From: "John Foster" <borealis-AT-mercuryspeed.com>
Subject: Re: neither/nor (was: Righteous War? Or bluff?)
Date: Wed, 19 Feb 2003 23:17:50 -0800



Subject: Re: neither/nor (was: Righteous War? Or bluff?)


"techne means art in Greek, not technology, although this
may be a derivation
of techne"

Paul,

According to Heidegger, <techne> is the root for for the
modern term 'technology'.

"...take seriously the simple question of what the name
'technology' means. The word stems from the Greek.
<Technikon> means that which belongs to <techne>. We must
observe 2 things with respect to the meaning of this word.
One is that <techne> is the name not only for the activities
and skills of the craftsman, but also for the arts of the
mind and the fine arts. <Techne> belongs to the
bringing-forth, to <poesis>; it is something poetic."
[Question Concerning Technology, M. Heidegger].

Further, during the time of "...Plato the word <techne> is
linked with the word <episteme>. Both terms for knowing in
the widest sense. They mean to be *entirely at home in
something, to understand and be expert in it. Such knowing
provides an opening up*. An opening up is a revealing.
Aristotle...distinquishes between <episteme> and <techne>
and indeed with respect to what and how they reveal.
<Techne> is a mode of <aletheuein>. It reveals whatever does
not bring itself forth and does not yet lie here before us,
whatever can look and turn out now one way and now another.
Whoever builds a house or a ship or forges a sacrificial
chalice reveals what is to be brought forth, according to
the terms of the four modes of occasioning. This revealing
gathers together in advance the aspect and the matter of
ship or house, with a view to the finished thing envisioned
as completed, and from this gathering determines the manner
of its construction. Thus what is decisive in <techne> does
not lie at all in making and manipulating nor in the using
of means, but rather in the revealing mentioned before. It
is as revealing, and not as manufacturing, that <techne> is
a bringing-forth."

Thus what is revealed as the craft of the craftsmen is an
original, a prototype, or model which is used for 'copying'
later during the 'manufacturing'; it is the essence of the
being of the being, and in the case of the wooden 'dory' or
boat, the original is what 'occasions' as the being of the
boat in any sense. Which is to say that the Nova Scotia dory
is both an actual object, with it's essential objectivity,
as well as it's symbolic meaning or sense. Being is there
fore, according to Heidegger, "something in any sense," "the
experiencable in any sense." Being for Heidegger (according
to an interpretation of the young Heidegger) means "this
<ens> is given in every object of experience, in so far as
it is simply an object...." {dealt with in GI 214-17, 318,
223-24}. Due to the 'temporal' character of all things, all
things <ens> occasion periodically depending on the
situation and the horizon for which all regions of being are
expressed (and become expressions pointing to something else
<instrumentum>).

Modern technology according to Heidegger has one unique
character which 'primitive' technology did not possess. That
is that modern technology is said to be 'grounded' in the
laws of 'modern physics' which arises from precise
definitions, and measurement, and it is therefore technology
which has become a matter of 'precision', 'exactitude' and
most of all a 'material synthetic form of consciousness
using symbolic intuition'. Modern technology therefore
cannot 'induce' nor 'occasion' a <Kraftwerk> unless it
utilizes 'art' or 'techne' in the original sense of
'embodiment' of something which it is not.

The difference between modern technology and <techne>,
according to Heidegger, is the difference between a 'copy'
made with modern manufacturing equipment, and the hand
crafted 'dory' or hand-crafted boat made of wood. The name
'Nova Scotia dory' refers to an artesanal fishing boat used
on the east coast of the Maritimes, a vessel unique to the
culture and landscape of this area, much like the 'Mac
Intosh apple' is unique to the to climate and culture of a
specific region. Genetically engineered apples, it is
assumed are not a unique product - which could only arise
from a unique 'occasioning' of an array of biotic and
abiotic variables including soil, climate, human taste and
preference, et cetera. The genetically engineered apple is a
product of a 'precise' calculation wherein specific DNA,
chromosomes, are injected into a living cell nucleus in a
'randomn' or 'chance' manner in the 'hopes' that the
chromosomes selected will provide the specifically desired
traits to the end product apple extending it's 'shelf-life'
for at least one year under cool conditions. The purpose and
intent of the GE scientist is to produce an apple which is
'lasting' and cannot rot, but it rarely is the case where
the GE crop actually proves to be as desireable as the
scientists claim due to the nature of ligands which may
express 'multiple traits' which also result in bizarre and
randomn 'undesireable' traits in some 'phenotypes'. Whereas
traditional 'Mendelian' genetics is a 'trial and error'
approach, utilizing 'knowledge from acquantance' and other
forms of knowing, modern scientific genetics depends on a
precise knowledge of the chemical constitution of the
smallest particles bearing life (if it was as simple as
that - we would not experience old age).

The ancient Greek word <aitia> (cf. etiological) (being
responsible) "...we now give to this verb 'to occasion' a
more inclusive meaning, so that it now is the name for the
essence of causality thought as the Greeks thought it. The
common and narrower meaning of 'occasion', in contrast, is
nothing more than striking against and releasing, and means
a kind of secondary cause within the whole of causality."
[The Question Concerning Technology, M. Heidegger].

The four modes of 'occasioning' are the forms of causality:
efficient (the primary one), material cause, final cause and
formal cause. Efficient cause is the understanding of the
orchardist how brings out the final desired effect in the
apple through an knowledge, aquaintance with the 'intrinsic
qualities inherent in the apple species', or it is the
knowing boatsmith who makes for the community, the first
dory. The craftsman is not the 'efficient cause' but the
'cause' of a certain revealing art. Technology is both a
'human activity' and it is also a 'means' to an 'end'. Even
so there is a condition for which no technology can arise at
all, and that is there must be some 'inference as to
causality' in all four types of 'occasioning'.

j foster





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