglu, Y.  Goudaroulis, & P.  Nicolacopoulos (Eds.), Imre Lakatos and theories of scientific change (pp. 375–381). Kluwer. Kroes, P. (1998). Technological explanations: The relation between structure and function of technological objects. Society for Philosophy and Technology, 3(3), 18–34. http.://scholar.lib. vt.edu/ejournals/SPT/v3n3/kroes.html. Kroes, P. (2001). Technical functions as dispositions: A critical assessment. Techné: Research in Philosophy and Technology, 5(3), 105–115. Kuhn, T. S. (1970 [1962]). The structure of scientific revolutions. The University of Chicago Press. Lacey, H. (1998). Valores e atividade científica. Discurso. Laudan, R. (1984a). Introduction. In R. Laudan (Ed.), The nature of technological change: Are models of scientific change relevant? (pp. 1–26). D. Reidel. Laudan, R. (1984b). Cognitive change in technology and science. In R. Laudan (Ed.), The nature of technological change: Are models of scientific change relevant? (pp. 83–104). D. Reidel. Layton, E. W., Jr. (1974). Technology as knowledge. Technology and Culture, 15(1), 31–41. Mitcham, C. (1994). Thinking through technology: The path between engineering and philosophy. The University of Chicago Press. Pitt, J. C. (2000). Thinking about technology: Foundations of the philosophy of technology. Seven Bridges Press. Pitt, J. C. (2001). What engineers know. Techné: Research in Philosophy and Technology, 5(3), 116–123. Popper, K. (1975 [1973]). Conhecimento objetivo: Uma abordagem evolucionária. Itatiaia. Queraltó, R. (2001). Technology as a new condition of the possibility of scientific knowledge. In H.  Lenk & M.  Maring (Eds.), Advances and problems in the philosophy of technology (pp. 205–214). LIT Verlag. Rouse, J. (1994 [1987]). Knowledge and power: Toward a political philosophy of science. Cornell University Press. Schummer, J. (2001). Challenging standard distinctions between science and technology. In H.  Lenk & M.  Maring (Eds.), Advances and problems of the philosophy of technology (pp. 215–230). LIT Verlag. Simon, H. A. (1981 [1969]). The sciences of the artificial. The MIT Press.

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Singer, C., Holmyard, E. J., Hall, A. R., & Williams, T. I. (1954). A history of technology (Vol. 5). Oxford University Press. Skolimowski, H. (1983 [1966]). The structure of thinking in technology. In C.  Mitcham & R. Mackey (Eds.), Philosophy and technology: Readings in the philosophical problems of technology (pp. 42–49). The Free Press. Vincenti, W.  G. (1990). What engineers know and how they know it. The John Hopkins University Press. Weingart, P. (1984). The structure of technological change: Reflections on a sociological analysis of technology. In R. Laudan (Ed.), The nature of technological change: Are models of scientific change relevant? (pp. 115–142). D. Reidel. Alberto Cupani born in Córdoba (Argentina), has been based in Brazil since 1978. He holds a PhD in Philosophy from the Universidad Nacional de Córdoba [National University of Córdoba] (1974), having undertaken post-doctoral studies in France (Université de Paris VII) in 1994–1995. He is professor at various Argentinian and Brazilian universities, and emeritus professor at the Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina [Federal University of Santa Catarina], Brazil (2013). He has been a researcher at the Centro Nacional de Pesquisa Científica e Tecnológica (CNPq) [National Center of Scientific and Technological Research] for 20 years. Currently he is working with the post-graduate studies at the UFSC. He is the author of several articles and books on the topics of Philosophy of Science and Technology, in particular Filosofia da Tecnologia: Um Convite [Philosophy of Technology: An Invitation] (Editora UFSC, 2016, 3rd ed.).  

Chapter 11

Lost in Translation? Ethics and Engineering Practice Tiago Mesquita Carvalho Abstract  The aim of this chapter is to clarify the scope of engineering ethics. We suggest a definition of engineering as practice, with its own virtues and internal goods, guided by a common good. A complementary function of engineering is also proposed, analogous to the translation between the objective lawfulness uncovered by theoretical sciences and the social lifeworld, through the materialization of truth in processes and commodities. These definitions make it possible to consider an ethical framework for the practice of engineering, which goes back to the Humboldtian maxim of transforming knowledge into deeds, that is, the question of how to convert the universality of facts into the particularism of values. Engineering ethics should not be confused with just another professional ethics, guided only by the internal regulations of the profession and by ethical standards and codes. On the other hand, it must not turn engineers into new moral heroes, the only social players responsible for solving dilemmas and ethical issues that arise with the massive arrival of technologies. Engineering should be understood as a collective practice of translation, creation and cooperation of alternative designs. This can contribute to the discussion of the philosophical relevance and ultimate goals of engineering practice. Keywords  Engineering ethics · Practice · Responsibility · Translation · Technology

11.1 Introduction Although technical skill is intrinsic to the emergence and development of humanity, engineering is much more recent. Technical skill, as a willingness to pursue productive and transformative activities in order to obtain benefits, assumes only the familiarity of empirical contact with reality and an understanding that natural phenomena develop along constant and regular lines. Engineering as a professional practice thus equates not with technical skill, but with technology: it is grounded in T. M. Carvalho (*) Instituto de Filosofia do Porto, Porto, Portugal e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 H. M. Jerónimo (ed.), Portuguese Philosophy of Technology, Philosophy of Engineering and Technology 43, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-14630-5_11

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knowledge of the ontological structure of reality itself, formulated in mathematical language or statistical regularities. Engineering is therefore, in a preliminary definition, an activity that aims to apprehend theoretical knowledge on the behaviour of natural phenomena, with a view to applying physical, chemical and biological processes methodologically and systematically in models, computer applications, products, instruments and procedures, so as to benefit the whole of humanity.1 The mastery of conceptual tools such as mathematics, computing and statistics is fundamental from the outset. Notice that this definition presupposes that engineering incorporates an idea of the good, of benefit, of harmony and alignment of the functional with the moral. The “invention of invention” is largely a modern phenomenon, in line with the theoretical epistemology which guided early scientists and engineers and which has played a central role in the economies of industrialized countries since the end of the nineteenth century. Technology presupposes methodical planning and a theoretical framework, while technical skill is aided by chance or by unconscious and intuitive processes, embedded in the forms of life of communities and dependent on slow adaptive developments (Mitcham, 1994: 215–230). Unlike the pre-modern, essentially Aristotelian framework, where techne was relatively barren and theoria was immersed in contemplative sleep, their alliance in technology is prodigiously fruitful. The modern marriage between the intellectual virtues of theoria and techne rendered production itself a continuous object of rationalization, establishing calculating reason as the driving force of history and source of abundance for a defined notion of material well-being. In order to be successful, however, scientific research had to resort to the onto-epistemological assumption that facts and values are separate. The success of the scientific enterprise thus meant the irrelevance of final causes for understanding nature, henceforth reduced to a mechanism. Efficient causes also became sufficient for explaining human nature, thereby leading to the erosion of practical reason’s capacity for determining the means to enable the teleological flourishing of human nature within communities. This alliance of theoria and techne, and the erosion of practical reason, led to the idea that scientific and technological progress is intrinsically aligned with moral and social progress. Growing scientific discoveries create a ceaseless acceleration, reflected in equally accelerating material renewal. Both are taken as evidence of the march of civilization towards a “golden age” or the “liberation of man”. Given the absence of a teleological view of human nature, another consequence of modernity is the way in which ethics has become a matter of following the best rules, whether they be deontological or consequentialist. Just as nature without teleology can be manipulated, so the organization of society becomes a body of improvable  Article 141 of the articles of association of the Order of Engineers in Portugal provides that engineering shall be at the service of mankind. Compare with the definition of van de Poel. “As a first approximation we might characterize engineering as an activity that produces technology. Producing is here to be understood very broadly, including such activities as research, development, design, testing, patenting, maintenance, inspection, and so on” (van de Poel, 2010: 2). 1

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individuals, subject to the goals of a productive and logistic utopia. It is in this sense that engineering acquires the capacity to assist and even direct the social progress of humanity. A paradoxical tension can thus be seen between the universality of facts and the singularity of values, illustrated by the difference between the accelerated accumulation of scientific research and the relative stability and fragility of moral and social progress. According to the epistemological assumptions of the modern separation of facts and values, the task of engineering is a neutral one of bridging this divide. In other words, to use technologies to operationalize the significance of the axiological neutrality of facts with the axiological multiplicity of values. This tension is continuously renewed, since the task of fundamental research on natural phenomena and the structure of reality requires continuous use of technology. Habermas discussed this issue in what he himself called the social lifeworld and the worldly universe of facts (Habermas, 2006 [1965]: 95). Contrary to the idea of a human nature devoid of a telos, the preliminary definition of engineering is complemented by the notion of practice, in the sense of MacIntyre (2007 [1981]: 188). Engineering has its own internal goods and standards of excellence, requiring the development of virtues by whoever successfully completes the scientific and empirical training of an engineering curriculum. The external goods of engineering are defined as technological objects themselves, or as manufacturing processes corelated to the above-mentioned internal goods. In this sense Florman (1976), for example, noted that engineering is not only an instrumental way of fulfilling certain functional, external purposes, but an activity that gives meaning to the lives of its practitioners. In being necessarily familiar with the “pure” and also the “applied” sciences, the engineer is led to adopt a rigorous, austere and objective approach to reality. An engineer identifies the facts concerning a given matter, without being contaminated by the ambiguity of other values or personal perspectives. The practice of engineering is anchored in educational and formative performances by which future engineers become aware of the power of reason to grasp the truth and its potential application. Understanding engineering as a practice clarifies how the professional activity of engineers is not reduced to the idiosyncrasies of a specialized domain closed in on itself. Although engineering provides its practitioners with enormous intellectual satisfaction, this delight should not be confused with the purposes of the practice itself, but as accompanying them. The practice of engineering follows an idea of a common good that ultimately justifies the existence of engineering as a means to that end. It therefore plays an active role in defining the nature of the interaction between science and society, between calculating reason and practical reason. The importance of engineering’s ultimate role contributes to the broad discussion of its alignment, since it is subject to political, social and economic constraints and embedded in the axiological plurality of democratic societies. At the same time, engineering is at the forefront of a variety of philosophical questions. Today, more than ever, we are living through the uncertainty of an epochal transition. The shift is from the previously ordered and markedly natural world, populated by an ontological hierarchy, to another increasingly artificial one in which

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changes, processes and solutions dictated by man have become normalized and expected. Engineering brings ethical questions to the public sphere since it is directly involved with the possible transformation of the essences of beings, of what is technologically possible or ethically acceptable, and what is in the power of humanity to do, but not in its power to predict. Moreover, due to the success and dissemination of technology in all forms of life, engineering itself ends up exporting its own epistemic framework to other areas of knowledge and even to everyday language, by means of its theoretical tools and analogies of instrumentality, modelling, simulation and forecasting. The ambition of many sciences and disciplines is now to be as “useful” and “solid” as engineering. The very images of nature and human nature are even understood through device- or technology-based metaphor (Martins, 2005: 168). In this sense, and given their power, engineers are the unacknowledged philosophers of post-modernity (Mitcham, 1998: 41). Rather than simply criticizing engineering from a philosophical point of view, it is actually more important for engineers to be able to philosophically reflect on their practice. A greater philosophical education could thus attribute to engineering practice not only greater self-understanding, but also counter the criticism usually levelled at it, that it depersonalizes life and alienates society.

11.2 The Birth of Modern Engineering The history of engineering in each country illustrates the multiplicity of the earliest narratives surrounding engineering and the hopes and promises associated with the development and progress of industrial nations. University curricula naturally reflected the extent of these ambitions. The diversity of the history of engineering in each country makes it possible to see how engineering, despite referring to universally valid laws of nature, can only be fulfilled according to certain conditions of local possibility. In Germany, for example, the first professional description of an engineer appeared in the seventeenth century, while in Portugal the first engineering treatise dates from the eighteenth century. Although engineers existed before any professional label was applied to them, it was only in the eighteenth century that the practice, in France and Germany, started to be organized with reference to a professional group (Reidel, 2013: 76). With the industrial revolution, the growth in demand for technical knowledge led to the need to establish a profession. The emergence of polytechnic and engineering schools allowed engineers to become a professional class with a body of knowledge that became increasingly essential for economic growth. In the dawn of engineering education in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in Europe, the optimistic assumption underlying university research was that theory would almost magically become better practice and reach a higher level of praxis, and undoubtedly equate to moral and social progress. At the end of the nineteenth century, following Humboldt’s reforms, the German university, for instance,

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subscribed to the fiction of the largely beneficial “contagion effect” of a sciencesbased education. The tension between technically usable knowledge and practical awareness of the social lifeworld or, as it was more succinctly called, between the universality of facts and the singularity of values, did not arise (Habermas, 2006 [1965]: 92). The most favourable moment for the emergence, teaching, transmission and standardization of engineering practices in each country depends on a number of factors by which society is led to accept that technology takes command of its destiny, in the sense that by training engineers, technology will remain increasingly available and tameable. The role of the scientist and the engineer in the industrial societies of the nineteenth century was defined by their ability to announce that the possibility of human progress is necessarily preceded by the dissemination of calculating reason into the organization of forms of life and through institutional support for expanding the practice of engineering. Engineering has enjoyed remarkable prestige since it first emerged, but it is different from that of science itself: science discovers, but it is up to engineering to convert theoretical knowledge into socially useful works, the benefits of which are reaped by society at large. Engineering is often charged with a Herculean task of launching, affirming and creating new markets through major public works programmes. From its genesis to the present, engineering has gradually gone through military and civil works, ranging from transport infrastructures to the more specialized works encompassed by electrical, mechanical and chemical infrastructures, while currently being an essential component in terms of organization and resource management, either in companies or in the State itself. The emergence of a professional class of engineers marks the definitive moment when science and technology became the proper engine of history. It was the engineer, more than the scientist, who became the helmsman, the vector of Modernity par excellence, that is, of a historical project defined by the progressive expansion of calculating reason to all human activities. It is up to the engineers to fulfil the civilizational targets, to tread the path towards the long awaited and promising collective future. Engineering power is considered to be akin to a development potential that can, if properly assisted, guarantee access to the future and allow each country to overcome its scientific and technological backwardness or to ensure clear geopolitical advantages. This liberating and salvationist undertone to engineering was largely due to Saint-Simonian scientism and the voluntarist action of the State in driving society through knowledge, particularly through the exact knowledge the engineer controls (Dorrestijn, 2016: 114). The assumption was that industry, economic progress and the unbounded promotion of well-being would necessarily follow from the existence of more engineers, the key men of industrialization. The call for society’s development and the resolution of its problems was addressed to the available mass of trained engineers, their skills and knowledge, according to the rationality of the factory. The guiding principle was to place engineers at the helm of society, on the Saint-Simonian philanthropic and ecumenical assumption that major benefits would

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soon follow. The engineer, however, was to apply science to society without endorsing the rightness of its application. Scientific and technological progress over recent centuries, predicated on the formal language of mathematics and supported by statistical data, helped to establish objective, public and impartial criteria for data, unaffected by private interests and parochialisms, and began addressing the management of human affairs itself, where meaning and values are, in contrast, often discussed and reassembled. The obliteration of practical reason gave way to the charisma of objective, calculating reason as being specifically able to deal with nearly all matters. Numbers have the authority that no form of human decision provides. Thus engineers, even though they are unelected, often have an implicit political mandate, guaranteed by their ability to crunch and handle numbers and thus making decisions seemingly objective and unavoidable, because they are independent of any subjectivity (Porter, 1996: 13). Engineers, being at the same time familiar with science and technology, skilfully navigate institutional byways with the authority of numbers. Their mastery of mathematical models and of the physical quantities associated with natural phenomena ultimately gives them an aura of neutrality and objectivity, which leads them to address social or organizational issues that are often not even technical but social, thus fostering an epistemic blindness and ontologically reducing beings by viewing them as resources to be used. Throughout the twentieth century, the engineer was not just a character in close contact with mathematics and other theoretical sciences, seeking the optimization of products, software and other processes according to material and financial constraints. The engineer was a pioneer, an avant-garde celebrity, because his skills made him a modern Argonaut, placed at the forefront of countries’ economic and social progress, while assuming the position of maker, manager and entrepreneur, often in the vicinity of political positions. As Rodrigues notes, “[...] engineers were a decisive occupational group for the construction of modern societies [...] Decisive not only for their role in bringing about those changes, but also for contributing to their legitimization as heralds of the idea of progress and the association between well-being and technological progress” (Rodrigues, 2004: 82). In line with their emergence in modernity, engineers were able to adopt a voluntarist position as geniuses and personalities. This is in stark contrast to today’s framework of decentralized networks and clusters which increasingly characterize technology and society. Engineering was thus associated with the idea of the wise man in his ivory tower, in which theoretical knowledge was disinterestedly pursued for its own sake. Hence the paradox of the particular reverence for engineers, despite the fact of their work being highly politicized by virtue of its major implications for praxis. There is thus a link between social and political conditions prevailing when engineering practice began and the historical task of promoting a scientific and technological culture, together with its implied economic advantages. To paraphrase Winner (2014), criticism of a possible technological somnambulism is hindered when the adoption and institutional sponsorship of science and technology receives an aura of strategic urgency towards competitiveness and development, which may explain the myth of the axiological neutrality of technology and engineering

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practice. Science and technology, until recently considered as unquestionable vectors of progress on the path towards the benevolent transformation of society, are therefore connoted with an almost messianic alibi of a technical utopia (Rodrigues, 2003: 86), which hampers reflective thinking on the appropriateness of transforming knowledge into public works and products. Ethical reflection on engineering is thus underpinned by two complementary ideas. The emancipation of reason from its religious and hierarchical shackles, as a result of modernity, led to the unshakeable belief that humanity holds the power to create its own future. The success of such an enterprise has, however, led to the late twentieth century awareness that humanity also holds the power to destroy the very conditions in which it is possible to create any future. The pernicious effects of the success of techno-scientific civilization have led to a crisis that calls into question the use of reason, i.e. the fundamental structure of industrialized societies (Jonas, 1984b). Major technological projects and undertakings such as nuclear power stations, mining and industrial automation are thus not the only ones with potential problems of acceptance, on account of the more obvious ethical issues they raise and the catastrophic scenarios underlying their use. Forms of everyday life based on mass production and consumption generate inconspicuous effects, removed from the user experience in both space and time, but which are potentially no less catastrophic. The “many-hands problem” (van de Poel et al., 2012), for example, consists precisely in the widespread acknowledgement of the difficulty in advancing forms of responsible management of collective action, interpreted as a collection of individual actions which are technologically inflated but underestimated in their effects. Moreover, in a globalized world, in which public financing systems and business consortia rely on global value chains and technological innovations partly manufactured in different continents, the practice of engineering today is mainly done in a networked and collective way. In addition, it has become largely specialized in different fields and in such a way as to be able to support technological prowess. In this sense, engineering seems to be ambiguous in its power to resolve or destroy. Engineers as a professional class are responsible precisely because of ethical issues which arise from their work. In this respect, it should be noted that the Portuguese Order of Engineers, like its European and North American counterparts, includes in its rules a set of duties to the environment, the community and the employer. However, there are no theoretical concepts and tools on how to think about technology in all its breadth in its mandatory deontological course. Issues such as the practice of responsibility in a context of epistemological opacity, the incommensurability of effects and the unpredictability of uses are not mentioned or are deemed not worth mentioning. Given that a condition of forward-looking responsibility for actions is the ability to predict its consequences, the practice of engineering is increasingly subject to technological complexities, whereby its external goods cause accidents or unforeseen effects. The duty to be aware of the consequences takes on a normative aspect, even though it may be argued that engineers cannot know everything about what they manufacture.

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In this sense, engineering ethics is primarily thought to stem from the excellence of professional conduct, which actually boils down to loyalty to customers and employers and to the public obligation to safeguard the integrity and safety of those affected. The issues of engineering practice are therefore mainly considered in the scope of its professional field and in line with a deontological or consequentialist approach.2 Once the good character of engineers follows professional principles, standards and regulations, all the conditions sufficient to prevent the occurrence of disasters, unforeseen effects and misuses would likely be met. The case studies discussed refer to whistleblowing as the paradigm of the ethical issues surrounding engineering. Codes of professional conduct, as a set of rules, regulations and instructions, are doubtless a fundamental step in raising ambiguous issues in engineering practice. However, compliance with them should not be equated with ensuring that certain insidious effects are avoided. Analysis of case studies in which public safety was adversely affected, as in accidents involving failures or poor design, and of instances of whistleblowing, should not overlook the fact that, despite their significance as examples, ethical issues in engineering deal with expectations of performance and visions for development. Professional codes of ethics do not tell us much as to how engineers may cautiously anticipate the future or promote technology designs which will avoid harmful or insidious effects down the line. A forward-looking responsibility cannot therefore relate solely to engineers’ professional conduct and internal loyalty to their employers, but must reflectively extend to their role in the development of algorithms, processes and products whose effects may be detrimental to the environment or society. The practice of engineering therefore involves internal responsibility, interpreted as an obligation inherent in professional tasks, standards and regulations, and external responsibility,3 understood as a virtue which goes beyond the regulations required by professional conduct. Although this latter notion of responsibility is incorporated in legislation, it is chronically challenging because it cannot foresee and specify all technological phenomena in their full complexity (Reidel, 2013: 78). External responsibility acknowledges the way in which technological objects and systems influence moral agency. Triggered by the varying circumstances of their social and institutional context, technologies affect the action and perception not only of engineers, but also of users, stakeholders and society at large. Engineering ethics is based not only on professional ethics defined by an existing normative  Ethical consequentialism is a way of extending cost-benefit analysis to various topics without criticism of their limitations. Likewise, it does not seem to be sufficient for integral full analysis of engineering practice. Although these analyses may be applied simply and quantitatively, in line with engineering standards, they fail to consider the incommensurability and ambiguity of externalities. The fact that they are presented by numbers also gives the impression of neutrality, impersonality and objectivity. Cf Doorn (2012) for further reading. 3  I am aware there is some place for confusion here, in that the concepts of internal and external goods, based on MacIntyre, would seem to be more in line with an internal and an external notion of responsibility, respectively. Reidel’s work, however, seems to classify external responsibility as an internal good. I have adopted his approach. 2

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framework but also, given the complex dynamics of technological innovation, by appealing to the practical reasoning of engineers, which goes beyond the excessively limited normative professional framework (Pritchard, 2009: 956). There is, of course, a link between these two notions of responsibility, between an imperative, abstract notion of mandatory responsibility imposed by professional codes and responsibility as an internal good in engineering practice by which engineers consider and deliberate on the scope of their own actions. The question arises as to whether engineering practice does not entrust to engineers an epistemic task that is too demanding, i.e. anticipating all possible uses of technologies. Engineering ethics struggles with the difficulty of coping with the engineer’s seeming powerlessness, in the face of growing technological complexity, to change things for the better, despite the fact that alternative designs and thinking about technological ends has to begin with each engineer’s practical reason and outside the confines of professional deontology.

11.3 Engineering Practice as Translation Engineering may give its practitioners a prominent position in the way technologies are designed and introduced in society. Given their specific skills, engineers may shape that way theory becomes practice, and the way factual truth is rendered in specific values. Through their training in curricular subjects and professional matters, engineers, unlike laymen, may become the dragomans of technological civilization, the social actors who can read the laws of nature, interpret the technological scripts (Callon, 1984; Latour, 1992) and bring the fields of science and society closer together, by highlighting how laws of nature can be alternatively translated in various social contexts. Engineers are able to penetrate the opacity of technology, deciphering the unknown language locked in its “black boxes” (van de Poel, 2006). In this precise sense, engineering practice resembles a collective translation in which engineers are translators. Habermas (2006 [1965]: 96) had already defined the problem of transforming technically usable knowledge into practical awareness of the social lifeworld as a translation problem. It is thus necessarily subject to rational discussion, that is, to a collective form of deliberation and constitution of the premises of practical syllogisms. Making engineering practice analogous to a collective translation practice gives its diverse processes and products a teleological orientation, that is to say, a discussion about its ends. It should be noted that the proposed notion of translation aims above all to highlight the specific way in which engineers bridge the gap between facts and values. Although there are similarities, it is important to differentiate it from the notion of translation used by actor-network theory (ANT). Any proper linguistic translation requires that the translator master both source and target language in order to preserve the literality or meaning of the text. Similarly, engineering should be able to judge which translations of the laws of nature preserve or fail to uphold the meaning of the good life for all. Just as the

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semantic heterogeneity and cultural circumstances of certain literary works make them largely untranslatable or incomprehensible for a given age, there are also technologies which are inadequate or inappropriate to the social lifeworld and should be rejected. The materialization of scientific results in technologies rests on the axiological neutrality of facts, but such neutrality becomes inadmissible when such facts operate in the field of everyday life. If engineering practice is reinforced by a reflection which raises the questions of relevance, suitability and pertinence of its products, it might be able to consider how the translation takes on many material forms, the uses of which in praxis should be subject to broad scrutiny, like any other action. As mentioned above, engineering can only be understood as a practice which is part of and contributes to a social whole (Bowen, 2010: 135). It is in the plurality of possible translations of truth that public discussion may suggest the suitability of certain technologies, in the sense of whether or not they favour both users’ flourishment and the common good. Practical reason should be strengthened in order to maintain public and political ascendancy over the automatism and increasing scale with which calculating reason has led the expansion of technological innovation, material production and the concomitant direction and management of human affairs. Engineering has lived for decades on the credit of the so-called disinterestedness of ancient theoria, in which access to truth was achieved by the wise nobleman. There is an urgent need to loosen the strict assumption that any application that proceeds from theoretical endeavours is appropriate due to a mere intimacy effect, that is, due to the prior contact of the scientist with truth. The eloquent and reputable saying of Veritas vos liberabit, “the Truth will set you free”, has given any translation of the laws of nature either a compulsive beneficial appearance or a contradictory neutrality. Rather, just as no textual translation is univocal, originating only one text in the target language, engineering has to reconstruct itself reflectively, in the sense that this translation, entrusted with the task of bridging theory and practice, may take several textual forms. There is no necessary logical connection between fluid mechanics and an airplane or between Maxwell’s equations and the cell phone. Following the translation analogy, the bicycle and the car are different texts, they are different material translations of Newton’s mechanical laws, and although they serve the same purpose of movement in an urban environment, they do so in different ways, creating different cities and forms of life. The engineer is a translator, and translating is inherently creative. Nevertheless, as in any translation, not everything is allowed. There are laws of correspondence and circumstantial constraints which apply between the source and target languages, and these define the range of possible translations, i.e. the various material solutions. The suitability of engineering purposes to the ultimate good should be the guiding principle of an ethics of engineering. Paul Ricouer identified the ambiguity of translation when he defined it as paradox, a way of serving two masters: the foreigner in his work, the reader in his desire for appropriation. In the same way, the engineer instantiates theoretical truth, alien to the social lifeworld, in the realm of practice, leading users to undergo the

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mediation of their action and perception (Verbeek, 2011) through the laws of nature materialized in technologies. The engineer, like the translator, is suspected of betraying theoretical truth and has a duty to be faithful to praxis, that is, to benefit the social lifeworld (Ricoeur, 2005: 11). Given that there are a number of constraints on translating the laws of nature into various material forms, the practice of engineering is necessarily subject to various socio-economic and historical circumstances that have surrounded the emergence of the professional class of engineers and the associated professional and university institutions. The current weakness of some scientific and university education systems may be seen, for example, in the lack of human and material resources and in academic institutions’ excessive dependency on their funding bodies. In a globalized world, technology is often connected to the dichotomy of an exporting centre and an importing periphery, creating long-term technological and financial dependencies. In its claim to universality, technological innovation in peripheries often means interpreting or passively translating into local realities that which is imported, preventing the birth of local “translations”. The translation analogy is relevant once again: to export technology from a central hub is to export the corresponding forms of life, stifling local literary expression. These issues should be vital to the ethics of engineering, as they illustrate the tension between two technological translations: one guided by the search for internal goods and a common notion of the good life and another based mainly on the value of external goods. That is why the history of engineering, given the growth of industrial economies, is similar but also different in each country. The history of the rise of engineering illustrates how the constraints and specificities of each national context are reflected in the way the value of truth is translated. Being an engineer in Portugal, England or Germany is not the same at all (Rodrigues, 1999: 63). The concept of translation thus helps to simultaneously explain how the identity of engineering remains similar in several countries and cultures, but at the same time differs in its respective practices, in the way it is tied in with various social purposes and goals. Although scientific truth is one and universal, there are regional variations in the way it is applied and how innovation is sponsored by institutions. The regional aspect of engineering practice is thus also the regional feature of ethics. Unlike theoretical knowledge, they cannot both aspire at all times and in all situations to a universally valid set of a priori rules. They have to attend to the hic et nunc in which praxis takes place.4 Returning to Aristotle’s intuitions, the recovery of practical reason means that an action qua production may be good or bad, regardless of whether the product of that action is functionally good or bad. On certain occasions and in

 Hans Jonas said the same eloquently when he noticed that “Judgment […] is the faculty of subsuming the particular under the universal; and, since reason is the faculty of the universal and science the operation of that faculty, judgement as concerned with particulars is necessarily outside science and strictly the bridge between the abstractions of the understanding and the concreteness of life. […] Hence it follows that the use of theory does not itself permit a theory: if it is enlightened use, it receives its light from deliberation, which may or may not enjoy the benefits of good sense” (Jonas, 1984a: 68–70). 4

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certain circumstances, it may be praiseworthy to make a certain product badly or not at all, just as it may be perverse to make a certain product superbly. The teleological adequacy of a translation depends on the context. It is important to stress that these arguments are not intended to question the objectivity of science and engineering, i.e. the realistic ontological information that both convey about the structure of reality and the behaviour of natural phenomena. Rather, what is intended is to highlight how the translation of objectivity into action and the broader field of other values is not a linear process. The materialization of the results of science is an open question. The fact that translation often takes place without calling for public debate reveals how engineering enjoys an unjustified reputation when it comes to translating knowledge into works. Ethics is thus at the very heart of engineering because it seeks to develop material solutions to “solve problems”. What counts as a problem, what is an acceptable or helpful solution, and what counts as a public good is subject to a lengthy and in-depth discussion of the values and ends in question. Engineering ethics therefore relates to the very practice of engineers, not by doubting their theoretical knowledge, but as a reflection on the contextual plurality of the meaning of material or virtual translations, in the case of algorithms and software. In short, the fact that the scientist and the engineer share the same formal theoretical language facilitates dialogue between them. What should be of concern, however, is the social lifeworld, where it is not possible to reconcile practical reason with a set of previously given facts, rules or norms, where a common language in relation to values has to be permanently constructed and discussed. It is there that engineering as a translation can be assessed. It is a function of engineering ethics to make the difference between praxis and theory clear. In this sense, it covers both questions of detail that cut across professional practice and global issues surrounding the effects of technologies on individuals, society and ecosystems. Engineers, as authors of technology, take on a key role (Harris et al., 2005: 625). It is they who, because of their expertise, can inform or alert customers and the public to the harmful consequences of technologies and to the risks and uncertainties involved in their widespread use. This does not mean that engineers are the only players capable of reflecting on or defining technological innovation, but that their knowledge defines the substantive limits of question and answer. To overlook that engineering practice is a translation underlying certain conditions of possibility leads to the modern assumption that theoretical knowledge is translated into artefacts in a beneficial, unambiguous and straightforward manner. It then becomes easy to forget that a techno-scientific culture is created from the ontological information provided by science is incorporated and translated in a scientific and technological culture at the agents’ vital praxis, while they abandon their beliefs, traditions and pre-scientific habits. The modern development of European societies is precisely based on the assumption of the overarching improvement that results from extending a solid foundation of scientific culture to the entire populace.

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11.4 The Limits of Engineering Ethics As we have seen, engineers were socially valued to the extent that they promised to shape and raise “the future”. Despite the messianic tendency and the utopian streak associated with the development of technology, the assumption that engineering encourages moral progress is realistic. In today’s era, economic theory dictates that the well-being and economic growth of nations, especially in the absence of endogenous resources, is accomplished through the ability of individuals, organizations and companies to create value through innovation, dissemination and application of knowledge. On the other hand, in a world which has gone global and has broken with the past, there are fewer and fewer borders for engineering and technology. Economies in democratic liberal societies are based above all on the multinational company, disconnected from the territory and political interests of a specific population. The idea that the individual figure of the engineer or his visionary character may, as in the past, still have something decisive to say about the destinies of each country seems increasingly unrealistic. The reputation of the engineer as a key social hero who overcomes difficulties, as a demiurge of matter, has faded. In a globalized world of geopolitical blocs, everything is networked, and the individual influence of the engineer is much more diffuse. In addition, during the twentieth century, engineering largely lost the support of political states and their respective social development goals. Engineering is now understood above all as a networked practice without a centre, in which the search for innovation is driven by the demands of a global economy. The question arises as to whether the ultimate end of engineering might be sacrificed in the quest for profit.5 Due to global labour demands in areas driven by technological innovation, the stress in higher education in engineering has shifted to greater applicability, patenting, and skills and the practices best suited to such interests. Thanks to the leading role and scale that engineering acquired globally, the conviction cherished by German idealism, that science simply educates and elevates, no longer applies. Faced with the neo-liberal paradigm of the university and the massification of university teaching in engineering, the Humboldtian model is now obsolete. Moreover, the future itself has become a problem. It has become shapeable to the same extent that it has become endangered. The discussion detailing how the translation of the value of truth may or may not be linked to social progress is now more urgent than ever, given the potential capture of engineering by particular economic interests and the unforeseen effects of various technologies.

 “American universities, later mimicked by Europeans and those from other continents, are now directly involved in industrial development, increasingly abandoning their nature as suppliers of science as a ‘public good’ and actively participating in the patent system and in exclusive licensing agreements of their results with the economic organizations they choose” (Garcia & Martins, 2009: 86). 5

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Given our growing dependence on technology, the idea has gained ground that the teaching of engineering in universities and polytechnics should, in addition to requiring strong theoretical and technical training, enable its students to reflect, consider and deliberate on the relevance of scientific knowledge to the values that preside over the social lifeworld. In this sense, it will be up to engineers to engage in a type of reflectivity specific to ethics that allows them to identify moral issues in their practice. This should enable them to question the benevolent spontaneity of engineering for the fabric of praxis, assigning greater importance to the way design influences and mediates actions and perceptions (Doorn, 2012: 87). Engineering ethics must then necessarily endow engineering practice with a stronger teleological sense of the social whole to which it belongs and by which it must be guided. Introducing engineering ethics in university curricula with elements of STS and philosophy of technology could furnish engineering practice with a reflectivity of its own which resuscitates a public and teleological orientation from its deathbed and places it over and above the private interests that have captured it. On the other hand, the field of shaping and development of technology includes not only engineers and inventors, but also political regulators and, above all, economic decision-makers (Grunwald, 2000: 186). Although the state in liberal societies does play a limited role in the way technology is developed, this does not mean that ethics can only surface when actors are linked to public institutions. Political regulation is the best way of imposing binding agreements on professional groups, whether in the public or private sector. In view of this delimitation, it is clear that there are areas in technological development that are not subject to ethical reflectivity and that engineering ethics would seem to be mainly a professional ethics whose scope is necessarily narrower than the broader ethics of technology. Although Grunwald points out how environmental ethics and biomedical ethics may complement the scope of professional ethics, in practice the ethics of technology is mainly made up of professional ethics, to be summoned in case of conflicts in the regulatory area (political ethics), in the economic area (business ethics) or invention (engineering ethics). This delimitation has the undoubted advantage of being realistic. Engineering, development and technological innovation consist of multi-faceted areas involving various financial and institutional constraints and in which engineers can play a decisive, but not always preponderant or even significant role. However, delimiting the scope of engineering practice as such has obvious consequences for the scope of ethical thinking in engineering. Occasionally it is in fact other actors, such as managers or political decision-makers, who shape, commission and guide technology so that it has certain features or fulfils certain purposes. On the one hand, matching engineering ethics with just another professional ethics is too restrictive. It raises the problem of the delimitation of different professional fields and the compartmentalization of different actors’ responsibilities. At the same time, it gives rise to the idea that one may always call for decision-making standards, to invoke a pre-existing universal framework of professional duties to deal with technological phenomena that are so often radically new.

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If engineering ethics boils down to being a professional ethics alone, the illusion may arise that in order to manage a conflict or to prevent undesired outcomes it would be enough, even at a methodological level, to identify which of the various professional ethics is to be called on to deal with conflicts in technology. In fact, ethics works on exposing the rational structure of justification that questions whether technological means are aligned with flourishing ends, thus pointing to an all-­ encompassing radical reflection covering all professional areas. It is inconsistent to call for an already available regulatory framework capable of resolving conflicts and ambiguities, when ethical and philosophical reflection aims precisely at raising such issues. On the other hand, reducing the issues in the ethics of technology to the practice of engineering is clearly too narrow an option and does not do justice to reality. An ethics of technology that overlaps with engineering ethics burdens a professional class with the epistemological and civilizational burden of designing technologies that are always compliant or appropriate, or with the task of avoiding the associated harms, a burden that it cannot carry alone. The premise is that if engineers were to comply with the internal and external responsibilities in their work, disasters, accidents or misuses would be avoided through more careful designs or through institutional receptiveness to whistleblowing. This approach is however based on the premise of sound predictions about fixed needs and on the epistemological transparency of the future. The assumption that technologies are tameable lacks realism. The idea that engineer’s individual responsibility may suffice to reverse the current pace of technological progress by making technological effects completely transparent and their effects predictable is a fallacy of Modernity whose optimism we should scrap. The emergence of the moral hero figure in the person of the engineer who ethically ponders his actions is familiarly close to the modern idea of the engineer as a social hero who benevolently translates knowledge into works, clearly managing to convert the value of truth into social utility. This approach ignores the inherent complexities of techno-scientific systems, the sociological dynamics within companies and the corresponding expectations of profit or efficiency, as well as quality standards that must be respected. It overstates engineers’ agency and the enlightened judgments they make. The point is that even if every single engineer were hypothetically heroic and morally commendable and sensitive to the questions surrounding technology, this would not suffice. Even if an overdeveloped practical reason could anticipate technology’s pernicious effects on society, an engineer’s individual agency would still be exhausted, given the emerging multifarious effects derived from technologically mediated individual actions. The optimism that a high level of individual responsibility is sufficient to chart the “best” course of technological progress in society is a fallacy (Grunwald, 1999: 180). No definition of engineering ethics is then useful without the assumption that engineers, besides being experts in their practice and subject to the internal responsibility proper to their profession, develop external responsibility as one of the internal goods that lead them to be interested in the convergence of personal flourishing

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and general social flourishing. In the absence of a regulatory framework similar to the one governing the professional conduct of engineers, it is necessary to rely on both practical reason and the external responsibility of engineers. A good engineer is a responsible actor who relies more on his practical reason, good judgment and moral imagination to consider alternative scenarios and designs than on the prior availability of rules and regulations that support and define his decision. This does not mean that engineering ethics does not have a role to play in thinking about technology, but that its role should be limited beforehand so as not to fall victim to the same epistemological fallacies that presided over the genesis of the modern promise of technology. What is needed is to ascertain whether, in every step of research, development, production and use of technologies, if there are contexts in which ethical reflection has something to say and what are the rational criteria for making that distinction. There is of course a close relationship between the ethics of technology and an ethics of engineering understood as professional practice (Mitcham, 1994), but decisions on technological development do not always allow for a consideration of value judgments and how values may be materially expressed. Management, regulation and evaluation of technologies invokes the question of how an ethical issue is ultimately identified, i.e. when does it become appropriate for engineers and society to work on a collaborative translation focusing on potential material alternatives. The corollary is that there may be areas of technological development in which ethical reflection has nothing more to say, either because of the dispersed and fragmented nature of the actors involved, or because of the irrelevance of the impact of the processes or products involved. If ethics had to be present in all questions concerning engineering practice, innovation would lose any spontaneity and would be paralyzed by of a radically inoperative ethics. Similarly, at the level of the individual agency, only rarely does action give way to deliberation, in such a way that action would be redirected beyond the conventional behavioural response. The field of ethics itself must therefore be equipped with criteria for identifying classes of problems that arise in the development of technology, which necessarily, when organizational resources are scarce, involves taking an institutional inventory of the involved and the public space in which the discussion of proper translations can take place. Engineering ethics contributes to defining the field of engineering practice itself, by defining the class of problems that admit a technical resolution (Mitcham et al., 2013: vii). This reflectivity is important for setting limits to a class of problems which engineering is not responsible for resolving. Only when a class of problems arises that does not admit technological solutions or for which technological solutions are problematic or conflicting does the very basis of moral standards prove questionable or insufficient. Only then does ethical reflection become relevant, since moral conflicts call into question the profession’s underlying moral context. Engineers may achieve better critical understanding of their practice and its likely futures through contact with a specialized humanities curriculum. At the same time, the internal goods and the common good it seeks to promote can be grounded and expanded.

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It is useful here to recall Aristotle’s admonition about agency and the domain of praxis, that is to say, about what can be otherwise. The principle of action is the end goal of the deliberation of the practical syllogism. It concerns something that is actually in the agent’s ability to trigger. In engineering practice, this means effectively knowing when the institutional or business framework justifies or allows for another translation, as with a value-sensitive design or even when a rejection or suspension of construction is justified. If there is a disagreement between practical syllogisms regarding the means, ethical reflection is called for in order to resolve the conflicts, namely, to evaluate which of the possible translations is more appropriate, as judged by a community of technology readers and interpreters. A conflict is precisely the focus of ethical reflection, because only when there are no rules, procedures or standards for action is the uncertainty and ambiguity surrounding technology revealed. In sum, given the plural nature of technological phenomena, engineering ethics cannot be held responsible for resolving all conflicts linked to technological issues, nor should it be confined to the professional sphere. Engineering ethics is born of the reflectivity proper to engineering practice. Even if it is not necessarily operationalised, it is by questioning its assumptions, by discovering its own conditions of possibility, that engineering can understand itself as a translation.

11.5 The Pleasure of Translation As we have seen, the Humboldtian principle consisted in the belief that universities have a fundamental role in educating for citizenship and conveying national values and culture. Or, put in another way, it entails the idea that the transition from theory to praxis, from the translation of knowledge into works, is univocal, inevitable and useful. Universities have effectively taken on the Church’s role in the conservation of cultural heritage through the importance given to the creation and dissemination of knowledge based on an institutional autonomy resistant to social and economic demands. The idea that truth and knowledge can, once the atavistic doors of tradition and faith have been opened, flood the social world of life, teleologically “infecting” praxis towards a greater and collective happiness, finds its parallel in the idea of the possibility of a perfect translation. This dream of perfect translatability echoes those other dreams of modern reason and consists in the “dream of a rationality totally free from cultural constraints and community limitations” while referring to a universal language (Ricoeur, 2005: 19). Abandoning this dream of absolute translation means entering into the pleasure of translation, into accepting that practical reason deals with singular and concrete situations of specific contexts. The loss of the linguistic absolute finds its parallel in the idea that the universality of theory ultimately has countless ways of being translated according to the values it serves. The definition of a good translation, as Ricoeur points out, would require a non-existent absolute criterion, as it would have

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to be based on the availability of a text that could compare the language of the source with the language of the target and with a meaning that is supposed to flow from the first to the second. George Steiner’s maxim that “to understand is to translate” means, in this analogy, precisely to spot the importance of the material environment for practical life and to bring it into the discussion in the public sphere. Engineering ethics must be understood as a collective reflection, deliberation and evaluation in which engineers and the general public are protagonists of the rational translation structure by which knowledge may be converted into moral and social progress. By reductio ad absurdum, if engineers were the only professional group in charge of shaping and regulating technologies, it would mean that no other professional group or society in general could take part in a political process of discussing the ends that technologies should favour. In most liberal societies, taking part in such deliberations is what defines the acceptable premises for practical syllogisms which deem certain means to be or not be appropriate. On the other hand, engineers, as creators of artefacts that permeate the social lifeworld, will continue to be aware of their epistemic opacity and uncertainty, that is, to be unable to anticipate certain effects and consequences of their work. They are nonetheless obliged to reflect and tentatively bridge the gap between their knowledge and the ignorance of any forecast, in the hope that innovation may be guided by social values, so as to deal with problems of rejection or sources of conflict. The correct procedure must be based on maximum deliberative involvement with the public according to the virtue of precaution. This will enable engineers to counter a certain tendency of STS and TA towards normative sterility (van de Poel, 2006: 223). In addition to requiring the development of internal goods, the practice of engineering is subject to budgetary and political constraints in order to thrive. It is often guided merely by external goods, that is, by their profit or efficiency or by political capitalization in a labour framework. However, engineers are also required to think about how the means they design or optimize might affect the general public, and their clients in particular, even though such reflectivity may not prevent certain undesirable effects from being generated in the first place. A framework for ethical thinking allows them to see themselves as translators who take their readers’ universe into account, but without being able to control the intricacies of how their translated work is interpreted. As any translation shows, a book’s life is defined by the several unforeseeable interpretations of meaning it generates and how it gives rise to discussions in a cultural context. Once translated and made available to the public, a book escapes the intentions of its author or translator, given the potentially infinite number of ways it interacts with readers’ lives. In this sense, there is a strong similarity in the way a literary work and a technology incur in the designer’s fallacy (Ihde, 2008). The road from laboratory hermeticism to open reality implies that each technology moves from a predictable context to a complex, interactive and largely uncontrolled context. The printing-press revolution (1440) triggered by Gutenberg, for example, created the possibility not only of unprecedented dissemination of books, knowledge

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and literacy, but also of alternative translations. The ecclesiastical authority of the Catholic Church relative to the translation and interpretation of the Bible declined in favour of a variety of other, more personal interpretations. Martin Luther’s translation of the Bible from the Hebrew (1534) made a foundational mark on German culture, giving the German vernacular precedence over Latin and leading to the emergence of Protestantism. Similarly, once any technology arrives to the market, it interacts with consumers in unpredictable ways. This does not prevent engineers, like any interpreter, from playing a leading role in the way they may retroactively explain the black box of technologies once they have been disseminated in everyday life. Since they are specialists in the forms of abstract thinking that preside over manufacture, development and use, they will be particularly well equipped for the hermeneutic task of reading and interpreting technologies, deciphering how their scripts (Verbeek, 2005) lead to action, without necessarily becoming phenomenologists, ethical experts or social scientists. The possibility that engineers use their practical reason thus depends on the type of technology or process in question, but also on whether the institutional and labour context is more or less favourable to that use. There are indeed mass-produced products which are relatively harmless. Among those identified as potentially ambiguous or conflict-generating, not all can be ethically questioned, due to lack of opportunity, time- or resource-related constraints, or competition, when companies and states have little margin for error and there is not much reflection accorded to engineering. Even if engineering practice has degrees of freedom that allow engineers to endorse a value-sensitive design, for example, it is not certain that engineers, by virtue of active external responsibility, will generate the much desired social effects they seek to achieve through technologies, just as an excellent translator does not control the latitude with which the translated work is interpreted or received. This does not mean, of course, that “anything goes”. The way in which consumers use technologies often determines how the responsibility of engineers is validated (Wittkowsky, 1999: 20). Despite these constraints and the apparent operative ineffectiveness of ethics, opportunities for a thoughtful exercise of speculative translation are fundamental. It is important to have room to think about the gaps between expectations and promises associated with technological development and reality, gaps for which engineer’s moral imagination is a necessary step for establishing future and alternative scenarios. Finally, the ethical issues and dilemmas surrounding technologies may even lead engineers to consider the scope for exercising external responsibility beyond professional codes of conduct. An ethical approach that favours the development of virtues in engineering practice also takes into account the ways in which engineering work can be stimulating and engaging. With moral imagination, precaution, and awareness of the common good, engineers may reduce how often complex and difficult situations arise, thereby acquiring the proper virtues and internal goods (Bowen, 2010: 140).

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By defining the scope of engineering practice, engineering ethics should make clear the teleological orientation by which the respective internal goods should be guided. In conclusion, engineering ethics delimits engineering practice as a field of translation in which science is conjoined with society and which may promote the common good in certain circumstances, by either design or experimentation. This might counter the modern tendency not to set any constraints on or make any demands of engineers and innovators. In Winner’s words, “a sign of maturity of modern civilization would be its recollection of that lost sense of appropriateness in the judgment of means. We would profit from regaining our powers of selectivity and our ability to say ‘no’ as well as ‘yes’ to a technological prospect” (Winner, 1978: 327).

References Bowen, W.  R. (2010). Prioritising people: Outline of an aspirational engineering ethic. In I. van de Poel & D.  E. Goldberg (Eds.), Philosophy and engineering: An emerging agenda (pp. 135–146). Springer. Callon, M. (1984). Some elements of a sociology of translation: Domestication of the scallops and the fishermen of St Brieuc Bay. The Sociological Review, 32(1_suppl), 196–233. https://doi. org/10.1111/j.1467-­954X.1984.tb00113.x Doorn, N. (2012). Responsibility ascriptions in technology development and engineering: Three perspectives. Science and Engineering Ethics, 18, 69–90. Dorrestijn, S. (2016). History, philosophy, and actuality of the utopian view of technology: On Pierre Musso’s critique of network ideology. In J. L. Garcia (Ed.), Pierre Musso and the network society: From Saint-Simonianism to the internet (pp. 103–129). Springer. Florman, S. C. (1976). The existential pleasures of engineering. St. Martin’s Press. Garcia, J. L., & Martins, H. (2009). O ethos da ciência e suas transformações contemporâneas, com especial atenção à biotecnologia. Scientiæ Studia, 7(1), 83–104. Grunwald, A. (1999). Technology assessment or ethics of technology? Reflections on technology development between social sciences and philosophy. Ethical Perspectives, 6(2), 170–182. Grunwald, A. (2000). Against over-estimating the role of ethics in technology development. Science and Engineering Ethics, 6(2), 181–196. Habermas, J. (2006 [1965]). Técnica e ciência como ideologia. Edições 70. Harris, C. E., Pritchard, M. S., & Rabins, M. J. (2005). Engineering ethics. In C. Mitcham (Ed.), Encyclopedia of science, technology, and ethics (Vol. 2, pp. 625–631). Thomson Gale. Ihde, D. (2008). The designer fallacy and technological imagination. In P. E. Vermaas, P. Kroes, A. Light, & S. A. Moore (Eds.), Philosophy and design (pp. 51–59). Springer. Jonas, H. (1984a). The practical uses of theory. Social Research, 51, 65–90. Jonas, H. (1984b). The imperative of responsibility: In search of an ethics for the technological age. University of Chicago Press. Latour, B. (1992). Where are the missing masses? The sociology of a few mundane artifacts. In W.  E. Bijker & J.  Law (Eds.), Shaping technology/building society (pp.  205–224). The MIT Press. MacIntyre, A. (2007 [1981]). After virtue: A study in moral theory. University of Notre Dame Press. Martins, H. (2005). The metaphysics of information. The power and the glory of machinehood. Res-Publica: Revista Lusófona de Ciência Política e Relações Internacionais, 1, 165–192. Mitcham, C. (1994). Thinking through technology: The path between engineering and philosophy. The University of Chicago Press.

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Mitcham, C. (1998). The importance of philosophy to engineering. Teorema, XVII(3), 27–47. Mitcham, C., Michelfelder, D., McCarthy, N., & Goldberg, D.  E. (2013). Foreword: Prospects in the philosophy of engineering  – An exchange between the editors and Carl Mitcham. In D.  Michelfelder, N.  McCarthy, & D.  E. Goldberg (Eds.), Philosophy and engineering: Reflections on practice, principles and process (pp. v–xi). Springer. Porter, T.  M. (1996). Trust in numbers: The pursuit of objectivity in science and public life. Princeton University Press. Pritchard, M.  S. (2009). Professional standards in engineering practice. In A.  Meijers (Ed.), Handbook of the philosophy of science (Philosophy of technology and engineering sciences) (Vol. 9, pp. 953–971). Elsevier. Reidel, J. (2013). Ethische ingenieurverantwortung. In A. Grunwald (Ed.), Handbuch technikethik (pp. 77–82). Springer-Verlag GmbH. Ricoeur, P. (2005). Sobre a tradução. Livros Cotovia. Rodrigues, M. L. (1999). Os engenheiros em Portugal: Profissionalização e protagonismo. Celta Editores. Rodrigues, M.  L. (2003). Engenharia e sociedade: A profissão de engenheiro em Portugal. In M. Heitor (Ed.), Engenho e obra: Engenharia em Portugal no século (Vol. XX, pp. 80–97). Dom Quixote. Rodrigues, M. L. (2004). O papel social dos engenheiros. In M. F. Rollo, M. Heitor, & J. M. B. de Brito (Eds.), Engenharia em Portugal no século (Vol. XX, pp.  82–107). Instituto Superior Técnico & Dom Quixote. van de Poel, I. (2006). Editorial: Ethics and engineering design. Science, Technology, & Human Values, 31(3), 223–236. van de Poel, I. (2010). Philosophy and engineering: Setting the stage. In I. van de Poel & D. E. Goldberg (Eds.), Philosophy and engineering: An emerging agenda (pp. 1–11). Springer. van de Poel, I., Fahlquist, J. N., Doorn, N., Zwart, S., & Royakkers, L. (2012). The problem of many hands: Climate change as an example. Science and Engineering Ethics, 18(1), 49–67. Verbeek, P.-P. (2005). What things do: Philosophical reflections on technology, agency and design. Pennsylvania State University Press. Verbeek, P.-P. (2011). Moralizing technology: Understanding and designing the morality of things. The University of Chicago Press. Winner, L. (1978). Autonomous technology: Technics-out-of-control as a theme in political thought. The MIT Press. Winner, L. (2014). Technologies as forms of life. In R.  L. Sandler (Ed.), Ethics and emerging technologies (pp. 48–60). Palgrave Macmillan. Wittkowsky, A. (1999). Die verantwortung des ingenieurs. In A.  Grunwald & S.  Saupe (Eds.), Ethik in der technikgestaltung: Praktische relevanz und legitimation (pp. 11–26). Springer. Tiago Mesquita Carvalho has degrees in both Engineering and Philosophy. He obtained a PhD in Ethics and Philosophy of Technology from the joint programme at the Faculty of Sciences of the Universidade de Lisboa [University of Lisbon], Portugal, and has been a researcher at CoLABOR, working on technology assessment and the impact of technology on labour and employment, in particular the impact of remote working. He joined the Instituto de Filosofia [Institute of Philosophy] at Porto in 2021, with a research project on moral responsibility, chance and catastrophes, in particular those related to climate change.  

Chapter 12

Critique of Western Technological Hegemony and Neo-Animism in Ruy Duarte de Carvalho Alexandra Santos

Abstract  Angolan philosopher Ruy Duarte de Carvalho was a man of many talents: a poet, an anthropologist, a filmmaker, a committed fictional writer and essayist, an agronomist, and even a watercolour painter. All these abilities proved valuable in making sense of the relations between colonialism, nationalism, modernization, identity, progress, and ecology in Angola, particularly in countering the stamp of backwardness attached to the nomadic shepherds of Southern Angola, in whom he discovered sustainable indigenous forms of living. Rather than being determined by some type of nostalgic attachment to the past, Ruy Duarte de Carvalho was driven by the recognition of the adequacy of the shepherds’ traditional practices, totally adapted to the semi-desert ecosystem. He was also painfully aware of the inability of such lifestyles to resist modernization. The present work puts Ruy Duarte de Carvalho’s essays and novels in context. It shows how the shepherds’ cause became the central point around which revolved a coherent reflection on the economic, political, and ideological subjugation of traditional minorities (in a way, also of entire African countries) under the pressure of a worldwide Western expansion impelled by the ideology of progress at all costs, led both by westerners and by the westernized groups who hold the political power in Angola. Ruy Duarte de Carvalho found a way out of the conundrum in neoanimism, a philosophical shift towards integration with Nature. Keywords  Angola · Westernization · Ecology · Nomadism · Neo-animism

12.1 Introduction Ruy Duarte de Carvalho was an anthropologist, writer of fiction, essayist, poet and filmmaker of Angolan nationality, even though he was born in Portugal. Throughout his life he used writing and film to reflect on topics such as colonialism, development, A. Santos (*) IADE – Universidade Europeia & Instituto de História Contemporânea, Lisbon, Portugal e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 H. M. Jerónimo (ed.), Portuguese Philosophy of Technology, Philosophy of Engineering and Technology 43, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-14630-5_12

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ecology, identity, nationalism and technology, taking Angola, the country to which he chose to belong, as his point of reference. From these African roots he developed a coherent body of thought on the economic, political and ideological subjugation deriving from what he called the ongoing Western expansion. Avoiding the reductionist trap of fashionable ideologies, above all those of a nationalist utopianism which took little notice of longue durée trends, he shed light on the complex relationships which arise between the State, international actors, national elites and the various “others” who subsist in the unified, but not homogeneous Angolan nation. Even though the foundation for his academic work was anthropology, Ruy Duarte de Carvalho went well beyond the boundaries of that discipline. He made a major contribution to thinking in a philosophical way on what he described as the “totalizing and totalitarian ideology of progress and growing technological complexity” (2008: 24). This essay begins with a summary biography of Ruy Duarte de Carvalho, situating him in the context of the end of the Portuguese empire and the advent of Angolan independence. It will touch on defining events in the political field, focusing above all on their cultural and intellectual background, since the aim is to understand the singular trajectory of a life and academic career which was deeply rooted in the reality of Angola. It goes on to discuss some of the concepts put forward by Ruy Duarte de Carvalho, exploring his affinities with the ideas of philosophers of technology and sociologists as influential as Georges Balandier, Vandana Shiva and Miguel Altieri. The first part looks at his view of “the ongoing process of Westernization” and its uncritical adoption by Angolan leaders. The idea of “the other’s game” leads us to the problem of local practices being destroyed in the name of a modernization which is achievable only through recourse to Western technologies, regardless of its devastating effects on local inhabitants. Finally, we address his suggested neo-animist philosophy, which restores to humanity its relationship with Nature in such a way as to dissolve some of the contradictions of our times.

12.2 Agronomist to Poet, Director, Anthropologist, Writer: Aspects of a Singular Angolan Trajectory Ruy Alberto Duarte Gomes de Carvalho was born on 22 April 1941 in Santarém, a city at the heart of the cultivated flood plains of the Tagus river in central Portugal. At that time Portugal was ruled by António de Oliveira Salazar, who presided over an authoritarian regime which imposed the principles of corporatism, organic nationalism and militarism on a poor, mostly illiterate country with low levels of industrialization. This was at the height of the Estado Novo (1932–1974) when the people were the target of an efficient and ubiquitous propaganda machine which praised the rurality of “the metropole” (continental Portugal) and the alleged mission of the Portuguese to civilize the local inhabitants of their overseas dominions. In the monumental Portuguese World Exhibition in Lisbon in 1940, pride of place was given to the colonial empire which tied together the remnants of the network of trading posts and territories from which Portugal had managed to control trade routes to the Indian and South Atlantic oceans 400 years earlier. It was thus in a

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period of fully effervescent nationalism, steeped in imperial mystique, that Ruy Duarte de Carvalho was taken to Angola by his family, while still a toddler. At the time it was regarded as the most promising of the colonies – although of course, it still suffered from the structural problems of Portuguese colonialism. The setting up of trading posts at various points on the Angolan coast in the fifteenth century set the stage for a claim to 500 years of Portuguese presence in that territory, but the borders of the colony were far more recent, dating from the last decade of the nineteenth century. It was only very gradually that the colony adopted the form which was to be that of today’s Angola, spreading out from the coastal enclaves of Luanda and Benguela, which for centuries were mostly collection and expedition points for slaves destined for Brazil, the Caribbean and São Tomé.1 The transition from a slave system to an economy based on intensive raw material production and export (coffee, sugar cane, cotton and sisal) came late in the day, as did the effective conquest of the territory of Angola. In some regions this was only achieved in the early decades of the twentieth century. Among the territories which – to use a euphemistic expression of the time – were “pacified” at a late stage was the semi-desert South. It was in this border region, in the town of Moçâmedes, that Ruy Duarte de Carvalho grew up, under the influence of an adventurer father who hunted elephants. This was to be a key factor determining his life path. The semi-desert landscape, the proximity to nature and to African people, especially the nomads, left a deep impression on him, one which was to last throughout the course of his personal and professional life, as he amply demonstrated in his biographical writings.2 During his adolescence Ruy Duarte de Carvalho returned to Santarém to study at the Escola de Regentes Agrícolas [Farm Management School], which gave mixed theoretical and practical instruction. At the end of the 1950s he returned to Angola holding an intermediate studies diploma and took on various jobs as a farm manager. These were years during which the colony – now re-baptized as an “overseas province” for PR purposes – recorded significant economic growth, but also witnessed the emergence of an anti-colonial consciousness, visible in the rise of underground cultural and party political movements in favour of independence. As Harold Macmillan said in a famous speech, the winds of change were blowing in the African continent – winds which the Salazar regime managed to ignore by clinging to the supposedly exceptional nature of Portuguese colonialism. But this was all in vain. In March 1961, following a series of violent incidents, a major insurrection led by

 A recent introduction to the history of Angola in English is to be found in Birmingham (2015). The most detailed study on the military campaigns in the conquest of Angola is by René Pélissier (1977). On the slave trade in Portuguese colonies see Marques (2006). 2  Ruy Duarte de Carvalho explores various biographical aspects in “Uma espécie de habilidade autobiográfica” (2011a), also available at the Buala website (www.buala.org/pt/ruy-duarte-de-­ carvalho). Other writings of his are available on the website, some of them unpublished, as well as an interview conducted by Maria João Seixas. This examines biographical and other aspects. 1

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the União das Populações de Angola [UPA – Union of Angolan Peoples]3 spread out in the north of Angola, leaving a trail of thousands dead.4 Working at the time for the Coffee Board [Junta do Café], Ruy Duarte de Carvalho found himself at the heart of the violent attacks carried out by the UPA. These attacks were followed by an even more violent counter-attack by the colonial authorities and the militias. This was the beginning of an anti-colonial war which would last for over 10 years (1961–1975) and make Portugal “the last imperial redoubt in Europe” (Garcia et al., 2017: 13). Isolated from European opinion by a powerful censorship apparatus, many Portuguese defended colonialism  – significantly, one of the musical hits of 1961 was the war anthem “Angola é nossa!” [Angola is ours]. This was not true of the young adult Ruy Duarte de Carvalho who, by contrast, became aware at this time that he had “converted to being an Angolan” (2008: 14). Shocked by the “climate of general horror […], the result of both the fierce insurgency and its perverse and still fiercer repression” (2011a: 13), he became a supporter of the nationalist cause. He did some underground work for the intellectual and urban Movimento Popular de Libertação de Angola [MPLA - Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola],5  The UPA grew out of the former União das Populações do Norte de Angola [UPNA – Union of Peoples of Northern Angola], an ethno-nationalist movement which had been formed in the mid-­1950s to fight for the independence of part of the ancestral Kingdom of Kongo. Having been rejected by the assembled leaders at the All-African Peoples’ Conference at Accra in 1958, on account of its separatist nature, the UPNA changed its name and its objectives, arguing now for the independence of Angola. Led by Holden Roberto, the UPA never lost its regional character, appealing mainly to the people who spoke kikongo. Following the revolt of 1961, the UPA changed its name again, to Frente Nacional de Libertação de Angola [FNLA – Angola National Liberation Front]. Having abandoned the armed struggle, from the early 1990s the FNLA has existed as a political party, represented in the Angola National Assembly. 4  The year 1961 was marked by a series of episodes protesting the Salazar regime. In Angola, the beginning of the year saw a revolt by cotton farmers, called Maria’s War on account of its associations with local prophesy movements. In February there was a co-ordinated attack in the city of Luanda, which had major international repercussions for a number of reasons. Today it is regarded as the starting date for the struggle for independence. On these events see the work of Alves (2017). On the UPA-led insurrection, we recommend the reading of Angola, a book which is now quite old, but provides useful explanations, by Wheeler & Pélissier (1971). 5  The MPLA has held power in Angola since 1975, which makes it hard to differentiate it from the Angolan state itself. By reason of their symbolic significance, the origins of the MPLA have been manipulated, and this has given rise to various controversies. As told by one of its founders, Lúcio Lara, one of the foundations for the MPLA was the Movimento Anti-Colonialista [Anti-Colonialist Movement], the organization which African students in the Casa dos Estudantes do Império [Empire Student Residence] in Lisbon and Coimbra set up in 1957, with the aim of making the situation of the Portuguese colonies known to the European press. Another important base was in Luanda, in the groups which wrote in the literary journals Mensagem and Cultura. From 1955 onwards these set up a myriad of underground independence parties (Lara 2000: 64, 73–78). According to Lara, the initials MPLA only started to be used after the Second Congress of African Peoples, in January 1960 in Tunis (2000: 348, 353, 465). On this much debated question, another former leader and founder of the MPLA, Mário Pinto de Andrade, stated in an interview with Christine Messiant that members of the MPLA were responsible for spreading disinformation, when establishing the “correct” origins of the movement became an important factor in legitimising it. 3

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but various circumstances – starting with the fact that the Coffee Board had placed him far from Luanda – prevented him from joining up to any of the military movements involved in the armed struggle, unlike most of the Angolan intellectuals of his generation. A key element in Ruy Duarte de Carvalho’s taking on of Angolan identity, in addition to the violence he witnessed, was the poetry which was being published in Angola,6 and the prose of José Luandino Vieira, in which he discovered an “Angolan soul”. He also felt an affinity with the landscapes and atmospheres in Brazilian literature, which was able to beat the censor and reach Angola, especially with the writings of João Guimarães Rosa, who is often mentioned in his work.7 In the dying years of the Portuguese empire, Ruy Duarte de Carvalho also started to write poetry, publishing his first book, Chão de Oferta, in 1972. Among the farm management posts which he held during this time, Ruy Duarte de Carvalho was in charge of sheep production on an estate in inland Benguela, in southern Angola – an experience he retells in fictional form in his short story “As Águas do Capembáua” [The Waters of the Capembáua] (1977). After leaving this job, he travelled to several European cities, returned to Africa to work for a Mozambican beer company, and finally went to study film in London. As a result of this change of direction, it was as a film director that Ruy Duarte de Carvalho was present at the turbulent end of the Portuguese empire, whose final weeks he filmed for the documentary “Uma Festa para Viver”8. After 15 years of an anti-colonial struggle which almost always took place in sparsely populated areas, Angolan independence came in the wake of the coup which took place in Portugal on 25 April 1974 and ended the dictatorship. Ruy Duarte de Carvalho, who was 34 at the time, chose to stay on in Angola and apply for Angolan nationality, despite the climate of violence which in the space of a few months led to the hurried departure of nearly all settlers.9 The situation became volatile when the main armed nationalist movements  – the FNLA,  a revamped version of the UPA, the MPLA and the União Nacional para a Independência Total de Angola [UNITA – National Union for the

 Ruy Duarte de Carvalho mentions specifically the impact of the poetry of Viriato da Cruz and of Aires de Almeida Santos (2008: 13). Much of the Angolan poetry of the 1950s and 1960s, which stands apart from the more “exoticist” line of colonial poetry, is available in anthologies republished in Lisbon and Coimbra by the Casa dos Estudantes do Império (Freudenthal et al. 1994), an organization which was essential for the dissemination of the ideals of independence among young intellectual Africans. 7  See in particular “Falas & vozes, fronteiras & paisagens… escritas, literaturas e entendimentos” (2008: 11–26), which is a mixture of autobiography and literary theory. In this work Ruy Duarte de Carvalho reflects on his favorite books, among other themes. 8  This documentary is available in the RDC Virtual Collection, https://vimeo.com/157407906. 9  A key work of reference on Angolan independence is the essay by Heimer (1979). More recent and wider in scope is the comparative study carried out by Jerónimo & Pinto (2015). The novel Rainy Season, by Agualusa (2009), which offers a fictionalized portrait of the Angolan political scene at that time, especially in MPLA-connected circles, is also recommended reading. 6

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Total Independence of Angola]10  – broke the agreement signed with the colonial power in January 1975 and started fighting for control of the capital, Luanda. The nationalist movements called on their allies for military assistance, Zaire, Cuba and South Africa (respectively), leading to the indirect involvement of the USA and the USSR, and dragged the country into the dynamics of the Cold War.11 The struggle for control of the capital rapidly escalated, leading to a civil war which would last almost 30 years (1975–2002), during which the MPLA retained control of Luanda, the city which Ruy Duarte de Carvalho made his home. In the relative peace of the Angolan capital, the euphoria of independence and building the nation went hand in hand with the collapse of networks of service provision and production and distribution of essential goods. All sectors of the economy declined in rapid succession, except for oil production. From the political point of view, it was during this time that the MPLA, which went from being an armed movement to being the political party in power, officially became a Marxist-Leninist party, although this development involved disagreements and tension. The decade following independence was marked by the seizure of power by a small political clique at the top, purges of internal enemies,12 economic planning along Soviet lines and the spread of the civil war to various inland provinces, but this was also a time when efforts were made to build the nation’s imaginary. Media such as literature, theatre, film and historiography were called on to create the nation’s symbolic framework, which had been loosely assumed by the nationalists during the anti-­ colonial war, but still lacked a proper definition.13

 UNITA was set up in 1966 by Jonas Malheiros Savimbi, an FNLA dissident who became known when he ostentatiously left that movement right in the middle of a meeting of the Organisation of African Unity (Davidson, 1972: 311). Thanks to support from Mao’s China, UNITA began military action in eastern Angola, but had little impact. This lack of effective military and political action changed after 1974, when Savimbi adopted an ethno-nationalist discourse directed at the Ovimbundu people, Angola’s largest ethnic group. Also during this time, as the Soviet bloc provided increasing support to the MPLA, UNITA started to receive North American and South African military aid. After a short period in which it was allied to the FNLA, UNITA became the major opponent of the MPLA, in a civil war which lasted until 2002. 11  The animosity which existed between Angolan liberation movements was not new, dating back as it did to the early years of the armed struggle. The rivalry between the FNLA and the MPLA was especially intense, at the Zairean rear and at the front near the northern border of Angola, and between the MPLA and UNITA, especially on the eastern front. The formation of a transition government in January 1975 failed to put an end to the conflict. On the contrary, in the political campaign which followed, each movement sought to assert itself with its traditional support groups, exacerbating ethnic, cultural and class divides which were already characteristic of Angolan society. These splits were made worse when the movements drew on support from rival countries in the international arena. 12  Political repression reached its highest point in the reaction to the 27 May 1977 coup led by Nito Alves, which is analysed in Pawson (2014). 13  On literature’s contribution to Angolan nationalism see the study directed by Chabal (1996); the role of nationalist historiography in building the nationalist imaginary is covered by Santos & Subtil (2017); on the relationship between nationalism, film and music, see the work of Moorman (2001, 2008). 10

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Ruy Duarte de Carvalho became well-known at this time as a maker of documentaries for Angolan television (TPA) and for the Instituto Angolano de Cinema [Angolan Film Institute].14 Drawing on his familiarity with the rural world, he produced films which were markedly documentarist and ethnographic, with the naïve intention of “making Angola known to the Angolans” as he mentions ironically in his autobiography (2011a: 15). The ways of life and symbolic representations of the people of the remote rural areas were the subject-matter of those films, which were far removed from the grammar of exoticism which was typical of colonial representations, but were also quite unlike the homogenizing and progressive aims of Angolan revolutionary intellectuals – sufficiently so that he was given a warning by a political committee (2003: 239–240). Ruy Duarte de Carvalho also continued to publish poetry,15 and wrote his first prose work, a book of stories called Como se o Mundo não Tivesse Leste [As if the World had No East] (1977). Here the critique of colonialism is accompanied by a profound respect for the pastoral peoples, in whom he discovers sustainable indigenous forms of relating to Nature and to others. A position which distanced him from the modernizing and anti-traditional programme of the MPLA – it is worth recalling that, in the context of Marxist-Leninist thinking, it was the destruction of traditional forms of social organization which opened up the path to a superior stage of humanity, and for this reason any attempt at maintaining or promoting traditional ways of life and traditional beliefs was logically to be rejected or, in the best case

 In addition to the documentary “Uma Festa para Viver” mentioned above, Ruy Duarte de Carvalho directed “Angola 76, É a Vez da Voz do Povo” and “Faz Lá Coragem, Camarada”, all for the Televisão Popular de Angola (TPA). They were also shown at festivals like the Asian and African Film Festival in Tashkent and the Moscow International Film Festival. In 1979 he directed “Presente Angolano, Tempo Mumuíla”, a series of 10 episodes produced by the TPA and in 1982 “O Balanço do Tempo na Cena de Angola”, which was awarded the prize for best medium-length film at Film Festival of Countries having Portuguese as their Official Language, in Aveiro. Finally, in 1989 he directed “Moia: o recado das ilhas”. Some episodes of the series and the two films above-mentioned can be seen in the RDC Digital Collection, at the online address https://vimeo. com/rdcvirtual. Ruy Duarte de Carvalho published a book on his relationship with documentary film (Carvalho, 1980), and several articles  which are  included in the anthology A Câmara, a Escrita e a Coisa Dita…(2008). 15  Ruy Duarte de Carvalho was a prolific poet. Following the early Chão de Oferta (1972, Editorial Culturang), in 1976 he published A Decisão da Idade (União dos Escritores Angolanos and Sá da Costa); in 1978 Exercícios de Crueldade (& etc); in 1980 Sinais Misteriosos… Já se Vê… (UEA and Edições 70), which received an honourable mention at the Most Beautiful Books in the World Fair at Leipzig; in 1982 he published Ondula, Savana Branca (UEA and Sá da Costa); in 1987 Lavra Paralela (UEA); in 1988 Hábito da Terra (UEA), which was awarded the National Literature prize in the following year; in 1992 he published an anthology, Memória de Tanta Guerra (Vega); in 1997 Ordem de Esquecimento (Quetzal); in 2000 he published two poetry books, Lavra Reiterada (Nzila) and Observação Directa (Cotovia); and finally in 2005, a collection of all his poetic work entitled Lavra, Poesia Reunida 1970–2000 (Cotovia). 14

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scenario, consigned to the realm of folklore.16 The film “Nelisita” (1982) stands out from the vast amount of cinematic production of those years. Made with the nomadic peoples of the Southern highland, the film brought him many international prizes.17 The descriptive memorandum for that film also provided Ruy Duarte de Carvalho with a diploma from the École de Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) in Paris, and with this another major change in his life. It is fair to say that during the 1980s Ruy Duarte de Carvalho again shed his skin.18 He who had been a farm manager and film director now slipped into being an anthropologist. The ethnographic work he carried out among the fishermen of the Ilha de  Luanda [Luanda peninsula], the subject of his doctoral thesis in Social Anthropology and Ethnology at the EHESS – published as Ana a Manda, os Filhos da Rede (1988) –, had an accompanying documentary film, but he was now to abandon the world of film in favour of anthropology and a career as professor at the Faculty of Architecture in Luanda. His academic work opened the doors to several universities, with invitations as visiting professor at Paris, São Paulo, Bordeaux and Coimbra. From the early 1990s Ruy Duarte de Carvalho, now an anthropologist, spent long periods of time in Southern Angola, taking advantage of the reopening of the roads resulting from the peace agreement of 1991 (the Bicesse agreement), which led to the 1992 elections, the first since independence. Contested by the two main armed movements, which never actually dismantled their military organizations, the elections failed in their objective of pacifying Angola. The civil war recommenced with increased intensity, although this time in a completely different national and international context. The collapse of the USSR and the subsequent end of the Cold War encouraged the rise of ideologies favourable to economic liberalism almost

 An example of the hostility of Angolan MPLA ideologues to traditional thought and practice is to be found in the popular novel Mayombe, written by Pepetela in the 1970s, which won the Angola National Literature Prize in 1980. In that story, the characters’ placement in their cultures of origin is criticized as “tribalism” and seen as a barrier to creating the Angolan nation and the model socialist citizen, designated as New Man – the man who is self-created through violence. This topic is discussed in Santos (2019). 17  The film “Nelisita” was awarded the audience special prize at the 1984 Carthage Film Festival; the Prix de la Ville d’Amiens at the Festival International du Film d’Amiens in 1983; the Prize of the seventh Art at the Panafrican Film and Television Festival of Ouagadougou in 1985; the prize for best fiction at the Aveiro Festival; and various prizes at the Frontline Film Festival and Workshop, which took place at Harare in 1990. It  is available in the RDC Virtual Collection, https://vimeo.com/154832740. 18  In Ruy Duarte de Carvalho’s own words: “I remember very well having entirely changed not only my soul but also my skin for half a dozen times along my life” (2011a: 12). 16

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everywhere. The MPLA-party, under the leadership of José Eduardo dos Santos,19 put an end to the socialist experiment, embarking on a programme of economic liberalization which was rushed on account of the (unfulfilled) expectation that he would lose the elections. In the short period of time that the peace agreement held, the MPLA nomenklatura dismantled much of the state apparatus and put public goods into private hands, in particular into those of its own members, high-ranking military officers and other party faithful, creating a dominant ruling class which was small in number, wealthy, clientelistic, kleptocratic, conspicuous, loyal to the leader, and immensely powerful.20 The sudden establishment of a capitalist-type regime was noted by national and international intellectuals, who denounced the ensuing increase in inequalities and the endemic corruption in a country ravaged by war and increasingly unable to provide for the needs of its people.21 A poor country, in which the ruling group – politically and hence from that time also economically – unashamedly flaunted its wealth. While criticism of the regime was widespread, it was nonetheless centred on Luanda, which saw rapid population growth and established itself as the undisputed seat of power in Angola, despite the progressive degradation of the urban infrastructure. In travelling periodically to the South, Ruy Duarte de Carvalho countered this tendency to reduce the reality of Angola to the city of Luanda. More unusual still, considering Angolan standards, he adopted as his main object of study and of

 José Eduardo dos Santos (1942–2022) had a degree in petroleum engineering from the former USSR. He became president of Angola in 1979, following the death of the country’s first president, Agostinho Neto. He was at the same time head of state and leader of the MPLA, head of the Angolan Armed Forces and, just as significantly, had overall control of the state oil company, Sonangol. He was in power for almost 40 years, departing in September 2017. On this personage, Ferreira & Rocha write correctly (2019) that he not only adopted the maxim of the absolutist state, L’État c’est Moi [I am the State] but was closer to a vision which could be summed up as l’État c’est à Moi [the State is mine]. 20  Corruption indicators regularly put Angola in the top 10 of the most corrupt countries in the world; at the same time, the country has one of the highest indicators of poverty, despite its huge revenues from oil production. On political, social and economic aspects of the post-independence Angola, see the illuminating book edited by Chabal and Vidal (2008), and Hodges (2003). These works provide continuity to the critical studies carried out in the 1990s by academics who were paying attention, like the economist Manuel Ennes Ferreira (1995) and the sociologist Christine Messiant (2008), who denounced the abuses of political leaders who had acquired economic power by appropriating public goods. 21  The critical turn in Angolan intellectual life during the 1990s is exemplified in the work of Pepetela, one of the most widely read and honoured Angolan writers. While his novels of the 1980s justified the MPLA’s taking power, in his short story The Return of the Water Spirit (1995), Pepetela criticizes the transition from a planned socialist-inspired economy to a distorted market economy controlled by political leaders, in the fictionalised biography of a female party leader who gets rich thanks to the dismantling of the State. 19

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intense civic action the nomadic Cuvale shepherds,22 who in the urban and centralizing view were “backward”. As a result of his work on “systems which the modernist, evolutionary approach sees as being among the most ‘archaic’” (2008: 36), Ruy Duarte de Carvalho published an article in the journal Lusotopie (1995) and the book Aviso à Navegação [Navigational Warning] (1997), thus fully assuming the role of the “intellectual-activist” (Vidal, 2011a: 4). In these works he seeks to explain the implications of the regime’s new economic orientation for the ways of life, and for the very survival, of the pastoral peoples. In focusing on aspects which are only apparently ordinary, he demonstrates how the government aggravated the already precarious position of these shepherds by following the liberal policy and entrusting to private interests the supply of the remote trading posts which the shepherds needed to buy grain and to sell their surplus livestock. To nobody’s great surprise, Aviso à Navegação did not have the hoped-for impact on the Angolan political decision-makers to whom it was aimed. In a way, it could be said that Ruy Duarte de Carvalho failed to create the audience which might have welcomed him and his work. This finally happened in 1999, with the publication of Vou Lá Visitar Pastores [Go There to Visit Shepherds]. This book, which it is hard to allocate to a specific category, is a mixture of travelogue, fiction, analysis and ethnographic reporting, guiding the reader on a surprising journey through time and space in the land, the traditions and the way of life of the Cuvale. Launched in Portugal and Brazil, it brought Ruy Duarte de Carvalho success outside his own country, and well beyond the relatively narrow realm of academia. The end of the civil war in Angola in 2002, achieved by means of the brutal defeat of UNITA as an armed movement, and the death of its historic leader Jonas Savimbi, was received with euphoria in Luanda, in the dominant belief that this was the beginning of a new stage in the country’s history.23 In addition to vanquishing its enemy, the MPLA-government benefitted at the time from an unprecedented increase in oil revenues, due to the high price of oil on the international market. This allowed it to embark on a programme of national reconstruction on a gigantic scale – for some, impossibly grandiose. Perceived by many as a resounding success, the Angola modernization programme was viewed with scepticism by Ruy Duarte de Carvalho, who saw in it an attempt to remake the country in the image of its 22  The Cuvale, or Kuvale, who were known in the colonial literature as Mucubais, are nomadic shepherds who live in the province of Namibe in Southern Angola – Ruy Duarte Carvalho explicitly avoids describing them as an ethnic group, on account of the essentialist implications of the term. Together with the Himba, they belong to the Herero group, “those of meat and milk and the sacred cattle”, which today occupies parts of the territory of Angola, Namibia and Botswana, deriving apparently from Bantu peoples who migrated at a late stage from the east coast of the African continent (2008: 356). On the history of the designation Cuvale and the misunderstandings arising from imputing ethnicity to this and other groups, see the chapter “Fontes, correntes e sujeitos: metáforas e equívocos do passado aplicados à interpretação do presente do sudoeste de Angola” (2008: 189–225). 23  On this period of Angolan history, Oliveira (2015) is recommended reading. The recent investigation known as Luanda Leaks, conducted by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, has shed further light on many of the corrupt schemes mentioned in it.

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r­ uling class – urban-centric, obsessed with the appearance of modernity conceived of as the adoption of Westernized patterns of consumption and lifestyle, and showing no interest in the fate of the poor and the rural populations. This clash with the reformist project headed by José Eduardo dos Santos’ governing clique led Ruy Duarte de Carvalho into intense civic action, the result of which was several volumes of essays (2002, 2003). Of these, Actas da Maianga, from 2003, stands out: it is a book in which Ruy Duarte de Carvalho delves into the topic of the Angolan war and, by looking at it in a long-term perspective and situating it in the world context, seeks to understand a crisis which is so “established, confirmed and entrenched” that Angolans see it and live it as “normality” (2003: 13). Publication of an enlarged version of A Câmara, a Escrita e a Coisa Dita in 2008, which brings together several articles intended for oral presentations, enables us to see not only how varied were the topics he addressed during this time, but above all how consistent he was in his defence of the victims of the Angolan collapse. Both books were published in Lisbon by Cotovia, which at the same time republished some of his poetry and launched the trilogy Os Filhos de Próspero (2000, 2005, 2009a), in which he addresses topics like the politics of memory, Angolan identity, the promotion of modernization and its opposite in the survival of “bubbles” of the traditional ways of life – what he called encapsulations –, in a mixture of fiction, ethnography and philosophy, using language which oscillates between poetry, academic writing and the essay form. In between, and in a somewhat different register, Ruy Duarte de Carvalho published Desmedida (2007), the story of a journey across Brazil, in which the differences in landscape produce reflections on the transits between the African and South American continents. Ruy Duarte de Carvalho himself resumed his life’s course as “starting out from poetry and entering anthropology by way of film, and allowing anthropology, in turn, to catapult me into fiction, which I am finally risking” (2008: 22). He died on 12 August 2010 in Swakopmund, Namibia, where he had moved 2 years earlier to work on his writing.

12.3 Western Expansion and Westernizing Obstinacy Over the course of almost 20 years during which he regularly visited Southern Angola and the migratory shepherds, Ruy Duarte de Carvalho was an attentive and critical observer of that which he often called “the ongoing Western expansion” or “the process of worldwide Westernization”. It is true to say that his position in time and space made him exactly the right person to carry out this analysis. It is not by chance that Ruy Duarte de Carvalho situates the origins of the expansionist movement, which he sees as a long-term process, in the voyages of maritime exploration promoted by the Portuguese crown from the fifteenth century onwards – voyages which featured so prominently in the schoolbooks of his adolescence. Countering the intention of those books, which focused on the heroics of a supposedly golden age, Ruy Duarte de Carvalho saw the construction of the Portuguese seaborne

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empire as a consequence of European economic and demographic growth, and as an early expression of the West’s expansionist vocation.24 Centuries after those first voyages and conquests, and driven by the industrial revolution, the expansionist vocation found its feet in the imperial and colonialist movements of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Here too, the fact that he was the son of a borderland settler gave Ruy Duarte de Carvalho a unique vantage point from which to view these issues. He witnessed the violent integration of African populations, later than in the rest of the colony, into a system based on hierarchies of culture, skin colour, and modes of production: intensive production of raw materials for export was favoured, based on so-called scientific knowledge, while extensive and traditional local production practices were devalued. This hierarchical order, imposed by the colonizers, was reflected in Southern Angola in the introduction of compulsory monocultures, and the establishment of large agricultural properties intended for breeding cattle, which rapidly came up against the types of production practised by the nomadic shepherds, based on transhumance. The colonial government, backed by the modernity of its “civilizing” mission, intervened militarily in 1940  in favour of the big agricultural landowners and against the Cuvale. It was at this time that a military campaign was launched which some regard as the last stage of the conquest of Angola, known as the “war of the mucubais”, as a result of which thousands of shepherds were killed, and survivors exiled to the islands of São Tomé and Príncipe.25 Ruy Duarte de Carvalho wrote several passages on these episodes: they are revealing of how modernizing ideologies in practice take on the material form of domination, exclusion and even extermination. The struggle for independence was often presented as an opportunity to end Western dominion over Africa and restore to Africans control over their own destiny. While he always supported the struggle for Angolan independence, Ruy Duarte de Carvalho maintained a critical distance in relation to the actual attainment of these objectives.26 His analysis of post-independence Angola led him to believe that liberation from colonial dominion was not in fact the end of the process of

 Ruy Duarte de Carvalho makes it quite clear that, for him, the idea of Angola is not a Portuguese emanation. He argued that “both Angola and Portugal, in their current situations, are rather emanations of that same process of European expansion which Portugal did indeed take overseas but in which it very soon found itself as well, in exactly the same relative position which the globalization of Western models and universalist modernization rendered absolute” (2003: 43). On this topic see the article “Colonização e globalização, continuidades e contiguidades colocadas no presente de Angola” published in 2004 in Estudos Afro-Asiáticos and included in A Câmara, a Escrita e a Coisa Dita… (2008: 36–46). 25  Pélissier dedicates a separate chapter of his História das Campanhas de Angola to the topic of repression of the Cuvale in 1940–1941, entitling it “An Anachronism” (1986, vol. II, 267–275). Ruy Duarte de Carvalho deals with this topic in both academic and fictional writings. By way of example, in Vou Lá Visitar Pastores, he gives a general outline of the endemic conflict between settlers and local populations which would culminate in the bloody repression (1999: 46-54). 26  The building of an Angolan consciousness and the clashes between national and ethnical identities are discussed by Ruy Duarte de Carvalho and Nuno Vidal in a long interview, held in June 1998 (Vidal, 2011b: 20–24). 24

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­ esternization which had been going on in that territory for several centuries. Aware w of the contradictions between the rhetoric of Africanity adopted by the those who sought independence and the Western and westernizing matrix governing the ideologies which the Angolan state adopted over time, whether in the form of Nationalism, Marxism-Leninism or later Neoliberalism, Ruy Duarte de Carvalho witnessed the materialization of the old adage which holds that everything has to change for everything to stay the same – Se vogliamo che tutto rimanga come è, bisogna che tutto cambi, as Lampedusa writes in his novel Il Gattopardo. For Ruy Duarte de Carvalho, the process of Western expansion, which started in the Renaissance and acquired forward momentum through nineteenth-century imperialism, resisted the wave of decolonization and has come down to our own time in the form of globalization. This consists of a world economy based on the alleged superiority of science and technology, but also on the Western mentality and way of life, a “unique and planet-wide process which imposes on all the effects and consequences of its dynamics, its inherent logic and its model of procedures and resolutions” (2003: 38). Ruy Duarte de Carvalho points out that this “dynamic of Western hegemony” is based on an “implacable and obstinately evolutionist, authoritarianly linear ideology of progress, usually disguised by paternalist, humanitarian and populist doctrine” (2008: 43). An ideology of progress which implies that there is only one political, social and above all economic path for all countries; which suggests that differences between countries are the result of their being at different stages of a single, teleologically directed trajectory; which is blind to the ideas of centre and periphery and refuses to consider that processes of economic, political and cultural subordination are reproducible. Acceptance of this logic, which he regards as perverse, is driven not only by Westerners, Ruy Duarte de Carvalho tells us, but also by the westernized who hold political and economic power in the former colonies, who “inherited from the colonial powers not only the locus of decision-making but also their angle of view” (2008: 43). And it is worth recalling that the social group from which these politicians were mostly co-opted – historians call them a creole elite – came to power thanks to their privileged position in the colonial system, however much they may repudiate that position by resort to the mythical narratives which justify them and which are the symbolic constructs of the new nation.27 In Angola, political leaders, and also intellectuals, identified almost totally with Western lifestyles and patterns of consumption (and not so much with the political model of democracy), unlike other parts of the world, like South America, where the pre-­ Colombian legacy was proudly reclaimed by certain sectors of society – think of the

 Santos (2019) demonstrates how certain novels regarded as foundational for the Angolan nation set up fictitious genealogies for the MPLA, concealing the urban and intellectual origins of the movement while at the same time associating it with the more combative past of inland populations, in an attempt to legitimize it both nationally and internationally. It is revealing that the fictional work of José Eduardo Agualusa, a writer who drew heavily on Angolan history and underlined the many ambiguities in the so-called creole sectors of Angolan society, is not counted by specialists among the small group of those who symbolically constructed Angolan nationhood. 27

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examples of Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera in Mexico, or the “anthropophagic” movement of Oswald de Andrade and Tarsila do Amaral in Brazil. It should also be noted that the foundations of the power of these more westernized groups lie precisely in their adoption of models they regard as being ontologically superior, and which in their eyes justify their position and which they in turn impose uncritically on the populations they rule, through programmes of modernization at all costs. Resorting to arguments which might be said to be close to those of the Antillean psychologist, philosopher and activist of African libertation Frantz Fanon (1952) – although devoid of the radicalism which characterizes the author of Black Skins, White Masks – Ruy Duarte de Carvalho intuits that the “pressing” and “implacable” nature of westernization provokes in the westernized man a sense of inferiority which he seeks to compensate for by subserviently adopting those practices which most readily show others how westernized he is. This while he denies any element which might associate him with that which he feels makes him inferior, in particular that which he himself identifies as African. In other words, the adoption of Western ways and models is an attempt to make others and himself forget an Africanity which is grounds for shame and embarrassment: It is no surprise that the ‘westernized man’, as the ‘desperate’ agent of westernization, […] embodies the expression of a certain fundamentalism, of a westernizing obstinacy which is seen as the only way of ‘liberating’ and ‘distancing’ him from the condition of being African as the West sees it, and renders him ‘inferior’ in the eyes of Westerners. His self-­ assertion […] can hardly be imagined as being directed to contesting the ‘values’ which are precisely those things that give the Westerner the evidence, the signs and the results of his ‘advantage’… That is a luxury reserved for the Westerner himself… So what is left for “westernized man” is, above all, to assert himself, to redeem himself, thus aiming at parity in relation to the Other by adopting and taking on board the Other’s models. (Carvalho, 2003: 159)

This subservient attitude to Western models gave rise to a “Westernizing fundamentalism”, which according to Ruy Duarte de Carvalho omitted precisely that part of Western thought which “perceives the failure of Enlightenment, universalist, positivist redemptionism, and questions the very dynamics and rationale for generalized westernization” (2003: 160–161). This is a form of westernization which fails to take into account the currents of thought of those who question and doubt the benevolence of “progress”, and for that reason seek solutions in other models and other visions – on occasion opening up to that which is outside their sphere of influence. What is dramatic about all this, Ruy Duarte de Carvalho would say, is that Angolan proponents of westernization leave no room for “‘other’, ‘African’ or ‘indigenous’ alternatives, which might be summoned to help us resolve our own problems” (2003: 160–161).28 That is to say, they limit their creative imagination  The importance of taking into account the perspective of the people not fully Westernized that he sometimes calls the “absolute other” – those “who present traces that are associated with populations integrated as nationals in the post-colonial nation-states, but keep uses, practices and behaviours from the pre-colonial era” – is the main subject of a text curiously entitled “Tempo de ouvir o ‘outro’ enquanto o ‘outro’ existe, antes que haja só o outro…” (“Time to listen to the ‘other’ while the ‘other’ still exists, before there is only the other…”) (2011b). 28

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and with it the possibility of finding solutions appropriate to the specific problems of Angola and Africa.

12.4 Caught in the Net of the Other’s Game For Ruy Duarte de Carvalho, the consequences of uncritically adopting Western models is an attitude which he would rightly call “being caught in the net of the ‘other’s game’” (2003: 137) – a “game” which he believes to be rigged from the start, since the “developing” countries have no way of getting close to achieving indicators which reward production methods and ways of life very different from their own. The most flagrant manifestation of this attitude is in so-called “developmentalist” policies, since the development they aspire to is in a thin layer of modernity, thick enough just to give an appearance of democracy, an appearance of educational attainment, an appearance of administrative efficiency, an appearance of industrialization, and an appearance of human rights. Ruy Duarte de Carvalho stresses that developmentalist-type policies are reflected in economic, social, health and cultural measures which confuse modernization and westernization, imposing on the people exogenous practices which often harm more than they serve, producing that which Ivan Illich called modernized poverty (2000). And this without even questioning such practices, or comparing them with solutions rooted in local life, which are assumed to be inherently “backward,” “obscurantist” and contrary to the spirit of “progress” – a progress often equated to entry into the market sphere. While Ruy Duarte de Carvalho acknowledges that for countries like Angola there is no permitted escape from “playing the game”,29 he also argues that they might be less enthusiastic, or even critical, as to rules which put them at a perpetual disadvantage. Always careful not to be excessively relativist, Ruy Duarte de Carvalho clarifies that he does not subscribe to a “culturalist, relativist radicalism, according to which all systems are equivalent, in the final analysis,” while nonetheless emphasizing that in opting systematically for exogenous solutions, a nation falls into “the opposite, even more fundamentalist camp, in which the solution must necessarily involve replacing one system with another” (2003: 169). Drawing on Georges Balandier’s idea of the “social costs of development” (1956, 1961),30 Ruy Duarte de Carvalho recalls the perverse outcomes of “developmentalist effects” to question the advantages of the unfettered adoption of any and all practices regarded as “modern”. To this end, he argues for the need to slow down modernization rather than accelerate it, so as to avoid general (social, economic,  In “Colonização e globalização…”, Ruy Duarte de Carvalho asserts: “we can’t avoid playing the game, I mean, understanding how the dynamic of Western hegemony is undetectable and how our own attitudes are defined by it – even those which claim to challenge it” (2008: 43). 30  It is worth recalling that French anthropologist and sociologist George Balandier (1920–2016) founded the influential Centre d’Études Africaines and the pioneering journal Cahiers d’Études Africaines. 29

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moral) disruption and the resulting poverty of the people who are thereby deprived of their ancestral forms of livelihood: Another notion which has become widespread but still seems to find no resonance in our decision-makers especially, is that all the developmentalist hype involves social costs. Perhaps this is, in other words, what is written all over and we hear everywhere, even on the international news, and on other occasions I’ve probably said it myself: how you achieve development does matter. Peoples, whole societies, have been condemned in the name of progress, to give up their ways of relating to the environment and to take part in campaigns of wilful destruction of their own defences in favour of interests, logics, objectives and strategies which are not their own, and often in the name of an abstract, improbable and probably baseless idea, of a common good which would only emerge long-term and in exchange for the sacrifice of successive generations of “the backward”… Is there anyone still willing to be sacrificed? And the long-awaited redemption – will it be total disruption, making everyone directly dependent, without appeal, on a programme of universal growth in the service of high finance? (Carvalho, 2003: 168)

This point of view has some affinities with the idea of agro-ecology put forward by Chilean researcher and activist Miguel Altieri – who also trained as an agronomist  – and, amongst other positions, was in charge of the UN Programme for Sustainable Agriculture. He argues that implementation of agricultural policies should take into account not only immediate productivity, but also the various social and economic aspects, such as strengthening social organization and reducing poverty, and long-­term sustainability (1989, 1995). Like Altieri, Ruy Duarte de Carvalho stresses the importance of preserving not only ecological equilibrium, but also the social equilibrium of communities which have “almost miraculously” (2003: 170) resisted colonialism and the years of civil war. It should be noted that, since the end of the civil war, community pasture lands have  been expropriated, enclosed, and turned into farms and “ranches” to an unprecedented extent, adding a new threat to the survival of the pastoralist communities. In this scenario, famine becomes widespread during the periodical droughts, as is currently the case.31 Ruy Duarte de Carvalho was critical of the introduction of exogenous practices and favoured preserving certain ancestral practices based on the local knowledge. He further suggested that these practices should be taken into account in decision-­ making, in what he envisaged as a “plan for democratic creativity going beyond the cynicism and caricature with which traditional authorities are always viewed and treated. Try to bring in  local experience, and not just global diktats, to imagine futures which favour the common interest of all and not just, or mainly, to justify certain present and private interests of the elites” (2008: 32). Such a plan would  According to recent reports from Amnesty International (2019, 2021), food insecurity is now a big concern in Angola’s Southern provinces, namely Huíla, Cunene, and Namibe. Here the effects of the worst drought in 40 years are aggravated by the cattle farms established over the last two decades. In the region of Gambos, these occupy 67% of community pasture lands, according to data collected by the organization. The expropriation of pastures by commercial farmers is especially harmful, since they occupy precisely the humid lands to which the transhumant cattle were taken during the dry season, allowing them to survive periods of drought. The reports fail to mention that many of these farms are owned by influential figures connected to the Angolan régime, who used their power to violate national law regarding community lands. 31

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mean that local knowledge and practices would be studied without prejudice, without being caricatured or reduced to folklore by “specialists” of the exotic.32 In other words, it would be important “to have adequate knowledge of those endogenous systems, beyond the clichés so deftly wielded by decision-makers” (2003: 167–170). Basically, the aim would be “to remain receptive to the contribution of other cultures, not just Western culture, in planning our present with a view to our future, and not just in the right terms economically but also in the right way so as to promote democratic models and the rights of man, society and minorities” (2008: 32). This point of view placed Ruy Duarte de Carvalho in significant opposition to the “Westernized common sense” adopted by the Angolan ruling class (2003: 160) in a variety of ways. It goes against the strongly ingrained idea of “backwardness”, in showing the positive, productive results of certain traditional practices, perfectly adapted to the environment, which allowed the peoples who lived off the pastoral transhumance to prosper. It also questions the very system used by Angolan political decision-makers to classify both peoples and territories, and even the fauna, in which Ruy Duarte de Carvalho sees a deep-seated  triple prejudice against the Cuvale shepherds, their land and stock. He refers to an almost biblical distrust against nomads, which he situates in a long-term process whereby the sedentary have opposed nomads for centuries.33 The second type of prejudice is against the semi-desert lands in which the shepherds move, which are seen as desolate and infertile, despite their capacity for sustaining great flocks and herds in a system of transhumance. Finally, he identifies a prejudice against the pastoral animals themselves, which government agents view through the lens of a television education – the ‘fat cows’ they consider ideal, Ruy Duarte de Carvalho remarks ironically, would be unable to survive in southern Angola without special care, the cost of which would be too high for the shepherds. Angolan decision-makers, dazzled by shiny westernized and westernizing science and technology, willingly adopted the “Western expansionist ideology” (2003: 170) as they tried to eradicate ancestral practices like transhumance, despite the fact that for the Cuvale, these practices had proved themselves capable of ensuring their survival throughout the long civil war, when the shepherds were among those who best managed to feed themselves in the country. Ruy Duarte de Carvalho here  Ruy Duarte de Carvalho makes plain his displeasure at the figure he calls “the specialist of the exotic” who in identifying traditional societies as “archaic,” renders them simply “potentially obsolete elements in the ideology of progress which necessarily guides the plans of those individuals and groups who dominate all politics” (2003: 104). 33  Ruy Duarte de Carvalho mentions that the sedentary have turned into conventional wisdom the idea that the earth and natural resources can be privately appropriated and worked. This makes them experience nomadic mobility as a threat, and their disrespect for private property a sacrilege (1999: 25–27). In this aspect Ruy Duarte Carvalho’s vision of nomadism is very close to the ideas of Bruce Chatwin, one of his favourite writers. In A Terceira Metade (2009a: 17) Ruy Duarte de Carvalho emphatically praises Chatwin’s famous 1977 travel book In Patagonia, even though the work of this adventurer and traveller which best deals with nomadism is perhaps The Songlines (1987). 32

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reveals the ideological nature of the political tendency to dismantle the nomadic way of life, a tendency which rejects the very pragmatism which was supposed to be its hallmark by insisting on “modernization,” regardless of the catastrophic results it may produce: It is difficult to understand how a rational attitude which deems itself pragmatic and right often takes on a note of irresponsible and presumptuous irrationality, extending not only to common sense but also based on arguments which claim to be technical and scientific, applies itself to combating and trying to end transhumant pastoral practices, apparently unaware of the evidence that this is contributing to making whole societies unviable, not to mention millions of individuals, without assuring or even suggesting to them any valid or even merely interesting alternative, and condemning to exploitation which is nearly always inappropriate to the reality of the natural environment large tracts of land for which transhumant pastoralism is perfectly adapted. Read about what has happened in Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa, for example, where political, administrative and technical intervention in traditional pastoral practices has always ended up disrupting economies, destroying resources, sapping human energies, anomie, alternative and circumstantial proletarianization, and poverty (Carvalho, 1999: 117).

In his attempts to counter these deep-seated prejudices, Ruy Duarte de Carvalho began describing the practices of the Cuvale shepherds, using detailed explanations which draw on knowledge ranging from botanics and anthropology to zoology, meteorology and geology. He explains how the Cuvale shepherd observes “very carefully all the facts affecting the possibility of pastoralism in such an arid region: availability of pastures and watering in particular.” He takes the best advantage possible “of the differences between the various sub-regions of the territory” (1999: 116); “he knows, interprets and knows how to deal with the environment of which he is a part, and I truly mean of which he is an integral part. He hasn’t read Cruz de Carvalho34 nor done accounts in the same way as the latter on the basis of his and other proven experiences in the whole of Africa on viability indicators which give pastoralism an advantage over livestock, but he is aware that his techniques are better at making full use of natural resources and drawing energy from them in the most balanced way possible” (1999: 123–124). Underlying this and other descriptions is a proposal to acknowledge and value collective and traditional knowledge forms. In this connection, it is legitimate to suggest Ruy Duarte de Carvalho’s affinity with the thought of a key figure in the environmental movement, Vandana Shiva, who has denounced the prejudice that exists in relation to knowledge which has been preserved, used and passed down by peasants, and which is regarded as being ontologically inferior to that acquired  Ruy Duarte de Carvalho makes several references to the work of Eduardo Cruz de Carvalho, the agronomist who headed the agency which conducted a rural survey of the then colony in the 1960s, the Missão de Inquéritos Agrícolas de Angola (MIAA). This agronomist was a distinguished professional with “remarkable knowledge of the territory of Angola and its regional diversity”, but above all because of his “vision of development of traditional agriculture based on ecological criteria” (Castelo, 2014: 529). After Angola, Cruz de Carvalho moved to the US, becoming Associate Research Economist at the African Studies Center of the University of California at Los Angeles. Among his work of that period is an article in which he questions the large agricultural plans for Africa and asserts that modernization is “erroneously equated with development” (1974: 200). 34

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through experimental and laboratory methods.35 Like this Indian thinker and activist, Ruy Duarte de Carvalho denounced the systematic efforts to discredit and destroy locally embedded collective knowledge forms based on experience, which the holders of power often do not recognize as valid. This is a topic which today is at the heart of significant debates, especially in the Indian sub-continent and in Latin America, ever since the advances of biotechnology have made it possible to privatize and exploit natural resources on a hitherto unimaginable scale. As peasant and ecological organizations have repeatedly denounced, the dissemination of biotechnological products, in particular GMO (genetically modified organisms), generates vast profits for biotech corporations at the same time as it deprives millions of farmers of their livelihood. Philosophers and sociologists like Jack Kloppenburg (1988), Hugh Lacey (2005) and José Luís Garcia (2009) have shown how a reductionist conception of science lies at the centre of this large-scale life-appropriating undertaking. It ties in perfectly with market interests, relegating ethical and civic concerns to the background, in particular those relating to preservation of communities, food security, biodiversity, depletion of natural resources and the destruction of ecosystems. It can rightly be said that Ruy Duarte de Carvalho’s work was aligned with these concerns, in as much as, from the outset, his analytical efforts focus on acknowledging the rationality of traditional pastoral practices in southern Angola. This rationality is not only mercantile and economic – although it is that too: it takes into account all aspects of human life, and of the environment which hosts that life, since it is concerned with the ecological equilibrium of vast areas. In contrast to the shepherds’ rational action, based on the concepts of sustainability and balance with and integration in the environment, Ruy Duarte de Carvalho posits what he believes to be a pseudo-rationality of political decision-makers, focused on a type of productivity that is disconnected from the natural surrounding reality.

12.5 The Neo-Animist Programme We have seen up to now how Ruy Duarte de Carvalho situates Angola, and the challenges of subsistence and development it faces, in the context of Western expansionism which co-opts the whole world for a project which disproportionately benefits the holders of political, financial, industrial, scientific and military power, who for

 So-called “bio-piracy” is an example of that prejudice against traditional forms of knowledge. This practice consists of the fraudulent registration of patents on seeds whose genome has been sequenced, even though these organisms are the product of the work of generations of farmers. This means that farmers may be required to pay royalties or duties to export the seeds which they themselves and their ancestors developed. The issue at stake here is a form of science which favours laboratory work based on the latest technology, to the detriment of knowledge accumulated by societies over time. In this connection see Shiva (1997) among other works by this author (1993, 2016). 35

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historical and geopolitical reasons are at the centre of that expansion, as compared to the periphery of the co-opted. This process of westernization rests on a belief in their own ideological superiority and avoids facing up to the unplanned consequences of technical, scientific and economic advance, ranging from increased inequality to the lack of food security, global warming and rapid destruction of species and habitats  – all of these problems being sharply present in Angola. Ruy Duarte de Carvalho did not share the view of other Angolan intellectuals, who perhaps longing for the “scientific socialism” of the time of independence, saw in Angola’s difficult situation a direct consequence of the advance of market capitalism. In his view, while economic liberalism promotes a view of the world which is closed in on itself and self-validating, it is no different in this respect from the supposed socialist alternative, both of these ideologies being characterized by universalism, being dazzled by technique, and indifferent to local particularisms. As he often mentions, liberalism and socialism are merely variants of the same Western and westernizing matrix. In other words, both are the outcome of western expansion, at the same time as they drive that expansion forward. It follows logically from this idea that in order to understand and overcome the limitations common to both liberalism and socialism, it is necessary to go back in time to certain earlier forms of western thought, which Ruy Duarte de Carvalho situates in what he calls the “humanist paradigm.” In what were to be his last writings, he analyses the idea of the primacy of man in relation to other creatures and to Nature, and the resulting attitude of perceiving man as the centre of the world, seeing this idea and this attitude as profoundly problematic, not least because “in seeking to ensure a privileged position of choice for man, at the heart of creation, they necessarily must lead to positions of choice and privilege for some men and groups, and incessantly produce dead-ends which jeopardize the fate of the whole species and possibly even of the whole of creation” (2009b). Ruy Duarte de Carvalho opposes both the idea of human exceptionalism and that dualism which radically separates humanity and Nature and thus devalues the latter metaphysically, a dualism which has for centuries underpinned the currents of thought shaping the still dominant western attitude, rendering it indifferent even to the advances of science itself, for example of an evolutionary biology which demolishes the very foundations on which that dualism is based.36 In his last writings, Ruy Duarte de Carvalho responds to his own appeal for a “universality not made of European, Western humanism alone” (2009a: 349) and moves in a direction which is consistent with his defence of locally embedded forms of thought: he suggests nothing less than replacing humanism with a neo-animism, which will be able to understand that “man’s place is not necessarily preponderant or central: his relative role is rather to maintain general equilibrium” (1999: 125). In  On dualism, its origins in Iranian Zoroastrianism and its transition into western thought, see the classic study by Jonas (2001 [1958]). 36

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the Decálogo Neo-Animista (2009b), one of his last texts, he provides a summary of his reflections on a possible manifesto for action, an ironic decalogue of 11 commandments. In this he identifies the so-called humanist paradigm as being the root of both the problems facing the world and of mankind’s inability to solve those problems. He argues for the need to abandon that paradigm which focuses on the human species and its interests, to arrive at a broader vision which takes into account the survival and well-being of all living beings and ecosystems – hence the use of the term neo-animism. This has been derived from a mode of thought based on the idea that “everything in the world has the same soul and each form of existence expresses it according to the body and substance which sustains it” (2009b). Basically he is suggesting a philosophical shift beyond the dualist sphere of western and westernized knowledge, and a courageous approximation to other cultural and philosophical spheres, to “other paradigms which have been set aside and discarded because they come from cultures dominated or extinguished by the West”, which “can be recovered and adapted to situations we are now reinterpreting, or invented on the basis of reconsidering their fundamentals which were stigmatized as being archaic as a result of the imposition of western civilization” (2009b). The aim was to arrive at a different way of thinking and acting, centred on the common interest – of both people and Nature; in other words, to re-establish mediation between human beings and the cosmological element. It is worth concluding with the poetic 11th commandment: We are all together, in the same boat, all humanity and everything that exists in the whole universe. If there are other universes, they too are with us in the same boat. And God is not an entity… God is the sum total of a creative and indecipherable process of becoming, of which each one of us, person, animal, stone, grass, star, asteroid, wind, breath and sigh, sadness and pain, euphoria and glory, are a whole and inalienable part… (Carvalho, 2009b)

If Ruy Duarte de Carvalho had lived in the time of the COVID 19 pandemic, he might have included in his 11th Commandment the new SARS-CoV-2 virus, in addition to the living beings and substances he mentions at the end of it (person, animal, stone, grass…). These viruses, although generally considered to be non-­ living, are part of our genetic material, have produced life for millions of years, and are part of everything and all in which human life is included. The SARS-CoV-2 virus is showing the extent to which the lives of humans are vulnerable, and how they can be threatened by this everything and all which the dominant version of the dualistic worldview neglects, like the repressed threat it has always felt from the wild side of the so-called natural world, and its hubristic belief that it has sufficiently tamed it with the science and technology which it judges to be its greatest achievement and of which it is so proud.

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References Ruy Duarte de Carvalho’s Essays and Novels Carvalho, R. D. (1977). Como se o mundo não tivesse leste. UEA Carvalho, R.  D. (1980). O camarada e a câmara, cinema e antropologia para além do filme etnográfico. INALD. Carvalho, R. D. (1988). Ana a Manda: Os filhos da rede. IICT. Carvalho, R. D. (1995). O futuro já começou? Transições políticas e afirmação identitária entre os pastores kuvale (herero) do Sudoeste de Angola. Lusotopie, 2, 221–237. Carvalho, R.  D. (1997). Aviso à navegação: Olhar sucinto e preliminar sobre os pastores Kuvale…. INALD. Carvalho, R. D. (1999). Vou lá visitar pastores. Cotovia. Carvalho, R. D. (2000). Os Papéis do Inglês. Cotovia. Carvalho, R.  D. (2002). Os Kuvale na história, nas guerras e nas crises: artigos e comunicações. N’Zila. Carvalho, R. D. (2003). Actas da Maianga. Cotovia. Carvalho, R. D. (2005). As paisagens propícias. Cotovia. Carvalho, R. D. (2007). Desmedida, Luanda – São Paulo – São Francisco e volta. Cotovia. Carvalho, R. D. (2008). A câmara, a escrita e a coisa dita: fitas, textos e palestras. Cotovia. Carvalho, R. D. (2009a). A terceira metade. Cotovia. Carvalho, R.  D. (2009b). Decálogo neo-animista. www.buala.org/pt/ruy-­duarte-­de-­carvalho/ decalogo-­neo-­animista-­ruy-­duarte-­de-­carvalho. Carvalho, R. D. (2011a [2005]). Uma espécie de habilidade autobiográfica. In Nuno Vidal (Ed.), O que não ficou por dizer (pp. 11–16). Associação Cultural Chá de Caxinde. Carvalho, R. D. (2011b [2008]). Tempo de ouvir o ‘outro’ enquanto o ‘outro’ existe, antes que haja só o outro… Ou pré-manifesto neo-animista. In Nuno Vidal (Ed.), O que não ficou por dizer (pp. 59–72). Associação Cultural Chá de Caxinde.

Other References Agualusa, J. E.. (2009). Rainy season (Daniel Hahn, Trans.). Arcadia Books. Altieri, M. A. (1989). Agroecology: A new research and development paradigm for world agriculture. Agriculture, Ecosystems and Environment, 27(1-4), 37–46. Altieri, M. A. (1995). Agroecology: The science of sustainable agriculture. CRC Press. Alves, T. (2017). Reporting 4 February 1961 in Angola: The beginning of the end of the Portuguese empire. In J.  L. Garcia, C.  Kaul, F.  Subtil, & A.  Santos (Eds.), Media and the Portuguese empire (pp. 235–252). Palgrave Macmillan. Amnesty International. (2019). The end of cattle’s paradise: How land diversion for ranches eroded food security in the Gambos, Angola. Amnesty International. Amnesty International. (2021). The end of cattle’s paradise: Severe drought and food insecurity in Southern Angola. Amnesty International. Balandier, G. (1956). Déséquilibres socio-culturels et modernisation des ‘pays sous-développés’. Cahiers Internationaux de Sociologie, 20, 30–44. Balandier, G. (1961). Le contexte socio-culturel et le coût social du progres: Le ‘tiers-monde’. Sous-Développement et Développement, 39, 289–303. Birmingham, D. (2015). A short history of modern Angola. C. Hurst & Co. Carvalho, E.  C. (1974). ‘Traditional’ and ‘modern’ patterns of cattle raising in Southwestern Angola: A critical evaluation of change. The Journal of Developing Areas, 8(2), 199–226.

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Castelo, C. (2014). ‘Novos Brasis’ em África: Desenvolvimento e colonialismo português tardio. Varia História, 30(53), 507–532. Chabal, P. (Ed.). (1996). The postcolonial literature of lusophone Africa. Hurst & Company. Chabal, P., & Vidal, N. (Eds.). (2008). Angola: The weight of history. Columbia University Press. Chatwin, B. (1977). In Patagonia. Jonathan Cape. Chatwin, B. (1987). The songlines. Jonathan Cape. Davidson, B. (1972). In the eye of the storm: Angola’s people. Doubleday. Fanon, F. (1952). Peau noire, masques blancs. Éditions du Seuil. Ferreira, M.  E. (1995). La reconversion economique de la nomenklatura pétrolière. Politique Africaine, 57, 11–26. Ferreira, M. E., & Rocha, M. J. A. (2019). Angola: dois olhares cruzados. Universidade Católica de Angola. Freudenthal, A., Magalhães, R., Pedro, H. & Pereira, C. V. (Eds.). (1994). Antologias de poesia da Casa dos Estudantes do Império 1951–1963. Associação Casa dos Estudantes do Império. Garcia, J. L. (2009). Biocapital et nouvelle économie politique de la vie. Revue de l’Institut de Sociologie, 14, 7–38. Garcia, J. L., Kaul, C., Subtil, F., & Santos, A. (2017). The Portuguese empire: An introduction. In J.  L. Garcia, C.  Kaul, F.  Subtil, & A.  Santos (Eds.), Media and the Portuguese empire (pp. 1–27). Palgrave Macmillan. Heimer, F.-W. (1979). The decolonization conflict in Angola 1974–76: An essay in political sociology. Institut Universitaire de Hautes Etudes Internationales. Hodges, T. (2003). Angola: Anatomy of an oil state. James Currey & Indiana University Press. Illich, I. (2000 [1977]). The right to useful unemployment and its professional enemies. Marion Boyars. Jerónimo, M. B., & Pinto, A. C. (Eds.). (2015). The ends of European colonial empires: Cases and comparisons. Palgrave Macmillan. Jonas, H. (2001 [1958]). The gnostic religion: The message of the alien God and the beginnings of Christianity (3rd ed.). The Beacon Press. Kloppenburg, J.  R. (1988). First the seed: The political economy of plant biology, 1492–2000. Cambridge University Press. Lacey, H. (2005). Values and objectivity in science: The current controversy about transgenic crops. Lexington Books. Lara, L. (2000). Documentos e comentários para a história do MPLA. Dom Quixote. Marques, J. P. (2006). The sounds of silence: Nineteenth-century Portugal and the abolition of the slave trade. Berghahn Books. Messiant, C. (2008). L’Angola postcolonial: Guerre et paix sans démocratisation. Karthala. Moorman, M. (2001). Of westerns, women, and war: Re-situating Angolan cinema. Research in African Literatures, 32(3), 103–123. Moorman, M. (2008). Intonations: A social history of music and nation in Luanda, Angola, from 1945 to recent times. Ohio University Press. Oliveira, R. S. (2015). Magnificent and beggar land: Angola since the civil war. C. Hurst & Co. Pawson, L. (2014). In the name of the people: Angola’s forgotten massacre. I.B.Tauris. Pélissier, R. (1977). Les guerres grises: Résistance et révoltes en Angola (1845–1941). Éditions Pélissier. Pepetela. (1996 [1980]). Mayombe. Heinemann. Pepetela. (2002 [1995]). The return of the water spirit (L. R. Mitras, Trans.). Heinemann. Santos, A. (2019). Angola imaginada: Nação, guerra e utopia na ficção de Pepetela (1971–1996). Imprensa de Ciências Sociais. Santos, A., & Subtil, F. (2017). Literature against the empire: Narratives of the nation in the textbook História de Angola and in the novel Yaka. In J. L. Garcia, C. Kaul, F. Subtil, & A. Santos (Eds.), Media and the Portuguese empire (pp. 309–326). Palgrave Macmillan. Shiva, V. (1993). Monocultures of the mind: Perspectives on biodiversity and biotechnology. Zed Books.

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Shiva, V. (1997). Biopiracy: The plunder of knowledge and nature. South End Press. Shiva, V. (2016). The violence of the green revolution: Third world agriculture, ecology, and politics. University Press of Kentucky. Vidal, N. (2011a). Introdução. In N. Vidal (Ed.), O que não ficou por dizer (pp. 3–8). Associação Cultural Chá de Caxinde. Vidal, N. (2011b). Entrevista a Ruy Duarte de Carvalho. A construção da nação e a consciência nacional: Processos políticos e exercício do poder. In N. Vidal (Ed.), O que não ficou por dizer (pp. 19–40). Associação Cultural Chá de Caxinde. Wheeler, D. L., & Pélissier, R. (1971). Angola. Praeger. Alexandra Santos is a professor at Universidade Europeia – IADE, and a researcher at Instituto de História Contemporânea [Institute of Contemporary History]. With a Doctorate in Sociology from the Instituto de Ciências Sociais, Universidade de Lisboa (ICS-ULisboa) [Institute of Social Sciences, University of Lisbon], she has also studied history, art history and communication. Her research is interdisciplinary, focusing on Angolan literature and history, nationalist ideologies, postcoloniality, and media studies. She is the co-editor of Media and the Portuguese Empire (Palgrave, 2017) and the author of Angola Imaginada ([Imagined Angola], Imprensa de Ciências Sociais, 2019).  

Part III

Technoscene and Postmodern World

Chapter 13

Mediatization: From Gutenberg to Unlimited Media and Datafication José Luís Garcia and Filipa Subtil Abstract  Since the birth of modern media until Internet, communication has been profoundly transformed and through it culture, society, forms of power and the creation of economic wealth. This essay examines this long-lasting process by exploring the idea of mediatization. It is a historical movement of co-implication of symbolic forms, technologies, contexts and communicative frameworks that has altered communication practices, their scope and meanings through the introduction and reception of new technologies (mechanical, electrical, digital) and by institutions (publishers, media companies, propaganda and public relations bureaux, advertising, technological platforms). We argue that it is a non-linear process, with several stages, intensified in our days, with aspects very critical to freedom and democracy, but whose outcome is open. Keywords  Print capitalism · Public sphere · Propaganda · Substantive and formal meanings of communication · Process of mediatization · Communicative contexts and frames · Datafication · Digital Surveillance · Metaverses

A slightly longer version of this text was published in portuguese in 2021: O processo de tecnologização e mediatização da comunicação e a sua dialéctica negativa, Revista Novos Rumos Sociológicos 9(15): 90–144. Translated by Gloria Dominguez. Reproduced with kind permission of the publisher. J. L. Garcia (*) Instituto de Ciências Sociais, Universidade de Lisboa, Lisbon, Portugal e-mail: [email protected] F. Subtil Escola Superior de Comunicação Social, Instituto Politécnico de Lisboa, and ICNOVA, Lisbon, Portugal e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 H. M. Jerónimo (ed.), Portuguese Philosophy of Technology, Philosophy of Engineering and Technology 43, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-14630-5_13

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13.1 Introduction In contemporary societies we obtain information, knowledge, and culture when we read books, newspapers, and magazines in print or online; listen to the radio and podcasts; watch films and television; view messages and images on smartphones and tablets; and we store stories, fictions, music, research, documents, sounds, and photographs on computers, among many other cultural practices. And we interact with one another when, for instance, we speak on the phone, send emails, texts, and pictures through the internet, or we teach, study, and place orders through the same network. Vast domains of culture and communication are, therefore, framed, covered, or even dependent on machines, structured sociotechnical contexts, and institutions that we call media and technological platforms. Technological inventions have prompted, from printing through the Gutenberg movable type mechanical system to the advent and mainstreaming of computers and the internet, changes in the forms of communication without there being a sufficient understanding and in-depth discussion of their consequences. Contemporary societies tend to uncritically embrace all technological innovations in media and communication and encourage their immediate adoption, however, in recent years there has been a growing concern about the effects of these innovations on culture, civic life, and the fight for veracity. The main purpose of this essay is to reflect on the longterm process which has altered communication profoundly and, by extension, culture and society, starting from the birth of modern media and mass communication up until the advent of the Internet. What connections and structurations can we find between technological inventions in the sphere of communication, the institutions that developed from their potential and the social, economic, and political conditions that are their context? Can we talk about the existence of a certain directionality in this historical process and detect in it various phases of modern communication? What is the historical relationship between mass communication and mass manipulation? Do any discernible trends exist regarding the implications for communication and its involvement in technology, the media and the economy? Along this path, what meanings have been established for communication? This reflection requires bearing in mind that, in order to understand the transformations of communication, it is necessary to not only give emphasis to the symbolic and cultural elements, but also to institutions, technologies and materials, economic and power structures, the networks of social relations formed by our projects, and social practices. Within this understanding, we follow the concept of James W.  Carey: “Communication is an ensemble of social practices into which ingress conceptions, forms of expression, and social relations. (…) Communication naturalizes the artificial forms that human relations take by merging technique and conception in them. Each moment in the practice coactualizes conceptions of the real, forms of expression, and the social relations anticipated and realized in both. One can unhinge the practice at each point. The social forms and relations technology makes possible are themselves imagined in and anticipated by technology. Technique is vectorial and not merely neutral in the historical process” (2009c [1982]: 65). Therefore, for the purpose of this essay, the sources are the research on mediatization and the analysis of the cultural, economic, and political history of communication that includes technology.

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In the first section, we will begin by exposing the principal aspects of the historical dynamic of the formation of the first media, their definitions as institutions, and interaction with the invention of Gutenberg’s mechanical system and conditions of social, economic, and political order. We will also pay attention to its main effects on communicative contexts and frames  – the concept of “communicative figuration” can also be adopted, which was inspired by the thought of Norbert Elias1 – as well as the meaning that communication has acquired as an ontological reality. We will then present in the second section, two other institutions that dictated the content and the form of communication by the media and technologies for the purpose of controlling information and mass manipulation: the political propaganda bureaus formed during the two World Wars and the private companies that promote “public relations” campaigns and advertising in democracy. A constellation of practices of these institutions generated a formal meaning of communication, which has been reinforced by the cultural industry. We will demonstrate that the technological sphere was already subjected to the industrial application of science in the field of electronics through innovations such as the radio and television. Lastly, in the final section, we will grant attention to the advent of computers, the Internet and the digitalization that paved the way for unheard-of possibilities: full integration of media into everyday practical life; sinchronic interactions by users at a global scale; creation of economic wealth and mass surveillance through datafication; digital colonialism of metaverses; and algorithmic monitoring of behavior. These potentialities can be applied by technological platforms and states, calling into question freedom and promises of community reinvigoration and democracy.

13.2 The Birth of Mass Communication and Print Capitalism 13.2.1 Mechanical Reproduction and the Printed Book as the First Modern Media Several studies indicate that the elementary attributes of modern media were already in gestation in the production of the modern printed book. Instead of a handwritten copy, the printed book began to be produced using the movable type mechanical system, a radical innovation invented by Gutenberg around 1439, becoming a product for a developing market (Eisenstein, 1979; Chartier & Martin, 1983–1986). This began the long-term historical process in which human communication became engaged by institutions that generally have commercial objectives, a mechanical technological base, sets of activities and functions, and whose products were aimed at broad social groups. From this process, modern media was born in the form of entities that were simultaneously cultural and economic, that to this day maintain a  A “communicative figuration” involves constellations of actors with characteristic social roles and orientations that are shared by these actors, and also communication practices. For more on this topic, see Couldry and Hepp (2016); and Hepp et al. (2018). 1

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prominent place in society. The book object, which preserved and disseminated culture and knowledge in space and time, had become more quickly reproducible and less expensive than the old codices and manuscripts. Henceforth, populations began to acquire knowledge from places that were not geographically near to them.2 All modern media have a close relationship with raw materials, technologies, and technological changes, but one cannot lose sight of the links that exist between them and the conditions related to culture, knowledge, society, economic production, and politics that are their context. The dissemination of the printed book owes much to the old aspiration for communication to overcome geographical barriers (Innis, 1999 [1951], 2005a [1950], 2005b [1952]; Carey, 2009b [1981]). It benefited from a growth in literacy, while at the same time increasing it, allowing for the consumption of the same cultural product and connecting distant groups around a common discourse. The entities that produced printed books, initially very small, over time began to gain the status of institutions as printer-publishers. The expansion of the press promoted the implementation and visual materialization of national languages. A more open and plural market of knowledge started to be developed in modern Europe. Referring to a concept by Benedit Anderson (1991), the expression “print capitalism” is an appropriate way to designate the intertwined relationships that turned the printed book into an economic product.3 It is part of the economy’s rise to the fundamental place it has come to have in the modern western world, and which holds the market at its center. Until the nineteenth century, with some exceptions, books were still exclusively for elites because of their prices. Historical literature about the press indicates that only more than two centuries after Gutenberg’s invention we found what we recognize today as the precursor to a newspaper with the features of a media institution, different from the handbills, pamphlets, and newsletters of the end of the sixteenth century and beginning of the seveneenth (McQuail, 1994 [1983]: 13). In the seventeenth century, in cities such as London, Amsterdam, Paris, Strasbourg, Frankfurt, Cologne, and Berlin, the regularly published newspaper emerged. It had a commercial base, informative content, advertisement, large-scale production guaranteed by graphic printing, and mass-­ circulation (Briggs & Burke, 2009 [2005]). As was the case for the printed book, an array of cultural, social, technological, economic, and political conditions contributed to the establishment of the newspaper. The desire for rapid and wider dissemination in space was coupled with the commercial aspect. Advertisement, which was increased with the expansion of the economy, was simultaneously developed with  It is estimated that in the sixteenth century there were around 500 printers and publishers in Venice, which was the leader of book production in Europe, between 15,000 and 17,500 book titles were produced and 18 million copies were placed on the market (Burke, 2000; Briggs & Burke, 2009 [2005]). 3  Benedit Anderson articulates the history of the industrial process of books with national construction and the constitution of the modern state. In fact, Anderson’s imagined community, which is at the heart of the constitutional rights of the modern state, implies the possibilities opened by technological change and by a reading industry. These are associated with the utopian dimension of a community project, development in transportation, and by a set of forms of identification, national representation formed by other devices like maps, the census, and museums. 2

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the newspaper, they influenced each other. Both aimed to reach the greatest number of people, a characteristic that became prevalent in future media. This tendency for audiences allowed the newspaper to be sold for lower prices and to not be a mere instrument of propaganda or a vehicle for power. The improvement in road networks guaranteed fewer delays in distribution, as did the development of the post office. A major effect of this new modern media was that its intervention in social and political life contributed to the constitution of communicative contexts and frames with freedom to form judgments about power and to criticize it. For example, newspapers played an active role in the French Revolution (Briggs & Burke, 2009 [2005]; Mornet, 2010). The newspaper inherited many riches from the culture of argumentation and persuasion itself, whose roots lie in the long term of the historic process.4 To this end, the emergence of journalism as a new literary, cultural, and social form was decisive. Journalism assumed roles that were reserved for oral and written traditions. It turned into a cultural mediator, into a first-rate symbolic producer in society. The briefly exposed historical path about the printed book and the newspaper as the first media institutions faced multiple obstacles and particularities of the political cultures of each nation. To this day, the history of the printed book and the press, even in countries that at one point passed legislation protecting freedom of information, is full of episodes of prohibitions, condemnations, and even the destruction of exemplars (biblioclasm).5 Their tendency to produce large quantities at the expense of quality and the fight for readers to make a profit by the media led them to be accused of corruption since their onset.

13.2.2 Print Media: The Ideal of a Public Liberal Sphere and Its Structural Transformation The transmission over distance to disseminate culture and information of the printed book and the newspaper boosted the constitution of what Jürgen Habermas called, in his famous work, the “public sphere” (Öffentlichkeit), which emerged in liberal Europe in the seventeenth century (1989 [1962]). The concept of the public sphere, which became an ideal of liberal bourgeois society, consisted of a dynamic and  See Breton and Proulx (1989).  Political power has a long history of conditioning essential freedoms related to information with laws, lawsuits, and corruption. Among the many examples that could be given, it is pertinent to note that even in liberal democratic regimes, such as the United Kingdom, the parliament, with the support of the monarchy, sought to protect the secret of its deliberations until the last decades of the eighteenth century. The case of Germany is also an example in which power sought to curb the press through the amplification of decrees that wanted to suppress it, going as far as to only allow newspapers appointed by the king. A milestone in questioning the legitimacy of the procedures used by government officials to curtail the dissemination of information and opinions contrary to their interests was the publication, by John Milton, in 1644, of Areopagitica, whose main theme was the unacceptability of prior censorship. 4 5

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fragile construction that aspired to be a forum of debate and argumentation about common problems. This sphere was public in two senses: the subjects discussed concerned the coexistence of the whole community (they were “public problems”) and their management (seen as “public authority”); and also  because they were publicized (made public). Books and newspapers reflected the existence of a population of readers who were interested in politics and the conflicting process of forming judgments; in turn, they constituted a medium that nourished the discussion and formation of public opinion. They were widely read, and oftentimes discussed in meetings at cafes, salons, and in the Parliament.6 Alexis de Tocqueville and Gabriel Tarde were prompt to understand the reach of the newspapers’ power for the new social form which was the public sphere. Tocqueville, in Democracy in America (2002 [1833]), emphasizes the strength of an opinion in North-American society that depended on the number of individuals and not the status of those who defended it. Gabriel Tarde in L’Opinion et la Foule (1901) argued that the act of reading the same newspaper had the mimetic power to unite its readers in an intimate and profound way, forming a public. The liberal public sphere was certainly one of the most relevant socio-political consequences of modern media. It obtained an autonomous identity from the political regime and became a condition for legitimacy associated with popular sovereignty. The public sphere was seen as existing outside of power, in the sense that its authority came from rationality and not from traditional power. Power was morally obliged to consider it and to seek the consent of the governed. Popular sovereignty was another great dimension of social life that contributed to the construction of Western modernity. Both represented a rupture from the idea of a social order that was under the rule of a divine providence. The new notion of order accepted human plurality and conflict and it believed in a new unity stemming from public discussion. Habermas conjectured that the contours of the liberal public sphere began to crumble with the advance of capitalism. The distinction between the private and the public became unstable, and it weakened the tendency for critical scrutiny over public problems (Habermas, 1989 [1962]). In the time of digital platforms, it is evident that these are reinforcing the erasure of the constitutive delimitation between the public and the private sphere (Habermas, 2021). The public sphere became muddled with an abstract collection of individuals whose opinions came to be measured by opinion surveys.

 Charles Taylor’s precision regarding the public sphere not being a space in the sense of topography is important, because the sphere that was formed in the eighteenth century with the action of the media transposed physical geography. For this reason, Taylor calls this public sphere a “metatopic” sphere (2004). However, he adds – and this remark is fundamental – that the Church and the State in the West already constituted metatopic spaces. 6

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13.2.3 Transmission and Distribution in Space, Advent of Electrification and Communication Empires In the nineteenth century, the mass press developed in a context marked by the strength of industrialization, which propelled technological innovation and its conjunction with science; by the success of political liberalism, which stimulated the formation of national markets; by economic liberalism, which encouraged entrepreneurial freedom; by urban expansion, through the assimilation of large groups of migrants; and by the importance of domestic life within the context of the family. Media institutions had new resources coming from advertising and demonstrated a great capacity to absorb technological changes. Several technological inventions transformed the newspaper into a medium with great power to intervene in the social world. The newspapers were cheaper and with another presentation, and its reading public increased and became more diverse.7 At the end of the nineteenth century, the “communication machines” were invented, an expression of Patrice Flichy (1991: 191) in his history of modern communication: the telegraph, the photographic camera, the phonograph, and the telephone. These machines integrated the trend of machine expansion and are the result of the combination between the dynamism of technological invention and economic entrepreneurship. However, as Flichy points out, inventors such as Cocke and Morse, as well as Bell, Edison, Berliner, Eastman, and Marconi were technicians without basic scientific training who created their businesses to develop and commercialize their inventions (1991: 83–84). The technological context of communication machines is one of electricity and the railroad, which must be considered technological revolutions given their impact on other sectors of the economy. Meanwhile, the electric telegraph emphasized the value of the speed of information, contributing to the creation of new forms of journalism, attracting more advertisers to newspapers, and turning it into a thriving economic enterprise and a cultural and political influence. It provided a model of transmission of signals and messages over space for the media, that later influenced by the application of science (especially, in the field of electronics) developed technological innovations since the end of the nineteenth century  – radio, television, computer, and the Internet. In conjunction with the railway, the telegraph stimulated the creation of national transportation and information systems. Through information about prices and the merchandise being moved in space, it contributed to the creation of markets at a national scale.8 In addition to its functional quality, the electric telegraph became a technological fetish, in other words, a sublime object, with enigmatic and amazing powers to

 The newspaper integrated capitalist dynamics and the state began to view it as an important actor. The number of daily newspapers in countries such as France, Great Britain, and Germany was in the hundreds; and in the USA it was more than 1500. In the middle of the nineteenth century, the usual print runs of newspapers in Paris and London were around 75,000 copies, and by the end of the century, they reached 300,000 and 500,000 (Chicharro Merayo & Rueda Laffond 2005). 8  See, for example, Standage (2007 [1998]) and Carey (2009d [1983]). 7

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revolutionize the world. For this, electricity emerged as an invisible and potent energy source, which was idealized with an almost religious fervor as a promise of the new civilization, and it turned into an industrial giant. The North American telegraph company Western Union, founded in 1854, was the first empire in the information business sector. The telegraph led the way for the insertion of the power of corporations in the world of broadcasting.9 The conjugation of the “electric sublime”10 and the formation of the great industrial information and media empires began to define, as Tim Wu demonstrates, a course of power and wealth that came to be enhanced with radio, cinema, television, computers and the Internet (2010). After the diffusion of the written word through the printing press, the era of diffusing the oral word and image began, to the point that old spatial limitations were surpassed.

13.2.4 The Substantive Meaning of Communication This great transformation of communicative contexts and practices was a magnificent opportunity for many late nineteenth and early twentieth century theorists to stress the importance of communication for human beings. The German political economist Albert Schaäffle pioneered an understanding of communication, shared by other German thinkers like Karl Knies and Karl Bücher, as a set of symbolization activities – language, songs, dance, and other symbolic forms – that express subjectivity, assign meaning, and are the product of a historic process that is the heritage of all members of society. Regarding the newspaper, he recognized it as an active part of the expansion of industrial capitalism and the growth of trade, a perspective that Max Weber shared.11 This legacy of German theorists has had a considerable echo in the USA. It was the social pragmatism of John Dewey and George H. Mead, the so-called Chicago pragmatists, who led communication to reach the status of ontological category of human beings. These authors identified communication as a socio-­symbolic interaction through which personality structures (in the sense of self in Mead’s  Flichy (1991) interprets this process as having initiated the dispute between “state communication” and “market communication”. 10  James Carey and John Quirk (2009 [1970]) define the “electric sublime” as a myth that carries the dream of reestablishing community and strengthening democracy through the capabilities that electricity and communication technologies associated with it would have in facilitating communication and decentralizing institutions. However, according to Carey and Quirk, the advent of electricity and these technologies has recentralized the power of many governmental, military and of other institutions in the United States. The concept of the electric sublime is based on that of the technological sublime that was developed by Leo Marx (1964). 11  With respect to the pioneering work of German theorists on the press and communication, see Hardt (2001 [1979]: 19–141). As for Max Weber, although he did not dedicate any substantive work to the media, he left rich notes about the newspaper and journalism, in a text that formulated a research program about the press (1976 [1910]). 9

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terms), the meanings, the role of interpretations, belonging to social groups, and the constitution of society are formed, reproduced, altered and regulated. They share the idea that in this socio-symbolic interaction humans learn, maintain, and modify the generative culture of their self-understanding, capacity to think, and distinctively human action. Their perspectives correspond to a concept of communication geared to an understanding that finds its root and principle in the linguistic medium itself (Mead, 1934; Dewey, 2000 [1925], 2009 [1916]). And they defended that communication thus understood, as recognizing intersubjective recognition, was the basis for democracy as a social ideal (Czitrom, 1982; Peters, 1989).12 This meaning of communication was pursued by the theoretical current known as symbolic interactionism (Erwing Goffman, notably); it echoes in the thought and research of authors such as Kenneth Burke, David Riesman, C. Wright Mills, Alfred Schutz; and it is the substratum of the cultural approach to communication of James W. Carey (2009a [1975]) and also of the theory of communicative action of Jürgen Habermas (1984 [1981], 1987 [1981]). We understand today that the Chicago pragmatists have left us with a substantive conception of human communication.13 And we also realize that they did it when they were being confronted with a completely groundbreaking historical reality of information and communication. On the one hand, they had a communication archetype before them based on the power of transmission provided by technologies and associated to an institution – the media – with its own productive and economic logics. The symbolic production of the media broke with the communicative environment and practices of communication that prevailed up until then, based on the rituals of orality and physical proximity, which was a condition for generating new contexts and frames that began to influence the daily life and culture of societies. On the other, the public sphere fostered by the press had erupted on the political and social scene from which an opinion emanated, which those in power could not ignore to have the acceptance of the governed. All this truly represented a new era in communication, with ample anthropological, cultural, social, and political repercussions. The Chicago pragmatists viewed the reshaping of proximity and social distance created by the media with hope, as a way to transform a great society into a great community. James W. Carey, despite having praised Dewey’s legacy (and of the pragmatists) on communication, wrote that the confidence they placed in the media and technology stemmed from a thought that underestimated conflict and

 Dewey was an exponent of the progressive American movement from the turn of the nineteenth to the twentieth century. His pragmatist philosophy had a great influence on the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at the University of Chicago, of which George H. Mead and Robert E. Park were also part, who gave great importance to communication and the media in their work. 13  The expression substantive conception of communication coined here is inspired by the distinction made by Max Weber between substantive and formal rationality, the first linked to values and the second to the relation between means and ends. The substantive meaning of communication is derived from the dependence of human beings on symbolic interaction for the constitution of their structures of personality, culture, and the society where they live. 12

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power and was marked by a congenital optimism and a simplistic view of technology (Carey, 2009c [1982]: 63).

13.3 The Instrumentalization of Mass Communication In the 31 years historical context between the outbreak of the First World War and the end of the Second, two types of institutions were created within the scope of mass communication and targeted at its strategic use: the war-time propaganda bureaus; and “public relations” and consulting firms that specialized in running campaigns for corporations and political actions. Communication and media theorists have not felt drawn to the study of such entities, which has led them to leave the way they initiated a profound change in the meaning of communication in the shadows (Subtil, 2015). However, much attention is given to them in various historical studies, both in their activity on cognitive, psychological, cultural and political dimensions. These studies reveal that the ideas and methods of manipulation, through mass communication, established at that juncture are perfectly identifiable today. The lapse of time between the two World Wars was politically characterized by the outbreak of revolutions, the collapse of European empires, the “Spanish flu” crisis, the Great Depression, civil wars, and the rise of new world powers. The ability of the press to influence situations of conflict was already evident, as was the case in Europe after the French Revolution and the Dreyfus case, and in the USA in one of the combats prior to the First World War, the Spanish-American War.14 This conflict, which led to Spain’s loss of Cuba, revealed the economic and symbolic power the press and media barons held. In the media field, the period between the two World Wars is also the era of the emergence of cinema and the radio at home. The application of science in solving technical problems and industrial research for the purpose of increasing production began to play an important role in the acceleration and changing of communication machines and technologies.

 The influence of newspapers on the French Revolution has already been the object of bibliographical reference. For the role of the press in the Dreyfus case, see Peter (1961), Winock (1992), and Miquel (2016 [1959]). As for the influence of newspapers in the Spanish-American war, see Emery et al. (2000 [1954]: 196–206). Other important wars that predate the First World War are: the war of several European states against the Boxers; the war of Transvaal, carried out by the British empire; the Russo-Japanese War, which placed the Russian empire against an emerging power in Asia; the war between France and Morocco; and the Balkan Wars. 14

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13.3.1 Propaganda and Mass Manipulation in the World Wars The First World War ushered in a period of catastrophe characterized by a new form of belligerence, total war. It involved society as a whole and forced the economy to be directed towards the manufacturing of arms. Mass communication became a “munition of the mind” (Taylor, 2003 [1990]): its instrumentalization was key to recruiting soldiers, raising economic funds for the war effort, influencing populations into supporting participation in the conflict, and confusing the enemy. Different countries and with distinct political regimes, such as the United Kingdom, Germany, the USA, and the former USSR are examples of the use of mass media to manipulate the mind and attitudes of individuals. Endowed with technological and scientific resources that had never been seen before, modern political propaganda emerged as a potent mechanism. The condition of media action in society is that of media multiplicity, in other words, different media act at the same time. The United Kingdom, with a liberal democratic regime and a population opposed to participating in the conflict, was the first country, in 1914, to establish a government entity of mass manipulation, the War Propaganda Bureau (WPB), attached to the Foreign Office. It was in charge of information control, propaganda, and disinformation during World War I. Jowett and O’Donnell (1999 [1986]) show how the WPB was responsible for publishing millions of books, pamphlets, photographs, and posters, inciting hatred towards the enemy,15 to promote people’s adhesion to the war and the enlistment of soldiers. Cinema was also intensively used to disseminate propaganda news and documentaries.16 Germany also developed information control and propaganda initiatives to support its war effort. But they were dispersed and were not under the coordination of a government entity until 1918 when political authorities formed the Zentralstelle für Heimatdienst (ZfH). It was the Groβer Generalstab (General Staff of the Armed Forces) who was in charge of censoring and selecting the information that reached the newspapers. Vanessa Ther’s (2014) research reveals that military and nationalist values were strongly promoted through the press and other forms of written communication.17 Cinema was also widely used.18 The entry of the United States into the First World War, in the last year of the conflict, was also accompanied by the creation of a propaganda entity to support the war. In 1917, President Woodrow Wilson promoted the formation of the Committee

 In this topic, see also Robertson (2020).  This is the case of The Battle of the Somme which was very successful. See Philpott (2014). 17  The newspapers fostered the ideology of Volksgemeinschaft (people’s community), which had at its core a vision of a German ethnic national community based on racial purity. Later, it was promoted by the Third Reich and it went on to be wrongly associated with it. 18  David Welch (2014 [2000]) highlights that the supreme command of the armed forces through the action of Erich Ludendorff created the Bild und Filmamt in January of 1917. It coordinated the production of documentaries and fiction films of a patriotic nature, news for cinema, and cinematographic and photographic archives. 15 16

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on Public Information (CPI).19 The CPI, directed by the journalist George Creel, was a complex bureaucratic organization that followed principles of Taylorist industrial efficiency (Jackall & Hirota, 1995 [1991]).20 American propaganda was extraordinarily polymorphous. The CPI quickly created a “multimedia platform”, which included text, image, moving image, speeches, and live events (Benson, 2010: 152). If total war caused democratic regimes to adhere to propaganda, it was in the 1917 October Revolution in Russia that it acquired the configuration of total propaganda. For Lenin, the proletariat lacked an avant-garde that would make it acquire consciousness and move to revolutionary action. Propaganda and agitation, through the denunciation of the capitalist order and slogans, had a role in ideological and political education. Propaganda and agitation had been used before and during the events of October and were intended to mobilize workers and their allies for objectives that the Bolsheviks truly wanted to reach. Having used force to gain power and determined to establish a new social and political order, the leaders of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), in accordance with what they considered to be the laws of history, instituted a dictatorship that aimed to transition into communism. To achieve this plan, the Soviet State used systemic violence and terror, but they were aware these were not enough. A core place was given to propaganda very quickly, both in the political and social spheres in a broad sense (Brown, 2013). The Soviet State was a propaganda-state, which combined propaganda, violence, and terror (the self-proclaimed “red terror”) in a fight they considered implacable to defend the revolution. After October of 1917, various entities were created: the Narkompros (People’s Commissariat for Education and Arts) established an education system based on Marxism-Leninism; the Department of Agitation and Propaganda, Agitprop, which monitored the party’s initiatives in mass communication and had complete control over science and culture; and Glavlit was in charge of censoring literature and all printed materials, in addition to monitoring and directing public discourse and the performing arts.21

 Wilson had a doctorate in political science and had a deep interest in research in communication for political purposes. In this regard, see Braman (2003: 36–38). 20  The organizational structure of the CPI was composed of two large sections, with services and divisions aimed at producing specific types of advertising with well-defined objectives. The Domestic Section encompassed vast areas of American social life and was composed of 12 divisions. The Foreign Section included three operational units and supervised more than 30 delegations abroad. For a detailed analysis of the task undertaken by each division, see Jackall and Hirota (1995 [1991]). 21  Regarding the history and functions of Narkompros, see Fitzpatrick (1970). About the education system, see Samoilenko and Karnysheva (2020: 189–204). Agitprop was created in 1920. Between 1921 and 1928, it grew and became more complex to the point of becoming a bureaucratic structure with more than 30 sub-departments of press, publishing, science, schools, education for party cadres, cinema, radio, literature, and theater. There was a division of Agitprop from the center of the republic to the local authorities of the state. Regarding Agitprop, see Mally (2003), Brown (2013), Price (2016), Savasir and Güleç (2020). For further information about the Glavlit, see Vladimirov (1972) and Fox (1992). 19

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World War II tied information further to propaganda and mass manipulation. German society was morally devastated by the defeat in World War I and economically weakened by the reparations it had to pay the victors. Based on a national culture that was characterized by ideas of a common mythical ancestry, associated with modern anti-Semitism, Hitler’s national socialism dethroned the weak Weimar republic with the promise to restore Germany’s past greatness. To use Jeffrey Herf’s (1984) concept, Germany followed the path of a “reactionary modernism,” combining high industrialization, modern technology, and the rejection of liberal democracy. Hitler, who had been impressed with the propaganda methods of Austrian Marxists and the well-organized English war propaganda, turned the German state into a propaganda-state. Unlike Leninist propaganda, Hitler’s propaganda did not aim for concrete ends, but sought mass exaltation, emotional support, using prophecies, threats, and war cries. His sources came from the most abstruse forms of collective unconscious. In 1933, he ordered the creation of Reichsministerium für Volksaufklärung und Propaganda (RMVP), which was under the command of Goebbels and was constituted as a central organ that directed two other structures that controlled information, culture, and the arts: the Reichskulturkammer and Reichspropagandaamt. The 30s and 40s were when the radio became established, and the Nazi regime used it as its principal propaganda vehicle. As Gunther Anders states, Hitler and Goebbels understood that through the radio they could give mass manipulation its maximum effect, and simultaneously drain power from the masses (Anders, 2011a [1961]: 89). The Nazi regime prompted the production of the cheapest transistor in Europe, the Volksempfänger. Restaurants, factories, and countless public places installed these devices with loudspeakers, and the “guardians of the radio” were created, whose task was to check if citizens listened to the appropriate radio broadcast (Welch, 2002: 38–43). The political spectacle was another great directive of Nazi propaganda (Jowett & O’Donnell, 1999 [1986]: 244–248). The Nuremberg rallies were the prime example, lasting 8 days and consisting of military apparatus, sound effects, and martial music. Biblioclasm was encouraged with public burning of books and attacks on libraries and bookshops. They also held events such as parades, processions, and funeral liturgies  – forms of langsamen Masse (slow mass), as designated by Elias Canetti in his long essay Masse und Macht (1986 [1960]: 43)  – for party leaders and war heroes.22 Film propaganda was likewise estimulated, the regime having instituted two support entities for cinema, the

 In “Hitler, according to Speer” (1979a [1971]) and also in “The Arch of Triumph” (Canetti, 1979b [1971]), Canetti stresses the importance Hitler gave to buildings to attract and secure the masses, generally huge sites, cultural buildings, constructions in stone meant to withstand eternity. Jowett and O’Donnell’s study (1999 [1986]: 244–248) shows that these events made German people see Hitler in a context in which their country appeared to have recovered from the defeat of WWI and it took them to the Aryan myth of the past. In these rallies a wide variety of symbols designed to emphasize the regime’s power and authority were used, including the eagle, the flag of Nazi martyrs, the Nazi salute, the carrying of swords and knives, the use of fire, the swastika cross and the flag. 22

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Reichfilmkammer and the Filmkreditbank. Triumph des Willens, by Leni Riefenstahl, in 1935, is the greatest work of cinema supported by the Nazi regime. Both the United Kingdom and the United States, during WWII, created bureaus for the control of information and propaganda once more. In September of 1939, the British government instituted the new Ministry of Information (MOI), and in 1941, a secret service called Political Warfare Executive (PWE). The two entities had the mission to discredit the enemy’s morale, encourage the troops abroad, and create a favorable view of the Allies.23 In the USA, Franklin D. Roosevelt established the federal agency United States Office of War Information (OWI) in 1942. It was a complex structure, just like its predecessor, the CPI.24 It was in charge of producing official information and censoring. The USA placed a large part of film production at the service of the war. The research by Meyerson (1995 [1964]: 225–259) and Colon (2019: 212–215) indicate that between 1939 and 1945, Hollywood received precise instructions for making films. Five of the most famous directors of the time – Frank Capra, William Wyler, John Huston, John Ford, and George Stevens – committed themselves to the conflict.25 Hollywood promoted cooperation between the United States and the Soviet Union through the documentary, Mission to Moscow, that praised Stalin. In the USSR, already under the full command of Stalin and after the terror or the Moscow Trials, in 1936–1938, the aforementioned agency, Glavlit, became more complex. Fitzpatrick’s (1992) study indicates that seven divisions controlled military and state secrets, inspected foreign literature, supervised the information of foreign correspondents, evaluated the books and magazines of printer-publishers, did the preliminary review of major newspapers, radio stations, and broadcast materials from TASS (news agency), and dominated the printing companies. An artistic movement called socialist realism was also created, which became the official art

 The PWE’s activities consisted of the spread of rumors and propaganda, the development of disinformation campaigns and clandestine publications, and even the creation of a set of clandestine radio stations. At the end of the war, the PWE was given the task of re-educating German prisoners of war. 24  The OWI’s objectives were achieved through the Domestic Branch and the Overseas Branch. The Domestic Branch coordinated the News Bureau, which was responsible for publishing information and official news about the war effort destined to the domestic audience, while it censured information in conjunction with the Office of Censorship. The Overseas Branch distributed US news and information abroad, directed Voice of America and coordinated the propaganda policy with the Allies (Cull, 2003a, b). 25  The Morale Branch of the US War Department was dedicated to producing films, press articles and radio broadcasts. Capra joined the US military and led the Morale Branch of the U.S. War Department. In response to the impact of Triumph des Willens, by Leni Riefenstahl, Capra directed seven 60-min films that made up a series entitled Why we fight, considered to this day a masterpiece of propaganda. This series first began to be screened in military training centers for American, British, Canadian, Australian and New Zealand soldiers, and later in cinemas in Great Britain. 23

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until 1950.26 During World War II the propaganda, which had previously been centered on communist ideals, was redirected to soviet patriotism and the cult of Stalin. All the previously mentioned institutions, British, German, North American, and Russian, counted with the participation, commitment, and legitimization of scientists, technicians, publicists, writers, journalists, artists, photographers, filmmakers, and other mass communication experts. Their actions included setting up campaigns, producing a diverse array of materials, and using all methods of propaganda and mass manipulation for the purposes established by their government and military command. As Jacques Ellul shows in Propagandes, propaganda will never cease to corrupt the public sphere after the Great Wars, both in the context of the new conflicts that followed, namely in the Cold War and democratic regimes.27

13.3.2 Critique and Legitimization of Propaganda The work of Viennese writer Karl Kraus is still remembered thanks to his vigorous criticism of propaganda during World War I and the press’s complicity. His drama from 1922, Die Letzten Tage der Menschheit: Tragödie in fünf Akten mit Vorspiel und Epilog, joins the denouncement of the war with the denouncement of the press that supposedly only reported it. For Kraus, as his fictional alter ego said  – the Gumbler (Der Nörgler)  – in scene 26 of the Fifth act, the “newsprint mobilized weapons.” The following words in this scene clearly reveal what he meant: “The rotary press made cripples of us all before we succumbed to cannon fire” (2015 [1918]: 513). In his view, the press generates a journalism of repetition and cliché that damages the relationship between words and meaning. The distortion of language by the press was the antechamber to the destruction of war. Also during World War I, John Dewey was a rigorous critic of propaganda in the USA. He became part of an anti-propaganda movement to reject the CPI’s activity and denounced the US government for using the same weapons as its opponents. For Dewey, democracy should not be defended by methods that promoted a kind of masslike conformity, but through public education programs aimed at forming citizens that could formulate independent judgments. In Individualism Old and New, he wrote “We lived exposed to the greatest flood of mass suggestion that any people  Socialist realism was conceived by Andrej Zdanov, Joseph Stalin’s right-hand man for culture. Theatre, literature and the visual arts had to be committed to the education and training of the masses for socialism. Socialist realism was founded on rigid and constrained rules and encompassed a thematic spectrum based on popular scenes, rural and urban landscapes, the representation of the activities of the working classes and the Red Army and the portraits of the main leaders and of Lenin. In this regard, see Fitzpatrick (1992) and Chung et al. (1996). After WWII, socialist realism was incorporated by the Warsaw Pact countries and adopted by artists influenced by Marxism-Leninism in various countries of the world. 27  For a comprehensive perspective of Ellul’s thoughts on propaganda, see, for instance, Winner (2013), and Colon (2019). 26

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has ever experienced. (...) The publicity agent is perhaps the most significant symbol of our present social life” (1962 [1930]: 42–43).28 However, it was in the USA that propaganda was legitimized in the academic and scientific world. Its main mentor was Harold Lasswell, author of Propaganda Technique in the World War (1938 [1927]), a dissertation that compares the organization of propaganda in the main warring countries of the First World War. Based on the behaviorist theory that certain stimuli corresponded to certain effects, an idea that has already been questioned by the Chicago pragmatists, Lasswell placed the effectiveness of messages at the heart of the research. To Lasswell, propaganda was a new control technique that the elites had at their disposal to contain the ignorance and superstitions of the masses. Lasswell tried to save propaganda from those who defined it as a communication of lies, arguing that only controversial issues should be a subject of propaganda. This vision came to inspire the sociologists Paul Lazarsfeld and Robert K. Merton from the University of Colombia, two founding figures of mass communication research.29 In a different military conflict, the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939), the English journalist and writer George Orwell had an experience with mass manipulation that was decisive for his literary and political career. The circumstances that he experienced and lived in that war in 1936–1937 led him to elaborate one of the most accurate predictions of the possibility of the rise of a totalitarian information state. In Homage to Catalonia, published in 1938, he witnessed how the Spanish Communist Party (PCE), strongly supported by Soviet power and by Comintern (Communist Internacional), instead of promoting left-wing concertation against right-wing Francoist troops, tried to discredit socialist rivals and even eliminate anarchists and Trotskyists. The PCE accused them of being part of an international fascist conspiracy, a falsehood that had already been used by Stalinism against its opponents in the USSR. In this work, Orwell reveals that the PCE used the same proceedings of distorting information of events and of cruel repression in the fight for power as Franco’s Phalangist did. His later books, especially Animal Farm (1945) and Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949), are inspired by the purpose of debunking the Soviet myth to stimulate the revival of the socialist movement under other

 Regarding the American experience with propaganda, see, for instance, Sproule (1997).  As Timothy Glander clarifies, for Lazarsfeld and Merton, the propaganda could be false or deceitful, but it does not necessarily need to be so. They separated what they called technical propaganda, based on statements of fact, from exhortative propaganda, based on emotional appeals. They believed that the “facts,” detailed circunstancial facts, were effective tools of persuasion. They advocated for a propaganda of facts to fight the spread of the mistrust and skepticism that were corrosive forces in modern societies. Large sectors of the population were unable to understand the trends and forces behind them and the historical events they were experiencing. All of this emphasized the profound need for guidance. For Lazarsfeld and Merton, technical propaganda was thus necessary and should be used on a large scale (Glander, 1999: 119–122). 28 29

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principles.30 But Nineteen Eighty-Four can also be read from a broader perspective: it projects a dystopian future whose protagonist is an omniscient state, based on methods and sociotechnical communicative contexts of degrading language and using falsehood to make one believe that reality was what the State determined and is where history is systematically rewritten. In the twenty-first century, 1984 is a metaphor for the rise of a society in which its citizens are controlled by the manipulation of millions of metadata.

13.3.3 Mass Manipulation, Political Campaigns, and Consumerism Mass manipulation was not only a reality carried out by bureaus created by governments and military forces in the context of war or revolutions. In the USA, right at the end of WWI, private companies emerged dedicated to the strategic use of media and information through campaigns that they set up for customers. They were the precursors of a trend that, throughout the twentieth century, established itself in business, politics, and other social spheres under a plethora of designations, such as public relations, advertising, marketing, or consultancy. Austrian American Edward Bernays stood out as a pioneer of such campaigns. He had been a prominent member of the CPI, and the campaigns he directed can be considered “evidential” in the sense of Ginzburg (1986),31 that is, campaigns that were considered eccentric when they were launched, but turned into a model for future advertisement and mass manipulation. Bernays was a friend of political theorist Walter Lippmann, defender of the perspective that the media and journalism were a machine of reproducing “stereotypes” and “manufacturing consent.” In Public Opinion (1997 [1922]), Lippmann argues that the perception of reality that the mass media construct is not only ambiguous but conditioned by prejudice and controlled by clichés. Whoever dominates the process of forming public opinion is then able to manipulate it. Lippmann calls this process manufacturing consent. His thesis is inspired by crowd psychology of Scipio Sighele, Gustave Le Bon, Gabriel Tarde, and Sigmund Freud. The crowd is an obstacle to avoid or subdue for the good governance of society. Bernays developed his work in dialogue with Lippmann’s ideas, proposing to organize the process of manufacturing consent, instead of questioning it. Propaganda entities during the  In his essay “Why I write,” he affirms: “Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism, as I understand it.” Nevertheless, Orwell’s work was exploited by anti-communist propaganda during the Cold War (Orwell, 2020 [1946]). 31  In this work, Ginzburg opposes a rationalist and quantifier model with origins in seventeenth century Europe, that omitted this from thought and research to the action and the senses in the world, by an indiciary paradigm that focuses on the most neglected details of signs of problems, or vast and profound symptoms. 30

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wars convinced him that the manufacturing of consent was achievable. In a democracy, when force could no longer be used to constrain the crowds, the only option was propaganda.32 If Lasswell had a dubious perspective about propaganda, by contrast Bernays had a very clear agenda. Bernays’ public relations firm was hugely successful in several campaigns he ran for US companies and government agencies. He invented a new form of advertising: instead of simply praising the characteristics of a product, of a cause, or a person, he associated them with realities the public desired. Examples of such campaigns range from promoting women tobacco consumption as a symbol of women’s freedom, breakfast with eggs and bacon, at the service of a bacon businessman and using the medical authority to endorse it. The most extraordinary of Bernays’ campaigns had the anomalous privilege of being at the core of Tiempos Recios, a novel published in 2019 by the Nobel Prize for literature Mário Vargas Llosa. In 1951, in Guatemala, Jacobo Árbenz was elected president after a free election, on the basis of public works and reform programs that aimed to modernize the country’s economy. One of its measures was to nationalize arable land not used by large landowners, as was the case with the American company United Fruit, which had vast properties in Central America, the Caribbean Islands, and Colombia. Bernays invented a campaign based on the lie that Guatemala was becoming a satellite of the Soviet Union and that the Panama Canal could be seized by the Russians. The campaign led in 1954 to a CIA operation, directed at the time by a former United Fruits representative, that was behind a coup carried out by the military officer Carlos Castillo Armas, who overthrew Árbenz. Bernays’ campaign is, on the one hand, an exponent of all campaigns that have been carried out to date based on the “red scare” and, on the other, a precursor to subsequent campaigns that articulate organized lies, data, algorithms, and meddling in other countries’ political and electoral processes. The campaigns led by Bernays stimulated the systematic application of methods of mass manipulation to political consultancy. Hannah Arendt wrote with great candor “Truth and politics”, published for the first time in 1967 in The New Yorker: “No one has ever doubted that truth and politics are on rather bad terms with each other, and no one, as far as I know, has ever counted truthfulness among the political virtues.” Historian Jill Lepore (2012) refers to Campaigns, Inc., a company founded in 1933 by journalists Clem Whitaker and Leone Baxter, as an avant-garde in the execution of political campaigns for politicians and companies. They were campaigns driven by new principles and methods they had invented. Each voter had to be looked at as a consumer. Candidates should be considered easier to sell than solutions for problems. If a candidate does not have an opponent, one must be created.

 For Bernays, the art of mentally reaching the masses, in other words, the factic power, was the art of governing. In Propaganda, he defined it as “the conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized opinions and habits of the masses”. A logical consequence of democratic societies, he continued, is to be “governed by people of whom we ignore everything, who shape our spirits, forge our tastes and blow our ideas” (2004 [1928]). 32

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It is necessary to say the same thing over and over. When a candidate cannot fight, he must put on a show. Campaigns, Inc. launched dirty political campaigns. In 1934, it managed to ruin Upton Sinclair’s candidacy for governor of California, they took quotes from characters in his books and presented them in the newspapers as if they were his political ideas. Whitaker and Baxter also developed political campaigns for companies that did not have a good public image, such as Standard Oil and DuPont. Their objective was to spread positive ideas about these companies and create legislation that favored these businesses. In line with Bernays, Whitaker and Baxter thought that their profession consisted of guiding people’s minds.

13.3.4 The Formal-Instrumental Meaning of Communication The social experience initiated and developed by the institutions of information control and mass manipulation reformulated the substantive meaning of communication that had been elaborated at the turn of the nineteenth to the twentieth century. This experience established a conception of communication that can be designated as formal (or instrumental) in the sense that it aims at effectiveness and has no other rational criterion than to choose the means that will accomplish its established end, whatever that end may be. It differs, therefore, radically from the substantive sense. Its formal significance was consolidated by the mathematical theory of information (Shannon, 1948; Shannon & Weaver, 1949) linked to engineering and technology, and the cybernetic movement of the 40s and 50s (Wiener, 1948, 1950). Both shared an information theory that excluded any meaning, value, or quality to affirm its mathematical, structural, and technical components. In technological and ideological terms, the mathematical theory of information and the cybernetic movement are pillars of the project that aimed to build a computer network and the subsequent digitalization process. With the end of World War II, Nazism, and fascism in the great powers of western Europe, it was believed that mass manipulation would disappear. But it became even more prolific in the consumer society that was established in the post-war. German theorists Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno were already thinking about the transformations in culture associated with mass communication in a radical way, arguing that it had become a commodity, a product fully organized according to the industrial logic of a hyper-concentrated economic power (2002 [1944]). In the post-war context, mass manipulation was not only characterized as an open psychological action specific for attacking the enemy. Nevertheless, with the Cold War, the enemy did not cease to exist. Mass manipulation also required slow and hidden psychological action that created a favorable atmosphere, to steer subjects without them realizing it. Jacques Ellul referred to the nexus between these two types of propaganda, one more direct, oriented to modify opinions and attitudes, and another that must precede it with sociological characteristics (1965). One prepares the land, plows the soil, the other reaps what has been sown.

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When Horkheimer, Adorno and Ellul wrote these dreary visions, television was out of the initial state it had been in at the end of World War II and communication was already under the banner of the penetrating strength of this device and of powerful institutions – television stations and channels – that were formed. Television brought diverse means and forms of information and culture together, such as journalism, cinema, broadcasting, photography, and spectacle, and like radio, delivered its product to the consumer’s home. First, television consolidated a large public on a national scale, and then, with satellites, it generated audiences with a global dimension. But the world that electromagnetic waves bring home is characterized, as the philosopher of technology Günther Anders upheld, by its spectral dimension. Broadcasted events are both present and absent, real and apparent, they are there, and they are not there, they are phantoms (1956: 14–24). Cinema also thematized the ontological ambiguity of technoimage, as is evident in the admirable film by Michelangelo Antonioni, Blow Up (1966). Dissociation was increasingly established between two registers of meaning, those from events and images of devices have also become a central topic in philosophy. Albert Borgmann wrote a major work, Holding on to Reality: The Nature of Information at the Turn of the Millenium (1999), whose title says it all.

13.4 Computers, Networks, Digitalization and Datafication At the end of the twentieth century, a new machine, the computer, and the most complex technoscientific system ever created, the World Wide Web, shook up communicative environment, social practices and made technological fetishism reappear. The computer dates to 1945, it is a contemporary of television, but it only started working on an experimental basis in the 1950s and 1960s, and its use became widespread at the end of the twentieth century. In the 1970s and 1980s, the first computer networks appeared, and around 1990, the World Wide Web, a virtual network rooted on the physical Internet network that represented the materialization of new communication potentialities that were difficult to foresee. The computer and the Internet are the engines of the socio-technical process of digititalization and a new environment for the construction of social, cultural, economic, and political worlds. In the 1970s, PCs appeared, laptops came in the 1980s, and in the 2000s smartphones and tablets arose. At the end of 2019, the Internet had about 4.6 billion users, and there were about 5.1 billion mobile phone owners. The Internet was originally thought of by its founders as a system that was open, plural, and facilitated freedom of information. It was gradually constituted through agreements between countless organizations and inventors, as a “spontaneous

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order.”33 Communication turned into a “new utopia”, as Philippe Breton (1997) asserts, a “myth information”, to use the expression by Langdon Winner (1989), or a “digital sublime” according to Vincent Mosco’s words (2004). But very early on, the Internet became a target of clashes to determine its course. In the context of market expansion and the radicalization of economic liberalism since the 1980s, many perceived that the Internet offered a new wave of growth in market capitalism and its logic. Digitalization has been implemented under the pressure of its own commercialization or authoritarian powers, which is leading to the most diverse cognitive, political and moral pathologies. There already is considerable research and literature on the countless problems that the Internet generates: the emergence of digital divides, which increase inequalities; the fragmentation and polarization of the public sphere, which leads to the strengthening of pre-existing ideological views; the spread of the culture of individuality via egocentric information; the additive nature of social networks enhanced by algorithmic targeting; the decline of an independent press, which has called into question the intermediary role of responsible journalism; the brutality of public debate through the computerised dissemination of hate speech; the proliferation of disembodied communication, that promotes the dissimulation of identity; the work mediated by platforms that create precarious and poorly paid jobs; the threat to privacy and many public freedoms. At the forefront of the Internet’s disturbing potentialities and consequences is the processing of huge data sets and their handling, which has an intense influence on social reality. We are facing a prodigious business that is simultaneously a governance instrument that poses a danger to freedom. Large networks are now colossal institutions, known as technological platforms or computer giants, for predominantly commercial purposes. Although others exist in countries like China and Russia and are very subordinated or conditioned by political control. The main platforms are the GAFAM (an acronym that stems from the combining of the brands of Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, and Microsoft). Each of these technology companies has billions of users and holds a market value of hundreds of millions of dollars. The interactions that take place on these networks produce huge data sets – social media data, business data, and personal data – that can be collected, tracked, and analyzed by processing them with different techniques to generate useful information and economic value. In 2020–2021, the critical social and economic situation produced by the COVID-19 pandemic and the political responses to it accelerated the use of the Internet and its networks to maintain forms of sociability, economy, work, learning, transport, policing, leisure, and friendship, which were already in action before the pandemic crisis. Such communicative interactions were subject to data collection and processing for purposes that users did not determine or control. For example, advertising, police control, computer propaganda, illicit interference  In the sense of Hayek, although he has essentially thought of social-cultural formations as natural languages, money as an institution, traditions and markets, England’s “Common Law” (one of his favorite examples) as emerging and not as designed and planned. For a discussion of the history and the notion of the web, see Musso (1997, 2003) and Garcia (2016). 33

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in electoral processes and political monitoring. An online connection, then, implies an interaction in a heteronomous environment (governed by someone else, and not by oneself). This interaction, this relationship, does not happen only with the interference of other individuals or (more or less known) institutions, but with opaque devices that filter, guide, and direct the connection. Or that track it, influence it, and monitor it. The data collected is processed and analyzed in such a way as to provide conclusions and decisions. Technological platforms classify digital information according to different usage values around popularity (visits), authority (links), reputation (likes), and prediction of behavior based on Internet users’ navigation trails (digital footprint) (Cardon, 2015). The key to its success lies in the systematic improvement of data management and classification models, from its original collection to its subsequent analysis. This is where big data, data science, artificial intelligence and machine learning come in. Algorithms are at the core of its processing, designed to serve the purposes of the platforms or entities to which the platforms sell the data. These algorithms are well-­ defined mathematical instructions. They classify digital information using calculation rules. They produce systems that select some objects over others and impose a hierarchy. This set of procedures has been coined as Datafication. With machine learning, human programming is even suppressed following the notion that mathematical models exposed to new data can “learn” from previous calculations. The way in which mass digital information is classified influences  – or even structures – the cognitive and communicative contexts and frames of our society. Classification systems that define situations can turn them real, as they contribute to structuring the decisions and options of individuals and institutions. If algorithms define a situation as real, it will be real in its consequences.34 Quantification has a scientific aura and is linked to predicting behavior, being at the same time a reduction of the qualitative dimensions of human and social life. Datafication, quantification, and algorithms all signify the generalization of calculability as a way of acting in the world. Those procedures define situations and guide decisions, allow automatic processes, justify choices, and adapt to mass surveillance. They allow the formation of groups to whom forms of political persuasion and advertisement can be sent. This is another development of a quantophrenic society, of fascination and obsession with quantitative methods, a pathology35 that has already come from the application of statistics and probabilities since the nineteenth century. Jill Lepore shows us that the antecedent of this type of activity is found in the North American company Simulmatics Corporation. Founded during the Cold War by social scientists, this company extracted data, used algorithms to target voters and consumers and

 This application of Thomas’s theorem is a quotation from a communication by Mireille Hildebrandt, professor of Law and Technology at the Free University of Brussels, held at the colloquium on Artificial Intelligence and Big Data, organized by the Institute of Social Science and School of Law, both from University of Lisbon, that took place on December 5–6, 2019. 35  The French expression la maladie de chiffres is very appropriate to characterize this phenomenon. 34

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destabilized politics, decades before these practices were carried out by Facebook, Google, or Cambridge Analytics (Lepore, 2020). New forms of capital appeared: capital of visibility on the net, capital of authority, capital of reputation. The economic branch of data emerged, a crucial dimension of a type of capitalism of our time – “cognitive capitalism” (Vercellone, 2005, 2007; Moulier-Boutang, 2011). It is based on the appropriation of knowledge and science, innovation, technology services, and creative industries. A capitalism that can also be called “digital” (Schiller, 1999), “platform” (Srnicek, 2017), and “surveillance” (Zubof, 2019). Datafication, algorithms and artificial intelligence are a structuring part of companies’ business models today, both in their relationship with customers and workers and in the development of competitive strategies in the market. They have high policing value because they allow individuals’ digital footprints to be followed and facilitate surveillance. They also have political value because they influence the minds and behavior of groups, states, and nations. By segmenting a target audience in order to constantly disseminate information to it, they have been tools of propaganda and computer disinformation in a systematic and systemic way. They increase the capacity of control companies and states have over individuals, but also allow disinformation, propaganda, and dissemination of lies to now be performed by any user or groups of users. Through metaverses, the digital economy is seeking to establish a communicational ecology based on social virtual reality. All these potentialities opened a new path that goes far beyond the influence over minds that traditional media provided – to that of directing and monitoring behavior. The Chinese state watches over its population through more than 300 million cameras supported by artificial intelligence and facial recognition technology and has a system called “social credit” that monitors behavior. The “digital dictatorship” of China (Kendall-­ Taylor et al., 2020) materialized the Orwellian dystopia of a totalitarian information state. A regime that, in the twenty-first century, curiously combines monstruous powers born in the previous century of the promethean-faustian hubris of the western world – political totalitarianism, technoscience without ethical limits, neoliberal capitalism, total propaganda, and digital  surveillance.36 On 24 February 2022, Russia, which also possesses those powers, invaded Ukraine and subjected humanity to the threat that has been hanging over our heads – nuclear apocalypse. At the same time, in countries with freedom of information, anyone with a smartphone can watch the war in Ukraine, see images of military columns broadcast by drones, express opinions globally, and follow cyber-warriors from various countries fighting a cyber battle with robots, trolls and algorithms. We are living in times of “media unlimited” (Gitlin, 2002).

 The concept of Rudolf Hilferding of “totalitarian state economy” is of great relevance for the discussion about the nature of the state and economy of China today (1947 [1940]). For a discussion of how China’s dictatorship relates to technoscientific power to maintain authoritarianism, see Ringen (2016), Lee (2018), Griffiths (2019) and Stittmatter (2019). 36

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13.5 Conclusion Human beings relate with one another through forms of social interaction that are established through various languages: verbal, oral, or written; nonverbal (corporal, images, drawings, graphics); and paraverbal (intensity, timbre, intonation). Such forms of social interaction we call communication. They are social interactions that can be in communicative contexts/figurations of co-presence (face-to-face), socio-­ technical (at a distance) or a mix of both. Since the invention of the movable type mechanical system by Gutenberg, remote information (through written language) is carried out through machines and technological systems and involves the social institutions we call the media. As we sustain in this essay, this invention is the beginning of a path to the intensification of transmission of messages over distance that, from the fifteenth century onwards, was strengthened by both the creation and adoption of new technological means and systems, and by the intervention of media institutions. Corroborating that communication is not a disembodied reality, communication has been restructured through technologies such as the press, telegraph, radio, television, computer and the Internet, and by institutions such as printer-­ publishers, the media, propaganda bureaus, advertising offices and the so-called tech giants. Over a little more than five centuries, communication has taken on new frames and figurations that stimulated profound changes in society, culture, economic wealth, and forms of power. Regarding the formation of this new historical reality, four main phases can be outlined. The first concerns the introduction of mechanization through the Gutenberg’s print press. This was an innovation carried out by non-scientific technicians and between the fifteenth and eighteenth centuries it led to the formation of the first modern media institutions, the printer-publishers of books and the newspaper. Books and newspapers began to provide a developing market. Their capacity to disseminate information and promote argumentation in a space outside political power, brought about a type of relationship over distance with a mental and mimetic nature. This kind of relationship stimulated the constitution of the ideal of a liberal public sphere based on rationality. The printing press remained quite stable for nearly four centuries. The second phase, which took place in the nineteenth century, is linked to the creations of entrepreneurial technicians who sought economic revenues and were the source of innovations in the press and, later, following the beginnings of electrification, the invention of the electric telegraph, photography, radio and cinema. These innovations were not limited to the technical reproducibility of written communication and sought the transmission of sound and image in space. They were the basic conditions for the development of a common field of transmission communication technologies. At the theoretical level communication was considered a substantive reality as a symbolic action, intrinsic to the formation of the human self, social relationships, and society. These first two phases were not stimulated by science and research for industrial purposes, although the second was already under the direction of industrialization in various economic areas.

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The third phase is associated with the full development of electrification that allowed, in the transition to the twentieth century, the development of electronics, telecommunications and later audiovisual.  Science was already being applied to research for industrial puposes, and during this stage the first economic groups and broadcasting empires emerged, operating in the new economic context of national markets. Innovation in information technologies began to be structured. The strong power of influence of these technologies and the media was used for mass manipulation in the context of the two world wars, which led to the instrumentalization of communication and the emergence of a meaning of communication as a means for any end. The fourth phase began in the scenario of planning and acceleration of scientific and technoscientific innovation after World War II and of a consumer society that had grown. At the technological level, it began to be characterized, at first, by the convergence between telecommunication and audiovisual, represented by TV and the power of technical image. In a second period, we witnessed the confluence of telecommunication, audiovisual, and computer science, which led to digital communication and datafication. Computers reproduce written information and diffuse it; they collect and disseminate data, sounds, photos, and moving images; they enable remote interaction between many users and can be transported. Books, the press, telegraphy, telephones, radio, TV, cinema, and file systems are part of the machine complex that is the computer. Anders noted that the expansion of machines implies that certain machines become parts of other machines (2011b [1969]: 120). In fact, computers are converting previous machines and technological information systems (and not only) into parts of a single machine. Through computers, computer networks and digitalization, tech giants are really ensuring an ever-greater share of the management and essential services of our individual and collective lives. “Total machine” is how the German philosopher calls a machine like a computer (2011b [1969]: 121). Computational information technologies have become a pan-technology. As we have shown, changes in transmission communication comprise a period in which certain technological innovations occurred in a pre-scientific era and others stemmed from the systematic application of science. This historical contingency leads to the rejection of any general understanding that views changes in information technologies resulting from social needs or a supposed linear march of the evolution of technology. However, since the emergence of print media to digital communication, the nexus between communication and transmission through technology has been a trend, a continuous process with historical duration, that has always progressed and has become more complex. Media institutions were constructed based on technologies that overcame space and their potentialities interacted with the construction of nation-states, the development of capitalism, and the formation of markets at a national and global scale. Media information was also accelerated by modern wars due to its power of influence and mass manipulation, having been intensely used in the great conflicts of the twentieth and twenty-­ first centuries. The information technologies that transpose geography increase the effect of symbols and messages when reaching people and places that are far away.

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They enable centralized control, which is why they have proven so appropriate for political power, commercial expansion, and large-scale campaigns. Vast domains of culture and communication are now a function of the technological and commercial order. The technological potentialities of modern media, and other institutions – governmental or commercial  – associated with communication and culture, and the destruction caused in the mediation of journalism and the press, have been the most potent support for mass manipulation. This has implied diverse forms of instrumentalization of communication. Among which is the deliberate creation and dissemination of organized lying, misinformation, the concealment of data, a refusal to debate, and propaganda. The instrumentalization of communication means that language is used to deceive, conceal, dominate the opinion and beliefs of one or more interlocutors, instead of sharing the same experience or an exchange of arguments by interlocutors who mutually recognize one another. Furthermore, the media can awaken what Hermann Broch called Massenwahn (mass delirium or mass hysteria)37 and other phenomena of political psychosis, through exhorting emotions, exploiting anxiety, instigating the desire for power, and appealing to delusion. All forms of mass manipulation destroy the possibility of generating bonds in a world that accepts plurality and conflict and thus requires discussion and respect. For this reason, they have been leading to the demise of the public sphere and undermining democratic political life. This is the result of the predominance of the formal meaning of communication over the substantive meaning. Mediatization describes the process – a path-carving – through which communication was being restructured in its contexts, frames, forms, connections, meanings, and consequences. Mediatization involves two major fields that have maintained mutual reinforcement relationships: on the one hand, technology, not only as an object, but also as knowledge, transforming activity and cultural force; and, on the other hand, institutions that welcome (or promote) technologies, structure social interactions and mediate the relationship between society and the practices of individuals. It is a transforming process of communication with broad implications that results from the intervention of technologies and media institutions. In the beginning, mediatization was a slow movement, with obstacles, a path without a defined direction. This movement acquired form and meaning through technological inventions, collective imaginaries, sociotechnical communicative contexts, institutional planning, economic stakes, political guidelines, and legal frameworks. It is misleading to speak of mediatization without considering the technologization of communicative contexts. There is a fundamental need to question technology and not contribute to its reification. Denying technological determinism does not have to imply the inability to criticize technological choices. With the advent of computers and digitalization, both mediatization and technologization have become more pervasive, spreading their effects to multiple domains of social life. One of the most important consequences of media is the relevance gained by remote communication

37

 In this regard, see Borch (2008, 2012).

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with its dependence on technological systems. However, if technology and media are vectorial, as James W. Carey has argued, other non-technological and non-media factors exist in social transformation. We, of course, do not deny that information technologies and the media have generated new symbolic forms and imaginative experiences, as recalled by Don Ihde (2007 [1976]), but communication is not limited to these means. It is a fallacy to identify communication with the communication of the media or with digital. This communication does not encompass fundamental forms of human communication (communication with the body, with the face, in co-presence, in rituals), nor does it satisfy all the substantive needs of social life. But it is true that sociotechnical communicative contexts have molded the social world and have even become prominent with the COVID-19 pandemic. Vast areas of society’s communication are in the hands of the media, tech giants, and their own power and market logic. The metaverses created by digital platforms are eroding our common universe and establishing a dystopian virtual world. The main aspect when considering mediatization is that it has been a process in motion that does not necessarily signify the expansion of communication, on the contrary, it can be the opposite. The history of modern communication has followed the direction of increased power, domination, and wealth, but such a route does not have to be irreversible. The reality of human communication remains open, although certain paths are more possible than others. The future is never fixed. Redefining the condition of human communication is a crucial endeavor if we want to continue to strive for liberty.

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Marx, L. (1964). The machine in the garden: Technology and pastoral idea in America. Oxford University Press. McQuail, D. (1994 [1983]). Mass communication theory: An introduction. Sage. Mead, G. H. (1934). Mind, self, and society. The University of Chicago Press. Meyerson, J.  A. (1995 [1964]). Theater of war: American propaganda films during the Second World War. In R. Jackall (Ed.), Propaganda (pp. 225–259). New York University Press. Miquel, P. (2016 [1959]). L’affaire Dreyfus. PUF. Mornet, D. (2010). Les origines intellectuelles de la Révolution Française: 1705–1787. Editions Tallandier. Mosco, V. (2004). Digital sublime: Myth, power and cyberspace. The MIT Press. Moulier-Boutang, Y. (2011). Cognitive capitalism. Polity Press. Musso, P. (1997). Télécommunication et philosophie des réseaux: La posterité paradoxale de Saint-Simon. PUF. Musso, P. (2003). Critique des réseaux. PUF. Orwell, G. (1938). Homage to Catalonia. Secker & Warburg. Orwell, G. (1945). Animal farm: A fairy story. Secker & Warburg. Orwell, G. (1949). Nineteen eighty-four. Secker & Warburg. Orwell, G. (2020 [1946]). Why I write. In P. Davison (Ed.), Orwell and politics (pp. 457–462). Penguin Books. Peter, J.-P. (1961). Dimensions de l’affaire. Annales, 16(6), 1141–1167. Peters, J.  D. (1989). Satan and Savior: Mass communication in progressive thought. Critical Studies in Mass Communication, 6(3), 247–263. Philpott, W. (2014). Somme, battles of. In U. Daniel, P. Gatrell, O. Janz, H. Jones, J. D. Keene, A.  Kramer, & B.  Nasson (Eds.), International encyclopedia of the First World War. Freie Universität Berlin. https://encyclopedia.1914-­1918-­online.net/article/somme_battles_of Price, J. (2016). Popular revolutionary theatres: The Soviet Union. In Modern popular theatre (pp. 31–48). Palgrave Macmillan. Ringen, S. (2016). The perfect dictatorship: China in the 21st century. HKU Press. Robertson, E. (2020). Atrocity propaganda in Australia and Great Britain during the first world war. In P. Baines, J. O’Shaughnessy, & N. Snow (Eds.), The SAGE handbook of propaganda (pp. 22–37). Sage. Samoilenko, S. A., & Karnysheva, M. (2020). Character assassination as modus operandi of Soviet propaganda. In P. Baines, N. O’Shaughnessy, & N. Snow (Eds.), The SAGE handbook of propaganda (pp. 189–204). Sage. Savasir, G., & Güleç, E. (2020). Art as a political act: The Russian agit-props of the 1920s. ART-E Sanat Dergisi, 13(25), 301–333. Schiller, D. (1999). Digital capitalism: Networking the global market system. The MIT Press. Shannon, C. (1948). A mathematical theory of communication. The Bell Technical Journal, 379–423, 623–656. Shannon, C. E., & Weaver, W. (1949). The mathematical theory of communication. Illini Books. Sproule, J. M. (1997). Propaganda and democracy: The American experience of media and mass persuasion. Cambridge University Press. Srnicek, N. (2017). The challenges of platform capitalism: Understanding the logic of a new business model. Juncture, 23(4), 254–257. Standage, T. (2007 [1998]). The victorian Internet. The remarkable story of the telegraph and the nineteenth century’s on-line pioneers. Walker & Company. Stittmatter, K. (2019). We have been harmonized: Life in China’s surveillance state. Old Street Publishing. Subtil, F. (2015). As Guerras Mundiais e as mutações na teoria social da comunicação e dos media. Revista Famecos, 22(3), 15–40. Tarde, G. (1901). L’opinion et la foule. Félix Alcan. Taylor, P.  M. (2003 [1990]). Munitions of the mind: A history of propaganda from the ancient world to the present day. Manchester University Press.

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Taylor, C. (2004). Modern social imaginaries. Duke University Press. Ther, V. (2014). Propaganda at home (Germany). In International encyclopedia of the First World War. https://encyclopedia.1914-­1918-­online.net/article/propaganda_at_home_germany. Accessed 4 Feb 2020. Tocqueville, A. (2002 [1833]). Democracy in America. University of Chicago Press. Vercellone, C. (2005). The hypothesis of cognitive capitalism. Birkbeck Collegue and SOAS. Vercellone, C. (2007). From formal subsumption to general intellect: Elements for a marxist reading of the thesis of cognitive capitalism. Historical Materialism, 15(1), 13–36. Vladiminov, L. (1972). Glavlit: How the Soviet censor works. Index on Censorship, 1(3–4), 31–43. Weber, M. (1976 [1910]). Towards a sociology of the press. Journal of Communication, 26(3), 96–101. Welch, D. (2002 [1993]). The Third Reich: Politics and propaganda. Routledge. Welch, D. (2014 [2000]). Germany and propaganda in World War I: Pacifism, mobilization and total war. I. B. Tauris. Wiener, N. (1948). Cybernetics or control and communication in the animal and the machine. The MIT Press. Wiener, N. (1950). The human use of human beings. Houghton Mifflin. Winner, L. (1989). Mythinformation. The whale and the reactor (pp. 98–117). The University of Chicago Press. Winner, L. (2013). Propaganda and dissociation from truth. In H. M. Jerónimo, J. L. Garcia, & C. Mitcham (Eds.), Jacques Ellul and the technological society in the 21st century (pp. 99–113). Springer. Winock, M. (1992). Le mythe fondateur: L’affaire Dreyfus. PUF. Wu, T. (2010). The master switch: The rise and fall of information empires. Random House. Zubof, S. (2019). The age of surveillance capitalism: The fight for a human future at the new frontier of power. Profile Books. José Luís Garcia  is Senior Researcher at the Instituto de Ciências Sociais, Universidade de Lisboa (ICS-ULisboa) [Institute of Social Sciences, University of Lisbon] and received his PhD in Social Sciences from the same University. During his PhD studies he attended Ulrich Beck’s courses at the London School of Economics. He worked with Hermínio Martins at the University of Lisbon in the organisation of books, conferences and in the supervision of doctoral students in philosophy and sociology of technology. He was an elected member of the Society for Philosophy of Technology (SPT) board between 2015 and 2021. He is a member of the Advisory Council of the Cybersecurity Observatory, Portugal. Garcia has held lectureships and seminars at various universities in Portugal, Spain, France, Italy, and Brazil. His books, in the field of the philosophy of technology, includes Pierre Musso and the Network Society: From Saint-Simonianism to the Internet (Springer, 2016); and Jacques Ellul and the Technological Society in 21st Century (Springer, 2013). Filipa Subtil  holds a PhD in Social Sciences from the Universidade de Lisboa [University of Lisbon], Portugal. She is Assistant Professor at Escola Superior de Comunicação Social, Instituto Politécnico de Lisboa (ESCS-IPL)  [School of Communication and Media Studies, Polytechnic Institute of Lisbon] and researcher at ICNOVA.  She was visiting scholar at Departament of Communication Studies, University of Iowa (2010), and Muhlenberg Collegue (2008) in USA, at University Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński in Poland (2017–2018), and at the Departament of Public Communication, Universidad de Navarra in Spain (2019). Her main research interests are theory of communication and media and gender issues. Among her  publications are: Media and Portuguese Empire (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017, co-editor and author) and Compreender os Media: As Extensões de McLuhan ([Understanding the Media: The McLuhan Extensions], MinervaCoimbra, 2006, author).

Chapter 14

The Virtualization of the Archive José A. Bragança de Miranda

Abstract  The archive, despite its location in the past as a space apart for reserve and protection from that which cannot have free course in experience, corresponding to a specific institution and therefore being controlled, has suffered a dislocation and disseminates throughout experience. The decisive phenomenon is one of increasing indifferentiation between archive and life, between action already taken and action to be done, between the ephemeral and the enduring. This essay problematizes the archive at the moment of its digital and electronic transformation. Beyond preservation or reproduction of the remains or fragments of an action already completed, the archive seems to be concerned with the “first principleness” of experience, but also with the materiality on which all action is based. This formulation suggests something disturbing. An archival mediality, only effective through an immediate connectivity, presents a state of traceability (and repetition) of everything. Keywords  Archival · Actual · Virtual · Experience · Materiality · Memory

This text was originally published in Portuguese in 1996: A virtualização do arquivo, Revista da Faculdade de Ciências Sociais e Humanas 9: 95–117. Translated by João Manuel Carrilho. Reproduced with kind permission of the publisher. J. A. Bragança de Miranda (*) Faculdade de Ciências Sociais e Humanas, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Lisbon, Portugal e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 H. M. Jerónimo (ed.), Portuguese Philosophy of Technology, Philosophy of Engineering and Technology 43, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-14630-5_14

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J. A. Bragança de Miranda You have to learn to look. You have to open yourself to the data. TV offers incredible amounts of psychic data. It opens ancient memories of world birth, it welcomes us into the grid, the network of little buzzing dots that make up the picture pattern. There is light, there is sound. (Don DeLillo)

14.1 Introduction Our experience is undergoing profound mutations, difficult to apprehend. The difficulty stems from the speed with which they are occurring and, above all, from the way they are embedding themselves in everything that seemed obvious to us, and was accepted for millennia. The archive, a seemingly minor and accessory subject, is such a case. The current profusion of references to “files”, “databases”, “virtual memory”, “Random Access Memory”, etc., makes one think that something decisive is happening in this domain. This essay is dedicated to the issue of the archive, for which theoretical research remains largely undone,1 although, as is well known, it was an essential concept in Michel Foucault’s archaeology.2 Beyond preservation or reproduction of the remains, or fragments, of an action already completed, the archive seems to be concerned with the “first principleness” of experience (the first foundations of action), but also with the materiality on which all action is based. This formulation suggests something disturbing. The new weight of the “archive” is due to an almost imperceptible change, guided by the current technologization of experience. The archive takes on a new shape at the moment of its digital and electronic transformation. But it is not enough to describe its technologization, as if it were a simple increment of something that was already under way and in fact has endured since the beginnings of culture. This latter point of view is well represented by computer theorists, who present computer “databases”, or new digital materials as if they were essentially similar to the classic archive, which is never really questioned. One continues to think as if the technologization of the ephemeral, conferring on it a hitherto unthinkable durability, was not something radically new, as if it were an addition to the “natural” perpetuation of that which has a certain rigidity, of that which leaves material traits. Such visions, although scientifically sophisticated, remain trapped in classical schematics, the assumptions of which remain unquestioned, and correspond, after all, to the

 Jacques Derrida (1995) argued for the need to “re-elaborate a concept of archive”, something included in the need to which I alluded. Derrida’s reflections are important, but they are too caught up in Freudian analysis. The phenomenon of the archive goes beyond any concept, it is even a category of experience. 2  The notion of archive was central to Foucault’s “archaeological” phase, not for technical reasons, for example as an aid to research, or for bringing the secret vestiges of power to light. In the four volumes of Dits et Écrits (Foucault, 1994 [1964]), several thousand pages long, it becomes scarcer as time goes on. This is due to a change of emphasis from the arkhé, on which Foucault’s strategy of recollection was based, to the “ontology of actuality”. 1

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culmination of metaphysics, at the moment when nihilism is technically realized.3 Hence the seriousness of this question. From the point of view of the experience that we ourselves have made and received, the decisive phenomenon is one of increasing indifferentiation between archive and life, between action already taken and action to be done, between the ephemeral and the enduring. In other words, everything tends to be attracted to the archive, which seems endowed with the capacity to incorporate its “exterior”, to incorporate what it was not, and that on which it was based. It is a question of extracting the consequences of this new phenomenon: although in the past the archive was always localized, corresponding to a specific institution, and was therefore under control, today it is delocalized and spreads out through the whole of experience.4 There is a rupture happening before our very eyes that attacks the long history of the archive in the West as an annexed space, attached to power. This space was confused with certain buildings designed to accommodate the “documents” and titles, linked to family lineages, but also to certain political lineages and even to modern non-familial, universal politics. It is a long way from the Greek archons, with their multiple guard skills, conservation and juridical interpretation, to the

 Jim Collins discusses this transformation from the point of view of its new role in contemporary culture: “The emergence of new repositories of information such as the computer network and the living room exemplify the widespread reformulation of what constitutes an archive, and just as importantly what constitutes an archivist. The institutional borders of both were formerly delimited according to site and level of education. But, as the accessibility of the already said, the already sung, and the imagined has changed the storability, and by extension the manipulability of information, the nature of cultural authority that once guaranteed the sovereignty of the archive and archivist is in the process of destabilization and relegitimization through other evaluative criteria” (Collins, 1995: 25). It is debatable, as we shall see, that such a radical mutation can still be apprehended within the classical interpretative schemas, with its external and over-imposed ‘criteria’ for the ‘archive’. Everything tends to be attracted to the “archival”, everything being liable to be filed, not by any ethical, political or aesthetic criteria, but by the imperative of technical feasibility itself. 4  Jacques Derrida emphasizes the importance of location for the archive. He says: “the archives could do neither without substrate nor without residence. It is thus, in this domiciliation, in this house arrest, that archives take place. The dwelling, this place where they dwell permanently, marks this institutional passage from the private to the public, which does not always mean from the secret to the nonsecret. (…) With such a status, the documents, which are not always discursive writings, are only kept and classified under the title of the archive by virtue of a privileged topology. They inhabit this uncommon place, this place of election where law and singularity intersect in privilege. At the intersection of the topological and the nomological, of the place and the law, of the substrate and the authority, a scene of domiciliation becomes at once visible and invisible. I stress this point for reasons which will, I hope, appear more clearly later. They all have to do with this topo nomology, with this archontic dimension of domiciliation, with this archic, in truth patriarchic, function, without which no archive would ever come into play or appear as such (Derrida, 1995: 2–3). It seems to us that Derrida does not emphasize enough the “relocation” and consequent dissemination of the archive. This seems spring from the way in which he privileges the “deconstruction” of the Arkhé’s principleness as a place for the inscription of a power, of a “dominium”. No matter how necessary, the current nihilism of “archiving everything” is already deconstructing this “first principleness”, putting new questions to the archive. 3

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modern national archives, detached from lineages and constituting their own space,5 but it does not call into question its essential location. The classic archival space was a space apart, of reserve and protection from that which cannot have free course in experience, which is taken away from it for essential reasons, which has to do with ensuring continuity of lineages, national identities, but also with the support of lines of association which link self and other, past and future, memory and forgetfulness. Comparing it to the relocation that is taking place, the overwhelming tendency to “archive everything” is a radical departure. The archival space is extending to encompass the entire space, determining the whole experience by its archival quality. In Card File, a 1962 play, the American minimalist Robert Morris signalled this rupture in the archive: he can only respond with parody to its desire to reproduce everything. Through a series of purely personal classifications, he shows the circularity between doing and archiving, suggesting the archive as the act itself at the moment when something is archived, in which case the action presents itself as if in search of an archival totality. Thus, in the file entitled “dissatisfactions” of 7/17/62, 3:15 pm, it is recorded “that everything relevant will not be recorded”. The recorded item, the classification and the space of the card file are absolutely contiguous, revealing what is at stake: the disproportionate complexity of the archival in contemporaneity.6 A whole series of new anxieties apostrophize thought, itself uneasy at the ultimate limit that besets it. Thinking is determined by the “archive” of language and by the figures of thought already thought, but also by the names in which it is received. In this context, it is almost not worth emphasizing that the following reflections are purely experimental and provisional, but no less necessary.

14.2 Memory For reasons that are almost intuitive, archive and memory have always been associated. This does not stop the conflict, but prescribes it. In fact, from a “political” point of view, memory always had primacy, but this is changing with the loss of distinction between the mass storage of computers and historical memory.7 The insistence on a co-essentiality of both archive and memory misrepresents both. On the one hand, one tends to make the archive something “natural”, an institution for guarding and preserving “data”, and on the other hand, an insidious sublimation of memory, making it somewhat ineffable in comparison to the rude and dusty  Museums, family archives, collections, and heritage corresponded to a kind of mimetic diffusion of the great model of the modern national archive. Their current convergence is something new. 6  All criteria for “relevance” are lost, since the accomplishment of the archival work as an archive of the moments of the construction of the work is the only relevant thing that remains (cf. Card File in Krauss & Krens, 1984: 126–129). 7  One might even argue for the contrary. The archive is the basis for understanding memory, not the other way round. What follows will do justice to this statement. 5

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“­ materiality” of the archive. Memory is assumed to deal with life, and the archive with what remains when life disappears. This view dates from the beginnings of Western metaphysics: it culminated in Romanticism and its aesthetic celebration of “life.” In Hoffmann’s tale, Golden Vase, this tendency is taken to the extreme (Hoffmann, 1992). But in fact, the archive is not the reverse of memory, nor is memory an authentic archive, felt after all to be impossible. Only within a hierarchical relationship of both do they relate. The task of metaphysics was to establish this hierarchy, prolonged by the way the technique unbalanced the traditional hierarchy that values memory over the archive, or orality in respect to writing, which, in a certain perspective, is a form of archive. We have to consider memory without anything else, referring only to itself and, moreover, that everything on which the “restance” of memory is based, is related to the archival. Only a failure to understand the archival would lead to the argument that virtual memory, mass storage and ROM memory are extensions of traditional memory; or to consider that the archive somehow refers to space, and memory to time. All are illusory distinctions, although they were the ones that gave strength to the Nietzschean genealogy, and still more to the archaeology instituted from Kant to Foucault,8 passing through Freud.9 In the metaphysical view realized in “modernity” the hierarchy of memory over the archive reduced the division between exterior and interior, making “recollection” a journey “in search of past time”, releasing the energies (possibilities) that are crystallized within a form, to retrace the path of a decision, the traits of an instituting, retracing the path that led to a present that recuses itself,10 thus opening up the futuribility of experience. Memory would thus be an anamnesis of the archive, which is still a memory, however perverted, for the archive is always deteriorated memory, life in fragments, and already dead. Of course reversals between the two are many, and this metaphysical opposition can coexist perfectly with the primacy of the “monumental”, a kind of archive magnified by memory. The deeds of a king, the commemoration of a battle, were

 In Archéologie du Savoir, Foucault states that: “This term does not imply the search for a beginning; it does not relate analysis to geological excavation. It designates the general theme of a description that questions the already-said at the level of its existence: of the enunciative function that operates within it, of the discursive formation, and the general archive system to which it belongs. Archaeology describes discourses as practices specified in the element of the archive” (Foucault, 1969: 173). 9  Derrida’s analyses are based upon the reflection on Freud, as if he had initiated, at least, “a potential revolution in the problematic of archive”. This conception could apply to countless modern authors, like Marx, Simmel, Weber, etc. Fundamentally, the common ground of all the moderns is the reflection on the constituent capacity and the processes of mediation through which that capacity passes. 10  This was also the intention of Walter Benjamin, when he spoke of anamnesis, without being able, however, to free himself from Platonism, whose problem is who controls the maieutic course. A role traditionally intended for the philosopher. 8

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illuminated by memory at the very moment when they were archived, petrified.11 The decision to carve in stone, to monumentalize, was a sign that memory was to some extent dominant. Monumentality prevails, but only as a way of symbolically repeating the initial feat. In retrospect, the monument is saved only as a paradoxical memory of a memory. The advantage of the archive is its materiality, the fact that it is symbolically poor, always resisting the sublimity of the memory. But archivists legitimized themselves by conferring upon it a value as memory, something clearly based on the metaphysical structure we have outlined. Memory must be understood by the actuality of the trace. As Andrew Benjamin says: “Memory brings with it the interplay of actual experience, what amounts to the reality of remembering, as well as the complex determinations provided by the subject matter of memory, namely that which is given to be remembered, and finally the conditions that work to construct memory. Memory already figures. It is already taking place” (Benjamin, 1994: 60). It is this imperative of “becoming concrete”, of being punctualized by the figuration, that forces memory to be of an archival nature. Unlike archives, memory has a certain duration, has permanence, but is always “fragmented”. There is no total memory, contrary to digital “memory”, which is absolute restitution. The archive ignited this dream, which technology seems to be able to realize. In any case, the archive is not a non-current memory, or a memory reduced to the figure. We would say that the archive is the material of memory, in its incessant work of deferral of the trace that we may call “figuration”. The sublimation of memory corresponds to the political illusion of a perfect remembering, on which the absolute desire for “identity” ultimately depends, just as any figure forms a false totality when absolutized, built by an effortfully coherent connection of fragments, without “gaps”. This is a violent process which justified the fascist Blood and Soil [Blut und Boden] movements, but also the nostalgias of “longing” and “empire.” All existing materials, the great books, photographs, and monuments, are listed in the smooth space of the “archive”, which is the material of memory worked out by power. All that is there, all the traits of action, serve as mediation for the desire for wholeness. But the strength of memory, resisting within the gesture that records it as a perfect and total “figure”, matches the “force of today”. “This day – ‘today’ – is not the day whose presence is marked by a date, and yet of course it is a day that will always be able to be dated. Memory and its presence ‘today’ demand that the day be taken up; the day can no longer be accepted either on its own terms or simply as given. The force of ‘today’ cannot be escaped” (Benjamin, 1994: 58). Actuality, which demands a figure  – a simulacrum, as Mallarmé used to say – becomes denser with memory. And memory reduplicates in the present that which exists now with what existed or could have existed. But it can also be denied by it, when we want memory to be monumental.12 Among contemporary artists, Christian Boltanski has confronted the paradoxes resulting from the  This is a recurring theme in the classics. Cf. Lessing’s Laocoon. An Essay upon the Limits of Painting and Poetry (1887) analysis of the stone. Or Winckelmann’s The History of the Art of Antiquity (1764) analysis of the folds of stone dresses in Greek statues. 12  It is the most important element to be retained from Nietzsche’s analyses of Il Intempestiva. 11

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involvement of memory by the archive and its sublimation by memory. The space where the fragmenting is juxtaposed is a memory space, which respects this fragmented state, which is fragmentary memory and memory of the fragment. Only for this reason does it permanently require refiguring as a condition of actuality. A shadow covers the fragments without abolishing them as fragments. The totality reveals itself as illusory, as the political will to coherence at the expense of the world, at the expense of experience. The sublime memory transgresses what is, and changes the archive, to better master the present.13 Memory can only be thought of as “archive” when it lets itself be determined as monumentality. The visibility that characterizes the monument, its being-there, is of the order of the archival which, from this point of view, is a “machine” that governs what deserves to last, and determines the principles for deciding what can be durable, usually “power”14 – responsible, from the earliest times, for the archive hierarchically controlled by memory. It is the enduring structure of the archive which endows memory with an astonishing continuity throughout history, mythical origin and origin of every myth. As one of the great experts on the subject, Frances Yates, says, “when viewed from a historical distance, all the memory methods are seen to have certain common denominators” (Yates, 1999: 241). The current dissemination of the archive, all of which is yet to be meditated upon, will be based on this common nature: of monumentality as the practical realization of a “political” judgment as to what must endure. It is this structure that, once instituted, imposes the idea of the lightness of memory, closer to the spontaneity of “life”. This leads one to deduce that the romantic criticism of the rigidity of the archive is itself determined by this structure. Derrida, despite all cautions, still works within this metaphysical opposition. He says: “the archive takes place at the place of originary and structural breakdown of the said memory. There is no archive without a place of consignation, without a technique of repetition, and without a certain exteriority. No archive without outside” (Derrida, 1995: 11, italics in the original). Exteriority does not serve to distinguish archive and memory, because as we suggest, memory itself is defined by figurability, and therefore by the exteriority of a trace, by its traits. Memory is the tracing of the trait that divides the existent, when illuminating the action. The opposition between what is, what has been, and what may become, is then entirely dominated by metaphysics. But this distinction was not essential, as demonstrated by contemporary technique, which in being able to monumentalize the ephemeral and to ephemerize the monumental, distorts any metaphysical opposition.15 This entails a delinking of the oppositions that unfold from the memory-archive binomial, such as interiority-exteriority,  This was the lesson taught by George Orwell in his most famous book, 1984. What he called “rewriting of history” was after all manipulation of the archive. 14  From this point of view, what did Louis XIV and all princes do, if not archive their glory in stone, with the durability that this presupposes? 15  The very idea of monument tends to blur, by implying that everything is a monument. It is the patrimonialism that prevails, for symmetrical reasons. Kerckhove calls this phenomenon the return of Jericho in his book Skin of Culture (Kerckhove, 1995). 13

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ephemeral-durable, original-distorted, etc. One may even say that these oppositions are operated by the archival. Contemporary technique is ending a millennial cycle, by revealing that everything can be archived. Nevertheless, however problematic this tendency may be, it still has some advantages over the sublimity of memory. It is emerging that memory is not opposed to the archive, both having something in common, namely exteriorization. What this means is that the inside only exists on the outside. The hierarchy that classically binds them, which privileges interiority in relation to exteriority, destroys that which renders memory current. It makes it something hidden and lost in the past, to be recovered in the present. But memory is the shadow of action, updating the “archived”. If it is true that the existent tends to be virtualized, by entering into an archival existence in such a way that the becoming is inseparable from the archiving, then the hierarchy that binds them is shaken up, and loses all meaning. The archival may seem to aim at the whole of existence, but memory is already the exposition of its transience and fragmentary state. Memory can imagine experience, discover in it invisible possibilities and affections, but which can become visible. This is the task of poetry. But it cannot dominate, not even constructively,16 because memory works on the relationship between fragments and not between fragments which have themselves been archived. With this passage to the relational, the dominance of interiority is lost, and the exterior appears as the pure surface of things. Which implies that memory becomes almost indistinct from the archival. The millenarian critique of the archive and the objectivation that it implies has ended up being extended to memory. Memory, like the archive, also tends towards externalization, towards objectification. It is precisely this that is denied by those who prefer “memory” to the romantic or platonic modes. We have already said that all Western experience, at least since the Greeks, as in Plato’s Phaedrus, is fascinated by this objectification of memory, of which writing is the first great operator.17 It is true that the archive could be seen as a memory, either degraded or materialized, by a process of reversal which even though possible is wrong. If experience has always been determined by objectification, by exteriorization,18 contemporary technology that obsessively refers to memory19 tends to replace the “interiority” or “ephemerality” of memory by procedures clearly related to the archive. This is true

 This is something similar to what happens in the media, but here the fusion is made by the attraction of desire, while in Boltanski by a unfolding of what is out there, in a state of archive. 17  As Derrida showed in Grammatologie, it is one of the matrices of Western metaphysics. His analyses of the opposition between phoné and gramme in Western metaphysics continue to be essential. 18  For example, for Simmel the “tragedy of culture” rests on the dissonance between this outer memory (the archive) and the subjective memory, unable to escape its fragmentary state. It is a theme that echoes in the repeated laments about the “excess-of-information”. 19  Artificial Intelligence is a technological writing mode of memory, which makes reversibility an essential principle, determined by “exteriorization”. 16

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even when one speaks of Random Access “Memory” or similar.20 And if the archival has always occupied a place in these objectivization processes, today’s novelty is that the archive should determine the whole of experience.21 The constitution manifests itself as universal, something the theory of “modernity” had to presuppose,22 at a time when its deep affinity with the phenomenon of the archive, or rather with the act of archiving, became clearer. Moreover, the constitution, in a contemporaneity increasingly dominated by technique, forces us to respond to the generalization of the archive, in an inescapable paradox: the relocation of the archive, with its widespread dissemination throughout experience, corresponds to the imperative of an (impossible) unarchiving. This would be the remnant of memory from inside the archive. We shall see what governs this imperative, as recognized by Derrida: “right on that which permits and conditions archivization, we will never find anything other than that which exposes to destruction, and in truth menaces with destruction, introducing, a priori, forgetfulness and the archiviolithic into the heart of the monument. Into the ‘by heart’ itself. The archive always works, and a priori, against itself” (Derrida, 1995: 12). Finitude, the fragility of what is exposed to time, is what threatens the archive from within. But Derrida’s thesis implies that there is an outside to the archive, something that cannot be guaranteed under its current technical conditions. The destruction of what is archived is essential, not so much by this fragility of what exists, as by the way the existent is threatened by the virtualising capacity of the “archival” with its principles of replication, survival and salvation. We might even consider that it is this finitude, here as elsewhere, that feeds the will to control what happens, establishes the mechanisms of repetition and reproduction that, paradoxically tended to the excess of the archival in contemporary experience. The paradox is that even destruction itself is archived, as was the case with avant-garde art.23 It is as if the “first principleness” of the archival, in its dissemination, imposed only the principle of conservation/repetition, as the principle of principles, themselves purely empty. The principle that institutes, mythically, the origin of the archive of power, and the purpose that transforms that which exists into an archive of power, was caught up in today’s logic of a pure archival, giving consistency to the control space, also called cyberspace. We will continue with the analysis of the technological mutation that is leading to the collapse of the classical hierarchization of memory over the archive.

 It is interesting to observe that ephemeral and temporary RAM is opposite to the mass storage of data disks. But the two will inevitably become more convertible over time. 21  This phenomenon was brought to the fore by historicism, and has to do with the constitution of experience. Basically, it will be the source of a series of other oppositions as between “reality” and “imagination”, between the existing and the possible, or between “constituted” and “constituent”. 22  This was the true background of phenomenology, as I have tried to show in an earlier book (Miranda, 1994). 23  The phenomenon of “academization” and museologization of vanguards is well known (cf. among others Peter Bürger and Octavio Paz, in well-known books). 20

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14.3 Technique Technique, which corresponds to a practical nihilism, in which the human ceases to have meaning, has profoundly altered the archival. It would be necessary to show that technique is the novum of our time.24 Technique, which was a medium, an instrument, added to the archive, transmigrates into the interior of the latter, in a process similar to what happened with art. In fact, the same is happening with regard to all experience, progressively replaced by technological Ersatz, by prostheses of all kinds. A telephone conversation is a conversation in which the medium is the technique itself. What remains of “culture” is like a kind of shell in whose interior everything simmers in artificial life. As a millenarian medium, and in releasing itself from the schemes that controlled it, technique makes both ends and principles the means of the medium. Technique, which was a means for culture, makes culture a means for its increase. For now, it is sufficient to recognize that what was principal and what was accessory became indistinguishable, that principles and ends were reversed, and that the means were freed from the schemes that dominated them, emerging as pure mediality. The effect of mediality is that all that exists is a medium. In a double sense, everything is a medium for technique; action takes place in this mediality. Both technique and action are aimed at the world as a whole, but in different ways. Disturbing as it is, all “values” lose their strength through the practical nihilization of technique. This is a historical necessity: there is no freedom without the leap out of necessity. Since it is not possible to pursue this question further here, we will limit ourselves to some considerations concerning the relationships between technique and the archival. Everything we have just stated is clearly manifested in the archive. As we have seen, this historically implies a separate place for storage and protection,25 principles of selection, and techniques of reproduction, copying, conservation and restoration. This technique was supplementary to the establishment of the archive, which in turn was an accessory to institutions, at the top of which the moderns placed the State. But even this status brought about significant changes, no matter how incipient. As Certeau says: “It consists in producing such documents, by copying, transcribing or photographing these objects by changing both their place and their status. This gesture consists in ‘isolating’ a body, as we do in physics, and in ‘distorting’ things to constitute them into pieces which fill the gaps of a set posited a priori [...] Far from accepting ‘data’, it constitutes them” (Certeau, 1986: 4). It is certainly a “technical operation”, which was still in its infancy.  This sentence should be justified, but I will not do this now. I only emphasized that, free from the human phrasing that chains it mythically, either theologically or aesthetically, technique tends to naturalize the human, which in its turn can only be defined as history in its suspended and “remaining state”. 25  This implies that “objects” are withdrawn from their course of experience, in order to enter into the archival. Classically it was a ‘conversion’ process. It would be worth assessing the relevance of this concept, of theological origin, at the time of the generalized conversion by technique. 24

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This was the reason why the archive, as an external technique, was surrounded by a body of specialists, and was the subject of a series of disciplines, subscribing to a device defined by Michel Foucault as the knowledge-power block. Being an ancient process, since power never existed without the archive (the first thing to be destroyed in Revolutions) modern archives and national archives accompanied the emergence of the nation-state. Major collections and bookstores were known in Rome, but it is clear from modern Europe with its renaissance patrons, their private collections, the great aristocratic houses, and later with the State, that archives began to proliferate. In recent centuries we have witnessed the proliferation of libraries and museums, which exploded in our times, when the first major databases started to gain ground. This process was concomitant with the emergence of the scholars and the major specialists, after the minor technicians. All alike are currently in full-blown crisis.26 The new eco-museums, heritage, the ecological mystique that makes Nature a reserve, all indicate that the archival has been disseminated. This crisis reflects the new significance of technique in contemporary experience. The computer was a first, decisive step, gradually enforcing clear procedural changes such as the de-referencing of data, its collation in series, and the imposition of analytical grids by means of software. But things became much more radical when computers converged with telematic networks and acquired powerful means of digitally “translating” sound and image, and not just writing or objects. The essential effect is the dissemination of the archive. Jim Collins presents us an excellent example of the new trends in disseminated archiving, which is the case of CDs, leading to a “widespread re-characterization of the parties involved in technological reproduction” (Collins, 1995: 27). This is achieved through the liberation of technique from all that restrained it: “The splitting of technology from ‘the Industry’ represents a fundamental rewriting of the traditional scenario in which technology was considered inseparable from industry, and together they depersonalized everything in their path” (Collins, 1995: 27). What happened to CDs had already occurred with the VCR and, at the beginning of the century, with photography,27 and is being taken to unprecedented extremes with digital technology. This new technology,

 On the other hand, the archivist suffers a kind of “dysfunctionalization.” The general philosophy that gave totality to human action and with it, the specialists, disappears. Besides the fact that today everybody is an “archivist”, as Collins realized, today everything and everybody is produced by the archive, or is even archivable. Certeau says, on the necessity of a total vision, characteristic of historicism: “The scholar wants to add up the innumerable ‘rarities’ brought to him by the indefinite trajectories of his curiosity. It is therefore necessary for him to invent languages, which ensure the possibility of comparing, and processing all the heterogeneous elements accumulated in these laboratories. If we judge from the evolution of his work (via Peiresc and Kircher, to Leibniz), the scholar is oriented, from the end of the fifteenth century, to the methodical invention of new sign systems thanks to analytical procedures (decomposition, recomposition). He is inhabited by the dream of a totalizing taxonomy and by the desire to create universal instruments proportionate to this passion for the exhaustive” (Certeau, 1986: 5). 27  The fact that anyone can collect photographs, have them at home, etc., corresponds to a revolution that has not remained unnoticed. 26

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which is able to turn everything into increasingly integrable database elements, is leading to the delocalization of the archives. It can be everywhere, and in addition it is always emerging in new forms. For example, the crossing of several databases creates a new database; the place where the data is located is not important, all data is located in the abstract space called cyberspace. This has had the paradoxical effect of spreading it everywhere,28 but only at first sight. With delocalization there was a transformation in the archive space, but also a transformation of the “objects” that can be archived. Gone are the days when the essential part of the archive consisted in removing “objects” from common pathways, from their perishable life, to confer on them an eternal life. This a process of economic conversion that has dominated our entire century, and is well exemplified by Marcel Duchamp’s29 strategy regarding the ready-made. This was a conversion of objects that had to do with the nature of the space in which they were collected, preserved or reproduced, and it was this space of “first principleness”, the aesthetic for instance, that received them, transforming them almost imperceptibly. That an object in series has added value owes much to the way aesthetics played with the archival. Now that everything can be archived, and will tend to be even more so in the future, what dominates is the hyperspace of the archive,30 outside any “first principleness’” It is not that the objects disappear, only that the ones that exist are inscribed in that space. Melot maintains that: “Any object is liable to conservation, and only objects can be kept. Not the idea but the ink, not the image but the silver salt, not the voice but the LP, not the breed but a herd of ‘pie-noire’ cows (at the ecomuseum of Saint-Michel de Brasparts)” (Melot, 1986: 18). That is far from obvious. Today the “idea” is as “objectual” as the objects that reproduce it. The difference between copy and original makes less and less sense. What is happening is precisely the increasing virtualization of objects, beyond the creation of new objects, which Lyotard calls, ambiguously, “immaterial”. This process of virtualization is accelerated by the economic-integrated obsolescence of most consumer objects. In

 One speaks of archival to indicate a remarcation of the space and the objects by the filing technique, constituting a device that tends to relate all databases among themselves. Some might consider it to be just more archives, their multiplication, and not a change of nature. But just like the private archives of the companies, museums were anchored in the state model of the archive, now all tend to share the same nature, that of technique. 29  Certeau presents the classic conception in a fascinating way, which criticizes vigorously but does not make much sense. He says: “The archive substitutes our product for a past received. It gradually makes people forget what it is supposed to represent. It erases the genealogical question from which it was born, to become the tool of a production. In the system that generalizes this metamorphosis, the archive is an operator which perverts time and transforms it into a space to be constructed. This machine plays a leading role in our theatres of operations” (Certeau, 1986: 6). 30  An instantaneous time is created, as Virilio (1996) saw very well. 28

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fact, the digital component tends to increase even in these objects.31 To the extent that the digital tends to be a universal technical language, it can be predicted that object virtualization will increase exponentially, tending inexorably to push away less “translatable” objects. The logic is that everything can be archived and is therefore digitizable. This requires a support space, which in many ways seems to be confused with cyberspace. But there is an essential difference: insofar as the virtual is a form of the real, the archive space corresponds to the manifestation of cyberspace, not to be confused with it. As a control space, cyberspace provides consistency to the immense fragility of the new “objects”. The space of experience is fragmented into the space of location (site), the cyber space of virtuality, and the heteroclite space of mediality. Reducing the archive space to the medium of an impression leads to making spatiality equivalent to the archive, which, as Derrida says in the introduction, is not acceptable, “There is no archive without a place of consignation, without a technique of repetition, and without a certain exteriority. No archive without outside” (Derrida, 1995: 11). This is the classic view of the archive, precisely the one that is disappearing. And the reason seems to be the following: from the first archive space, a registration medium dominated by law and heritage, arose a space without extension that can be called archival space or the cyber-archive. A space that tends to drag the whole of experience towards cybernetic control procedures, but that includes possibilities which it is important to promote. The virtual is written into experience with a double movement: the universalization of a smooth space (of control)32 and the liberation of things relative to the mechanisms of power characteristic of modernity. It is in this ambivalence that one must intervene to prevent the worst. But this is not possible if we confuse the actual with the virtual. In fact, all virtual is “real”, but it is not possible to define the real through the actual. The whole strategy of Western domination rests on the idea of controlling the actual, that is, in the procedures for making something “potential” real. Jacques Derrida, who takes psychoanalysis as the model for a general archival science, tends to make this mistake, in particular by appealing to the Freudian notion of the “unconscious”.33 As he says: “The unconscious does not know the difference here between the virtual and the actual, the intention and the action, or at least does  Melot believes that the archive hype has to do with the search for legitimation of a form of society that increasingly destroys all objects. He says: “it seems that there is a phenomenon of communicating vessels and that we, worshipers of objects, preserve them with all the more zeal as we destroy others for purely economic reasons, objects themselves destroying landscapes, lifestyles, beliefs” (Melot, 1986: 18). In this context, we can see the extent to which “heritage ideology” and even environmentalism are reactions to what is happening. 32  It would be worth developing the reflections of Gilles Deleuze and Guattari on smooth space and striated space, put forward in Mille Plateux (1980). 33  Derrida sums up the Freudian position thus: “Freud’s intention is to analyse, across the apparent absence of memory and of archive, all kinds of symptoms, signs, figures, metaphors, and metonymies that attest, at least virtually, an archival documentation where the ‘ordinary historian’ identifies none” (Derrida, 1995: 64). But is this not the equivalent of outweighing the localized archive, at a moment when it is being deeply shaken up? 31

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not model itself on the manner in which the conscious (as well as the law or the morals accorded to it) distributes the relations of the virtual, of the intentional, and of the actual” (Derrida, 1995: 65–66). It is necessary to remove the virtual from this structure of domination by the actual, the structure of realization. But it is this structure which ties the experience of the moment, in its indefinite catenation, to the control space. For Derrida this implies “reforming” our “conceptual archive,” as if it were not a question of a transfiguration of experience by technique, by the archival quality of contemporary technology. If it is correct, and even essential, to separate the virtual from “the traditional philosophical opposition between act and power” (Derrida, 1995: 67), it is less evident that the actual and the virtual are determined in the same way by the archive, by the fact that there is no “meta-­ archive”. It would be possible to show that there is no meta-archive, not for theoretical impossibility, but for reasons that have to do with the estrangement of our experience by technique. For Derrida, the question of the archive lies in knowing où commence le dehors? This is clarified by the already mentioned statement that “There is no archive without a place of consignation, without a technique of repetition, and without a certain exteriority. No archive without outside” (Derrida, 1995: 11, italics in the original), which echoes the old deconstructionist thesis that il n’y a pas de dehors du texte. Except that exteriority corresponds, plainly and simply, to spatialization, in a peculiar gesture of Cartesianism. This causes everything to be settled in effectuation, in realization, in re-actualization, which is possible only within the space of the archive. This, incidentally, is a very dangerous thesis.34 The archival tends to be the virtualization space of historical experience, but a space that must be thought of as a space of shock. If the archival had conquered technically, Derrida’s entire theoretical placement would no longer make sense. The hyperspace of the archive is in correspondence with the onrush of the technique. This implies, as we have said, a transmutation of archival technique. The archive is now based on the replicating capacity of the technique, its poiesis, and is no longer a technique of reproduction, copying, or conservation, etc. This is the crucial problem of Derrida’s analysis, when identifying the archive with the technique of “re-producible, iterable, and conservative production of memory, to that objectivizable storage” (Derrida, 1995: 26).35 Technical reproduction, however, is above all a re-production, that is, a production with a replicant capacity, abolishing the distinction between copy and original, and creating new objects, as in the case of synthetic images or even photography. What is at stake is a machinic repetition with an autopoietic faculty. That the synthetic or artificial can replicate implies a

 There are some dangers here, such as making fictional murder something as serious as real murder. But it is not a “mistake”. It is this confusion that feeds the “politically correct”. 35  Derrida’s mistake lies in privileging theory in the analysis of the archive. All his effort is directed towards a Heideggerian science of ‘trait’: “As techno-science, science, in its very movement, can only consist in a transformation of the techniques of archivization, of printing, of inscription, of reproduction, of formalization, of ciphering, and of translating marks” (Derrida, 1995: 14–15). Such a science is incapable of grasping the technique otherwise than as an instrument, a position that we have already criticized. 34

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relapse into “nature”, which does not conform to the idea of technique as a simple prosthesis, substitution or acceleration. Something new is at stake. Its similarity with life has to do with the fact that “life” is machinic, repetitive, reproductive.36 Reproduction is not a copy, not even a mere manifestation or exteriorization, but the almost viral dissemination of a “meme”, as Richard Dawkins (1989 [1976]) puts it.37 It is insufficient to equate reproduction with multiplication of copies, as Walter Benjamin had realized in his 1930s essay on reproducibility. Derrida’s position repeats, albeit with the intention to depart from it, the old metaphysical notion of typos, everything leading to, “The first impression is scriptural or typographic: that of an inscription which leaves a mark at the surface or in the thickness of a substrate” (Derrida, 1995: 26). Even if it questions the foundational problem, which has bewitched all metaphysics, it still cannot escape the matrix of metaphysical “typology”, the opposition between support and trait. Hence the question: “Can one imagine an archive without foundation, without substrate, without substance, without subjectile? And if it were impossible, what of the history of substrates?” (Derrida, 1995: 26–27). With the introduction of archival hyperspace, the clear distinction between support and inscription becomes very problematic. The reversibility of both will tend to increase, undermining this very distinction. We are faced with a difficulty similar to that of the McLuhanian thesis on the “press” as a determinant of a unique space of effectiveness. In fact, McLuhan excessively oversimplified things in his analysis of typography. That which it possessed of archival technology, as an instituting means, is only truly realized with digital technology. The typographic is not surpassable, but realized by a universal extension of the “typos”. This, on the other hand, removes meaning from the opposition between technai logoi and “typography”. Information invests everything as an obstacle. The saying that “information does not stand in the way of obstacles” is well known. Information dematerializes them, virtualizes them. Contrary to the thesis that the archive objectifies or is a “subjectile”, it dematerializes, makes transparent, as a technically supported means of production. It is not possible to live up to the archival, functioning within an eclectic conception that ties the archive (located in the classic way) to the technique of reproduction. This delocalization is highest in the case of e-mail, fax and teleconferencing, which are undermining the modern structure of experience. The space in which the actions that pass through e-mail or the telephone, etc. take place, and which must first be translated into information, can hardly be grasped, unless it be for its performativity. It works or does not work. Only cyberspace can guarantee the operation, but in its articulation with the experience, it depends on databases. Within the grid of increasingly flexible software, the archival produces corporeities of a new type, and in the long run it will be able to simulate every single body. The work to corporealize information until it achieves visibility is only possible with the permanent

 On the difference between naked life and life with form, see Agamben (1995).  On the notion of “meme”, which has proved to be of importance for the present reflection on technique, see Dawkins (1989 [1976]). 36 37

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use of databases. The punctualization that corresponds to the “organization” of information in bodies, by the very structure of the archival, always returns to the latter. In a single act, technique operates the archiving and unarchiving of the data, virtualizing the experience and covering it with the immense web of the archive. What is new is the reversibility of all the components of the archive: the content of what is to be archived and the archive itself, the archivable, and the archivist of the archive. The moment of archiving would imply a difference between creation and stocking, between pressure and impression. But it so happens that electronic speed, in itself inhuman, tends to abolish the time separating the one from the other.38 The transmission of a live soccer game is paradigmatic: at the same time as it “transmits” what is real, reproducing it by a symbolic-electronic medium, it operates an archiving, which becomes evident in the replay. The strange thing is not so much the electronic reproduction itself, since everything is transmitted in a state of repetition and instantaneous unarchiving. It is the state of archiving that animates the live transmission, not the other way around. Essentially, there is no live transmission. This instantaneous archiving is becoming ever more widespread. The information archived by satellites and videos in large shopping centres operates a recording that is based on the archival and that relaunches it continuously. In fact, the new systems show that the essential problem lies in the unarchiving. Not only those of videography or TV, but also computers and their mass storage, in which archiving is instantaneous. To give visibility to a thing or event, something has to be removed from visibility. The unarchiving of the visible operates this concealment, which is accompanied by an invisible archiving. Nothing can be erased except the archival system itself, which is permanently threatened by the accident. Everything today seems to be centred on unarchiving. In other words, unarchiving is a virtual mode of archiving (e.g. the ZIP file, which is an archive of archives, and all new image or sound compression systems). This unpacking process is being activated by the new technologies. The current unarchiving is a form of virtual archive. In order to universalize the archive it is necessary to unarchive, but this will feed the archival, which thus “provokes” experience to translate itself into it, and to save itself technically, but not politically or aesthetically. The current unarchiving is thus the form of the archive when it disseminates, virtualizing all that exists.39 The whole tradition of the archive is therefore being profoundly altered. The only solution is to instil anarchy within the archival.40

 On the other hand, at the level of space, there is a multiplication of levels, followed by complex threads, making each level the meta-archive of another one. 39  What Adriano Duarte Rodrigues described as the “return of the archaic” is based on the current unarchiving operated by the media. These are nourished from the “remains” of the archive tradition, functioning as a sort of narcissistic catcher of the energies of desire. The “figures” that are offered to desire, which come from the archive, for example from literature or painting, serves as an attractor of spectators, transfiguring them. 40  Anarchism is a decisive motive in Heidegger’s thought, not to be confused with something “political”. It is a question of responding to the Arkhé, at the nihilistic moment of its failure and, simultaneously, to its absolutist imposition. Cf. On this subject, Schürmann (1982). 38

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Derrida speaks in this context of anarchive, whose model is the “drive” towards death or destruction: “It works to destroy the archive: on the condition of effacing but also with a view to effacing its own ‘proper’ traces – which consequently cannot properly be called ‘proper’. It devours it even before producing it on the outside” (Derrida, 1995: 10). The Freudian metaphor is inadequate for thinking about the archival – which calls into question the archons and all “first principleness” by a technical imperative of virtualization of the experience, removing it from visibility when unarchiving. But this unarchiving is the proper background of the archival: everything is taken from the fragility, the finitude, to survive in the spectral life of the archive. The anarchival has nothing to do with the denial of the archive, nor with the deletion of the traces that classically guaranteed the archive: what was saved for visibility – the museum is the model par excellence. The anarchival is the deepest logic of the contemporary archive. The anarchival is nothing without the archive.41 This anarchy has much less to do with the rejection of certain figures of the arkhê, such as power – all that has already been captured by the archival, but much more with the destitution of ‘first principleness’ as an archive. If the archive is all the arkhê that exists, this means that anarchy is something that intervenes in the minimal space that exists between archiving and unarchiving. It has to do with visibility, with the work of the figure.

14.4 Conclusion It is of decisive importance to know how to respond to the archival which disseminates. Everything indicates that technique is abandoning the millenarian scheme that dominated it as a means to an end or to a principle (I would say that the power is telos and arkhê is the principle). The problem is whether there will be a mediality that does not use arkhai and telos. We have already seen this, arguing that this mutation is inseparable from dissemination of the archival. Paradoxically, this archival mediality is only effective through an immediate connectivity. It is this mystical dream that electricity seems to be able to realize. Rather than being a support for the traces of action, for the remnants of action, for the ashes of memory, the archive is presented as the state of traceability (and repetition) of everything. But given its presumed and necessary instantaneousness, the very difference between action and effects, between support and content, etc., cancels out, in a reversibility that raises new issues.

 The movements described as neo-Luddites, which attack the technology of information networks, tend to be captured by an insurmountable paradox. They cannot fail to “deconstruct” or “destroy”, to display the danger, but the more they do, the more they reinforce archival technology and security procedures. Which relaunches the movement. But there is no need to remain bound by the aporia. 41

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Among several, the most important is the control of the biotype by archival replication. All figurability depends on the postponement of this drop in the bios and the possibility of working the mixture of silicon with the flesh.42 The flesh itself can be saved, as everything is saved, technically. The theology of salvation incubated its realization through technique. It is necessary to abandon the mystique of salvation that only relaunches the process. By accepting finitude, living in wandering away from the arkhai, dwelling in the abyss of endless mediality, the question of politics arises as an absolute imperative.

References Agamben, G. (1995). Homo Sacer: Il potere sovrano e la nuda vita. Einaudi. Benjamin, A. (1994). Object, painting. Academy Editions. Certeau, M. (1986). L’espace de l’archive ou la perversion du temps. L’ Archive. Traverses, 36, 4–6. Collins, J. (1995). Architectures of excess: Cultural life in the information age. Routledge. Dawkins, R. (1989 [1976]). The selfish gene (2nd ed.). Oxford University Press. Derrida, J. (1995). Archive fever: A Freudian impression (Eric Prenowitz, Trans.). The University of Chicago Press. Foucault, M. (1969). L’a priori historique et l’archive. L’archéologie du savoir. Gallimard. Foucault, M. (1994 [1964]). Des espaces autres. In Dits et Écrits: 1954–1988 (vol. IV, pp. 752–762). Gallimard. Hoffmann, E. T. A. (1992). Vaso de ouro: Uma lenda dos tempos modernos. Culturarte. Kerckhove, D. (1995). Skin of culture: Investigating the new electronic reality. Sommerville House Publishing. Krauss, R., & Krens, T. (Eds.). (1984). Robert Morris: The mind-body. Guggenheim Museum Publications. Melot, M. (1986). Des archives considerées comme une substance hallucinogene. L’Archive. Traverses, 36, 14–19. Miranda, J. A. B. (1994). Analítica da actualidade. Vega. Schürmann, R. (1982). Le principe d’anarchie: Heidegger et la question de l’agir. Seuil. Virilio, P. (1996). Vitesse de libération. Galilée. Yates, F. (1999 [1996]). Selected works: Vol. 3. The art of memory. Routledge. José A. Bragança de Miranda  has a PhD in Communication Sciences from the Universidade Nova de Lisboa [NOVA-New University of Lisbon], Portugal, with tenure in Cultural Theory. Currently he is an Associate Professor at the Department of Communication Sciences at the same University, collaborating since 1992 as invited Chair Professor at the Universidade Lusófona. He has taught Culture Theory and Contemporary Arts, Media Theory and Cyberculture. Editor of several specialized journals, Bragança de Miranda has been the director of Revista de Comunicação

 Growing concerns about cyborgs and “artificial bodies”, clones, etc. indicate the way things are going. 42

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e Linguagens [Journal of Communication and Languages]  and has authored numerous essays regarding different areas of contemporary culture. The books Analítica da Actualidade, Política e Modernidade ([Analytics of Actuality, Politics and Modernity], Vega, 1994) and Corpo e Imagem ([Body and Image], Vega, 2012) are among his most important publications.

Chapter 15

Law-Technology Lag or Law as Technology in the Big Data Age Maria Eduarda Gonçalves

Abstract  In an data-driven world, people increasingly value the protection and security of their personal data. Many states have adopted or are in the process of adopting data protection laws based on principles similar to those of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) of the European Union, resulting in a global convergence of data protection rules. Yet doubts may arise regarding the ability of the GDPR to effectively safeguard data protection principles and rights in the age of big data and related algorithmic decision-making. Against this background, the choice of the risk-based approach as the key law enforcement mode under the GDPR might be interpreted to be a result of the recognition of a law/technology lag in this instance, in the sense of an intrinsic difficulty of the law in dealing with the pervasiveness and automation involved in present-day collection, circulation and use of the data. The risk-based approach leaves data protection decisions mainly to the data controllers. A better explanation for the GDPR’s novel enforcement mode may be found in the “law as technology” proposition, meaning a law intended to liberate the use of digital technologies. In the context of its strategy for a data-­driven economy, the EU had shown its concern with European lateness in embracing the data revolution. Accordingly, EU data protection reform has been meant to reduce the administrative burden on the data controllers and processors so as to further the competitiveness of the digital single market. As a consequence, data protection will ultimately depend on how the data controllers will meet their greater responsibilities. Keywords  Data protection · Privacy · GDPR · Digital single market · Data-driven economy · Big data · Algorithms · Risk-based approach · Technology-law lag · European Union

M. E. Gonçalves (*) DINÂMIA’CET-IUL – Centre for Socioeconomic and Territorial Studies, Lisbon, Portugal e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 H. M. Jerónimo (ed.), Portuguese Philosophy of Technology, Philosophy of Engineering and Technology 43, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-14630-5_15

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15.1 Introduction In an increasingly data-driven world society and economy, people all over the world value the protection and security of their data. Many countries have adopted or are in the process of adopting comprehensive data protection rules based on principles similar to those of Regulation (EU) 2016/679, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) of European Union, in force since May 2018, resulting in a global convergence of data protection rules. Behind the alignment of data protection laws with the GDPR lies the expectation of an adequacy decision from the European Commission, with the effect that personal data can move freely between those countries and EU member countries, thus facilitating cross-border data transfers and business operations.1 Europe has indeed been a pioneer in this area, and has provided a model for data protection laws. The origins of personal data protection go back to the late 1960s in some Northern European countries and to the Convention for the Protection of Individuals with regard to Automatic Processing of Personal Data of the Council of Europe (Convention 108, signed in 1981). This Convention inspired Directive 95/46/EC on the protection of individuals with regard to the processing of personal data and on the free movement of such data (the “Data Protection Directive”), adopted by the European Community, now replaced by the GDPR. The Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, in force since December 2009, affirmed the right to data protection as a fundamental right guaranteed under EU law. Yet, notwithstanding the self-assured discourse of EU institutions, doubts arise regarding the ability of the GDPR to effectively safeguard personal data protection principles and rights in the age of big data technologies and related algorithmic decision-making. It is not hard to infer that the automation and inherent opacity of reuses of data sets obtained from unrelated sources, and for purposes unknown when the data were initially collected, render data protection principles such as prior consent by the data subject, purpose limitation and data minimisation hard to apply. It is worth recalling that data protection laws were initially designed having in mind the computer systems of large organisations, both public and private, to the extent that they collect, store and process personal data for the purposes of their own activities. A significant role was then assigned to Member States’ data protection authorities, endowed with investigative and intervention powers, including receiving and examining notifications by data controllers prior to their

 By February 2020, the Commission had recognised 13 countries as providing adequate level of protection for personal data (European Commission, 2020). 1

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carrying out any wholly or partly automatic processing operation or set of such operations. The choice of the so-called risk-based approach as the key enforcement mode under the GDPR, one that relies mainly on the data controllers, might be interpreted as a corollary of the recognition by the EU legislator of a law/technology lag in this instance, in the sense of the trouble the law has, and by the same token the public authorities have, in handling the increasing pervasiveness and automation involved in present-day data collection, processing and uses. Yet a sounder explanation for the adoption of the risk-based approach may be the “law as technology” proposition, meaning a law intended to enable or stimulate particular actions, in this instance, liberating the use of digital technologies as much as possible. Indeed, in the context of its strategy for a data-driven economy and data-driven innovation, understood as “the capacity of businesses and public sector bodies to make use of information from improved data analytics to develop improved services and goods that facilitate everyday life of individuals and of organisations, including SMEs”, the European Commission (EC) had shown its concern that the European digital economy “has been slow in embracing the data revolution compared to the USA and also lacks comparable industrial capability” (European Commission, 2014: 2). Accordingly, EU data protection reform has been explicitly based on the will to reduce the administrative burden on the data controllers and processors so as to further the competitiveness of the digital single market. The EU strategy in this domain has been amplified and strengthened with both the EC Communication on Artificial Intelligence for Europe (European Commission, 2018), and the EC Communication on a European Strategy for Data, and the Data Single Market (European Commission, 2020). As a consequence, the GDPR may turn out to be weaker or stronger as a means of protecting personal data and inherent principles and rights, depending on how the data controllers discharge their responsibilities under this Regulation. In this chapter, we will start by addressing the big data phenomenon and the challenges that it entails for data protection principles and rights (Sect. 15.2). We will then focus on the risk-based approach as the main regulatory novelty under the GDPR (Sect. 15.3), and discuss its underlying rationality in the light of the “law/technology lag” versus the “law as technology” propositions (Sect. 15.4). We will conclude by reflecting on lessons that may possibly be drawn with respect to the relationship between law and technology, particularly when fundamental human rights are at stake.

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15.2 Big Data and the Data Protection Reform in the European Union According to the GDPR, key principles to be observed by the data controllers and processors2 are: lawfulness of processing (i.e. personal data may be processed only if the data subject has unambiguously given his/her prior consent, or other legitimate basis exists); purpose limitation (i.e. personal data may only be collected for specified, explicit and legitimate purposes and may not be further processed in a way incompatible with those purposes); and data minimisation (i.e. processing of personal data must be restricted to the minimum amount of data necessary). Additionally, the data subjects are assigned rights empowering them to have access to their personal information registered in databases, as well as to rectify the data, and to object to data processing in certain situations. In its Communication on a comprehensive approach to the protection of personal data in the EU, which set the stage for the reform leading to the GDPR, the European Commission (EC) had recognised that “rapid technological developments and globalisation have profoundly changed the world around us, and brought new challenges for the protection of personal data” (European Commission, 2010: 2). As the agreement on the proposal for a General Data Protection Regulation, submitted by the EC in January 2012, was being reached in December 2015, the Commission stressed, “Today’s agreement is a major step towards a Digital Single Market. (…) With solid common standards for data protection, people can be sure they are in control of their personal information.” The Commission also proclaimed the GDPR to be “good for citizens and good for businesses” (European Commission, 2015: 1). Both the European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS) and the Article 29 Data Protection Working Party (Article 29 DPWP) welcomed the proposed regulation as a step forward for data protection in Europe, robust enough to face future informational technology-driven challenges, trusting that it would reinforce the position of the data subjects, enhance the responsibility of data controllers and strengthen the role of data protection authorities (EDPS, 2013; Article 29 DPWP, 2012). One might, however, doubt that these beliefs were fully justified in view of evolving data processing techniques and sophisticated tools in data mining and data analytics of large data sets used in quite opaque modes by major online operators for the purposes of their own activities and to deliver data services to third parties (Mantelero & Vaciago, 2013). Big data has been defined as “large amounts of different types of data produced from various types of sources, such as people, machines or sensors. (…) Big data  The Article 29 Data Protection Working Party defined the data controller as the natural or legal person, public authority, agency or any other body, which alone or jointly with others determines the purposes and means of the processing of personal data, and the data processor as a natural or legal person, public authority, agency or any other body, which processes personal data on behalf of the controller. See Opinion 1/2010 on the concepts of “controller” and “processor”, adopted on 16 February 2010, https://ec.europa.eu/justice/article-29/documentation/opinion-recommendation/files/2010/wp169_en.pdf 2

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may involve personal data, which can be anything from a name, a photo, an email address, bank details, posts on social networking websites, medical information, or a computer IP address” (European Commission, 2016: 1).3 Increasingly, Internet platforms, be they search engines or social networks, along with the spread of devices that permeate our daily lives, from smartphones and related apps that track our contacts and our likings, to home equipment and medical sensors, deliver to the information systems massive data on our routines, preferences, relationships and health (so-called big data). Big data rely not only on the increasing capacity of information and communication technologies (ICT) to support the collection and storage of large amounts of data, but also on their power, using algorithms, to assist in analysing, understanding and taking advantage of the data to inform decisions by enabling identification of patterns among different sources and datasets. Big data analytics scrutinizes mountains of data to identify or predict facts about individuals and to use those facts in decisions ranging from which products to sell them to whether to provide medical treatment (Waterman & Bruening, 2014). The expectation from big data is that they support better decisions (Article 29 DPWP, 2013a). According to the EC, data-driven innovation refers to the capacity of businesses and public sector bodies to make use of information from improved data analytics to develop improved services and goods that facilitate everyday life of individuals and of organisations, including SMEs (European Commission, 2014). Yet, the other side of the coin is their growing use for monitoring human behaviour, either for marketing or for surveillance and control, based on big data’s predictive potential. Apprehension has been expressed about the impact of the so-called “governance of algorithms” (Cardon, 2015) or “algorithmic regulation” (Morozov, 2015). Algorithms used in data processing underlying decision-making in ever more domains of activity have been blamed for being selected and applied in opaque and unaccountable modes, as both the algorithm itself and the input data are normally considered proprietary. Besides, determining the potential or actual ethical impact of an algorithm is difficult for many reasons. Such challenges are set to grow as algorithms increase in complexity and interact with each other’s outputs to take decisions (Mittelstadt et al., 2016). The effect that exploring the predictive capacities of big data may entail on individuals’ freedom and autonomy adds to such concerns. Algorithms, which structure information, while automating processes that we used to control ourselves, may end up influencing both our conduct, and the conduct of other people towards us, with  According to the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), data is “a reinterpretable representation of information in a formalized manner, suitable for communication, interpretation or processing”. Data can either be created/authored by people or generated by machines/sensors, often as a “by-product”. Examples are geospatial information, statistics, weather data, research data, etc.”, https://www.iso.org/obp/ui/#iso:std:iso-iec:11179:-4:ed-2:en. Big Data is a data set(s) with characteristics (e.g. volume, velocity, variety, variability, veracity, etc.) that for a particular problem domain at a given point in time cannot be efficiently processed using current/existing/ established/traditional technologies and techniques in order to extract value, https://www.iso.org/ files/live/sites/isoorg/files/developing_standards/docs/en/big_data_report-jtc1.pdf 3

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undesirable results. Predictive algorithms base their predictions on users’ normal practices, thus restraining the latter’s access to unfamiliar information. Moreover, they may be, and are already being used by organisations such as insurance companies to check the relatively risks of client behaviour, moulding insurance premiums accordingly. Their use in politics, seeking to influence voters, started to be recognised.4 Given the inherent potential harmful consequences for individuals, clarifying the inherent responsibilities is a critical issue (Waterman & Bruening, 2014). The EDPS itself conceded that big data entail the emergence of a revenue model for Internet companies relying on tracking online activity (EDPS, 2015). Likewise, the concept of “total surveillance” has been put forward to describe the way large-­ scale processes of strategic management relying on big data operate today (Couldry & Powell, 2014; Andrejevic & Gates, 2014). The “collect-everything approach” applied to monitoring and intelligence definitively connects big data to mass surveillance, with problematic impacts on data protection and related human rights and freedoms (Pasquale, 2016). The big data trend thus represents a turning point in the uses of ICT. It is not hard to admit that the increasing pervasiveness and automation involved in present-day data collection, processing and use render the effectiveness of conventional data protection principles, namely prior consent by the data subject, purpose limitation and data minimisation, difficult to achieve. It should be recalled that EU data protection law seeks to reconcile the protection of personal data with the free movement of the data, to draw on Directive 95/46/ EC’s own title. The very concept of data protection presumed that processing personal data is a legitimate activity as such, provided that certain safeguards are met, in this way departing from the earliest concept of privacy understood as a closed or secret sphere of the individual’s life and social relationships, one that fell within the individual’s capacity to control and seclude from others’ knowledge (Westin, 1967; Wacks, 1980; Nissenbaum, 2010). Following on from Directive 95/46/EC, the GDPR enumerates a catalogue of exceptions to data protection principles, largely justified by the intent not to raise unjustified obstacles to the free movement of data (Koops & Leenes, 2014). This is especially clear in the case of consent. Although under Article 6 (Lawfulness of processing) personal data may be processed only if the data subject has given his consent for one or more specific purposes, the same provision ultimately allows the processing of personal data on almost any ground, a door opened by exceptions provided to the legitimate interests pursued by the controller. The only orientation offered for assessing the legitimacy of such interests is a balance between them and the data subjects’ interests and fundamental rights and freedoms, which is quite an evasive criterion (Zanfir, 2014). Moreover, the balancing test is left to a  See “Les assureurs demandent à leurs clients de se mettre à nu. Generali lance une assurance ‘comportementale’ dans la santé. Une première en France”, and “Assurance: votre vie privée vaut bien une ristourne”, Le Monde 7 September 2016. The case of the reuse by Cambridge Analytica of thousands of profiles provided by Facebook, rendered public in 2018, also illustrates this point (Gibney, 2018). 4

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case-by-case determination by the data controllers, with just some general non-­ binding guidance from the Article 29 DPWP (2014a). This requires a demanding evaluation, one that data controllers may not have the necessary competency to undertake, apart from being in a position of conflict of interest (Ferretti, 2012). It has even been argued that the legitimate interest exception provides “a sort of legal umbrella” for companies to shelter under (Horten, 2016). This exception, it has been admitted, provides the criterion on which the majority of personal data processing is based, occupying at times the default position, mainly for commercial transactions (Le Métayer & Monteleone, 2009). It seems easy to infer that the automation inherent in data mining and reuse of large data sets obtained from diverse unrelated sources render consent at the stage of data collection practically unfeasible (Tene, 2011; Colonna, 2014; De Hert & Papakonstantinou, 2016). This is all the more so as the precise purposes of secondary uses of the data may not be known when the data are initially obtained. Most big data practices involve multiple data controllers and processors sharing sets of data for various, often uncertain, purposes, limiting the effectiveness of the exercise of one’s rights (Koops, 2014). Likewise, the features of big data technologies question the purpose limitation principle. Since analytics is designed to extract hidden or unpredictable inferences and correlations from datasets, it becomes difficult to define ex ante the purposes of the data processing. Tene and Polonetsky (2012) allude in this connection to the transformative use of big data. An additional issue is big data technologies’ increased blurring of the public-private boundary, undermining the principle of purpose limitation (Reidenberg, 2014). All in all, consent, purpose limitation and minimisation clash with everything that big data stands for, as one of this technology’s key features is its ability to gather and automatically re-use information that was collected for different purposes and from different data controllers. The recurring idea of a law/technology lag might be evoked in this connection (Moses, 2007; Marchant, 2011). Yet, no such insight surfaces from the pertinent policy documents or statements of EU institutions. Rather, the GDPR has been explicitly designed “to simplify the regulatory environment” and “substantially reduce the administrative burden” on data controllers and processors (Reding, 2011; Article 29 DPWP, 2013a; European Union, 2016). The “law as technology” proposition may thus provide a better explanation for the GDPR’s novel regulatory option. If technology is understood in its broad sense as any device or system for converting inputs into outputs, then the law itself may be regarded as a technology (Wiener, 2004), i.e. an enabler of particular social practices or social interests (Cattan, 2012); in this instance, the law’s intent to enable the growing use of digital technologies by liberating them from strict supervision and control by the data protection authorities. Such intent may have determined the adoption of the “risk-based approach” as the key law enforcement mode under the GDPR, one that leaves data protection mostly to the data controllers to decide.

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15.3 The Turn to the Risk-Based Approach to Data Protection: A Triumph of Pragmatism Over Principle The risk-based approach to data protection entails the obligation of the data controllers to assess the risks of data processing to the rights and freedoms of natural persons throughout every stage of the data life cycle, i.e. collection, storage, processing, retention, sharing and disposal. To fulfil their duties the data controllers are expected to evaluate the likelihood and severity of risks for individual rights in the light of the nature, the scope, the context and the purposes of the processing. The Article 29 DPWP judged that this evaluation refers primarily to the right to privacy but may also involve “other fundamental rights such as freedom of speech, freedom of thought, freedom of movement, prohibition of discrimination, right to liberty, conscience and religion”, which renders the evaluation even more demanding (Article 29 DPWP, 2014a). The risk assessment should lead to “appropriate technical and organisational protection measures” “to ensure a level of security appropriate to the risk, including inter alia, as appropriate, the pseudonymisation and encryption of personal data” (Article 32 GDPR on Security of processing). Where high risks of data processing for the rights and freedoms of natural persons are identified (such as those involving a systematic and extensive evaluation of personal aspects which is based on automated processing, processing on a large scale of specially sensitive data or a systematic monitoring of a publicly accessible area on a large scale), the data controllers should undertake a Data Protection Impact Assessment (DPIA) (Articles 35 and 36 GDPR). It is also up to the controllers to take the initiative to consult the data protection authority prior to processing in case a DPIA indicates that the processing would result in a high risk in the absence of measures taken by the controller to mitigate the risk. In addition, the data controllers must promptly notify data breaches, to prevent ex-post misuse of data “unless the personal data breach is unlikely to result in a risk for the rights and freedoms of individuals” (Articles 33 and 34 GDPR). Remarkably, the notion of “personal data breach” is defined as a “breach of security” leading to the accidental or unlawful destruction, loss, alteration, unauthorised disclosure of, or access to personal data transmitted, stored or otherwise processed” (Article 4 GDPR on Definitions, §12). As a matter of fact, the risk-based approach to data protection is not a new concept. It was foreseen under Directive 95/46/EC with regard to the security of processing (Article 17) and the prior checking obligations by data protection authorities in case of operations likely to present specific risks to the rights and freedoms of data subjects (Article 20). Yet, it is the GDPR that gives full expression to such an approach by turning it into the main enforcement model, whilst relying predominantly on the data controllers to apply it. In addition to obligations relating to security of processing and to carrying out a DPIA, as mentioned above, the risk-based approach has been extended and is reflected in other implementation measures such as the data protection by design principle (Article 23 GDPR) and records of processing activities (Article 30 GDPR).

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Moreover, the GDPR encourages self-regulation by the data controllers through codes of conduct and certification mechanisms (Articles 40 and 42). Two critical differences emerge between the previous regime and the new one5: first, the accent placed by the GDPR on high risks to the rights and freedoms of data subjects (Article 35§3; Recital 84), while the Directive did not contain such a restriction; secondly, whereas the Directive stated that Member States’ supervisory authorities should keep a record of all processing operations notified, now that prior notification ceased to be an obligation, the role of the supervisory authority is limited to establishing and making public a list of the kind of processing operations which are subject to the DPIA requirement (Article 35§4). Under the GDPR, the obligation to keep a record of the processing activities became limited to the organisations employing more than 250 people (Article 30). What in fact distinguishes risk-based decision-making is the systematic attempt to assign more resources to those factors likely to have greater effect if the risk event occurs (Duckett et al., 2015). Regulation based on the assessment of risks is about the optimum allocation of resources according to the impact and probability of the risks, and about accounting and legitimising such use (Black & Baldwin, 2010; Black, 2010). Gellert (2015) recalled the linkage of risk-based regulation to New Public Management seeking explicit standards and measures of performance and greater parsimony in resource use approximating private sector management styles. Yet the scope of the DPIA itself is rather uncertain. The DPIA draws on the Privacy Impact Assessment (PIA) currently used mainly in common law countries, even though a pioneering case for DPIA in the EU already exists on radio-frequency identification (RFID) applications (Article 29 DPWP, 2011). Although PIA has been regarded as more than a mere compliance check with the law (Wright & De Hert, 2012), existing guidelines on PIA tend to adopt pragmatic approaches centred on security management aspects (CNIL, 2015; Mantelero & Vaciago, 2015). Privacy risks are mainly perceived in this context as risks to the reputation of the organisation, which appear to be particularly acute in businesses that deal directly with the general public (e.g. banking, retail). For the UK Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), “identifying, assessing, and managing privacy risks should not be different from the process of identifying, assessing, and managing other risks faced by an organisation, such as environmental, competitive, or financial risks” (ICO, 2015). Thus, the DPIA may end up as a mere managerial exercise emptied of real substance (Gellert, 2015). Indeed, the diverse levels of accountability foreseen by the GDPR owing to different degrees of risk posed by data processing led to the concerns expressed in Article 29 DPWP, which held that the risk-based approach should not be regarded as an alternative to well-established data protection principles and rights. These must be equally strong when the processing is relatively “low risk”. Still, the Working Party admitted that a data controller whose processing is relatively low

 Note that the term “risk” appears 76 times in the text of the GDPR, whereas it appeared 8 times in the text of Directive 95/46/EC (including the whereases). 5

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risk may not have to do as much to comply with their legal obligations as a data controller whose processing is high risk (Article 29 DPWP, 2014b). For its part, the EDPS recognised that remitting monitoring of compliance predominantly to self-control did not shield against the peril of core principles of data protection being compromised since it is often “a challenging task to decide what is fair and lawful and what is not when it comes to big data analytics” (EDPS, 2015). The DPIA involves evaluation of intangible values and comprehensive balancing exercises, including value conflicts and consideration of many factors, whether it may lead to unfair discrimination or any other negative impact on the individuals concerned or on society, which one might doubt the operators are in the best position to undertake (Article 29 DPWP, 2014b; EDPS, 2015; Lynskey, 2015). It is true that the choices of the data controllers, when carrying out a DPIA, need to be reported to the supervisory authority. The latter may then limit or prohibit the controller’s plans if it finds that “the intended processing does not comply with this Regulation, in particular where risks are insufficiently identified or mitigated” (Article 36§2 GDPR). However, besides leaving to the data controller the responsibility of evaluating whether a DPIA is needed in the first place, most data protection authorities, with the limited funds available to them, will presumably be in weaker position vis-à-vis powerful online operators than hitherto (EUFRA, 2010; Davies, 2016). This is rendered more problematic in the face of the power of the major online operators already qualified as “deciders” (Rosen, 2012) and “data oligarchs” (Jasanoff, 2016). The latter, occasionally in cooperation with public actors, are creating hybrid worlds of governance that deeply impact the rights and freedoms of citizens (Graber, 2017). The risk-based approach results in leaving data protection issues mainly to data controllers to decide, replacing the ex-ante notification and control by the supervisory authorities by enforcement means that approximate the more liberal regime of the USA (Hasty et al., 2013), as well as the overall world trend towards shifting the focus of privacy protection from informed consent at the point of collecting personal data to accountable and responsible uses of personal data” (ITU, 2014).6 Unsurprisingly, the lobbying coalitions were strong advocates of the risk-based approach (Horten, 2016). For Digital Europe, for example, companies “are in the best position to evaluate the risks that their data processing poses to interests of data subjects” (Digital Europe, 2013). While this assertion may cause some misgivings, one might admit that in the context of a regime relying mainly on self-regulation, “a strong harm-based approach can help to promote responsible data use based on risk management” (Black, 2010). Some observers regard the US regime, grounded on the Safe Harbour Principles and on self-certification by the operators, ultimately as a more effective one (Determann, 2016). Likewise, the DPIA has been praised as a

 A somewhat similar trend towards reliance on the self-regulation and responsibility of operators may be found in Directive (EU) 2019/790 on copyright and neighbouring rights in the digital single market, which has been regarded as “favouring private ordering over public policy” (Quintais, 2020). 6

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way of building up operators’ awareness of the need to protect the rights of data subjects (Quelle, 2015). Yet while data protection principles and rights are reaffirmed, the change in their mode of implementation ends up altering the rationale for the regime, paving the way for managerial considerations to take precedence over those of rightfulness, causing a “triumph of pragmatism over principle” (Kuner et al., 2015).7

15.4 Law-Technology Lag or “Law as Technology”? Deconstructing the Rationale of the Data Protection Reform As already noted, one might be tempted to interpret the novel data protection enforcement paradigm in the light of the law/technology lag idea. Where technological progress renders state-based regulation obsolete, a private-based flexible law (“soft law”) has been portrayed as a more appropriate instrument (Sarr, 2012). Such flexible law could adapt more easily to the decentralised contexts of digital networks by relying on the actors who in fact control the networks. This might have been the understanding behind the adoption of the risk-based approach by the GDPR. It is indeed reasonable to admit that big data technologies represent a fundamental shift, even a “tectonic shift” (McArdle, 2016) in data uses. What’s more, the impact of technological developments on society frequently goes beyond the immediate purposes of the technical devices (Boyd & Crawford, 2016). “Modern technological systems rival legal institutions in their power to order and govern society”, Jasanoff remarked (Jasanoff, 2016: 9). This observation seems to match big data technologies with all their algorithmic and predictive capacities likely to entail substantial changes in knowledge production, privacy, identity and surveillance (Couldry & Powell, 2014). Moreover, several features, epistemic and technical, as well as legal (i.e. intellectual property rights and trade secrets), plus the uncertainties and bias in the evidence and in correlations drawn upon in data analytics, hamper understanding of their impacts by users or data subjects (Pasquale, 2016; Mittelstadt et al., 2016). So a difficult quandary arises: on the one hand, technical complexities and the global character of the technology hinder the role of the regulatory state (Cohen, 2016), while on the other hand, technology’s great impact on society calls for  Self-defence by the data subjects is given more strength through the novel right to be forgotten (Article 17 GDPR), empowering data subjects to obtain from the controller the erasure of personal data concerning him or her without undue delay where one of a series of grounds enumerated in the article concerned applies. Also here, it is up to the data controller to evaluate whether the values or interests underlying the right to be forgotten are surpassed by other values, namely the right of freedom of expression and information, or specific duties by the data controller such as to comply with a legal obligation which requires processing or to perform a task carried out in the public interest or in the exercise of official authority vested in the controller, etc. 7

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reinforcing public regulation so as to guarantee the prevalence of liberal and democratic values. Strikingly, the EU did nowhere summon a law/technology lag as justification for its regulatory policy options. Rather, as Recital 15 of the GDPR shows, the reform relied on the assumption of technological neutrality, meaning that data protection principles apply whatever the technology used (Maxwell & Bourreau, 2014). In practice, the legitimate interest exception and the purpose compatibility requirement (Article 6 GDPR), mentioned in Sect. 15.2 above, offer the basis on which personal data processing has to a great extent continuously relied. Today’s much greater possibilities of data mining and processing, enabled by big data technologies, provide a substantially greater margin of autonomous decision-making to data controllers to summon their legitimate interests, hence evading the data subjects’ explicit consent, as well as to reuse data collected for one purpose for different, supposedly compatible purposes. As regards automated decision-making, including profiling, the GDPR foresees certain safeguards by requiring data controllers to inform the data subjects and to offer “meaningful information about the logic involved, as well as the significance and the envisaged consequences of such processing for the data subject” (Article 13§2 (f), Article 14§2 (g)).8 In other words, organisations should disclose their decisional criteria.9 Furthermore, data subjects are granted the right to object to profiling methods (Article 21§1 GDPR) and not to be subject to a decision based solely on automated processing which produces legal or similar significant effects on them (Article 22 GDPR).10 These safeguards include the right to obtain human intervention on the part of the controller and the possibility for the data subject to express his or her point of view and to contest the decision. At first glance, these provisions further transparency and defer control to the data subjects. But since they only apply to decisions that do not involve human judgment, such as automatic refusal of an online credit application or e-recruiting practices without any human intervention, they are likely to affect a limited class of  Both the EDPS and the Article 29 DPWP demanded that the data subjects be given access to their profiles, as well as to the logic used in algorithms to determine the profiles (Article 29 DPWP, 2013b). Some everyday examples where the logic of decision-making should be disclosed include a personalised car insurance scheme (using car sensor data to judge driving habits); credit scoring services; a pricing and marketing system that determines how much discount an individual will receive or what media content to recommend to an individual. Transparency could include, for example, informing people about re-identification risks stemming from data collected about them (Narayanan et al., 2016). 9  In the USA, an initiative by the Federal Trade Commission named “Reclaim Your Name” is meant to empower the consumer to find out how brokers are collecting and using data; give her access to information that data brokers have amassed about her; allow her to opt-out if she learns a data broker is selling her information for marketing purposes; and provide her the opportunity to correct errors in information used for substantive decisions like credit, insurance, employment, and other benefits, https://www.ftc.gov/sites/default/files/documents/public_statements/reclaim-yourname/130626computersfreedom.pdf 10  Recital 71 states the data subject’s right to obtain an explanation on how the decision was reached. 8

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automated decisions. Besides, significant exemptions limit the scope of the transparency obligation such as that “the provision of such information proves impossible or would involve a disproportionate effort”, something that it is once again for the data controller to evaluate (Article 14§5 GDPR). In the end, restrictions on automated decision-making and profiling look rather supple under the GDPR (Davies, 2016). Based on similar considerations, the EDPS recommended that the provisions of the GDPR on transparency be reinforced, and that “a new generation of user control” implying “powerful rights of access” and “effective opt-out mechanisms” be foreseen (EDPS, 2015).11 It has been admitted that for algorithms to be interpretable by data subjects, special regulatory or methodological requirements would need to be implemented (Tutt, 2017). Algorithmic auditing carried out by technically skilled entities has been advocated as a precondition for verifying correct functioning (Pasquale, 2016). As with risk regulatory experiences in other technology-related domains, independent expert assessment to examine how companies as well as governments collect and use the data, and to evaluate the inherent risks with a view to minimising them, looks critical for the aforesaid propositions to succeed. This would imply reconsidering the design of the DPIA procedure so that a more active involvement of the data protection authorities, and of independent expertise under their supervision, is ensured. Moreover, risk assessment of specific instances of data mining and data analytics could benefit from the plural perspectives that Internet users as data subjects and as citizens could convey to identify the risks and minimise their impacts (Gonçalves, 2020).12 Risks should be considered in a comprehensive manner, from data security to their ethical processing, and the DPIA should be transmitted to the data protection authorities even in cases of lower risk, apart from being rendered public (Quelle, 2015). Against this background, the EU’s determination to reduce the administrative constraints on data controllers, and the latter’s self-rule, resulted in the EU drawing back from exploring all possible means of defending data protection principles when faced with the challenge of big data. All in all, it is legitimate to infer that the EU purposeful strategy for the digital single market, i.e. to enable European data products and services to compete,  The World Economic Forum emphasised the importance of ensuring understanding beyond transparency, in the following terms: “People need to understand how data is being collected, whether with their consent or without – through observations and tracking mechanisms, given the low cost of gathering and analysing data”, and added, “From Passive consent to engaged Individuals: Too often the organizations collecting and using data see their role as a yes-no/on-off degree of consent. New ways are needed to allow individuals to exercise more choice and control over this data that affects their lives”; “From Black to White to Shades of Gray: the context by which data is collected and used matters significantly”, World Economic Forum, Unlocking the Value of Personal Data: From Collection to Usage, http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_IT_ UnlockingValuePersonalData_CollectionUsage_Report_2013.pdf 12  Comparison with theory and practice of risk regulation in other fields may indeed help us to figure out the drawbacks of the risk-based approach to data protection as it is presently designed (Beck, 2009; Wiener et al., 2011). 11

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provides a better explanation for the choice of the risk-based approach to data protection than any intrinsic difficulty which the law or the legal system have in handling technological progress.

15.5 Conclusion What lessons can possibly be drawn from this account of the EU data protection reform with respect to the relationship between law and technology, particularly when fundamental human rights are at stake? In theory, the relationship between technology and society may be viewed in a dialectic way whereby society moulds the design and the uses of technology, while technology itself shapes social action, either enabling or constraining it (Fuchs, 2008). “Technology rules as much as the law”, Jasanoff (2016) emphasised. Our analysis indicates that the politics for the European digital market, built on a data-driven innovation strategy, have shaped the recent reform of EU data protection law. Indeed, as stated above, although one might admit that the preference for the risk-based approach rested on the EU’s pragmatic recognition of the legal system’s limitations in handling the consequences of digital technologies, a better explanation may be found in EU’s deliberate intent to simplify the rules for companies in the digital age, so that innovation is fostered. In this connection, it should not be overlooked that market freedoms, and the European single market in particular, do not result from a mythical natural order of things. They are shaped by policies and legal rules that permit the workings of the markets (Block & Somers, 2016; Wilkinson & Lokdam, 2018). Caught between its twofold objective of safeguarding data protection principles and facilitating business, the EU legislator ended up favouring the latter, even though the data controllers’ duties and responsibilities were increased. One might conclude by saying that the law’s enabling role as to innovation surpassed the law’s protective role as to rights. Yet if one of the law’s basic functions is to pursue human rights (Bobbio, 1996), it might be said that the GDPR has not met the expectations of a law designed to protect the fundamental right to data protection. By delegating regulatory controls to the operators, the EU chose to elude part of its regulatory responsibilities. A soft law-like data protection regime ensued, one whose transparency and effectiveness is far from guaranteed. This is all the more so considering the growing data appropriation and control by the main digital operators furthered by big data technologies, and yielding them a structural power to shape today’s choices, both individual and social, in access to information and knowledge. The big data phenomenon represents a defining moment in ICT uses, entailing a critical mutation in the balance of power between data controllers and data subjects. In view of this, one might have expected the EU to re-balance the position of individuals vis-à-vis the data controllers, in keeping with the fundamental right to data protection, and incidentally with the avowed official confidence in the data

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protection reform to cope with technological change. Instead, the GDPR signalled a shift towards a regulatory paradigm largely based on the data controllers themselves. Thus, the future of personal data protection will depend to a great extent on how the data controllers, above all the major digital operators, will comply with established data protection principles and rights.

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Committee and the Committee of the Regions, COM (2020) 66 final, Brussels, 19 February. https://eur-­lex.europa.eu/legal-­content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELEX:52020DC0066&from =EN. Accessed 25 March 2020. European Union. (2016). Statement of the Council’s reasons: Position (EU) No. 6/2016 of the Council at first reading with a view to the adoption of a Regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council on the protection of natural persons with regard to the processing of personal data and on the free movement of such data and repealing Directive 95/46/EC (General Data Protection Regulation) 2016/C 159/02. https://publications.europa.eu/en/publication-­ detail/-­/publication/8263b3d6-­10f6-­11e6-­ba9a-­01aa75ed71a1. Accessed 20 December 2019. Maria Eduarda Gonçalves obtained a Doctorat d’État en Droit, University of Nice; LL.M., Harvard Law School. Professor of Law at ISCTE-Instituto Universitário de Lisboa [ISCTE  – Lisbon University Institute], Portugal. Researcher at the Centre for Socioeconomic and Territorial Studies  – DINÂMIA’CET-IUL.  Member of the Scientific Council for the Social Sciences and Humanities of the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology, the External Scientific Advice Commission of the Research Centre on Law and Society (CEDIS), New University of Lisbon, and the Advisory Council of the Cybersecurity Observatory, Portugal. Was a member of several EU expert groups, namely the Expert Group on Science and Governance (2005/2007) and the Expert Group on Benchmarking of Science and Technological Policies, EC (2001/2002). Has been delegate of Portugal to the Advisory Group of Experts on the Law of the Sea of IOC/UNESCO and to the Legal Subcommittee of the UN Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space. Main research interests are Cyberlaw, economic law; social studies of science and technology.  

Chapter 16

Ontotechnologies of the Body: Technoperformativity and Processes of Subjectivation António Fernando Cascais

Abstract  Research in which technoscience, body, gender, and identity intersect is greatly indebted to the Foucauldian conceptualization of the apparatus, or dispositif, comprising materialities, discursive and nondiscursive practices. Its intrinsically ontotechnological character provides a most relevant interpretative framework for the understanding of the production of contemporary subjectivities, or processes of “assujettissement” in the age of biopolitics. Building on Foucauldian wide-range analyses, several authors shed light on the technologically mediated shaping and reshaping of identities, or the experimental exploration of neo- or counter-identities that are post-naturalist, post-essentialist, post-humanist, anti-ableist and anti-­ heteronormative, namely Donna Haraway, with her definition of figurations as material-semiotic tools, and Judith Butler’s queer theory, according to which materiality designates a certain effect of power in its formative constitution of the subject, simultaneously forming and regulating the “subject” of subjectivation. Butler’s insight has proved specially productive in the matter of understanding queer performativity i.e., the epistemo-political re-subjectivation programs and processes of impugned, abject and deteriorated identities. Finally, the most recent reflection on the uses of the body, by Giorgio Agamben, sheds light on the essential and deep bond between the ancient slave as animated object and modern technology as animated instrument, thus allowing for a radical contestation of the mere serviceability of both the body and technology. On these grounds, this essay is a critical survey of both the virtues and the ambiguities and risks of technoperformative projects, such as Paul Preciado’s countersexuality, balancing the vindication of morphological freedom against conservative anti-technological trends that go beyond traditional political oppositions. Keywords  Ontotechnologies · Body · Dispositif · Technoperformativity · Subjectivation A. F. Cascais (*) Faculdade de Ciências Sociais e Humanas, Universidade Nova de Lisboa & ICNOVA – Instituto de Comunicação da NOVA, Lisbon, Portugal e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 H. M. Jerónimo (ed.), Portuguese Philosophy of Technology, Philosophy of Engineering and Technology 43, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-14630-5_16

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A. F. Cascais The mode of being of life, and even that which determines the fact that life cannot exist without prescribing its forms for me, are given to me, fundamentally, by my body. (Michel Foucault, The Order of Things)

16.1  Dispositif and Uses of the Body The current field in which technoscience, body, gender, and identity intersect is greatly indebted to the Foucauldian conceptualization of the dispositif, which Deleuze calls a “multilinear ensemble”, in such a way that “the three main instances Foucault successively distinguishes, Knowledge, Power, and Subjectivity, by no means have contours that are defined once and for all, but are chains of variables that are torn from each other” (Deleuze, 1989: 185). The fact is that Foucault only characterizes the dispositif when requested to do so during an interview titled “Le jeu de Michel Foucault”, where he says: What I am trying to encompass with this name is, firstly, a thoroughly heterogeneous ensemble consisting of discourses, institutions, architectural arrangements, regulatory decisions, laws, administrative measures, scientific statements, philosophical, moral and philanthropic propositions, in short: the said as well as the unsaid, such are the elements of the dispositif. The dispositif itself is the network that can be established between these elements. Secondly, (…) between these elements, whether discursive or nondiscursive, there is a sort of interplay, shifts in position, changes of functions, which can themselves also differ widely. Thirdly, (…) (the) dispositif has (…) a dominant strategic function. (Foucault, 1994: 299)

If the reticularity (which makes Foucault a precursor avant la lettre in current reflection on the digital – Ferraris, 2018: 79) and the strategic function of the dispositif are quite literally affirmed by Foucault himself, it is more difficult to summarize the interplay of its internal dynamic in a word that is as evident and clear. In addition to the three essential components of the dispositif – materialities, discursive practices and nondiscursive practices –, which remove from its central position the prior privilege granted to discourse in archeology (Rabinow, 2003: 51), as is evident in the Foucauldian definition of episteme (Rabinow, 2003: 53), what has become certain over time is the portentous productivity of the dispositif, its constitutionally ontotechnological character. Moreover, this character was immediately noted by Dreyfus and Rabinow (1983), in their clarifying summary according to which the Foucauldian dispositif sheds light on the production of the individual as object and as subject within knowledge-power relations. Only more recently, however, has due importance been given to the crucial role played by Foucault in the clarification of the contemporary technologization of the processes of subjectivation. By stating that the “‘dispositif’ is an essential technical term in the thinking of Foucault” (Agamben, 2006: 5), not merely one of the themes he covers, Giorgio Agamben takes for a fact that the term dispositif always involve a process of subjectivation, as it “designates that in which, and through which, one

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realizes a pure activity of governance devoid of any foundation in being” (Agamben, 2006: 19). Taking the place, in the Foucauldian strategy, of universals such as the State, Sovereignty, Law, Power, as Agamben accurately notes, the dispositif constitutes Foucault’s taking a position on the fundamental problem of the relationship between individuals and historical context, the latter being understood as the ensemble of institutions, processes of subjectivation, and rules in which power relations are realized. Agamben concludes that there are two great classes, living beings and dispositifs, and between these two a third, subjects, which results “from the relationship and, so to speak, from the fight between living beings and dispositifs” (Agamben, 2006: 22). By taking into account the theoretical and political implications of the Foucauldian dispositif, Agamben was able to redefine it as “anything that has in some way the capacity to capture, orient, determine, intercept, control, and secure the gestures, behaviors, opinions, and discourses of living beings” – a definition that goes beyond mental hospitals, the Panopticon, schools and factories, and includes the pen, writing, philosophy, agriculture, the cigarette, computers, cellular telephones, and even language, “which is perhaps the most ancient of dispositifs” (Agamben, 2006: 21–22). Agamben validates even more universally the idea of the dispositif, which he roots in the very process of hominization, following a line indebted to what Jakob Uexküll, first, and Martin Heidegger, subsequently, called the receptor-uninhibitor circle that severs the living being within itself and from the immediate relationship with its environment. It is that interruption, Agamben continues, that generates the Open, the possibility of building a world and, immediately, the simultaneous possibility of the dispositifs that populate the Open with all sorts of instruments, objects, and technologies (Agamben, 2002: 25). By unveiling to us the availability of all the things in the direction to which it points, technology appears to us as a grid of intelligibility of the world and of man himself, after the latter having throughout history understood himself mythologically, religiously, and scientifically on the basis of the disposition of the world, as Umberto Galimberti concisely clarifies: it is in the disposition of the world rather than in instrumentality that the essence of technology is individualized. And this means that technology, in its modern sense, is no longer applied science but a horizon within which even pure science finds the condition and the destination of its inquiries. Only if one understands that modern technology, having replaced the dominion (signoria) over man with dominion itself, placed itself as a precondition of the interpretation of man and the world. (Galimberti, 2000: 353)

We thus reach an adequate understanding of the role of technology in determining human motives and the very subjects that conceptualize them. In that sense, by creating a world man creates himself (Galimberti, 2000: 178) through a process that cannot be subsumed into the subjectivist formula according to which what is at stake is giving back to man the power to use the products of his own autonomous activity from which he estranged or alienated himself, removing himself from the action upon which subjectivity itself depends. On the contrary, things, invested with action, take on a meaning, the internalization of which we call subjectivity and of which psychology can give no account, considering it as an object that is given a

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priori and ignoring the dynamic of its formation, for there is no sense or meaning that gives away its secret where its origin has been erased (Galimberti, 2000: 177–180). With her notion of figuration, Donna Haraway offers us an even more accurate conceptualization of technology, if that is possible, as an interpretative framework that shapes the experience itself: Figurations are performative images that can be inhabited. Verbal or visual, figurations can be condensed maps of contestable worlds. All language, including mathematics, is figurative, that is, made of tropes, constituted by bumps that make us swerve from literal-­ mindedness. I emphasize figuration to make explicit and inescapable the tropic quality of all material-semiotic processes, especially in technoscience. For example, think of a small set of objects into which lives and worlds are built-chip, gene, seed, fetus, database, bomb, race, brain, ecosystem. This mantralike list is made up of imploded atoms or dense nodes that explode into entire worlds of practice. The chip, seed, or gene is simultaneously literal and figurative. We inhabit and are inhabited by such figures that map universes of knowledge, practice and power. (Haraway, 1997: 11)

By shedding light on the processes of assujettissement (Foucault, 2013), the Foucauldian reflection on the dispositif might give the impression that in our day and age the category of subjectivity is wavering and losing consistency, to the point that it would be possible to erase or overcome it, though in reality, as Agamben aptly clarifies, it undergoes “a dissemination that pushes to the extreme the masquerade that has always accompanied personal identity” (Agamben, 2006: 23). Et pour cause, precisely therein lies the irresistible fascination that from its early days the Foucauldian reflection on the dispositif has had for all areas, both academic and political and social, in which there is a central role for identities (ethnic, gender, sexual, etc.) that are subjugated, stigmatized or deteriorated, ontologically “contested” or “called-into-question”. And as such, for the epistemo-political denunciation of the compulsory hetero-construction that naturalizes and essentializes them, as well as for the emancipatory projects of resignification and resubjectivation of abject identities, or the experimental exploration of neo-identities that are post-­ naturalistic and post-essentialist (though not exactly post-identity, as is commonly but mistakenly believed). A paradigmatic example of this démarche is the queer theory that builds on the analysis of the Foucauldian assujettissement as a subjectivation that subjects: “Power operates for Foucault in the constitution of the very materiality of the subject, in the principle that simultaneously forms and regulates the ‘subject’ of subjectivation. (…) ‘Materiality’ designates a certain effect of power or, rather, is power in its formative constituting effects” (Butler, 1993: 34). Lastly, Agamben formulates the idea of “use of bodies” (Agamben, 2016: 1093ff.), which I also consider to be essential for the understanding of the generally “anthropophagic” horizon, so to speak, of interindividual relations, of indiscriminate consumption of everything and everyone by everyone, which has provided fertile ground for the development of a relevant stream of analyses concerning affects in the contemporary world. He explains that the syntagm “use of the body” represents a point of indistinction between one’s own body and that of another, which he begins to examine in the comparison between slave and tool made by the same Aristotle from whom modernity seems to have radically distanced itself, as Foucault

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pointed out. Mediated by the “denatured” relation between human beings, the organic exchange is transformed by slavery into a relation of the master’s body with nature that is mediated by the relation of organic exchange of the slave’s body with nature. For Aristotle, the slave was no more than an organon praktikon kai choriston, a kind of automaton, an animated instrument, an organ that is an integral part of his possessor, so that the relation between master and slave belongs to the realm of oikonomia, the strictly private governance of the house. That justified the full use of the slave’s body, evidently including sexual intercourse with the masters, which was in no way understood as abuse. The slow transformation of this framework that was legated by Antiquity to the subsequent European history – of society, culture and technology, the altered nature of which was noted by the very influential Heideggerian analysis – underwent some decisive changes, starting with a conceptual mutation carried out by the medieval theologists who dared to inscribe the instrument within the category of the quadruple Aristotelian causality, adding to the material, formal, efficient and final causes a fifth cause, the instrumental cause. It was formulated in the Summa Theologiae of Thomas Aquinas in the form of a doubt that Heidegger did not ignore, as noticed by Agamben: …the discovery of the instrumental cause constitutes the first attempt at giving a conceptual figure to technology. While for the man of Antiquity the instrument was annulled in the ergon it produced, in the same way that labor disappears into its result, now the operation of the tool is divided into an end of its own and an extrinsic purpose, and in this way it allows the sphere of an instrumentality that can be directed towards any end whatsoever to emerge. The space of technology is then opened as the dimension of illimited medial character and availability, since at the same time that it remains in relation with its own action the instrument has here been rendered autonomous with respect to it and can refer to any extrinsic purpose whatsoever. (Agamben, 2016: 1138)

Indeed, it is altogether plausible that there is in the technical instrument something more than simple “serviceability” and that this serviceability does not coincide, as Heidegger thought, with a new and decisive epochal unveiling-veiling of the being but with a transformation of the use of bodies and objects, the original paradigm of which must be looked for in the “animate object” that is the slave, that is, in the man who, by employing his body, is in reality employed by another. In this sense, the mutation in the nature of teknè dates back to the medieval conceptualization of the instrumental cause, well before the emergence of the modern Heideggerian Gestell, which in some way presents itself as a condition for the possibility of a modern technoscience that disposes and mobilizes, with the meaning given to it by Heidegger and Ernst Jünger, respectively: “Technology is the dimension that is opened when the operation of the instrument has been rendered autonomous and at the same time is divided into two distinct and related operations” (Agamben, 2016: 1139). We can ask ourselves if between modern technology and slavery there is not a more essential bond than their common productive purpose, by taking into account, among other things, the fact that the machine presents itself from the outset as the realization of the paradigm of the animate instrument, for which the slave had provided the original model, and that both proposed to free man from need in order to ensure him access to the dimension that is more his own, that of political life, as prescribed by

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Aristotle in the days when the polis was the political paradigm of the West. The symmetry between slave and machine would therefore concern the consummation of anthropogenesis, the becoming fully human of the living man, but that implies a new symmetry in relation to the bare life that, located as it is at the threshold between zoê and bios, between physis and nomos, allows, by way of its own inclusive exclusion, for political life. In that sense, slavery is to the ancient man what technology is to the modern man. The one and the other, like bare life, harbor the threshold that grants access to the truly human condition, and the one and the other show themselves to be inadequate for their objective, with the modern solution showing itself to be no less inhumane that the ancient one. What is at stake in the “human tool” is not merely the emancipation from work, but the paradigm of another human activity and another relation with the living body, to which, for lack of a better name, Agamben calls “use of the body”: “And if the hypothesis of a constitutive connection between slavery and technology is correct, it is not surprising that the hypertrophy of technological dispositifs has ended up producing a new and unheard-of form of slavery” (Agamben, 2016: 1144). In fact, there is profound solidarity and congeniality between this kind of distancing from the idea of serviceability of the body – we don’t have a body, we are a body  – and the lineage of revision of the Marxist view of political economy in which Pierre Klossowski and Jean-François Lyotard stand out and which Foucault absorbs. From such revision stems the core of the notion of libidinal economy (which, indeed, Foucault never names). It involves the mercantile circulation of the totality of affects and no longer merely the Marxist labor power. In this regard, let us consider the cases of human trafficking, comprising both labor exploitation and sexual exploitation, or further yet the cases of drug trafficking and all their related phenomena, which are only the tips of the iceberg of the generalized and massive economic profiting from the complex of affects of individuals, a reality that is socio-­ technologically enabled and in which communication technologies and cyberculture, in their dark side, play a non-negligible role: “the fact is that at the base of the process is not need but desire. The apparatus determines individual intention in a way that it is not only about alienation but also, and above all, gratification and recognition. (…) Disposition is a close kin to what Foucault called ‘dispositif’: we have, on the one side, life; and, on the other, its channeling and organizing through the apparatuses that control, structure, develop” (Ferraris, 2018: 109). The totality of the body has transformed into libidinal raw material that is entirely subject to mercantilization, processing and consumption, losing sight of what the Heideggerian Gestell foretold. We consume each other in an omnipresent anthropophagy that is in no way related to the arcane rituals of original societies, against a backdrop of retreat from the emancipatory impulse inherited from the Enlightenment and decisively intensified after the Second World War, notably in the Western countries where it arose. It is understandable, therefore, that Foucault became a pioneer in denouncing the biopolitical production of sexuality, calling into question desire as locus of resistance and as a driver of the emancipatory impulse: “we aim to use the bodies, pleasures, and knowledges, in their multiplicity and possibility of resistance, to counter the grips of power. The rallying point for the counterattack against

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the deployment of sexuality ought not to be sex-desire, but bodies and pleasures” (Foucault, 1977: 161–162).

16.2 Technoperformativity and Processes of Subjectivation Political epistemology  – epistemopolitics, according to Sam Bourcier –, which combines body and technology, sexuality and gender, builds on the established notions of overcoming the serviceability of the body and criticizing the instrumentality of technology. However, just as it sometimes shows that clear awareness of the biopolitical indistinction noted by Agamben, it also sometimes falls into its traps. Serviceability and instrumentality are precisely what is at stake in the reconceptualization of the prosthesis, which constituted a fundamental axis of the establishment of technology as the central operator of the processes of emancipatory resubjectivation in the areas of sexuality and gender. The road to that reconceptualization was long and winding and included Leroi-Gourhan and the mnemonics of Bernard Stiegler and the theory of cultural change resulting from the shifts in perceptive organization propelled by the revolutions in the technological media for human communication, from Marshall McLuhan to Lev Manovich and Jay Bolter/Richard Grusin – all of whom contributed to calling into question the archetypical conception of technology as organic projection, i.e., prosthesis, − of the members and functions of the human body as established by the pioneering Ernst Kapp’s Philosophy of Technology. But it is Donna Haraway who is the original reference in this history – the history of emancipatory technoperformativity – with her famous Cyborg Manifesto. With it she intends to go beyond Foucault’s biopolitics, which she deems a flaccid premonition of the politics of the cyborg that places itself within feminism but can have repercussions that go beyond it. Cybernetic organism, machine, and organism hybrid, at once a creature with a social reality and a creature of fiction, the cyborg is the result of three violations of crucial boundaries, between animalism and humanity, between animal-human organism and machine, and between physical and nonphysical. What Haraway proposes is the dream of a heteroglossia that refuses any sort of anti-science metaphysics or demonology of technology: The machine is us, our processes, an aspect of our embodiment. We can be responsible for machines; they do not dominate or threaten us. We are responsible for boundaries; we are they. (…) Cyborgs might consider more seriously the partial, fluid, sometimes aspect of sex and sexual embodiment. Gender might not be the global identity after all, even if it has a profound historical breadth and depth. (Haraway, 1991: 248)

Quite far removed from the prosthetic conception of technology, cyborgs have to do with regeneration and reconstitution, and they do not trust the matrix of reproduction and the phenomenon of birth. Following along a technologically assisted process that runs from the birth control pill to in vitro fertilization and enabled a transition from sexuality with procreation to sexuality without procreation, and then

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from the latter to procreation without sexuality, Haraway places hope in the cyberfeminist utopia of a monstrous world without gender, which “means both building and destroying machines, identities, categories, relationships, space stories. Though both are bounds in the spiral dance, I would rather be a cyborg than a goddess” (Haraway, 1991: 181). Allucquère Roseanne Stone (Sandy Stone) treads the same path in her work The Empire Strikes Back: A Posttranssexual Manifesto (2014). In it she defends transfeminism against the rejection of transsexuality by some feminists: In the case of the transsexual, the varieties of performative gender, seen against a culturally intelligible gendered body which is itself a medically constituted textual violence, generate new and unpredictable dissonances which implicate entire spectra of desire. (…) To foreground the practices of inscription and reading which are part of this deliberate invocation of dissonance, I suggest constituting transsexuals not as a class or problematic ‘third gender’, but rather as a genre – a set of embodied texts whose potential for productive disruption of structured sexualities and spectra of desire has yet to be explored. (…) The disruptions of the old patterns of desire that the multiple dissonances of the transsexual body imply produce not an irreducible alterity but a myriad of alterities, whose unanticipated juxtapositions hold what Donna Haraway has called the promises of monsters – physicalities of constantly shifting figure and ground that exceed the frame of any possible representation. (…) The essence of transsexualism is the act of passing. (…) to begin to write oneself into the discourses by which one has been written – in effect, then, to become a (…) posttranssexual. (Stone, 2014)

She points out that computers were first seen as a very unrefined tool for human will, which could physically and conceptually extend human abilities in the exact Greek sense of prosthenos, extension, prosthesis. The appearance of the Internet consummated, however, a shift in paradigm from computers as tools to the paradigm of computers as arenas of social experience. Therefore, if we consider the relations – interactions, separations, and fusions – between the bodies and the selves from the viewpoint of an analysis of the history of a set of practices such as the communication technologies (telegraph, telephone, radio, television, fax, computer networks, computer games, etc.) that mediate those relations, it is easy to see that the social spaces and social groups they create do not emerge as merely coexisting with technology. On the contrary, the bodies and subjects are stabilized by communication technologies into power fields, mutant and instable as they are, in at least three ways: 1. Selves and relationships between selves constituted and mediated by Technologies of communication, i.e. an apparatus for the production of community. 2. Technologies that mediate cultural legibility for the biological substrates to selves, substrates that legally authenticate political action; i.e., an apparatus for the production of the body. 3. Technologies mediating between bodies and selves that may or may not be within physical proximity i.e. interfaces (Stone, 1995: 89). As arenas of social experience, they not only facilitate but also actively intervene in the processes of resubjectivation by way of the capacity for auto-affection of the users themselves, who ultimately are not mere users unaffected by the use:

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prosthetic communication and the things it creates, specifically interactive entertainment software, the Internet, cyberspace, and virtual reality, are not a question of market share or even content. In a fundamental McLuhanesque sense these things are parts of ourselves. As with all powerful discourses, their very existence shapes us. Since in a deep sense they are languages, it’s hard to see what they do, because what they do is to structure seeing. They act on the systems – social, cultural, neurological – by means of which we make meaning. Their implicit messages change us. (Stone, 1995: 167–168)

This is precisely what leads Ferraris to recognize in a concise manner that: “The Web is, therefore, a performative rather than a descriptive system; which explains why it has changed our lives much more than the old media of mass communication” (Ferraris, 2018: 79). However, the media that are messages in a McLuhanean sense transform us in a way that – here I must agree with Stone – is not at all desirable: “The quiet death that comes when we have lost our presence in the discourses that shape our lives, when we no longer speak but are spoken – that is, when not we but our culture speaks through our mouths – is for me the most frightening” (Stone, 1995: 167). This might not be so much the case for the younger generations, who did not experience the world prior to cyberculture, as pointed out by Andrew Ross, who finely sensed the shift in the relation of countercultural activity with technology that consisted in replacing a technoculture based on software and organized around the demonization of abject hardware structures with a dissident culture organized around marginalized principles regarding free access to information and communication. He states that much of the sixties culture was formed around a technology of folklore (a heap of pre-industrial, rural, oriental and anti-­technological ideas, values, and social structures), whereas the cybernetic countercultures were organized from the nineties of the twentieth century onwards around the folklore of technology (the mythic prowess of survival and resistance in a world of virtual environments and posthuman bodies with a plethora of data, deeply influenced by the imaginary world of science fiction). In turn, cybernetic activism cannot but trust a politics of identity that is much more concealed than the cultural politics of the sixties ever was, since the access to closed systems requires the discreetness and dissimulation of a simple authentication of a signature or pseudonym, rather than the identification of a real and watchable person. But even this is now threatened by the progress of biometric and biosensitive systems of authentication with a biological signature (Ross, 1991: 120). Furthermore, the restrictive definition of hacking can be extended, as a cultural practice, to all sorts of system analysts, designers, programmers and operators, irrespective of how little expertise they may have, who are able to interrupt, disturb, and redirect the placid flow of structured communications that dictates the respective positions in the social networks of exchange; this does not mean providing a universal definition of the agency that hacking is. There are many social agents that place their hopes on technological reskilling, to whom the sabotage of communicational rationality is of little use and to whom a reconstructive definition of hacking, preferably to a deconstructive one, would be more appropriate, and whose technoliteracy plays a decisive role in the struggle against automation and deskilling (Ross, 1991: 124).

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A veritable body of literature, especially in the area of media studies, cultural studies, and queer and gender studies has very productively combined information and communication technologies with the processes of creation of subjectivities in times of omnipresent digital networks and cyberculture in the contemporary world. Such a combination inevitably presupposes a very advanced crisis in the conception of technology as prosthesis. From crip theory came the contribution that was missing to complete the questioning of the prosthetic conception of technology. Crip theory criticizes the essentialist biomedical model of disability that essentially treats it as a lack or restriction, incapacity, lesion, deficit, a deformity deviating from normality, to be corrected with a prosthesis that in some mechanical way repairs, restores, resets or replaces an organic function that is compromised or a capacity that has been lost, in a way that is, so to speak, “ableist” but maintains or even worsens the discriminatory, excluding, and ultimately demeaning social effects for the disabled person. In opposing the essentialist biomedical model with a constructionist social model of disability, we should likewise rethink not only the way in which we understand the “pathology” but also the way in which we reconceptualize the “cure”: “If we begin to understand that disability is largely socially constructed, then cure, and the values it embodies, must be understood as likewise constructed” (Cheu, 2011: 209). This means that crip theory dares to take a “potentially radical gesture of exhibiting the discursive character of the bodies and identities by accepting what is ‘natural’ as ‘artificial’” (Kuppers, 2011: 195), which disables the anatomical reduction of disability, in the same way that queer theory deconstructs (“queerizes”) the anatomical reduction of sexual difference, strictly oppositional and binary, that would explain sexuality in a heteronormative way through the attraction of opposites that would lead one of the sexes to seek to supplement with the other what it naturally lacks. As with the denaturation and de-essentialization of sexuality in queer theory, in crip theory: “The natural transforms into a pose, an artifice, a style; it is transposed into the world of simulacra. In the same way that the ‘beast of rock’ is a performance, rather than a ‘natural’ expression of imposing masculinity, the ‘natural’ becomes problematic in the disabled body” (Kuppers, 2011: 193). What is more, starting with the principle that “(t)he institutions in our culture that produce and secure a heterosexual identity also work to secure an able-­ bodied identity” (McRuer, 2006: 151), crip theory creates a joint theory of the construction of compulsory “able-bodiedness” and compulsory heterosexuality and their respective relations and framework: Compulsory heterosexuality is intertwined with compulsory ablebodieness; both systems work to (re)produce the able body and heterosexuality. But precisely because these systems depend on a queer/disabled existence that can never quite be contained, able-bodied heterosexuality’s hegemony is always in danger of collapse. (…) I would argue that crip theory (…) can continuously invoke, in order to further the crisis, the inadequate resolutions that compulsory heterosexuality and compulsory able-bodiedness offer us. And in contrast to an able-bodied culture that holds out the promise of a substantive (but paradoxically always elusive) ideal, crip theory would resist delimiting the kinds of bodies and abilities that are acceptable or that will bring about change. (McRuer, 2006: 31)

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Much like the composed heterosexual self, the nondisabled identity is derived from a set of different traits that are thought to be organized according to a pattern, a coherent and uniform unit, which leads McRuer to paraphrase Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick when characterizing queer performativity, to conclude that: If the alignment of all these features guarantees the composed able-bodied self, then – following Sedgwick on queerness – we might say that disability refers to the open mesh of possibilities, gaps, overlaps, dissonances and resonances, lapses and excesses of meaning when the constituent elements of bodily, mental, or behavioral functioning aren’t made (or can’t be made) to signify monolithically. [§] One could easily conclude from these circumstances that we are all disabled/queer, since all of us (at some point and to some degree – or to some degree at most points) inhabit composing bodies that exist prior to the successful alignment of all these features. (McRuer, 2006: 156–157)

This understanding of the experience of disabled sexuality as something that is not abject exposes the unreflected assumptions regarding a physical normality that determines the value attributed to some sexual practices to the detriment of others, thus enabling the recognition of patterns of abuse and victimization of which other stigmatized minorities are the object. Since the specific type of social construction of physical and mental properties of the body as demeaning defects is integral to the symbolic requirements of oppression in general, Tobin Siebers prefers the idea of sexual culture to that of sexual life, which is “ableist” and presupposes, as far as sexuality is concerned, that people with a disability are carriers of a stigma that ultimately decisively suppresses their existence as sexual beings, for they are devoid of the necessary capacity, control, or assertiveness for that purpose, which in some way relegates them to a status of deficit of humanity, since normality represents the supreme measure of human choices, actions, thoughts, and values: “Sexual culture refers to neither gender assignation nor sexual preference (…) Sexual culture references the experience of sex itself” (Siebers, 2012: 39). Sexual culture entails an “artfulness of disability” (Siebers, 2012: 46), a creativity or ingenuity of disability that sees it not as a defect to be overcome in order to access a full life, including as regards sexuality, but as a complex incorporation that promotes pleasure and gives to sexuality a political dimension that redefines disabled people as sexual citizens. Disability is thus resignified as a creative response to a challenge that is social as much as, or even more than, it is organic. Starting with the very term – crip, from the English word cripple  – the negative meaning of which is turned against the abjection it denotes, crip theory proposes to apply to disability the procedure of resignification that queer theory employed with the meaning of the English word queer that was applied in particular to people commonly thought to be homosexual and by extension to all individuals of “dubious” sexuality. As Sedgwick and Butler, founders of queer theory, aptly explained in their time, since performativity is “that dimension of speech with the capacity to create what it names” (Butler, 2005: 17), “queer” began as an insult that created stigmatized, shameful, abject identities called-into-question by the very language that not only names them but that in naming them creates the only intrinsically degraded way in which the subjects exist as entities recognizable to themselves and to others (Butler, 1993).

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In fact, performativity describes the processes that make us the object of action – gender performativity –, exposing our condition as abject, “shameful”, and vulnerable to being affected by action, as much as it describes the conditions and possibilities for action – queer performativity. As Sedgwick explains: (t)he forms taken by shame are not distinct ‘toxic’ parts of a group or individual that can be excised; they are instead integral and residual in the processes by which identity itself is formed. They are available for the work of metamorphosis, reframing, refiguration, transfiguration, affective and symbolic loading and deformation, but perhaps all too potent for the work of purgation and deontological closure. (Sedgwick, 2003: 63)

Sedgwick emphasizes that the place of identity that is delineated by shame does not determine the coherence nor the meaning of that identity and that race, gender, class, sexuality, appearance, and physical perfection are but some of the constructions that will crystalize there, deriving from that original affect their particular structures of expression, creativity, pleasure, and struggle. Accordingly, shame as a mediator of identity is politically interesting “because it generates and legitimates the place of identity […], but does so without giving that identity space the standing of an essence. It constitutes it as to-be-constituted, which is also to say, as already there for the (necessary, productive) misconstrual and misrecognition” (Sedgwick, 2003: 64). Coherently, Sedgwick states with particular clarity and conciseness that “‘queer performativity’ is the name of a strategy for the production of meaning and being, in relation to the affect shame and to the later and related fact of stigma” (Sedgwick, 2003: 61). Therefore, it must be recognized that Judith Butler is right in asserting that “matter itself is founded through a set of violations” (Butler, 1993: 29). Since the materiality that is supposed to be irreducible turns out to be constructed through a problematic genderized matrix, the discursive practice through which matter is made irreducible ontologizes and at the same time holds in place that genderized matrix, Butler states. Postulated or signified as prior to signification itself, the body is actually produced as an effect of that signification that claims at the same time to discover it as something that precedes the act of signifying, which implies that language is not mimetic but productive, constitutive, performative. And here Butler draws attention to the fact that matter is a principle of creative origin, recognized by the Greeks as a receptacle (hypodoche) of transformations, the Platonic chora that we seem to have forgotten in the meantime: “This receptacle/nurse is not a metaphor based on likeness to a human form, but a disfiguration that emerges at the boundaries of the human both as its very condition and as the insistent threat of its deformation; it cannot take a form, a morphe, and in that sense, cannot be a body” (Butler, 1993: 41). A space for symbolic inscription (favored by queer theory), the body is performatively genderized through a process of repetition that produces or creates identity and that acts as a citation of a matrix that equates in a causal and deterministic manner a certain sex (biologic, anatomic, genetic, etc.) with a certain gender (the social playing of a role) and the latter, in turn, with a certain sexual identity (heterosexual, homosexual), so that in the socially intelligible and admissible identity the cultural

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meaning of “man” exclusively interprets masculine bodies and “women” exclusively feminine bodies and each person’s sexual subjectivity, governed by compulsory heterosexuality, dictates that men only desire women and viceversa, in a rigid and immoveable binary opposition. Therefore, gender performativity refers, first and foremost, in Butler, to the process of production of effects in identity that become consolidated and materialized through a sort of citationality, the acquisition of being through the citation of power, a citation that is established as an original complicity with power in the formation of “I”: As a process, signification harbors within itself what the epistemological discourse refers to as ‘agency’. The rules that govern intelligible identity, i.e., that enable and restrict the intelligible assertion of an ‘I’, rules that are partially structured along matrices of gender hierarchy and compulsory heterosexuality, operate through repetition. Indeed, when the subject is said to be constituted, that means simply that the subject is a consequence of certain rule-­ governed discourses that govern the intelligible invocation of identity. The subject is not determined by the rules through which it is generated because signification is not a founding act, but rather a regulated process of repetition that both conceals itself and enforces its rules precisely through the production of substantializing effects. (Butler, 1999: 185–186)

The interruption of the mimetic repetition of the heteronormative matrix by deliberate failures, creative incoherences that cause delays that are increasingly distant from that matrix, gives rise to transformations and metamorphoses in identity that resubjectivate their agent, turning him into another who is increasingly de-identified from his original mold – such is queer performativity. In fact, queer theory goes beyond traditional constructivist theories, showing that the body does not preexist its discursive formation. From there derives, Sam Bourcier adds, “a redefinition of the notion of body as a corporeality that cannot be restricted to the body itself. Our body is an ensemble of borders and moveable and duly policed surfaces, produced by norms and technologies of knowledge-power (…) and no longer according to an interiority/exteriority axis with the skin for a border” (Bourcier, 2018: 404). This way of conceiving the ductility of the body as an object of design in a technical and pragmatic sense is in agreement with the defense of transhumanist “morphological freedom” alluded to by Gilbert Hottois, and Bourcier cannot help but wonder, in a way that meets the concerns of the former, if technologically-assisted flexibility in identity might not be an avatar of neo-liberalism. We find ourselves in the arena of technoperformativity that produces “transmutations” (Bourcier, 2018: 401), which according to Bourcier would require a “theoretical and political definition of technology (Bourcier, 2018: 588). Bourcier touches on the crux of the matter: it is indispensable to reflect on technologically-assisted experimentation, but he is wrong when he ignores that it is already at an advanced stage outside of the queer and transgender studies, which tend to be, especially the latter, naïvely technophile. And they are at the center of Bourcier’s concerns when he points to an incompatibility between the first works of Butler (1993, 1999) and the subsequent one (Butler, 2004), to accuse the latter of disconnecting queer theory from trans subcultures (Bourcier, 2018: 685), when at the outset it was, much like the feminisms, a gender technology in its own right. Bourcier defends that those politicized queer subcultures, with queer transmasculinity at the helm, are henceforth the ones multiplying

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sexual possibilities that seek a “sexual disorientation” that goes even further than the queer deconstruction of the binary mode of heterosexuality versus homosexuality. This includes countersexuality as formulated by Beatriz/Paul Preciado in his Countersexual Manifesto (2011), which is based on the assumption that the history of sexuality has moved from the realm of the natural history of reproduction to become a part of the artificial history of production: “Countersexuality is not the creation of a new nature, but rather the end of Nature as an order that legitimizes the subjection of some bodies to others. Countersexuality is, firstly, a critical analysis of gender and sexual difference, the normative performativities of which were inscribed onto the bodies as biological truths […] Secondly: countersexuality aims to replace this social contract we call Nature with a countersexual contract” (Preciado, 2011: 12–13). The axis of countersexuality resides in a radical questioning of the therapeutic, biomedical character of the prosthesis as a correction of something that failed, when what is at stake is going beyond what works and how it “normally” works: What is interesting, from a countersexual point of view, is the capacity of the instrument to acquire consciousness, to incorporate the body’s memory, to feel and act on its own. The prosthesis endowed with phantom sensitivity breaks with the mechanical model in which the prosthesis ought to be a simple instrument that replaces the missing member. It becomes impossible to stabilize the prosthesis, to define it as mechanical or organic, as body or machine. For a time, the prosthesis belongs to a living body, but it resists definitive incorporation. It is separable, detachable, discardable, replaceable. Even when it is bound to the body, incorporated and apparently endowed with consciousness, it can at any moment revert into an object. (Preciado, 2011: 152)

By overcoming the binarisms that reinforce the political stigmatization of certain groups (women, nonwhite, queers, disabled, sick, etc.) and systematically prevent their access to textual, discursive, corporal technologies that produce and objectivate them, it finally becomes possible to demystify the technical production that presents itself as “nature”: “every technological ‘organ’ reinvents a ‘new natural condition’ by which we are all disabled. What is more, every new technology recreates our nature as disabled in relation to a new activity that requires technological compensation” (Preciado, 2011: 153). Preciado further states that the difference between bio- and techno- is not a difference between organic and inorganic, and so what is at stake is not the assessment of the shift from biologic to synthetic, but rather noting the appearance of a new type of corporality: “The new technologies of production of the body do not faithfully follow a classical taxonomy according to which each organ and each tissue has a single corresponding function and a single corresponding location. Far from obeying a formal or material totality of the body, biotechnology and prosthetic technologies combine representation modes derived from cinema and architecture, such as editing and 3D modeling” (Preciado, 2008: 139–140). From this viewpoint, Preciado shows himself to be somewhat indebted to Judith Butler, who was already a supporter of the Deleuzean/Guattarian idea of a “body without organs”, with which she reinterpreted the Freudian idea of general

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erotogenicity of the body: “To be a property of all organs is to be a property necessary to no organ, a property defined by its very plasticity, transferability, and expropriability” (Butler, 1993: 61). Preciado acknowledges the vicarious nature, so to speak, of the prosthetic function, which can migrate from organ to organ, thus fully opening up the possibility to wonder which organ, or erogenous location, or absence thereof, can establish someone as a man, as a woman, as masculine, as feminine, or symmetrically disqualify someone as homosexual, heterosexual, transgender, transsexual, disabled, etc. From this point forward, Preciado begins to move away from the focus placed by queer theory on the performativity of the symbolic, preferring his own idea of technoperformativity as operator of resubjectivation: “If it is possible to speak with Judith Butler of a performative production of gender, we would have to indicate that that which is mimicked here is not solely a theatrical performance or semiotic code but rather the biological totality of the living being” (Preciado, 2008: 130). Already in Countersexual Manifesto Preciado stated that: Countersexuality is also a theory of the body situated outside the polarities man/woman, masculine/feminine, heterosexuality/homosexuality. It defines sexuality as technology, and it considers the different elements of the sex/gender system called “man”, “woman”, “homosexual”, “heterosexual”, “transsexual”, as well as sexual practices and identities, to be nothing more than machines, products, instruments, dispositifs, gimmicks, prostheses, networks, applications, programs, connections, fluxes of energy and information, interruptions and interrupters, keys, traffic laws, borders, constraints, designs, logics, equipment, formats, accidents, detritus, mechanisms, usages, detours… (Preciado, 2011: 14)

In Testo Yonqui (2008), Preciado goes even further and raises objections to queer theory that are much more difficult to refute: “Gender (femininity/masculinity) is not a concept, nor an ideology, nor a performance” (Preciado, 2008: 89). Invoking Teresa De Lauretis, who replaced the notion of gender oppression with the notion of gender technologies, which are quite another set of technologies of production of somatic fictions, Preciado chooses to speak of technogender, instead of gender, “to account for the set of photographic, biotechnological, surgical, pharmacological, cinematographic or cybernetic technologies that performatively constitute the materiality of the sexes” (Preciado, 2008: 86). Where queer theory devises a sophisticated explanation for the discursive performativity that materializes gender according to heteronormative matrices, which, in turn, queer performativity deconstructs and reconstructs, Preciado reiterates the ontotechnocological bricolage of technoperformativity as follows: Twenty-first century gender functions as an abstract device of technical subjectivation: it is glued, it is cut, it is displaced, it is cited, it is imitated, it is absorbed, it is injected, it is grafted, it is digitalized, it is copied, it is designed, it is bought, it is sold, it is modified, it is mortgaged, it is transferred, it is downloaded, it is applied, it is transcribed, it is forged, it is executed, it is certified, it is exchanged, it is dosed, it is provided, it is administered, it is extracted, it contracts, it is subtracted, it is denied, it is renounced, it is betrayed, it mutates. (Preciado, 2008: 88)

Indeed, the countersexuality project is positioned in relation to the Foucauldian understanding of sexuality as a dispositif of biopolitical capture of individuals, forcing itself to go further than the queer theory inspired by it, to ask what sort of

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ultimate ductility could explain the fact that gender is malleable to such an extent. The answer lies in the orgasmic force or potentia gaudendi, which it conceives on the basis of the Greek dynamis, filtered by the Spinozian power to act or force to exist: it is about the power (actual or virtual) of (total) excitation of a body. This power is an indeterminate capacity, it is genderless, it is neither feminine nor masculine, neither human nor animal, neither animate nor inanimate, it is not primarily addressed either to feminine or to masculine, it does not know the difference between homosexuality and heterosexuality, it does not differentiate between object and subject, nor does it know the difference between being aroused, arousing or being aroused by. It does not favor one organ over the other. (…) The orgasmic force is the sum total of the excitation potency inherent to each living molecule. The orgasmic force does not seek its immediate resolution but rather aspires to extend through time and space to everything and everyone, in all places and at all times. It is the force that turns the world into pleasure-with. The orgasmic force gathers at the same time all the somatic and psychic forces, implicates all the biochemical resources and all the structures of the soul. (Preciado, 2008: 38)

As the “total and abstract capacity to create pleasure” (Preciado, 2008: 90), it is above all a power of life that aspires to be transferred onto everything and everyone, a force of transformation of the entire interconnected technocultural planet. A phenomenon that, in Preciado’s opinion, Foucault did not mention in his analysis of societies that were not yet contemporary, making it necessary to conceptualize a third regime of subjectivation or of knowledge-power, neither sovereign nor disciplinarian, to which Deleuze (1990) calls the society of control (biopolitical control) but Preciado prefers to call the society of pharmacopornographic capitalism: “Here, even money becomes an abstract signifying psychotropic substance. The addicted and sexual body, sex, and all its semiotechnical derivatives are today the principal resource of post-Fordist capitalism” (Preciado, 2008: 36–37). In the state of permanent hyper-productive excitability of pharmacopornographic capitalism – a personal interpretation of Peter Sloterdijk’s infinite mobilization – the labor power revealed its true substrate, which is the potentia gaudendi. In addition to its impermanent and highly malleable character, it is characterized by the impossibility to be possessed or preserved. It is an energetic foundation that exists solely as an event, a relation, a practice, a becoming, which means that the technobody (not exclusively biological and prediscursive), an entity that is techno-alive and multiconnected, is its polysexual living substrate. Where Marshall McLuhan and Norbert Wiener had sensed that the communication technologies worked as extensions of the body, it is henceforth necessary to say that it is the individual body that works as an extension of global communication technologies, which also explains the fact that already Donna Haraway preferred the notion of technopower to the Foucauldian notion of biopower, thus contributing to the obsolescence of the idea of an exclusively biological life. The orgasmic force that is convertible into capital does not reside, therefore, in the bios, as was thought from Aristotle to Darwin, but in the technoeros, Preciado maintains. Such force is processed and used in the post-­ Fordist era of pharmacopornographic capitalism and that use transforms it into a process of subjectivation that opens up the possibility of transforming the subject into an endless reserve of the planetary race convertible into capital, into an

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abstraction, into a digit: “And from this it follows: both biopolitics (the politics of the control and production of life) and thanatopolitics (the politics of the control and management of death) function as pharmacopornopolitics, as planetary managements of potentia gaudendi” (Preciado, 2008: 40). Women were the primary target of this by being reduced to sexual and reproductive work when their orgasmic force was converted into merchandise. But if we join Marx in thinking that the labor power is not the actual work carried out but the potential to work, then it can be deduced that any body, human, animal, real, virtual, female, male, possesses a potentia gaudendi that generates a fixed capital, by participating in the productive process without being consumed by it. Admitting that “[o]ur contemporary societies are gigantic contemporary sexopolitical laboratories where the genders are produced” (Preciado, 2008: 93), Preciado repeats, on his own account and on technoperformativity terms, something that queer theory had already suggested, following in the footsteps of Foucault. It is the capacity for position reversal within power-knowledge relations, that is, the capacity of individuals for making something out of what was made of them, which in queer theory essentially means a resignifying and resubjectivating politics of performativity (clearly different and indeed opposed to the politics of identity from second-wave feminism and LGBT movements that coexisted with it), but to which Preciado gives a new character: As sexual subjects, we inhabit biocapitalist amusement parks. We are men and women of the laboratory. Effects of a kind of politico-scientific bio-Platonism. But we are alive: we materialize both the power of the pharmacopornographic system and the possibility of its failure. (Preciado, 2008: 93)

The fact is that the type of action envisaged by Preciado requires a type of subject that is different from the reconfigured and resignified subject of queer theory. Here it must be noted that, following the final stage of the Foucauldian work, queer theory neither simply abolishes nor dispenses with the subject, and both present it as a product, a result, a final effect that is always open to new reconfigurations, unlike what would follow from a very rushed and careless reading, but also very widespread one, especially among the younger activist generations, who base themselves on Preciado to that effect, interpreting his thinking as a radical de-subjectivation. A certain ambiguity in Preciado provides the necessary room for that, and this is strengthened by his distancing, not ambiguous in the least, from the politics of queer performativity: Not only man and woman, masculine and feminine, but also homosexual and heterosexual appear today as insufficient binarisms or oppositions to characterize the contemporary production of queer bodies. In addition to resignification and resistance to normalization, performative politics will become a field for experimentation, the place where new subjectivities are produced and, as such, a true alternative to the traditional ways of doing politics. (Preciado, 2008: 259)

The core of the alternative Preciado suggests does not lie in his criticism of the failure of traditional identity politics or of the installation and normalization of social movements (which culminates in ableist feminism and same-sex marriage),

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even when they tried to go beyond essentialized identity politics. It lies in the decidedly post-emancipatory and experimental vocation that he wishes to impress upon his politics of technoperformativity, which immediately leads us to ask, on the one hand, what do politics devoid of emancipatory content consist of and, on the other hand, whether experimental politics can even be considered as politics tout court: In this context of production and global masturbatory control it becomes obsolete to talk of sexual liberation or of war of the sexes. We must speak instead of pharmacopornographic domination, resistance, and terrorism (…). This new pharmacopornographic proletariat is an economic subject that produces sexual and toxicologic added value (…), and it is also a new political subject: not because it is able to incarnate the promise of radical feminism (betrayed by anti-pornographic, abolitionist liberal and State feminisms), of the queer movement (betrayed by the homosexual and transsexual movements, as well as by their alliances with the medical, legal, and mediatic powers) and of the movement of nonallopathic medicines and of liberalization of drug use (betrayed by the pharmacological agreements and threatened by the State mafias and drug trafficking), but because it stems directly from the detritus of these failed political subjects. (Preciado, 2008: 208)

As a(n) (in)conclusive coda, let us recall some warnings, starting with Agamben, who very appropriately in that regard pointed out that no return to classic politics is possible and that the restoration of its categories would have nothing but a meaning of criticism (Agamben, 2016: 164). The tensions we refer to are, after all, the tensions of experimental life into which biopolitics has turned all forms of life and which make us question if we might not be about to leap into it with the very gesture of conceiving and experimenting whatever might be a form of resistance. Following in the footsteps of Foucault, who was a pioneer in gaining this awareness, Agamben notes that: “It is easy to see that experimental life is a bios that has, in a very particular sense, so concentrated itself on its own zoê that it became indistinguishable from it” (Agamben, 2016: 163). Indeed, what seems to emerge against the backdrop of a pursuit of morphological freedom is a new epistemopolitics that operates a fully decisive shift from the realm of the emancipatory into the realm of the experimental (and, as such, post-emancipatory), always running the imminent risk of, for all practical purposes, paradoxically bringing closer together political orientations deemed incompatible, if not mutually exclusive. It is possible to detect surprising convergences between diametrically opposite political views both within bioconservatives and transhumanists, as Gilbert Hottois summarizes in a very clarifying way: Bioconservatives assemble anti-technology activists and anti-company capitalists, religious conservatives, defenders of the rights of people with a disability, deep ecology environmentalists that refer to the law of Nature or of God, certain feminist movements, anti-modernity reactionaries, members of the socialist left and atheist or agnostic communists, trade unions fearful of the disappearance of work, defenders of the rights of man, the intellectual left, which is humanist and progressive but conservative or reactionary regarding new technologies, those ‘Cassandras’ that merely invoke the principle of precaution… All of them converge towards a ‘defense of the rights of man or of the human’, but for reasons and against a backdrop of beliefs that are sometimes diametrically opposite. [§] On the other hand, the transhumanist branch (…) spreads from anarcho-capitalism and libertarianism to the socialism of the Welfare State; feminist amalgamations, homosexual, transsexual and transgendered movements, certain defenders of the rights of man, utopians of the left, neoliberals,

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animal defenders… Here also, the range spans from left to right, with its axis resting of a notion of ‘person’ that cannot be reduced to that of ‘human’. (Hottois, 2017: 178)

If human is that which has the capacity to make itself, without any specific previous identity, then all the human-becoming will be subject to recognition (Butler, 2004: 134), which “means that it is a man who recognizes himself as such, that man is the animal that must recognize itself as human to be human” (Agamben, 2002: 44). Therein as well lies the pertinence of Judith Butler’s urgent interrogation of what counts as a life whose loss is worthy of mourning, no matter how precarious it might be (Butler, 2006), or unsustainable (Cascais, 2016), or, as it was once called by Nazi biomedicine, “a life unworthy of being lived” (Lebensunwertes Leben). In sum, the human as an anthropological machine: “Homo sapiens is therefore neither a substance nor a clearly defined species: it is rather a machine or an artifice to produce the recognition of the human” (Agamben, 2002: 46). Since recognition does not belong to the realm of the ontological but rather to the realm of the historical, it is impossible to invoke an original essence in the name of which it would be possible to put aside forms of undesirable (in)humanity. All that is left is the memory of the holocausts, all of them, which never should have been so that we can know what must never be repeated. There is no moral whatsoever in the thrust of history, which is retroactively incorrigible and irretrievable, though we can always draw lessons from it for our own action. This is the specter that unavoidably haunts today’s transhumanist projects of Artificial Life and Artificial Intelligence, as well as the politics of morphological freedom, whenever, willfully or surreptitiously, they slide from a therapeutic, corrective or preventive intervention into enhancement or betterment aiming at improvement. This likewise reveals that normality never ceased to be a regulating ideal, which, though it never really was a statistic norm or constant, is in the process of becoming an aporia of the unattainable, that, in making the goal always further, higher, and stronger, gradually produces a mass exclusion of obsolescence, failures, defective products, disposable leftovers, an unsustainable human (bio)mass that is literally too much and destined for extermination processing. It is the mass production of disposable bare life, which inescapably separates the crowd from those excluded from the integral political body, as Agamben concludes (2016: 155–158), and that reason can only think of in shock and awe, “quasi attonita”, in the words of Schelling (Agamben, 2016: 160). It is possible to deduce from the reflection of Foucault, first on the disciplinary orthogenesis of modern individuals (described in Discipline and Punish) and secondly on biopolitics (in The Will to Knowledge), that this veritable mechanism of selection (stimulus and intensification of desirable characteristics and rejection and elimination of deleterious traits) also extends to the transposing of what he calls the threshold of biological modernity (“biohistory”) and that it can include paroxysmal apexes in which biopolitics flows into thanatopolitics (necropolitics, in slightly different versions, apud Achille Mbembe). Following in the footsteps of Foucault, these confirm the concentrationary paradigm of Agamben (2016) and the immunization paradigm of Roberto Esposito (2002). We do not need totalitarian ruptures to bring about holocausts that were once a

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prerogative of the fascist paroxysms; the democratic business as usual production of states of exception is gradually taking care of it, against a backdrop of capitalist-­ liberal economic rationality, capable of reaching the point of environmental and climatic apocalypse, but which henceforth presents itself as naturalized and banalized in the form of reality as it is, in its solid inevitability and immovability. May I be allowed a platitude, if indeed it is one: of technology, we know a lot about where it has brought us; and very little about where it leads us.

References Agamben, G. (2002). L’ouvert: De l’homme et de l’animal. Éditions Payot. Agamben, G. (2006). Che cos’è un dispositivo? Edizioni Nottetempo. Agamben, G. (2016). Homo sacer: L’intégrale 1997–2015. Seuil. Bourcier, S. (2018). Queer zones: La trilogie. Éditions Amsterdam. Butler, J. (1993). Bodies that matter: On the discursive limits of ‘sex’. Routledge. Butler, J. (1999). Gender trouble: Feminism and the subversion of identity. Routledge. Butler, J. (2004). Undoing gender. Routledge. Butler, J. (2005). Humain, inhumain: Le travail critique des normes. Entretiens. Éditions Amsterdam. Butler, J. (2006). Precarious life: The powers of mourning and violence. Verso. Cascais, A. F. (2016). Da biopolítica após Foucault: Sustentabilidade dos sistemas e vidas insustentáveis. In M. Nalli & S. R. Mansano (Eds.), Michel Foucault: Desdobramentos (pp. 173–198). Autêntica Editora. Cheu, J. (2011). De-gene-rates, Replicants and other aliens: (Re)defining disability in futuristic films. In M. Corker & T. Shakespeare (Eds.), Disability/postmodernity: Embodying disability theory (pp. 198–212). Continuum. Deleuze, G. (1989). Qu’est-ce qu’un dispositif? In AAVV (Ed.), Michel Foucault philosophe (pp. 185–193). Seuil. Deleuze, G. (1990). Pourparlers. Les Éditions de Minuit. Dreyfus, H. L., & Rabinow, P. (1983). Michel Foucault: Beyond structuralism and hermeneutics (2nd ed.). The Chicago University Press. Esposito, R. (2002). Immunitas. Einaudi. Ferraris, M. (2018). Mobilização total. Edições 70. Foucault, M. (1977). A vontade de saber. António Ramos. Foucault, M. (1994). Le jeu de Michel Foucault. In Dits et écrits (Vol. III (1976–1979), pp. 298–329). Gallimard. Foucault, M. (2013). Vigiar e punir. Edições 70. Galimberti, U. (2000). Psyche e techne. Feltrinelli. Haraway, D. (1991). Simians, cyborgs, and women: The reinvention of nature. Free Association Books. Haraway, D. (1997). Modest witness second millennium: FemaleMan meets OncoMouse. Feminism and technoscience. Routledge. Hottois, G. (2017). Philosophie et idéologies trans/posthumanistes. Vrin. Kuppers, P. (2011). Image politics without the real: Simulacra, dandyism and disability fashion. In M. Corker & T. Shakespeare (Eds.), Disability/postmodernity: Embodying disability theory (pp. 184–197). Continuum. McRuer, R. (2006). Crip theory: Cultural signs of queerness and disability. New  York University Press. Preciado, B. (2008). Testo yonqui. Espasa Calpe.

16  Ontotechnologies of the Body: Technoperformativity and Processes of Subjectivation 303 Preciado, B. (2011). Manifiesto contrasexual. Editorial Anagrama. Rabinow, P. (2003). Anthropos today: Reflections on modern equipment. Princeton University Press. Ross, A. (1991). Hacking away at the counterculture. In C. Penley & A. Ross (Eds.), Technocultures (pp. 107–134). University of Minnesota Press. Sedgwick, E. K. (2003). Touching feeling: Affect, pedagogy, performativity. Duke University Press. Siebers, T. (2012). A sexual culture for disabled people. In R. McRuer & A. Mollow (Eds.), Sex and disability (pp. 37–53). Duke University Press. Stone, A. R. (1995). The war of desire and technology at the close of the mechanical age. The MIT Press. Stone, A.  R.. (2014). The empire strikes back: A Posttranssexual Manifesto. https://sandystone. com/empire-­strikes-­back.pdf António Fernando Cascais has a PhD in Communication Sciences from the Universidade Nova de Lisboa [NOVA – New University of Lisbon], Portugal. Assistant professor at the same University and Coordinator of the R&D projects Models and Practices of Science Communication in Portugal (2004–2009) and History of the Visual Culture of Medicine in Portugal (2009–2013). Author of Mediations of Science (2019) and over two hundred essays on the Mediation of Knowledge, Philosophy of Technology and the Body, Foucauldian and Queer Studies, the Visual Culture of Medicine, Biopolitics and Bioethics.  

Chapter 17

Solidary Technoscience: A Concept for the Philosophy of Technology Renato Dagnino Abstract  The background to this chapter is the idea that development strategies based on the use of capitalist technoscience in countries on the periphery of capitalism have proven increasingly ineffective. The aim is to draw on the resources of Latin American Science and Technology potential to overcome underdevelopment, dependency, and inequality. I suggest a concept which is important for Latin Americans involved with the philosophy of technology – solidary technoscience. It is the basis of an analytical-conceptual framework for launching a cognitive platform for the solidary economy. This new concept involves a critique which is made in order to overcome the concept of social technology used within the Latin American solidary economy movement. Keywords  Peripheral capitalist economy · Capitalist technoscience · Solidary technoscience · Social transformation

17.1 Introduction This chapter contends that development strategies based on the use of capitalist technoscience in countries on the periphery of capitalism have proven increasingly ineffective. This appraisal is the outcome of over four decades of participative research in the Latin American Thought in Science, Technology and Society, founded in the 1970s (Dagnino et al., 1996). This approach seeks to re-source Latin American Science and Technology potential to overcome underdevelopment, dependency, and inequality. More specifically, the driving force behind this incursion into the philosophy of technology is related to another, complementary objective: that of confronting social exclusion and unemployment by conceiving technoscientific knowledge for the production of goods and services in the economic-­ productive arrangements prevailing in the informal sector of Latin R. Dagnino (*) Unicamp – Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Campinas, Brazil e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 H. M. Jerónimo (ed.), Portuguese Philosophy of Technology, Philosophy of Engineering and Technology 43, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-14630-5_17

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American economies. This set of production and consumption networks, based on collective ownership of the means of production and self-management, seeks to achieve sustainability in the context of a peripheral capitalist economy, and now constitutes the solidary economy. As such, it seems to be an embryonic vehicle for effective social inclusion. This text advances a concept which is important for Latin Americans involved with the philosophy of technology  – solidary technoscience, first outlined in the book Neutralidade Científica e Determinismo Tecnológico: Um Debate sobre a Tecnociência [Neutrality of Science and Technological Determinism: A Debate on Technoscience] (Dagnino, 2008). It is the basis of an analytical-conceptual framework for launching a cognitive platform for the solidary economy.

17.2 Science, Technology, Knowledge for the Production of Goods and Services, and Technoscience The initial focus of this essay is on the knowledge mankind uses to produce goods and services, setting aside the conventional separation between science, on the one hand, and technology, on the other. The common sense supported by this separation is that technology is the application of science to cheaper and better production – intrinsically true knowledge which is universal and neutral (in the sense of not being contaminated by interests and values) – to satisfy the needs of society. On occasion, technology may be evil in its effects, if based on science generated by dark, unethical interests. Scholars of the modern Western tradition of Science and Technology Studies (STS) have begun to question this notion, which is based on the idea that the Cartesian ideal of a comprehensive and rational understanding of reality should coexist with the Baconian, of the control of nature at the service of humanity (Lacey, 1998). To argue against that separation, I have drawn on researchers ranging from Jean Ladrière (1977) and Gilbert Hottois (1996) to Jorge Nuñez (1999) and, the most popular of them, Bruno Latour (1989), all of whose arguments provide convincing evidence that this separation no longer corresponds to the growing imbrication of science and technology, and that the locational and temporal cleavage that understood the former as carried out in the university in search of the truth and not in the corporation in search of profit, and for a future of uncertain outlines and not for its immediate application, no longer applies. In fact, the term technoscience better describes observed reality and is more appropriate for analyzing the global dynamics of innovation, powered by large corporations but also involving public education and research organizations. It was following this path and realizing that the term technoscience should always be qualified by the adjective “capitalist” that I started using it to describe contemporary reality. I also began to use the term technoscience to refer, generically, for any time and society, to a concept that seemed essential for

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a better understanding of this reality: that of knowledge for the production of goods and services. A look at the history of science and history of technology reveals that this knowledge has always been a combination of what we today call science, art, witchcraft, technology, religion, beliefs, the result of trial and error or of empirical observation, handicraft, and “animal instinct”, etc. Vandana Shiva (2001 [1997]: 30), referring more specifically to contemporary science, reminds us that it “is not restricted to modern Western science, but includes the knowledge systems of several cultures in different periods of history”, basing her opinion on the fact that science is an expression of creativity, both individual and collective, and that, since it has different expressions, science is also a pluralist initiative that encompasses different ways of knowing. Syntheses have always existed which are similar to the knowledge used for producing goods and services today in use – capitalist technoscience, which is interpreted by those authors as a contemporaneous fusion between science and technology and considered to be characteristic of a specific stage of development of this mode of production, neoliberalism. Moreover, that which is perceived as a combination of portions of knowledge – science and technology, codified by taking advantage of the opportunities opened by the former, was born as a tacit unit even before capitalism was “invented”. In other words, technoscience is a cognitive outcome of the changes in work processes for producing goods and services oriented to satisfying the interests of the actors who control these processes, according to their values. Considering the reality of capitalism, where the values and interests of the minority that holds the greatest power are embedded in the technoscience engendered by big corporations, the seemingly common-sense idea of separation and precedence of science and technology is not plausible. Also to be discarded is the notion that a science devoid of values and interests would be generated first, and then the technology to apply it would be placed “at the service of capital”, as an orthodox Marxist might say. In this line of thinking, it is as if supposedly neutral scientific knowledge would later be “contaminated”, through the development of technology, with the capitalist values and interests of private property and the exploitation of human labor and, when introduced into the work process, would enable the extraction of relative surplus value. Stephen Marglin (1986) and Harry Braverman (1974) have contributed to an understanding of how capitalist technoscience is generated, and of how, in the transition from feudalism to capitalism, the knowledge possessed by the worker was expropriated by the capitalist. They show how the history of capitalist technoscience began with the expropriation of knowledge derived from the life (and frequently family) experience of the direct worker. Improvement came from action by the owner of the means of production on the work process, to adjust the production of goods and services to the demands of consumers and competitors. When necessary – for reasons of cost, scale, uncertainty, etc. – controlled experimentation, systematization and codification of this cognitive outcome could occur outside the production environment, in specialized spaces, to return to it with greater efficiency. A virtuous circle tended to be established that encompassed territories other than

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those of production and consumption, such as the university space, which was apparently little subject to the logic of capital. The trajectory of capitalist technoscience has nothing to do with “seeking truth” through the “advancement of science” or, by relying on it, producing better and cheaper goods and services with greater “efficiency” through technological development. The emergence and expansion of specialized public and private organizations oriented to teaching and research, and to receive the children and godchildren of the owning class, was only one facet of that trajectory. It could also be a said that separating knowledge used for production of goods and services (which in pre-capitalist societies encompassed a wide and varied set) on the one hand, and science and technology on the other, is an ideological manipulation performed by capitalism. Through it, capitalism was able to naturalize the idea that there was a binomial that expressed an immanent and latent contradiction. On the one hand, there was a pure, good, true and universal science, the result of an infinitely curious human drive for perfect knowledge of nature. On the other hand, there was a technology that used it for the production of goods and services, but which, being “unethical” (that is, exalting capitalist ethics), could be oriented to evil, such as the use of nuclear physics to kill people and, also, to cure cancer. A more recent proposition in favor of this argument is that there is a third type of knowledge necessary for the production of goods and services. This is how the concept of innovation is added to the binomial, already in full neoliberalism, to convince us that there is knowledge only able to be generated in the company and that it should be, as has effectively been happening, the focus of the cognitive policy of the capitalist state.

17.3 An Analytical-Conceptual Framework for Solidary Technoscience Based on the Contribution of the Philosophy of Technology In this section, I will return to the formulation of the analytical-conceptual framework, to deal with the technoscientific issues associated with the solidary economy. The concept I propose here is solidary technoscience, a notion that translates the metaphor of a cognitive platform for launching the solidary economy. This new concept involves a critique which is made in order to overcome the concept of social technology used within the Latin American solidary economy movement. As concepts dealing with issues such as social inclusion imply and, at the same time, denote different perspectives on the best strategy to achieve it, it is inevitable that they will be disputed. What animates the proposal I make in this text is the fact that (in a contradictory way, given that this movement is politically counter-­ hegemonic) the two myths that hamper social inclusion tend to be legitimized within the social technology movement itself. The first, which I have just discussed, is that of the separation between science and technology; the second, which my incursion

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into the philosophy of technology fundamentally questioned, is that of the neutrality of technoscience. In order to further illuminate the path that led to the concept of solidary technoscience and one of its most important milestones – the critique of the concept of social technology below, it is necessary to indicate how this new approach to the cognitive aspects of the solidary economy developed, and to show how a broader perspective of the Social Studies of Science and Technology evolved as a result of incorporating the “philosophies” of technology and science into them. I became convinced that these two objects – science and technology – are not separate constructs, but have always been forms of knowledge for the production of goods and services emerging from the action of social actors on the work process. What actually exists is a relationship between technoscience and society. To show the reader how this process occurred and how the philosophy of technology fits into the analytical-­conceptual framework under construction, I quote some of the most significant contributions that I found in these areas. The New Sociology of Science, and its Edinburgh Strong Programme (Bloor, 1991) combined with “laboratory studies” (Latour & Woolgar, 1986) sharpened my perception that science was a mutant and negotiable social construct. The Social Construction of Technology (Bijker et al., 2012) helped me to understand how “relevant social groups” produced the “closure” of “sociotechnical artifacts” at the micro level, influenced by their values and interests when it was possible to tune them in with those operating in the macro environment of the “seamless fabric” in which large organizations operate. The underlying idea that it would be possible, by increasing the intensity of the signals emitted by new groups in the context of redesigning capitalist technoscience, to alter their outcome, was also essential to my purpose. Policy Analysis (Ham & Hill, 1993) had allowed me to make explicit the anomalous style that S&T policy has all over the world and the atypical character it has on the periphery of capitalism (Dagnino, 2016). Actor Network Theory (Callon, 1981) allowed me to unravel the controversies that arose in the scenario of the production of technoscientific knowledge. Gender Studies (Wajcman, 2000), which revealed a field that even critical thinking on the relationship of Science, Technology and Society had long ignored, allowed me to understand how the academic production of women, “contaminated” with values that opposed those that impregnated capitalist technoscience, pointed to the possibility of alternative ways of generating the type of biased knowledge that is inherent in the solidary economy. It was within this mosaic that, with the aim of creating the analytical-conceptual framework I was looking for, I found the contributions of the philosophers. The Philosophy of Science, through authors such as Hugh Lacey (1999), with his discussion on the neutrality of science, corroborated my perception that scientists are conditioned by non-epistemic values. He also complemented my view on how the outcome of their work at universities and public research institutes, which they intended to keep safe from dominant values in the capitalist socioeconomic and political context, was influenced by those values. This meant that even that which could be more properly described as scientific research could not directly contribute

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to building that platform for launching the solidarity economy that I saw as necessary. The Philosophy of Technology, through authors such as André Gorz (1980, 1988), although dealing with a territory other than Latin America, or perhaps because of this, reinforced my understanding of the relevance of the subject. In this sense, I should emphasize his rejection of the false opposition alleged by capital between frivolous opulence and virtuous austerity and the denunciation of its need to generate scarcity where there is abundance. This false opposition conditions the worker to a model in which no-one is allowed to produce something that he needs to consume, and no-one may consume something that they are forced to produce. I highlight his idea that this model, which would act as a regulator between the level of satisfaction attainable by the individual and the volume of work he carries out, needs to be questioned by supporters of the solidary economy. Unlike salaried work, collaborative exchanges would be responsible not only for the improvement of workers’ well-being but also for enlarging their critical conscience and dignity. I would also like to draw attention to his insight into the contradiction between collective and individual autonomy, a contradiction which justifies those who oppose the collective ownership of the means of production of the solidary economy to the private ownership inherent in capitalism and the state ownership of Soviet socialism, as well as the repressive and conformist bias of real socialism. Also of value is his plea that knowledge be used to free up time and to adopt as a guide the notion of “sufficient”. This leads him to criticize the productivist ideal, based on notions of endless growth and growing needs, which regrettably continues to guide left-wing thinking today. It was above all Andrew Feenberg (2002) who contributed most to my reflection and whose work is of paramount importance to this text. With his discussion of the neutrality of technology, using a Marxist approach, he appropriately justified, historicized and formalized the idea contained in the theory of social construction of technology that “artifacts have politics” (Winner, 1986). He explained the misunderstanding they incurred and the risk they ran for those who, aspiring to use capitalist technology to materialize alternative political projects, accepted the myths of neutrality and determinism. His view that the use of capitalist technology in the construction of socialism was one of the conditioning factors of the bureaucratic degeneracy of Soviet socialism was especially important. It reinforced my perception that the economic, environmental, political and cultural sustainability of the solidarity economy could not be based on capitalist technoscience. The taxonomy proposed by Feenberg (2002) was especially useful in characterizing how technology is perceived by different social actors. As is shown below, extending his analysis to what I understand by technoscience, it is possible to use the four conceptions he proposes to better understand my criticism of the notion of social technology and to formulate the concept of solidary technoscience. The first of these conceptions, the Instrumentalist, offers an appropriate foundation for this criticism. It supposes, in line with the liberal, positivist and modern optimism surrounding progress, that technology, resulting from a search for truth

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and efficiency, is neutral. As a result, submitted to an external and a posteriori control of ethics, it can be used to satisfy infinite societal needs. The second conception is the Determinist, as put forward by conventional Marxism and which retains the idea that technology is an application of science. While maintaining the belief in the neutrality of technology, it incorporates the notion that its development occurs through the demands of efficiency and progress that it establishes itself. Despite its deep ideological differences with liberalism, conventional Marxism also accepts the idea of neutrality that is at the root of its economic-productive and social construction. Thus, although conventional Marxism attributes the development of productive forces, in the capitalist mode of production, to the interest of the entrepreneur in raising the productivity of labor that he can appropriate (since it is guaranteed by private ownership of the means of production), this conception understands that, since their development is linear and inexorable, they are responsible for changing modes of production in the long run. Their periodical tension with the social relations of production (slave, feudal, capitalist, socialist) would lead to the communist mode of production. It would not be control through ethics, as proposed by the Instrumentalist conception, but the socialist revolution, the trigger that would allow human progress. The same technology that today oppresses because of its neutrality, could tomorrow, once “appropriated” by the working class, be used – in the realm of other social relations of production – to build socialism. The third conception presented by Feenberg, interpreting the contribution of the Frankfurt School, is that of Substantivism. This conception denies the idea of Neutrality, but retains that of Determinism: capitalist values and interests incorporated in the production of technology condition its dynamics to such an extent that they prevent its use in alternative political projects. Unlike the previous ones, this conception is pessimistic in relation to the future of Humanity. By accepting the idea that technology “governs itself”, it indicates that almost nothing can be done to “contaminate” it with other values and interests. The fourth conception, which Feenberg calls Critical Theory, denies the idea of neutrality, disagreeing therefore with Instrumentalism and also with Determinism, since it considers technology as a carrier of values. But it does not accept the idea of Substantivism, that capitalist values give it immutable characteristics which hinder social change. This conception considers, as Instrumentalism does, that technology can be controlled, thus denying Determinism. It is based on this fourth conception, and on considerations regarding the convenience of using the category of technoscience instead of science and technology, that I have formulated the idea of Sociotechnical Adaptation (Dagnino, 2008). I enunciate it as being an engaged and optimistic posture. Given that technoscience is a social construction, I have argued that capitalist technoscience can be redesigned (or became adequate) through the politicization of the institutions where it is usually produced, a process requiring the internalization of alternative values and interests, the observance of the precepts of plurality, and an a priori internal democratic control of these institutions. The additional condition for Sociotechnical Adaptation is the incorporation of social actors (directly interested in having a form of

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knowledge for the production of goods and services aligned with their values and interests) in this redesign process. These considerations lead to tentative proposals for defining the cognitive launching platform for the solidary economy, on the basis of a generic concept, which I call “technoscience”, denoting “knowledge for the production of goods and services”. To maintain coherence with the objective outlined at the beginning of this text, the concept should, in the first place, give an account of the characteristics of technoscience existing in a capitalist society and the motivations (values and interests) of those involved in producing it. As with my Feenberg-inspired incursion into the philosophy of technology, this approach is aligned with Marxism. More than any other, this approach seems to provide adequate guidelines for including in solidary technoscience elements related to the solidary economy: the social actor, the work process, control (self-management or hetero-management), and ownership of the means of production (private or collective). In addition to incorporating the elements that explain why a social actor modifies work processes to serve his interests, this concept replaces social technology. This condition is needed to counter the dubiousness of that concept commonly employed within social movements, NGOs and government agencies involved with the solidary economy. In short, Solidary Technoscience is a concept that could make their actions much more effective.

17.4 Formulating a Generic Concept of Technoscience This section offers a step-by-step presentation of the concept. The first step is to understand technoscience (knowledge for production of goods and services) as the cognitive outcome of a social actor’s action on a work process oriented to the production of goods and services, on which (in general) other social actors also act. The expression “outcome” is used to highlight the notion that technoscientific knowledge is a consequence of a social actor’s successful attempt to alter a work process to achieve some objective he desires. This knowledge, therefore, is (usually) not something known a priori, ex-ante, that could be successfully used for that purpose. Its status as technoscience derives precisely from something that occurs a posteriori, when reaching the objective of the actor (the appropriation of the material result of his action) who altered the work process he controls. Bearing in mind the form of ownership of the means of production involved in the work process, two other aspects have to be considered. The first derives from the fact that only if the actor is the owner of the means of production will he have the control over the work process necessary to alter it. The second aspect is that it is this property that ensures that the material result of this change can be appropriated by him. It is then possible to broaden the concept by saying that technoscience is the cognitive outcome of an actor’s action upon a work process that he controls and that enables a qualitative or quantitative modification in the generated product (in the generic sense of output) that may be appropriate according to his interest. Capitalist

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technoscience serves as a good example: it is the cognitive outcome of the action of the capitalist on a work process that allows an increase in the exchange value of the product (or production) generated that he can appropriate (in the form of relative surplus value). This increase may be in terms of quantity (process technology) or quality (product technology). Goods and services produced to be used by individuals who produce other goods and services within the framework of social relations of production acquire, in capitalism, a value that transcends the satisfaction that their use makes possible (use value). Its exchange value, formed through a capitalist work process by the sum of the materials employed, the salary paid and the surplus value (entrepreneur’s profit), is that around which its price effectively realized in the market will fluctuate. It is in order to reduce the time during which the direct worker “remunerates” with his work the salary he receives that the entrepreneur, by altering the work process, tentatively generates “capitalist technoscience”. Coercion in capitalism is exercised through a labor market characterized by the existence of a large contingent of unemployed (the “industrial reserve army”) that translates into constant pressure on workers to accept the conditions imposed by the capitalist. This type of coercion, although very effective, is subtler than that existing in previous economic modes of production, which means it is perceived as natural and inevitable. It is important to point out that all these factors (private ownership of the means of production, extraction of surplus value, appropriation of the surplus) are guaranteed by the capitalist order and legitimized by the system of ideological domination that emanates from it and that naturalizes the forms of hiring and subordination of the direct worker. They are also continuously made possible in the financial sphere by a wide range of subsidies the State provides for capital accumulation. By helping to obscure the morally questionable character of the capitalist’s behavior and to ensure the consent of the working class, which is the necessary counterpart to the construction of its (ideological) hegemony, and of capitalism itself, the State confers legitimacy on this specific form of generating technoscientific knowledge. Abstracting now from the specifically capitalist situation and shifting the focus to a hypothetical generic situation, it is possible to distinguish three spaces to which the social actor who acts upon the work process belongs: production itself, the social contract and the broader socioeconomic context. By understanding these spaces heuristically as conditioned in inverse order and considering the attributes they assume in each of the situations to be analyzed – capitalism or the solidary economy – I outline below the characteristics of technoscience associated with each situation, capitalist or solidary respectively. In the production space, which can be understood as that in which the work process takes place, two apparently antagonistic elements coexist. The first and most important is control, understood as the ability related to the use of intangible knowledge or incorporated in technological artifacts. Control is an inherent characteristic of any work process, whatever the mode of production in which it occurs. The second is cooperation, understood as being associated with the acting together with another individual to obtain a benefit perceived as mutual and demonstrated in

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group work processes. The key element of the social contract space is coercion (the act of compelling someone to an action or choice directly or through ideological mechanisms). This space, as previously exemplified in the case of capitalism, is conditioned by all the organs of the State that appear as privileged loci of legitimization and naturalization of a given socio-economic context (or mode of production). It is in the third space, in the socioeconomic context, that one finds the element that conditions the other two throughout historical time: the type of ownership of the means of production or of dead labor. Property which in the group work processes may assume the collective or private form; in capitalism, it may result in the sale of the labor force, or living labor, which characterizes capitalism. Bearing in mind these three spaces and four elements – the socio-economic context (ownership of the means of production), the social contract (coercion) and production (control and cooperation)  – and focusing once again on capitalism, it is possible to go one step further. The form of private ownership of the means of production, although a more than central, defining aspect of capitalism (along with its corollary, the purchase and sale of labor force), is not directly responsible for the characteristics of capitalist technoscience. Because it is something exogenous to the productive space, it is not able to determine univocally the elements of control and cooperation that arise there and that characterize capitalist technoscience. This becomes clear when we compare the modes of slave or feudal production with the capitalist one. In all of them, the ownership of the means of production is private, but the way in which the work process develops in the productive space is considerably different. Among other things, and mainly because of the impossibility of a type of coercion – physical violence – that the corresponding social contracts (especially that of slavery) made possible. What might explain the attributes related to the elements of control and cooperation in the production space, which is one of the defining characteristics of technoscience generated in each situation (or mode of production), is the relationship between State and society (or the social contract) that involves this space. There would be a mediation conditioning the characteristics of the work process: the type of coercion allowed and legitimated by the social contract. This mediation is decisive for shaping the characteristics of technoscience. It involves the type of ownership (attached to the socioeconomic context), the elements of control and cooperation (attached to the space of production) and the element of coercion (attached to the social contract). The private ownership of the means of production that ensures control of the work process implies a form of cooperation that enhances the way capitalist technoscience is developed and used. This mediation is so decisive that even when the exogenous element of the space of production – the private ownership of the means of production – ceases to exist, and non-capitalist social relations are established, the technoscience used in the space of production tends to preserve attributes imposed by this capitalist type of control and cooperation. An important result of this attempt to understand the specificities of capitalist technoscience is the proposition that what characterizes it is not only the private ownership of the means of production, but the type of control and cooperation that it determines or provides and that remains impregnated in technoscience. The

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phenomenon of hysteresis that this may bring about is observable in factories recovered by their workers (when private ownership of the means of production no longer exists) that tend to maintain the technoscientific, or technological, characteristics in force in the work process that used to occur in them. This set of considerations allows us to conceptualize capitalist technoscience as the cognitive outcome of the capitalist’s action upon a work process that, due to a socioeconomic context (which engenders private ownership of the means of production) and a social agreement (which legitimizes the economic coercion exerted by the labor market and the ideological coercion imposed by the capitalist State), gives rise to imposed, asymmetric control and Taylorist or Toyotist cooperation that together bring about a modification in the product he can appropriate. Having considered the particular aspects that characterize capitalist technoscience, as evidenced by the reality in which we live, it is possible to use this understanding to follow the path in reverse, formulating the generic concept of technoscience (or knowledge for the production of goods and services) as the cognitive outcome of the action of a social actor on a work process that he controls and that allows a modification in the generated product that can be appropriated according to his interest. Having presented the generic concept of technoscience, it is interesting to return to the initial proposition – that of separating science from technology – to show how it is suitable to adopt this concept. Even when stripped of the more apologetic content presented there, technology appears in specialized literature as the capacity originated by the practical application of knowledge, methods, materials, tools, machines and processes to combine resources aiming to produce desired products faster or in greater quantity or even providing a cheaper product with higher quality. As can be seen, the concept put forward here differs from that proposition in several aspects. First, because it does not refer to the actor who modifies the work process (and who is interested in benefiting from this action) and, therefore, does not clarify that if he does not control it (in the “technical” sense, of the productive space) there will be no way to perform any change that may result in technoscientific knowledge, however interesting, “innovative”, attractive, or “scientific” it may be. Secondly, because the usual proposition supposes that any change in the work process which increases the amount of product generated during the time dedicated to it, can be carried out by the actor who controls the work process. The concept of technoscience proposed here highlights the obvious fact that this will only occur if the actor has some guarantee that the resulting product (material or economic) will be divided according to his interest. Thirdly, because the concept makes clear that this possibility is provided by a social agreement which legitimizes certain relations of ownership and exploitation. If this agreement ceases to exist, or if its maintenance is threatened (by an economic crisis, for instance), even if the actor continues to control the work process, he will not make any change. Fourthly, because it excludes the possibility that an actor who does not control the work process – the worker or the direct producer, in the case of the capitalist economy – could modify it: regardless of his intentions, he would take this concrete action. In comparing the concept presented here with the usual proposition, that the ­latter takes away or “naturalizes” the capitalist context that involves and gives

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meaning to it, by simply omitting it. This is a common characteristic of ideas current in both the social and hard sciences: having been defined under the aegis of the capitalism, they do not make reference to it. To this extent, purposefully or not, they acquire a status of universality and timelessness that masks their character as historically, socially and politically determined constructions. This aspect makes clear that an alternative technoscience – such as solidary technoscience – can only emerge in spaces in which, as suggested by the Sociotechnical Adaptation proposal inspired by Feenberg’s critical theory, there are values and interests coherent with an alternative style of development, like the solidary economy, which are counter-hegemonic to those that are dominant in those environments where capitalist technoscience is generated. For this to occur, a different form of ownership must exist, even if it is limited and surrounded by an adverse context in which private ownership of the means of production continues to prevail. That alternative is not state ownership, typical of “real” socialism, but the collective form of ownership characteristic of the solidary economy. Thus, although collective ownership of the means of production is a generic condition for an alternative style of development, it is plausible to imagine a previous situation (which may be as long-lasting as that of the centuries covering the transition from feudalism to capitalism) where these alternative environments may exist and prosper. Almost by definition, however, these are hardly likely to be located in private enterprises.

17.5 The Concept of Solidary Technoscience As I have endeavored to show, the generic concept of technoscience here formulated stems from a social and economic analysis of how human knowledge used to produce goods and services has evolved throughout history. I have drawn on the concept of technoscience to name this form of knowledge. Understood as a recurrent imbrication of what capitalism has accustomed us to refer to as science, technology and other very diverse comprehensions, including what is currently known as innovation, I call this knowledge technoscience. The end-point of this trajectory is the particularization of the generic concept of technoscience in order to arrive at solidary technoscience. This leads to the following formulation. Solidary technoscience is the cognitive outcome of the action of a collective of producers on a work process that, due to a socioeconomic context (which engenders collective ownership of the means of production) and a social agreement (which legitimizes associativism), which, in the productive environment, gives rise to particular control (self-management) and cooperation (voluntary and participative), provokes a modification in the product whose material result may be appropriate according to the decision of the collective. Once the concept is posited, its policy and political-oriented bias should be highlighted. It should be emphasized that it stems from the intention, through consciousness, mobilization, participation and empowerment of popular movements and

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through State action (promoted by leftwing coalitions), to generate knowledge for the production of goods and services capable of supporting the sustainability of the solidary ventures that are emerging in the peripheral Latin American capitalist economy. It is therefore distinct from that of social technology that I mentioned in the third section with the promise of a critique that I am now finally able to set out. Before that, I should clarify that I was one of the originators of this concept, when I was asked to formulate it in the book celebrating the launch of the Social Technology Network in 2003 (Dagnino et al., 2004). Instead of presenting a concept, I decided with my co-authors to write “on the analytical-conceptual framework of social technology”, which was the title we gave. There we explained how some contributions from the field of Social Studies of Science and Technology made it possible to evolve from the Appropriate Technology movement, initiated in the 1970s, avoiding the mistakes made and endowing the new concept  – of social technology  – with greater robustness and effectiveness. More than presenting an “easy” concept that ended up being accepted in a generalized way, our intention was to invite the organizations and people that were joining the Social Technology Network to reflect on how they should act in order to realize their intention of promoting social inclusion through technological development.

17.6 Final Considerations To conclude, it seems appropriate to answer the following question: why abandon the concept of social technology and adopt that of solidary technoscience? The main reason is that what happened in this case is relatively frequent with concepts related to the social sciences that impact the field of policy and politics: the same signifier came to be used to designate a signified (meaning) different from that originally attributed to it. What is known as a semantic slide has occurred, which tends to originate a perverse confluence. In the field of the ESCTs here approached, several researchers have referred to this semantic slide and made explicit the deliberate manipulative dubiousness of those who employ these concepts. As Pol and Ville (2009: 881) say in their criticism of the concept of social innovation: it is “a term that almost everyone likes, but nobody is sure what it means”. The same authors, to substantiate their argument, rely on what the famous Fritz Machlup said in 1963: “A term which has so many meanings that we never know what its users are talking about should be either dropped from the vocabulary of the scholar or ‘purified’ of confusing notations” (Pol & Ville, 2009: 880). These reflections led me to consider it more appropriate to risk developing a new concept rather than continuing to criticize the way this term has been used. There are several concepts of social technology coined by organizations involved with the subject and repeatedly cited in documents of various kinds, including academic works. In the Brazilian context, the best known is probably that of the Banco

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do Brasil Foundation, which was adopted by the Social Technology Network: “Social Technology comprises products, techniques and/or methodologies that are reapplicable, developed in interaction with the community and that represent effective solutions for social transformation” (RTS, 2005). Not by chance, it is very similar to the one formulated by the Institute of Social Technology, which defines social technology as the “set of techniques, transformative methodologies, developed and/ or applied in interaction with the population and appropriated by it, which represent solutions for social inclusion and improvement of living conditions” (ITS, 2004: 26). Wikipedia gathers the two concepts: “Social technology is considered the whole product, method, process or technique, created to solve some kind of social problem and that meets the requirements of simplicity, low cost, easy applicability (and re-applicability) and proven social impact”. The study of the philosophy of technology has been essential to developing a critique of these concepts and to underpin the one I am putting forward, solidary technoscience. It helped me to elucidate the meaning of some of its aspects, as highlighted below. First, there is an unspecified actor who ought to be distinct from the “population” or “community”, an actor who is supposed to be in charge of the “application” of something that is not indicated, but which can be assumed to be a form of knowledge. This knowledge is distinct from that possessed by the “population” or “community”. This non-appointed actor would be responsible for creating, in interaction with the “population” or “community”, technologies (“product, method, process or technique”) appropriate to their needs. Following the plot, this actor could only be the one who, specialized in producing knowledge based on the understanding of how nature works, would be able to make the production of goods and services by the “population” or “community” generate “solutions for social inclusion and improvement of living conditions” and have a “proven social impact”. Almost by exclusion, one should conclude that these would be researchers and technologists located in public education and research institutions. Although the concept does not indicate what the cognitive basis of this “creation”, “development” or “application” would be, it is plausible to infer that the result would be a composite or mixture of the science over which this actor has an almost absolute monopoly, due to his hegemonic role in the elaboration of the science, technology and innovation policy in our peripheral region, and the knowledge deriving from the experience of the “population” or “community”: empirical, ancestral or popular knowledge. A re-reading of the concept would lead to the understanding of social technology as applying neutral science in a different way, since it is “developed in interaction with the community” and oriented towards “social transformation”. This implies that the result of this development process  – social technology  – would then be almost by opposition or denial, totally distinct from that carried out to increase the exploitation of the worker and the profit of companies and would avoid its normally harmful implications. In other words, the fact that the application of science takes place in “interaction with the community” would guarantee that, as the concept of neutral science makes explicit, this result would leverage “social transformation”. It does not seem necessary to indicate how much these assumptions contrast with

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what has been presented here and, in particular, how much they contradict what has been set out by the authors of the field of philosophy of technology I have explored. Since the way I understood social technology was not totally aligned with the concept that was becoming widespread, I continued to work in the theoretical field to arrive at an analytic-conceptual framework such as the one presented here. Its presentation along with the methodological and operational procedures I conceive to put it into action are published in a book that still contains in its title the concept of social technology (Dagnino, 2014). More recently, in Dagnino (2020), already making reference in its title to the concept discussed here, I published a “strategic manual” of solidary technoscience that adopts the normative orientation required to intervene in public policy decision-making processes and in the political arena. To conclude, I would like to make two final points. The first is the fact that the concept of solidary technoscience, as derived from the specification of the generic concept of technoscience, may contribute to avoid the Manichean nature of the way the concept of social technology is usually applied, and deserves to take its place. Solidary technoscience does not succeed as a concept by denying conventional technology (or capitalist technoscience). It is simply the outcome of a quite different type of action of a different actor upon a work process. This very concise explanation seems to be an important step in increasing the effectiveness of the actions carried out within the social movements involved with solidary economy. The second point, which can be deduced from what has been said here, is the critique of the attitude of those who, by refusing the neutrality of capitalist technoscience, aspire to a neutral, value-free and true type. In this naïve perception they expect those involved in research activities in public institutions to make a reactive effort to avoid becoming “infected” with private interests. The position advocated here is, on the contrary, frankly proactive. Consistent with the conception of Sociotechnical Adaptation, what is proposed is the “contamination” of the spaces where technoscience is produced with the values and interests of the social actors who will benefit from its enactment. This implies an activity of “inward awareness” of those public institutions conducted by their participants who defend an alternative style of development. This process will prevent them from engaging in hegemonic disputes within these institutions and will place them at the service of the cognitive demands of the solidary economy (Dagnino, 2018).

References Bijker, W. E., Hughes, T. P., & Pinch, T. (Eds.). (2012). The social construction of technological systems: New directions in the sociology and history of technology. The MIT Press. Bloor, D. (1991). Knowledge and social imagery (2nd ed.). The University of Chicago Press. Braverman, H. (1974). Labor and monopoly capital: The degradation of work in the twentieth century. Monthly Review Press. Callon, M. (1981). Pour une sociologie des controverses technologiques. Fundamenta Scientiae, 2, 381–399. Dagnino, R. (2008). Neutralidade da ciência e determinismo tecnológico. Ed. Unicamp.

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Dagnino, R. (2014). Tecnologia Social: Contribuições conceituais e metodológicas. EDUEPB e Editora Insular. Dagnino, R. (2016). A anomalia da política de C&T e sua atipicidade periférica. Revista CTS: Revista Iberoamericana de Ciencia, Tecnología y Sociedad, 11(33), 33–63. http://www.revistacts.net/files/Volumen_11_Numero_33/DagninoEDITADO.pdf Dagnino, R. (2018). Elementos para una política cognitiva popular y soberana. Ciencia, Tecnología y Política, 1(1), 1–7. https://doi.org/10.24215/26183188e004 Dagnino, R. (2020). Tecnociência solidária: Um manual estratégico (2nd ed.). Lutas Anticapital. Dagnino, R., Thomas, H., & Davyt, A. (1996). El pensamiento en ciencia, tecnología y sociedad en Latinoamérica: Una interpretación política de su trayectoria. REDES, III(7), 13–51. Dagnino, R., Brandão, F. C., & Novaes, H. T. (2004). Sobre o marco analítico-conceitual da tecnologia social. In A. E. Lassance Jr. et al. (Eds.), Tecnologia social: Uma estratégia para o desenvolvimento (pp. 15–64). Fundação Banco do Brasil. Feenberg, A. (2002). Transforming technology: A critical theory revisited. Oxford University Press. Gorz, A. (1980). Adieux au prolétariat. Galilée. Gorz, A. (1988). Métamorphoses du travail, quête du sens. Galilée. Ham, C., & Hill, M. (1993). The policy process in the modern capitalist state. Harvester Wheatsheaf. Hottois, G. (1996). Entre symboles et technosciences: Un itinéraire philosophique. Champ Vallon. ITS Brasil. (2004). Caderno de debate: Tecnologia social no Brasil. ITS. Lacey, H. (1998). Valores e atividade científica. Discurso Editorial. Lacey, H. (1999). Is science value free? Routledge. Ladrière, J. (1977). Les enjeux de la rationalité: Le défi de la science et de la technologie aux cultures. Aubier-Montaigne. Latour, B. (1989). La science en action. La Découverte. Latour, B., & Woolgar, S. (1986). Laboratory life: The construction of scientific facts. Princeton University Press. Marglin, S. (1986). What do bosses really do? The Journal of Economic History, 46(3), 585–623. Nuñez, J. J. (1999). La ciencia y la tecnología como procesos sociales: Lo que la educación científica no debería olvidar. Félix Varela. Pol, E., & Ville, S. (2009). Social innovation: Buzz word or enduring term? The Journal of Socio-­ Economics, 38(6), 878–885. RTS – Rede de Tecnologia Social. (2005). Documento Constitutivo da Rede de Tecnologia Social. http://www.rts.org.br/rts/a-­rts/historico, Accessed 19 February 2018. Shiva, V. (2001 [1997]). Biopiracy: The plunder of nature and knowledge. South End Press. Wajcman, J. (2000). Reflections on gender and technology studies: In what state is the art? Social Studies of Science, 30(3), 447–464. Winner, L. (1986). The whale and the reactor: A search for limits in an age of high technology. The University of Chicago Press. Renato Dagnino is full professor at the Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP) [State University of Campinas], Brazil, in the fields of Social Studies of Science and Technology and Scientific and Technological Politics. He is an engineer by training and has studied Human Sciences and Economics in Chile and Brazil. His PhD is in Economic Sciences from UNICAMP. His publications include Ciência e Tecnologia no Brasil: O Processo Decisório e a Comunidade de Pesquisa ([Science and Technology in Brazil: The Decision Process and the Research Community], Editora da Unicamp, 2007); Neutralidade da Ciência e Determinismo Tecnológico ([The Neutrality of Science and Technological Determinism], Editora da Unicamp, 2008); Tecnologia Social: Ferramenta para Construir Outra Sociedade ([Social Technology: A Tool for building Another Society], Komedi, 2010, 2nd edition); Estudos Sociais da Ciência e Tecnologia e Política de Ciência e Tecnologia: Abordagens Alternativas para uma Nova América Latina ([Social Studies in Science and Technology and Politics of Science and Technology: Alternative Approaches to a New Latin America], EDUEPB, 2010).  

Chapter 18

Commercially-Oriented Technoscience and the Need for Multi-Strategic Research Hugh Lacey and Pablo R. Mariconda Abstract  We begin by a summary of the standardized version of the model of the interaction between scientific activities and values (elaborated fully in Lacey and Mariconda, 2015), and based on it we argue that there is a profound incoherence in the self- understanding of the modern scientific tradition, and that the main options actually available to ensure continuity with the positive realizations of this tradition can be well represented by two sorts of ideal types that we name, respectively,“commercially orientated technoscience” and “multi-strategic research”. Then, in the light of the predominance that commercially oriented technoscience has gained in contemporary scientific institutions, we argue for the importance of developing multi-strategic research in areas such as agriculture. This is needed so that adequate evaluation of the potential risks of large scale applications of technoscience, as well as harm they may have actually occasioned, can be made; and also so that these applications can be rigorously compared with scientifically informed practices, such as agroecology, which are not as problematic for human health and the environment and which explore the regenerative powers of nature itself. Keywords  Commercially-oriented technoscience · Multi-strategic research · Decontextualizing strategies · Context-sensitive strategies · Strategic pluralism · Impartiality

This article is an abridged version of Lacey and Mariconda (2014a) that omits many important details and arguments. H. Lacey (*) Swarthmore College/USA & Instituto de Estudos Avançados, Universidade de São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil e-mail: [email protected] P. R. Mariconda Departamento de Filosofia, Instituto de Estudos Avançados, Universidade de São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 H. M. Jerónimo (ed.), Portuguese Philosophy of Technology, Philosophy of Engineering and Technology 43, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-14630-5_18

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18.1 Introduction In this essay we defend the following three claims. First, the common self-understanding of the modern scientific tradition is profoundly incoherent. Second, two interpretations of scientific activities are available today – “commercially-orientated technoscience” and “multi-strategic research” – that enable this incoherence to be surpassed while preserving continuity with the positive achievements of this tradition. Third, although commercially-oriented technoscience has come to predominate in contemporary scientific institutions, it is necessary to engage in multi-strategic research in order that deliberations about the legitimacy of using technoscientific innovations can be properly informed by the outcomes of all relevant scientific research. Our argument draws upon theses that are proposed in connection with the model of the interactions between scientific activities and values (M-SV). In the first part of the article, we will summarize the aspects of the model that our argument utilizes and the conception of science incorporated in it; and then, in the second part, address the three claims.

18.2 The Model of the Interactions Between Scientific Activities and Values 18.2.1 Moments of Scientific Activities According to M-SV, different types of values may play different roles at the different logically distinct moments of scientific activities. We distinguish five moments: M1 – adopting a strategy for engaging in a research project; M2 – carrying out the research; M3 – cognitively evaluating theories and hypotheses; M4 – disseminating scientific results; M5 – applying scientific knowledge. Ethical/social values have some legitimate (and, at times, essential) roles to play at all the moments except at M3, where only cognitive values – the criteria for evaluating a theory or hypothesis as a bearer of knowledge and understanding of specified phenomena – have legitimate roles. Cognitively evaluating a theory (T), at M3, concerns the capacity of T to represent knowledge and understanding of a specified domain of phenomena (D); it involves estimating the degree of manifestation of the cognitive values in T with respect to empirical data obtained from observing phenomena of D. To hold that T represents knowledge and understanding of D (which we abbreviate, “to hold TD”) is to make the judgment that TD belongs to the stock of established scientific knowledge, and that there is no reason to anticipate that more research aiming to test it would lead to its rejection. This judgment is (or ought to be) made in accordance with the ideal of impartiality, which requires that

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1. T is correctly held to represent knowledge and understanding of D (TD is correctly held) if and only if T manifests the cognitive values to a very high degree (according to high standards for appraising the manifestation of these values) and to a higher degree than any competing theory, in the light of sufficient and relevant empirical data obtained by observing the phenomena of D; and 2. TD is correctly rejected if and only if another theory, inconsistent with T, manifests the cognitive values more highly in the light of such relevant empirical data.1 In making this judgment, apart from theoretical developments of T, only the empirical data and the cognitive values are relevant. In particular, there is no legitimate role to be played alongside of the cognitive values by ethical/social values, or by metaphysical convictions, or by pragmatic evaluations of a theory, i.e., evaluations of how well its applications may serve intended, desired or privileged interests. The notion of “strategy” occupies a central and distinctive place in M-SV, as does the claim that scientific research is always (explicitly or implicitly) conducted under a strategy adopted at M1. A strategy is adopted in a research project to enable specified kinds of phenomena to be investigated. Its principal functions are: 1. to constrain the types of theories (or hypotheses) that may be investigated in the project and possibly held of the phenomena investigated, thereby specifying the kinds of concepts that may be deployed in these theories, the types of possibilities that may be identified, and the types of models, techniques and simulations that may be used in the research; and 2. to select the kinds of empirical data that need to be procured and reported, of what phenomena, and using what kinds of descriptive categories. Different kinds of strategies may be required for investigating different kinds of phenomena (see Sect. 18.1.2). The modern scientific tradition upholds the ideal of comprehensiveness, according to which, in principle, any object/phenomenon of the world (including those of importance in the lifeworld, i.e., in the domain of daily life, human experience, social arrangements and institutional practices) and hypotheses about it can be submitted to scientific investigation, with the expectancy that (at least in the long run) it will belong to a domain, of which a theory will come to be held in accordance with impartiality. The range of phenomena that might be investigated is very large and variegated. Selecting which ones to investigate often is based on judgments of their ethical/social importance; and the strategies adopted must be apt for investigating them. This leads to the common state of affairs where there exist relations of mutual reinforcement between adopting a strategy and adhering to a value-outlook; and where these relations can function as part of the explanation and justification for adopting a strategy. In the long run, however, adopting a strategy depends on its fruitfulness, that is, its capacity to enable the expansion of the stock of established scientific knowledge; hence, there is a strong empirical restriction on the adoption of strategies.

 Cf. Lacey (2010, chap. 1), for a more detailed elaboration.

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Ethical/social values may play a variety of legitimate roles in carrying out the research that is conducted at M2, after adopting a strategy at M1 with the aspiration of expanding the stock of scientific knowledge that may be established at M3. One role has to do with selecting the particular objects/phenomena (from the general domain selected at moment M1) that are to be investigated (e.g., the zika virus, rather than another kind of virus, because of its relevance to a health crisis) and, therefore, with selecting the objects/phenomena of which scientific knowledge will actually be obtained. A second concerns carrying out experimental research, when the ethical/social value of obtaining scientific knowledge might be subordinated, e.g., to respect for human rights. When making decisions about such matters, there is a place for committees and codes of ethics. A third role arises in light of the fact that holding TD in accordance with impartiality (at M3) is the result of research activities, which require various material, social and economic conditions, and in which investigators have various interests, motives and objectives. Ethical/social values function to maintain social and institutional conditions that are favorable for coming to correctly hold TD, and avoiding situations where TD may be held, but not in accordance with impartiality, as would happen if ethical/social values or pragmatic evaluations were allowed to play a role illegitimately alongside the cognitive values, or if research is not adequately conducted (e.g., concerning issues connected with risks of using chemical or biological technoscientific innovations) because of the interests of the funders of the research, or because juridical decisions impede research  on, e.g., the risks of using technoscientific innovations on a large scale, such as the extensive use of chemicals in agriculture in countries like Brazil and Argentine. The presence of certain conditions can contribute to eliminate the mechanisms that impede coming to hold hypotheses in accordance with impartiality. There is controversy about what they are, however. For some, they involve maintaining commitment to the scientific ethos; for others, providing structures within scientific institutions, under democratic supervision, which enable scientific activities to be conducted by investigators who adhere to a range of different value outlooks, and which facilitate critical interaction among the investigators and relevant members of the public. Whatever they may be, certain social conditions, that depend on certain ethical/social values being embodied in scientific institutions, contribute causally towards obtaining accordance with impartiality. But, this does not imply that these ethical/social values function as criteria for cognitively evaluating hypotheses and theories. Whether or not TD is correctly held is settled by reference only to the empirical data and the cognitive values. At the same time, the explanation of why TD has come to be correctly held, rather than some other theory of some other domain of phenomena, cannot be dissociated from the role of ethical/social values connected with, on the one hand, the adoption of the strategy under which T has been investigated and, on the other hand, the immediate aims of the research in which T is developed (at M2). Ethical/social values penetrate profoundly throughout the whole of moment M5. Applying scientific knowledge is practical action; and all action is intentional and expresses certain ideals that confer intelligibility and value on the ends towards which an action aims. An application always serves interests that express particular

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ethical/social values. It is developed and implemented because of the benefits expected to be gained by these interests; and the expectation that these benefits outweigh the possible negative consequences connected with their collateral effects, and that they are greater than what could be achieved with possible alternative, competing practices. Furthermore, questions about the legitimacy of using applications of TD arise that go well beyond the interests of potential users. They cannot be addressed adequately by reference to only the established knowledge represented in TD. When held in accordance with impartiality, TD may serve to demonstrate that certain applications are possible and be able to explain their efficacy (i.e., their reliability of operation and for bringing about intended effects) under specified conditions. However, although technical efficacy is normally a necessary condition for legitimacy, it is not sufficient to guarantee the legitimacy of an application. Judgments of legitimacy always involve considerations of ethical/social values, and also claims about, e.g., harmful effects, risks, benefits and alternatives (all of which are implicated in value judgments) that are open to empirical investigation, but that typically cannot be resolved by reference to the same theory, or by research conducted under the same strategy that gave origin to it (cf. Mariconda, 2014). Judgments of legitimacy normally depend on the development of multi-strategic research that can produce results pertinent to the pragmatic evaluation of the overall consequences of introducing and using technological applications in practical activities.2 Although introducing and using an application (in, e.g., technology) always serves certain interests, it has been regularly affirmed throughout the modern scientific tradition that scientific knowledge belongs to the shared patrimony of humanity, so that, at M5, neutrality functions as a regulatory ideal (cf. Mariconda, 2010). According to the ideal of neutrality, in principle, (i) for any viable value-outlook held in current democratic societies, there are practices, in which it is embodied, that can be served by applications of (or otherwise be informed by) some items of the stock of established scientific knowledge; and (ii) this stock (as a whole) serves all value-outlooks more or less evenhandedly, without privileging some at the expense of others. So stated, neutrality signifies inclusion and evenhandedness. Note that neutrality concerns the totality of items of scientific knowledge, not each one taken separately. Only some items of scientific knowledge (e.g., some connected with medical cures) actually serve all value-outlooks more or less evenhandedly, and some serve a variety of value-outlooks in addition to the one that initially was served by their technological application; but many actually serve one value-outlook (e.g., that contains values of capital and the market) at the expense of others (e.g., that contains values of social justice, democratic participation and environmental sustainability). Our formulation is consistent with these facts. Neutrality actually functions as a

 Cf. Lacey and Mariconda (2014b, section 5), where these remarks are elaborated and clarified.

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regulatory ideal, however, only if it can be shown by means of empirical investigation that the trajectory of scientific developments is (or could be) in the direction of closer approximation with it. M-SV helps to identify the conditions necessary for neutrality to function as a regulatory ideal.3

18.2.2 The Conception of Scientific Research Incorporated into the Model of the Interactions M-SV incorporates the following conception of scientific research: SR1: Scientific research is systematic empirical investigation – that is responsive to the ideal of impartiality – conducted by deploying strategies that are apt for obtaining knowledge/ understanding of the objects/phenomena being investigated, where (consistent with the ideal of comprehensiveness) the range of objects investigated is always being increased, frequently anticipating that there will be practical and technological application of the knowledge obtained, and aiming (to the extent possible) to obtain knowledge that will enable every viable value-outlook to be served by some applications so that neutrality may actually function as a regulative ideal.

As discussed in connection with M1, M-SV expresses the theses: 1. the strategy adopted in a research project should be apt in the light of the characteristics of the objects/phenomena investigated; 2. research on different types of objects may require the adoption of different types of strategies; and 3. adopting of a strategy may be influenced by the existence of mutually reinforcing relations between adopting it and adhering to a particular value-outlook. Up to a certain point, (1) and (2) are uncontroversial, for we expect different kinds of strategies to be adopted in different areas of science. The distinctive contribution of M-SV is to uphold (3), to interpret (1) and (2) in the light of (3), and to defend the intelligibility and necessity of strategic pluralism.

18.2.3 Decontextualizing Strategies At first sight, modern science, as conducted in contemporary scientific institutions, does not seem to fit well with thesis (3). The greater part of modern scientific research deploys decontextualizing strategies (DSs). DSs constrain theories, which are investigated and evaluated, so that they can represent and explain objects/  In addition to the ideals already mentioned – impartiality, comprehensiveness and neutrality – the modern scientific tradition upholds the ideal of autonomy for research practices and institutions. We will not discuss it in this article, but our position about it is expressed in Lacey and Mariconda (2012). 3

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phenomena and encapsulate their possibilities by reference to their underlying order, that is, by reference to their underlying structures, to the processes and interactions of their components, and to the laws (typically expressed mathematically) that govern them. Representing phenomena in this way decontextualizes them: it dissociates them from any place that they may have in relation to social organization, human lives and experience, from any link they may have with human agency, sensory qualities and value, and from any possibilities that they might have in virtue of their places in human, social and (often) ecological contexts. As to empirical data selected and sought for, they are obtained by means of measuring, instrumental and experimental operations (frequently assisted by computers), and generally described using quantitative categories. There are a variety of DSs; e.g., in accordance with theses (1) and (2) above, the strategies of newtonian mechanics, quantum mechanics and genetics are different. Moreover, there is no doubt that DSs are fruitful and versatile: fruitful – they enable the accumulation of an enormous amount of knowledge of phenomena, the discovery of many components and laws of the underlying causal order, and the identification of hitherto unknown possibilities (including possibilities for human action); versatile – new types of DSs regularly arise for dealing with phenomena that could not come to be understood under previously introduced strategies. The variety of fruitful DSs, the range of objects/phenomena that can be grasped under them, and the novel possibilities for practical application that are identified, all continue to expand. The tradition of modern science has tended to maintain that this expansion will continue (often in unpredictable ways) apparently without limit. Nevertheless, even if this is so, it does not imply that (even in principle) all objects/phenomena, or all aspects of them, can be adequately grasped by means of adopting DSs. The absence of a limit of this kind, does not imply that there is not a boundary that cannot be crossed. It does not imply that (even in the long run) using DSs will be able to provide understanding of all phenomena, or that understanding that is in accordance with impartiality cannot be obtained of some phenomena by using strategies that are not reducible to DSs.

18.2.4 Decontextualizing Strategies, Context-Sensitive Strategies and the Ideal of Comprehensiveness In fact, DSs because they involve decontextualization are not apt for investigating objects/phenomena whose identities are intrinsically connected to their contexts – e.g., the systematic effects of social change; some interactions and processes of the components of sustainable agroecosystems; consequences (harmful effects and risks) of introducing applications into the lifeworld that are occasioned by mechanisms (e.g., socioeconomic ones) that are not reducible to physical, chemical and biological ones; the social causes of harmful states of affairs (e.g., the zika epidemic); the conditions required to take effective measures to protect public health in

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impoverished areas; and technological practices engaged in for the sake of strengthening the values of social justice, democratic participation an environmental sustainability, etc. Moreover, human action, including engaging in scientific research using DSs, can only be explained with the use of intentional categories. Hence, DSs do not suffice for gaining understanding of the actions and decisions connected with research conducted under DSs – having to do, e.g., with constructing experimental spaces, and determining the boundary and initial conditions of experimental events (at M2), what strategies to adopt (at M1), and the goals and conditions of applications of scientific knowledge (at M5). Engaging in research exclusively conducted under DSs, therefore, is not in accordance with the ideal of comprehensiveness. Moreover, there are fruitful strategies, which are not reducible to DSs  – we call them context-sensitive strategies (CSs) – that are apt for conducting research that is able to obtain knowledge and understanding that are correctly held of some phenomena whose identities are intrinsically connected to their contexts (as exemplified by the strategies of agroecology). Engaging in research under CSs, as well as under DSs, opens the possibility of greater responsiveness to comprehensiveness. Nevertheless, there is little space made available for research conducted under CSs in mainstream scientific institutions. In them it seems to be taken for granted that scientific methodologies are essentially defined by the adoption of DSs, as if they endorse a conception of scientific research that corresponds, not to SR1, but to the following: SR2: Scientific research is systematic empirical investigation – that is responsive to the ideal of impartiality – conducted under DSs, where the range of objects investigated is always increasing, frequently anticipating that there will be practical and technological application of the knowledge obtained.

For both conceptions, SR1 and SR2, the strategies adopted can vary depending on the characteristics of the phenomena investigated. For SR2, however, the range of variation is much narrower, since it requires scientific research both to be empirical (as for SR1), and (unlike for SR1) to involve decontextualizing. We argued above that the range of phenomena that can be grasped under DSs, although apparently without limits, has a boundary, and that, in order to cross it, adopting some CSs is required – so that it cannot be crossed by following SR2. Our argument may be rebutted by claiming that such a boundary reflects only a temporary state of affairs, for – given the versatility of DSs we can expect that DSs will be devised that can cope with phenomena and spaces of much greater complexity – eventually it will become apparent that “being essentially contextualized” indicates only the great complexity of the underlying order of phenomena in the lifeworld, and does not constitute a boundary that cannot be crossed by using actual and future DSs. According to this claim, comprehensiveness remains in place as a very distant horizon for research conducted under DSs. The claim is consistent with available empirical data and, indeed, with any amount and variety of empirical data; it represents, not a claim with strong empirical backing, but a metaphysical proposal, a contemporary version of materialist metaphysics that has profoundly influenced the modern scientific tradition. It does not imply that the conduct of research that leads

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to results held in accordance with impartiality cannot be successfully carried out under CSs, or that eventually research conducted under DSs will produce better understanding of the phenomena that come to be grasped under CSs. Questions about the fruitfulness and necessity of CSs can only be resolved by conducting research under them and finding out what their outcomes may be; but this is research that does not count as “scientific” when SR2 is endorsed. Part of the explanation for the widespread endorsement of SR2, rather than the more encompassing conception of science SR1, especially in the earlier centuries of the tradition, may be connected with commitment to materialist metaphysics. However, we have argued (Lacey & Mariconda, 2014a) that, for explaining it today, it is more important to refer to: (a) the mutually reinforcing relations that exist between adopting DSs and adhering to the value outlooks that contain the values of technological progress {VPT} and of capital and the market {VC&M}; (b) the fact that the results of research conducted under DSs serve in a privileged way interests that embody the values of {VPT} and {VC&M}, often at the expense of those that embody competing value-outlooks, e.g. those that contain values of social justice, democratic participation and economic sustainability {VSJ}, and those that lead to demanding that more scientific research should be conducted on risks to health and the environment; (c) the fact that {VPT} and {VC&M} are highly embodied in the hegemonic (commercial, governmental, political, educational, etc.) institutions of the contemporary lifeworld. Hence, despite first appearances, and despite the fact that categories permitted in theories developed under DSs have no value categories, modern science does fit quite well with thesis (3). Moreover, given (a), (b) and (c), research conducted within the framework of SR2 is not responsive to the ideal of neutrality.

18.2.5 Strategic Pluralism SR1, the conception of scientific research that M-SV incorporates, allows strategic pluralism, by which we mean that it allows CSs, as well as the variety of DSs, to be adopted in scientific research. Conducting research in accordance with strategic pluralism does not generally involve rejecting the use of DSs in favor of alternative strategies, but the introduction of a range of CSs that complement the DSs in use. DSs are apt for investigating the underlying order of phenomena; but CSs are needed to investigate phenomena that are essentially related to their contexts. Generally, however, research conducted under CSs makes use of knowledge obtained under DSs. In this sense, DSs may be considered central for scientific investigation, but this is not the same thing as attributing to them priority to the point of exclusivity (as where SR2 is held). Introducing a role for CSs changes the significance of research conducted under DSs: instead of being utilized virtually exclusively, the utilization of DSs comes to be balanced with that of CSs. Moreover, adopting CSs often bears

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mutually reinforcing relations with value-outlooks like {VSJ}, and those that lead to demanding that more scientific research should be conducted on risks to health and the environment. Strategic pluralism, thus, opens the possibility of greater responsiveness to neutrality. That possibility depends on the range of value-outlooks that are related with fruitful strategies: the greater the number of viable value-outlooks that are adhered to in contemporary democratic societies that have relations with fruitful strategies, the closer neutrality could be approximated. Strategic pluralism also opens the possibility of greater responsive to the ideal of comprehensiveness, since utilizing CSs enables knowledge and understanding to be obtained of phenomena that are intrinsically related to their contexts, and that lie beyond the boundary that apparently cannot be crossed when only DSs are utilized.

18.3 Incoherence of the Self-Understanding of the Modern Scientific Tradition, and Options for Gaining a Coherent Interpretation that Maintains Continuity with the Positive Realizations of the Tradition4 The self-understanding of the modern scientific tradition incorporates SR2 and, hence, it privileges, to the point of exclusivity, research practices that are conducted under DSs. At the same time, it affirms commitment to the ideals of comprehensiveness (C), neutrality (N) and impartiality (I). For it, C is a consequence of the fruitfulness and versatility of DSs with bolstering from materialist metaphysics; N is based on the idea that control, considered as the characteristic human stance towards natural objects, is the source of inclusion and evenhandedness (Lacey & Mariconda, 2014b; Lacey, 2014; Mariconda, 2010); impartiality is understood as explicated in Sect. 18.1.1. This self-understanding is represented in the following schema, in which “….” refers to components of the self-understanding modern scientific tradition that we will not discuss in this article: Schema 1. Modern science = DSs + C [from fruitfulness and evenhandedness of DSs + materialist metaphysics] + N [from control as the characteristic stance towards natural objects] + I +… We indicated above, however, that using DSs exclusively is incompatible with research being regulated by the ideals of comprehensiveness and neutrality. Therefore, despite the facts of the fruitfulness and versatility of DSs, and that results (held in accordance with I) obtained under DSs have informed countless efficacious applications that have fundamentally transformed the lifeworld, the combination (DSs + C + N) – and therefore the self-understanding of tradition represented in the schema 1 – is incoherent. This incoherence of self-understanding does not put into question the facts just stated.  An expanded version of the analysis offered in this section can be found in Lacey (2014).

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18.3.1 Viable Coherent Interpretations of Scientific Research We will now point to two ways, available for reinterpreting and reorienting the scientific tradition, that are able to avoid this incoherence while remaining in continuity with the tradition by incorporating the positive contribution of modern science (encapsulated in these facts) and maintaining some of its key characteristics, e.g., commitment to the ideal of impartiality I. We call them, respectively, commercially-­ oriented technoscience and multi-strategic research. 18.3.1.1 Commercially-Oriented Technoscience (CT) CT incorporates SR2 and so constrains scientific investigation to using DSs. Its results, when applied, at the same time that they contribute to practical, industrial and medical and other areas of technoscientific innovation, serve especially well interests connected with increasing economic growth and competition that embody {VTP} and {VC&M}. CT may be seen as a contemporary version of science as encapsulated in SR2. Its attraction derives from the same factors, (a), (b) and (c) (in Sect. 18.1.2), that explain the widespread endorsement of SR2, but now giving greater priority to the aim of obtaining technoscientific innovations that serve interests that embody {VPT} and {VC&M}. This is reinforced by the fact that a large part of the funding for research conducted in CT is motivated by the connections between scientific research, technoscientific innovation, economic advantages and economic growth (development). For CT, neutrality is not a first order consideration, although the adherents of CT may pay lip-service to it. They have little interest in the materialist metaphysical speculations that influenced the development of the modern scientific tradition, but some of them claim that technological and economic growth serves (or will come to serve) the well-being of everyone, from which it might be inferred that CT satisfies the requirements of neutrality. But, this claim cannot be investigated (and confirmed empirically) following research conducted under DSs; it is merely rhetorical. Effectively neutrality does not function as an ideal for CT. Likewise, since CT does not seriously consider systematically using CSs in research, neither does comprehensiveness function as an ideal for it. CT may be represented in the following schema. It represents that the almost exclusive adoption of DSs derives from the mutually reinforcing relations (represented by ““) between adopting DSs and adhering to {VPT}and {VC&M}: Schema 2a. TC = DSs [from: (adopting DSs) (adhering to {VPT} (adhering to {VC&M}] + I +…

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18.3.1.2 Multi-Strategic Research (MSR) MSR endorses strategic pluralism. It recognizes that DSs have an important place in scientific research, and it also permits roles for CSs that are apt for conducting research on phenomena that fall outside the range of what can be grasped under DSs. Consequently, MSR, by allowing a multiplicity of strategies (DSs + CSs) to be utilized, is able to be responsive to the regulative ideal of comprehensiveness without having recourse to materialist metaphysics. In addition, in research conducted under some CSs, results may be obtained that serve interests that embody value-­ outlooks, e.g., {VSJ}, that contest {VPT} and {VC&M}. Hence, unlike CT, MSR is open to movement in the direction of neutrality, and so strengthens the role of inclusiveness and evenhandedness as a regulative ideal for scientific research. MSR may be represented in the following schema: Schema 2b. MSR = (DSs + CSs) [from mutually reinforcing relations with  adhering to many value-outlooks] + (C) [from strategic pluralism] + (N) [ from commitment to inclusivity and evenhandedness] + I +…

18.3.1.3 Comparing Commercially-Oriented Technoscience and Multi-Strategic Research CT and MSR should be considered as ideal types. Both approaches maintain continuity with the modern scientific tradition, but in different ways. On the one hand, CT shares with the tradition giving primacy, to the point of exclusiveness, to conducting research under DSs, but it does this in a way that unifies science and technology and transforms them into technoscience, and that makes explicit its ties with {VPT} and {VC&M}. Thus, comprehensiveness and neutrality are not regulative ideals for its practices, and consequently the modern scientific tradition’s commitment to these ideals is weakened. On the other hand, MSR strengthens this commitment. It rejects the exclusivity (but not centrality) of DSs, and it aims for a balance in utilizing DSs and CSs in research that is appropriate in light of the range of phenomena to be investigated. It strengthens responsiveness to comprehensiveness and neutrality by permitting research to be conducted that may be linked, not only with {VPT} and {VC&M}, but also, with various other value-outlooks, e.g., {VSJ}. CT is strongly embedded in contemporary scientific institutions, and this has implications for all moments of scientific activities, for research, financial resources, applications of scientific knowledge, education, employment, publication of results, etc. The corporations (and their government allies) that largely finance CT, and make use of the innovations that it generates, have little interest in MSR. MSR is the source of knowledge needed to inform, on the one hand, evaluation of the full range of consequences and risks occasioned by using the applications of CT that can inform effective democratic regulation of technoscientific innovations that negatively impact on human health and the environment (cf. Mariconda, 2014) and, on the other hand, the conduct of social practices (e.g., agroecology and public health) that may embody the values of value-outlooks like {VSJ}. But, many proponents of

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CT think that its projects may be impeded if this knowledge were generated. Hence, it appears likely that the viability and long-term development of MSR will depend to a significant extent on social and institutional conditions that could only become available if scientific institutions were to be profoundly re-oriented.

18.3.2 The Importance of Multi-Strategic Research We do not underestimate the difficulties involved in the proposal to re-­institutionalize science. However, we challenge the idea that science should be identified with its predominant forms in contemporary mainstream scientific institutions. Science is a historical social practice that can be looked at from two sides. From one side, it can be seen that, for the most part, scientific activities – research, development, evaluation of hypotheses, exploring the possibilities open to applications of scientific knowledge, developing applications  – unfold within institutions. From the other side, it can be seen that currently institutionalized science represents a stage of the tradition of modern science, whose self-understanding has, at least until recently, always included commitment to the ideals of impartiality, neutrality, comprehensiveness and autonomy. There is always tension between the two sides, between the activities carried out in institutions recognized as “scientific” and the products of investigation generated in them, and the ideals, whose interpretation may change as the tradition unfolds and as the social context of the institutions fluctuates. This tension can provide the impetus for transforming the institutional forms of science. As pointed out above, not much space is currently available in scientific institutions for systematically conducting research in MSR. This does not imply that MSR does not represent a real option for the future, however, or that it does not make sense to engage in it to the extent possible in collaboration with the current social bases that have an interest in its development. Motivation to re-institutionalize science so that MSR gains a more significant place could come from renewed commitment to the traditional ideals (some of which have been weakened in CT), or from awareness that a variety of interests, which embody the values of value-outlooks (e.g. {VSJ}) represented to some extent in contemporary democratic societies, could be strengthened by projects informed by knowledge obtained within MSR. Those two sources of motivation are not entirely distinct, for engaging in research conducted under CSs (linked with value-­ outlooks like {VSJ}), can contribute to restore the regulative role of the ideal of neutrality. Together they lead to the positive research program of MSR. Another source of such motivation is to enable effective democratic regulation of the harm and risks occasioned by using certain technoscientific innovations. This engenders a critical stance towards CT.

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18.3.2.1 The Positive Research Program of Multi-Strategic Research We are especially interested in enhancing the philosophical and methodological grounds for taking the following question seriously in scientific organizations: How should scientific research be conducted (and by whom, in what institutions and in connection with what practices), with what priorities and utilizing what strategies, and how should the results of scientific research be used and technologies developed and managed, for the sake of ensuring that the rights, well-being, and the conditions for constructive participation in a democratic society are strengthened for everyone everywhere, and that nature is respected and that its regenerative powers are not further undermined and restored whenever possible?

We can find responses to this question in a number of areas. To illustrate this, we organized a dossier of articles, published in Estudos Avançados (cf. Lacey & Mariconda, 2014c, 2015), exploring responses in “social technology” (i.e., technology designed to be used to serve interests that embody {VSJ}); in agroecology; in public health; and in forest sustainability and management. Exploring areas like these – and others connected to, e.g., energy, the environment and the developments of information and communications technologies – helps to identify the kinds of CSs that need to be developed and utilized in research projects in order to respond adequately to the question just posed. These research projects are components of the positive research program of MSR. Some space can certainly be found today in universities and public research institutions to pursue it; and NGOs and some public bodies provide some funding for it. The long term prospects of MSR depend on the fruitfulness of its positive research program being demonstrated (as well as on other conditions and alliances with groups and social movements, cf. Lacey, 2008). 18.3.2.2 The Critical Stance of Multi-Strategic Research Towards Commercially-Oriented Technoscience Research conducted under DSs has an indispensable (but not exclusive) role in MSR. Those, who support MSR, recognize the positive success of the projects of CT, and endorse the value of many of the innovations that it engenders. At the same time, they adopt a critical and discerning stance towards the priorities, practices and innovations of CT, and raise questions about the role and consequences of introducing technoscientific innovations into the contemporary lifeworld. Their criticisms generally have to do with the fact that research in CT is not adequately regulated according to the ideal of neutrality – that, on the one hand, generally it does not contribute to the shared patrimony of humanity, but serves especially well interests that embody the value-outlooks {VPT} and {VC&M} and, on the other hand, frequently it occasions serious risks for human health, the environment, and the well-­ being of traditional, indigenous and agroecological communities, thereby weakening the embodiment of value-outlooks like {VSJ}. We will point to two aspects of the critical posture.

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The first aspect has to do with the inadequacy of DSs by themselves for investigating all questions relevant to appraising the legitimacy of introducing innovations into the lifeworld. E.g., DSs do not suffice for investigating the long-term risks to health and environment of using these innovations that are occasioned by mechanisms that derive from an innovation being a commodity that embodies values that are components of the value-outlooks {VPT} and {VC&M}; and for investigating the possibilities of the practices, like agroecology, that are not based fundamentally on using technoscientific innovations. Research that is adequate to address these questions needs to use the strategic resources of MSR. The proponents of CT often claim, concerning an innovation that is to be introduced into the lifeworld, that introducing it will not occasion risks (that cannot be contained by means of properly designed and enforced regulations). However, when they make such claims, since they rarely utilize CSs in their research and so have not adequately investigated the potential risks, it is likely that they are held in discord with impartiality. Although the ideal of impartiality is generally important for proponents of CT when considering questions pertaining to the efficacy of using an innovation, in the context of deliberating about the legitimacy of introducing it, they often subordinate impartiality to the interests that embody {VPT} and {VC&M}. The second aspect derives from the fact that research in CT becomes a productive source of efficacious innovations that are contributing to expand the embodiment of {VPT} and {VC&M} in powerful contemporary institutions, thereby strengthening the current economic and social trajectory of neoliberalism. The dominant scientific institutions have become integral parts of this trajectory, and themselves embody {VPT} and {VC&M} ever more profoundly. (Today, what we call CT is often called “commercialized science” or “science in the private interest”.) This generates undesirable consequences for scientific institutions and for professional scientists (perhaps especially at the moments M2 and M4), including consequences connected with priorities of research, the conditions for conducting research, sources for financing research and the budgets of scientific institutions, evaluation of the results of research and of the production of scientists (cf. Mariconda, 2012), opportunities for employment of scientists and advancing their careers, the content of scientific curricula, the structure of scientific institutions and of the principal values embodied in them, the ways in which conflicts are created between scientific and commercial interests, and various additional things. In this article, we have maintained that the current options for developing scientific research are usefully portrayed as being between CT and MSR. They represent incompatible interpretations of the nature of scientific research that are connected to incompatible projects and visions concerning the future of the lifeworld.

References Lacey, H. (2008). Ciência, respeito à natureza e bem-estar humano. Scientiae Studia, 6(3), 297–327. Lacey, H. (2010). Valores a atividade científica 2. Associação Filosófica Scientiae Studia/ Editora 34. Lacey, H. (2014). Tecnociência comercialmente orientada ou investigação multiestratégica? Scientiae Studia, 12(4), 669–695.

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Lacey, H., & Mariconda, P.  R. (2012). The eagle and the starlings: Galileo’s argument for the autonomy of science. How pertinent is it today? Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, 43, 122–131. Lacey, H., & Mariconda, P. R. (2014a). O modelo da interação entre as atividades científicas e os valores na interpretação das práticas científicas contemporâneas. Estudos Avançados, 28(82), 181–199. Lacey, H., & Mariconda, P. R. (2014b). O modelo das interações entre as atividades científicas e os valores. Scientiae Studia, 12(4), 643–668. https://doi.org/10.1590/S1678-­31662014000500002 Lacey, H., & Mariconda, P. R. (Eds.). (2014c). Ciência, valores e alternativas I. Estudos Avançados, 28(82), 177–275. Lacey, H., & Mariconda, P. R. (Eds.). (2015). Ciência, valores e alternativas II. Estudos Avançados, 29(83), 175–259. Mariconda, P. R. (2010). The control of nature and the origins of the dichotomy between facts and values. In P. Lorenzano, H.-J. Rheinberger, E. Ortiz, & C. D. Galles (Eds.), History and philosophy of science and technology (Vol. 4, pp. 1–19). EOLSS Publishers. http://www.eolss. net/Sample-­Chapters/CO5/E6-­89-­17-­00.pdf Mariconda, P.  R. (2012). Get ready for technoscience: The constant burden of evaluation and domination. Scientiae. Studia, 10(Special Issue), 151–162. Mariconda, P.  R. (2014). Technological risks, transgenic agriculture and alternatives. Scientiae. Studia, 12(Special Issue), 75–104. https://doi.org/10.1590/S1678-­31662014000400005 Hugh Lacey is Scheuer Family Professor Emeritus of Philosophy, Swarthmore College (PA, USA), and Research Collaborator in the Group of Philosophy, History and Sociology of Science, at the Instituto de Estudos Avançados [Institute of Advanced Studies], University of São Paulo, Brazil. His published books include Is Science Value Free? Values and scientific understanding (Routledge, 1999). His recent work deals with various aspects of the role of values in science and technology. It has paid considerable attention to the question of the legitimacy of using GMOs in agriculture, and especially to the importance of the competing practices of agroecology, and the methodological strategies that are adopted in agroecological research.  

Pablo R. Mariconda is Full Professor of the Universidade de São Paulo (USP) [University of São Paulo], Brazil. He obtained his PhD in Philosophy at the USP in 1986. From then on, he has dedicated himself to the development of the doctoral program of philosophical studies on science and technology. He has translated the more important works of Galileo, the Dialogue (1632) and the Discourse (1638) into Portuguese, with historical and contextualized introductions and critical notes. He has recently organized a Portuguese edition of Descartes’ Discourse on Method and Essays. From 2003 to 2017, he was the editor of Scientiae Studia, a quarterly Latin-American journal, published in Portuguese and Spanish, devoted to Philosophy, History and Sociology of science.