The Empirical Turn in the Philosophy of Technology (review)

This collection of fourteen essays aims to show the importance for philosophy of technology of "empirically adequate" descriptions and analyses of technical artifacts, their design and production processes, objective causal relations and functions, and the conceptual frameworks through which design and production take place. The book—divided into sections on ontology, epistemology, and ethics, and a dialogue on engineering and law—brings together philosophers and engineers in an attempt to give much-needed empirical substance to the philosophy of technology. Cases used include the Hubble Telescope, knowledge-based expert systems (in particular, PRIDE), and steam engines.

The project of the empirical turn is to open the black box of technology, as Kroes suggests, and look inside at engineering practices. As such, it seeks to move beyond metaphysical discourses on technology, influenced by Heidegger's or Ellul's grim ontologies, which carved the initial contours of philosophy of technology (after all, there is little left to say when we are fated to technological society). It also seeks to move past inordinate emphasis on the social consequences of technology. Joseph Pitt, for example, argues that the discipline should focus on the people involved in the messy realities of design and production in order to uncover ideological strains underlying social critique. The editors stress that they do not want to discount the importance of normative ethical questions or social criticism, but they argue that understanding the process of technological design and production opens new directions for philosophical inquiry that may aid moral and social approaches.

Yet this all depends on the character of the empiricization. Taking up the lessons ofW. V. O. Quine and other problematizers of the fact/value distinction, the editors and some of the contributors emphasize the relationality of social concerns, technological artifacts, conceptual frameworks, and the motivations embodied in particular practices. Anthonie Meijers suggests that there is no artifact distinguishable from its relational properties. Louis Buccarelli argues that technological artifacts are social artifacts dependent on the particular "object worlds" of those involved in their design. Most of the authors also argue in various ways for the importance of the concrete materiality of technological objects. Davis Baird, for example, discusses spectrochemical instrumentation and the disjunction between ideal types of artifacts and their imperfect material reality in order to illustrate the interplay between material constraints and design ideas.

Just as the imperative to empiricize is delivered, the writers collectively begin to qualify the empirical turn into a broader description of technology that seems to have much in common with social constructivist approaches. Bram Bos's essay is particularly helpful in this regard. The difference seems to be one of degree. He suggests that "if we adopt the basic conviction that the politics of technology can be fruitfully studied only if we look for the ways technical artifacts are integrated into culture and social practice, empirical investigation of these sociotechnical complexes are obligatory" (p. 63).

Overall, this is an interesting collection with too many diverse insights to discuss fully here. One senses the struggle to escape the limitations of a philosophy of technology overly involved with metaphysical constructions and universalistic formulae. For those in the social-criticism camp with regard to technology, the volume's project represents a way to take up what Carl Mitcham and René von Schomberg call an "ethics of collective co-responsibility" (p. 182). The volume is also valuable for social critics of technology, in that it provides a starting point for a more technically informed approach. But it is especially intended for philosophers of technology and engineers interested in philosophical aspects of the design process.