Tracey asked:

First let me begin by thanking those who provide this service. It is very helpful.

I am a doctoral student in Instructional Technology. If I wanted to read more about how classic
thinkers viewed the creation and use of tools and technology by human beings, where would I begin?
Who should I read first?

Let me just explain why I ask this question. I am concerned with the development of theory in my
field. We discuss a lot of application, but since my field is relatively new, solid theory has not yet been
developed (in my opinion). I really don't have a background in philosophy, so I hope my question is
not too strange. I had a thought that perhaps I can gain some ideas about the development of theory
in IT from reading some classic thought in philosophy on tools, technology, and/or theory and
knowledge creation. The reason I have this idea is because many other fields have beginnings in
philosophy. The philosophical questions that the classic thinkers asked and discussed comprised the
foundations of many of the sciences and social sciences we know today.

I hope someone is able to help me with this question and that if I am barking up the wrong tree, that
someone would kindly let me know.

============

The real difficulty, I would say, is that thinking about technological issues could hardly precede the
development of technology itself, and the use and theory of tools and implements and work methods
is not, unfortunately, a topic to have exercised any philosopher on a more than very superficial layer.
Invariably, when a new science begins, the most important issues to exercise either philosophers or
scholars influenced by them are epistemological issues, and methodologies usually lag far behindat
least insofar as they are elaborated and written up. I mention these difficulties mainly for the reason
that I'm inclined to recommend some pertinent reading to you, but with the caveat that, I'm afraid, the
risk of wasting your time is yours!

The best known of the classical philosophers who actually has a lot to say about these issues is
Francis Bacon. I suggest you dip into his Advancement of Learningand The New Organon.Bacon is
not shy about 'principles' and produces innumerable classifications and taxonomies related to the
various branches of learning (in which what we call technology today forms a part). Now depending
on your personal inclination, you could be bored stiff or fascinated about the prophetic genius that
glimmers through the dim fog of a very primitive science. One way or another, you may find food for
thought in this.

Now following on from this, Bacon was the inspiration behind the Encyclopedieof the French
'philosophes', headed by Diderot and Voltaire. I regret I've only read the latter's contribution plus a
small handful of others, so my recommendation is restricted to recommending that you consult
someone who is knowledgeable about the work. I suspect (but can't confirm) that something of value
to you might be found in there.

Another work worth looking into might be Comte's Positive Philosophy.As philosophy it is dreadfully
dated now, and probably just for the reason that so much of its matter or principle has been updated
in the proliferation of methodologies. With Comte we begin in any case to overlap with the rise of
autonomous scientific principles; and I doubt there is much in writings on the latter that has not since
been improved upon. But just in case your interest is wakened, you might also dip into the writings of
Hermann von Helmholtz, which give a fascinating and first-hand glimpse into the technical
accomplishments of that era (cf. Science and Culture,Chicago UP).

Finally, for a purely scientific point of view, yet from the vantage point of philosophy, you can't go past
the correspondence between Leibnitz and Clarke (the latter a mouthpiece for Newton). This might be
aiming somewhat too high, but it can't hurt you to read at least a couple of exchanges to get a taste
for what's going on here.

I would love to think that this helps. But though I remain dubious, let me add (speaking purely of my
own disposition) that of the many ways to kill time, few are as interesting as these for their own sake.

Jürgen Lawrenz

Sydney

I think you're looking in the wrong direction. You can read Heidegger until your face turns blue, but he
won't help you in your work; in fact, he was very much a Luddite. You might look at Aristotle and the
idea of techne,but again, I don't think it will help. The area you want to look at, in my opinion, is
cognitive psychology. There's been a tremendous amount of work there on the various modalities of
perception, manipulation, theory formation, and so forth... so much that I don't even know where to
begin with references... I could give you 50, easily, right off the bat. Go to your Psychology
department and find some people in these areas, or who can start you reading in them. Computer
people on the whole do not know this literature. The problem however is that it is truly enormous, and
you're going to have to do quite a bit of reading to extract what you want to know. I guess you could
start with the (very old) literature on the tachistoscope and keep going from there, and take a look at
the Stroop effect, and also I'd recommend (which you might know) the MIT robotics lab website...
There's Gopnik on 'theory theory'... and of course the huge literature on cognitive development... I
mean, I think you're doing the right thing, but you may have to (and I'm quite serious) get another
PhD, or do the equivalent reading, to really learn this as thoroughly as it should be learned.

Steven Ravett Brown

Certainly your question is not strange:

About philosophy and technology I found two sites that may be interesting:

http://www-rohan.sdsu.edu/faculty/feenberg/talk4.html

and

http://commhum.mccneb.edu/PHILOS/techessay.htm.

Technology and philosophy could help each other in more ways.

Henk Tuten