Returning to the real meaning and implications of attempting to add a social dimension to the naturalistic study of scientific knowledge, one finds another dividing line that philosophers insist on keeping sharp and SSK insists on softening namely, the line that separates science from the rest of culture. This is technically called the demarcation criterion. Bloor (1991) says that the main "cause of [sociologists'] hesitation to bring science within the scope of a thorough-going sociological scrutiny is . . . . the conviction that science is a special case . . . naturally [he adds] philosophers are only too eager to encourage this."29 The reasons behind this hesitation are, of course, what sociologists must struggle against if they are to make a place for sociology in the naturalistic program.

As we have seen, one of the reasons is internalism, which the supposed autonomy of science relies on. Another has to do with an individualistic view. Referring to this last, Bloor argues: "Does not individual experience take place within a framework of assumptions, standards, purposes and meanings which are shared? Society furnishes these things and also provides the conditions whereby they can be sustained and reinforced. . . . The knowledge of a society . . . is their collective vision of Reality . . . not of a reality that any individual can experience or learn about for himself. . . . Knowledge then, is better equated with Culture than Experience."

This approach, assimilating rather than demarcating, integrating rather than separating knowledge from the rest of culture, is a recurrent theme in SSK. So, for example, Shapin (1982) says: "In the sociological approach to knowledge people produce it against the background of their culture's inherited knowledge, their collectively situated purposes and the information they receive from natural reality." These purposes are collectively designed, he says, and can pertain to both the technical scientific culture, and society in general. "Typically [knowledge], its usage and meaning, will be embedded within a complex social network, such that possible connections always exist between consideration in all parts of the net."31 And Barnes (1990) claims that knowledge is inherited, routinely transmitted from generation to generation; it is part of a cultural tradition, and as such is sustained by the authority surrounding custom and tradition. "Then, Barnes claims, "what counts as knowledge in most social contexts it is tempting to call customarily accepted belief.' It is sustained by consensus and authority much as custom is sustained. It is developed and modified collectively, much as custom is developed and modified. This we might call the standard sociological conception of knowledge." This "conventionalist collective," as Barnes calls it, view of knowledge comes face to face with the "individualistic rationalist" traditional view, according to which cognitive beliefs have a privileged epistemological status. Yet, he claims, if this status is not presupposed, it does not appear as evident. Each move in the game of science could be different, without offending either reason or experience; given that there are no compelling reasons, agreement about the correctness of the move must be consensually established.

Likewise, Collins (1985) claims that SSK approaches science as just another cultural activity, and he adds a demystifying aspect to this claim. In its broadest sense, Collins claims, a culture relies on the ability of human beings to see the same things and to respond to them in similar ways. Without this uniformity, there is neither culture nor society. Science, too, he says, relies on achieving and maintaining uniformities, but its tricks come to be so routinized that they are taken for granted. It is for this reason that in studying science one needs to pay special attention to what happens before the routine acceptance of uniformities begins.33 This could be done by looking at controversies before they are closed. Science, he says, works by producing agreement among experts. But agreements are the end result of controversies. After controversies close, one hears a single voice, that of the winning group. Yet, he says, "Allowing everyone to speak is as bad as allowing a single group alone to speak. It is as bad as having no-one speak at all."34 It is from the prevalent presentist view of science, a view that relies on hearing only the winning voice, that science appears to be empowered by a special authority. "Making science a continuous part of the rest of our culture," Collins says, "should make us less intimidated."

Another way of putting the antidemarcationist argument is Latour's (1987) way. He tells the dramatic story of a fictitious character, a supposed dissident scientist trying to make the case for his dissenting voice. He promises, with this story, to show "the heterogeneous components that make up science, including, the social ones." At a given moment in the story, Latour anticipates a possible objection from readers: "What do you mean social'? [the reader might ask] Where is captitalism, the proletarian classes, the battle of the sexes, the struggle for the emancipation of the races? Western culture, the strategies of wicked multinational corporations, the military establishment, the devious scientists? All these elements are social and this is what you did not show with all your texts, rhetorical tricks, and technicalities." Latouragrees that he has shown nothing of all this, and yet, he has shown, he says, something more important than these traditional "social" actors. He claims to have shown that, at the same time that scientific literature becomes more and more technical, the dissident, in turn, becomes more and more isolated. Due to the magnitude of resources in the hands of his opponent, the dissident ends up "isolated, besieged, and left without allies and supporters." If this "is not a social act," Latour says, "then nothing is." "The distinction between the technical literature and the rest is not a natural boundary; it is a border created by the disproportionate amount of linkages, resources and allies locally available. This literature is so hard to read and analyze not because it escapes from all normal social links, but because it is more social than so-called normal social ties."

In this way, by focusing on the view of science and knowing as collective social activities as one of the chief features of sociological naturalization, we have passed from a more "neutral" issue such as that the unity of knowledge making is collective and not individual to a less neutral one, that this activity is similar to other collective cultural activities. For there is no collective activity without an order, according to SSK, an order established by convention by a community's members. This order, in turn, once established, is routinely followed, and, after a time, is taken for granted, and then becomes invisible, and then, finally, is kept in place by authority. It is true that in our conventional wisdom one is not used to speaking of science and its knowledge in terms of order, routine, tradition, and/or authority. Yet it is not any less true that the relevance and/or propriety of using these expressions in a naturalistic approach is an issue that does not have to be decided a priori.

This issue is crucial in deciding about the demarcation issue in science studies. Thus it is up to the sociologists to prove, theoretically and empirically, that there is no sharp distinction. And, we saw, that is exactly what they intend to do. Similarly, it is up to the philosophers to demonstrate their affirmative decision by establishing a normative naturalized theory of rationality. Judging by the space that rationality has received in the philosophical literature, it seems that the Popperian idea that demarcation is the core issue in philosophy of science stands as firm as it always has.

After clarifying the difference made by adding sociological to philosophical naturalization, one finds another dichotomy that has marked philosophy of science since its beginning, namely, the dichotomy between the context of discovery and the context of justification. Indeed, philosophy began to see the scientific enterprise as divided into two very different kinds of activities: that of discovering and that of evaluating scientific results. Only this latter was thought to be philosophically relevant; the processes that really give rise to scientific results appeared as irrelevant to the justification of these results. This distinction turned out to function, as a matter of fact, as a veto against the investigation of real scientific processes. With philosophical naturalization there were changes: the investigation of real, historical, actual episodes of science are now thought to be not only relevant, but almost necessary conditions of what is considered to be good metascientific practice. Yet this philosophical change has had little effect on the dichotomy of contexts, because investigations now empirical of change and evaluation continue to be the major philosophical topic.

Sociological naturalization reverses the order of relevance; the key metascientific problems arise around the processes of knowledge making, before the crystalization of the results. Indeed, for SSK, what is more interesting and relevant is to analyze what scientists really do when they practice the activity called science: when they produce laboratory phenomena, as well as when they produce scientific literature; when they intervene in a controversy, as well as when they decide on closure; when they relate claims about nature with claims about society, as well as when they relate claims about society with claims about nature. SSK claims, thus, that the most interesting and relevant place to look in order to know the nature of science is to the real practice of science. Without it no scientific results would exist.

This reversal of the order of priority, from finished products to their production processes, is quite important because, according to SSK, once scientific results laboratory facts, controversy closures, scientific papers are delivered, they are all that we know where "we" includes not only lay-people but most scientists. The processes, agents, and resources that brought them about become, in this way, invisible. Scientific results become black boxes that have a life of their own. Here is a reason for the fruitfulness of focusing on production processes. But there is another still more important reason. It has to do with the fact that, according to SSK, this invisibility is the reason why one has traditionally seen scientific results as emanating directly from nature, as having to do with nothing but nature, reality, the world such as it is in itself, independently of human action, intention, interests, and desires. This is the prevalent view of scientific results, and it is so generally shared that it is taken for granted. It is precisely for this reason that this view must be critiqued by analyzing in detail each and every one of the factors, actions, and resources that make science possible in the first place. For these reasons, one should give priority to science in action rather than to the results of its actions.

Bloor's (1991) defense of a naturalized study of knowledge implies the search for a general causal theory about cognitive phenomena. Such a theory has to explain all cognitive beliefs; that is, all of them have to appear as part of the same causal process, and all have to be the effect of the same kinds of causes. But, Bloor says, the problem with this demand is that the set of cognitive beliefs has been divided, traditionally, into a positive and a negative side, namely, the correct, true, rational beliefs, on the one hand, and the incorrect, false, irrational beliefs on the other. Moreover, and here is the point, for each of these sides one has a different kind of explanation. While the beliefs on the positive side members of an autonomous intellectual realm are explained by the exclusive action of internal factors, typically scientific rules and facts, those on the negative side are explained, instead, by referring to external factors typically psychological and sociological.27 In this way, differences in the set of beliefs give way to the dichotomization of their causes, and this turns out to be an obstacle to the construction of a single causal explanatory theory of knowledge. Bloor's principle of symmetry intends, precisely, to block this dichotomization: if social factors have causal efficacy, they have it for all beliefs alike. That is, the field of sociological investigation should not be limited to the pathology of beliefs. This is indeed the way Bloor introduces and presents arguments for his principle. The possibility of a positive answer to Bloor's question about the propriety of sociological incursion into epistemological matters is, thus, blocked by this radical distinction between internal and external factors and their causal efficacy. The rejection of this distinction is, indeed, the negative content of the principle of symmetry, whose positive side would be the demanding of a role for sociology in science studies.

One could say that to read the symmetry principle in this way is to give it a weak interpretation even weaker than Bloor himself wanted. Indeed, the meaning of "strong" as in Strong Program has been understood as having to do with a reductionist oversociologization of knowledge's explanation; namely, in knowledge causation social factors would have priority if not exclusivity. There would be no causal role for reality to play. But this last reading cannot be supported because of what the very text that introduces the principle really says. AndBloor<>

This misunderstanding about the use of the term "strong" could be a reason for the persistent rejection of a demand for a role for sociology in science studies. This rejection continues today, in spite of the fact that sociology's integration could appear as a further step in the transformation of philosophy which gave rise to its naturalization. In effect, philosophy was the first of the science studies in this century as a normative foundationalist discipline. This meant, at the time, that there had to be a sharp demarcation between the task of philosophers, on the one hand, and that of historians, pscychologists, and sociologists, on the other. The first transformation came as a consequence of Kuhn's demand for a role for history and Lakatos's proposal to deal with a metascientific investigation program as if it were an historiographical one. With this change, the normative versus descriptive distinction became the internal versus external distinction. And this in turn meant, as I have said, that Lakatos opened the door to history with the same firmness that he closed it to psychology and sociology. The later transformation occurs with the naturalization of epistemology: the demand which originates with Quine although it has a very different meaning today to deal with knowledge as a natural phenomenon. This opens the door to science studies to psychology and, almost simultaneously, to biology. Science studies became, thus, truly interdisciplinary. But the traditional thesis about the autonomy of science the core of the internalist view continues to block the possibility of "a naturalist understanding of knowledge in which sociology plays a role."

My strategy to cast some light on the controversy between philosophers and sociologists consists of reconstructing some of the basic ideas stressed by SSK, with the aim of comparing both metascientific programs: the sociological and the philosophical. I intend to show that a major point of confrontation, in the first place, has to do, not with what they say about science, but rather with what they say about the proper way to study science: the aim of science studies; what to prioritize to reach this goal; what path to follow, what to avoid; what its analytical tools are and what its working agenda is.

Sociological Naturalization

As Giere (1988) acknowledges, SSK presents itself from the beginning, not only implicitly but militantly, as a naturalistic program.20 SoBloor (1991) claims: "The sociologist is concerned with knowledge, including scientific knowledge, purely as a natural phenomenon." His concern must be, then, the identification of the regularities and general principles that govern the field of cognitive phenomena, and, consequently with his naturalistic commitment, he will use the same causal language used in the research of other fields of natural phenomena.21 This is, precisely, the content of the first principle of Bloor's program: the principle of causality.22 Since causal accounts of knowledge have achieved philosophical status, thanks to the naturalization of epistemology, the interesting point here is to identify what differentiates sociological from philosophical naturalization. Thanks to the latter, epistemology "without a knowing subject" became the epistemology whose philosophical thesis relies on the sciences whose subject matter is precisely the cognitive subject, namely, cognitive psychology and evolutionary biology.

Now, with SSK, sociology wants to enter the scene. It would incorporate the study of the "social" dimension of knowledge. Yet the problem of understanding what, precisely, its contribution would be resides in the ambiguity of the term "social."23 A first clarification comes from regarding it as referring to the fact that the unity of knowledge making i.e., its genesis, evaluation, transmission and change is not the work of the isolated individual, but a collective activity. Science would be, then, an enterprise and knowing an activity collective by nature. So Bloor (1991) asks: "How much of man's knowledge, and how much of his science is built up by the individual relying simply on the interaction of the world with his animal capacities?" In his view: "Probably very little."

But this view is not now among the most prevalent. Indeed, the most widely accepted tradition concerning epistemological matters is whatBloor calls "individualistic empiricism," and Barnes calls "individualistic rationalism." In the conclusion of Shapin's (1982) well-known paper, he claims that historians of ideas routinely study knowledge as a base of cultural change, and they acknowledge that cultural heritage is socially transmitted; yet, he complains, "Many historians of ideas still treat contributions to culture as if they were generated in vacuo by atomistic individuals, and some of them continue to view the source of cultural material of science as a matter of moral concerns."25 Collins'swork relies on case studies in which the collective making of scientific consensus is the key point. As in the case of so-called laboratory studies, the key point of the collective making of scientific facts and literature is given such importance as to be the first of the six principles that summarize the approach (Latour, 1987).

It would, of course, be a very deflationist approach to reduce the meaning of "social" to "collective making." Yet it is an interesting starting point for the understanding of what the meaning and specific contribution of sociological naturalization would be. For if it is true that cognitive activity is constitutively and interestingly social in the above mentioned sense then SSK would focus on something largely neglected in epistemology. So SSK would complement naturalized epistemology by claiming that the investigation of the nature of scientific knowledge can be reduced neither to that of the cognitive capacities of individuals nor to their evolutionary history. It turns out that humans would also be social beings, also have a cultural history, which would also determine the nature of their behavior including their cognitive behavior. In this way, SSK would open the agenda of science studies to a series of new issues neglected until now. Now if science is an enterprise and knowing an activity collective by nature, it would be reasonable to integrate sociology within the interdisciplinary field that is now the study of science promoted by philosophy itself as, in fact happened first with history of science, and later with psychology and biology. But why did this not happen? Why has there been no affirmative answer to SSK's call for "a naturalist understanding of knowledge in which sociology plays a role?"26 The answer to this question leads to the first of a series of distinctions and dichotomies that have marked our philosophical culture about science; these, in turn, could be an important part of the reason behind the misunderstanding and resistance towards SSK.

The Decade of the '70s

Bloor one of the founders of SSK begins his (1991) with a question: "Can the sociology of knowledge investigate and explain the very content and nature of scientific knowledge?" The question has the merit of beginning at the very beginning; it has to do with the novelty and, in this case, with the feasibility of attempting to give sociology a role in epistemology a field traditionally located in the philosophical province.Bloor presents his book as an argument to convince even hesitant, stubborn, critical, or skeptical people. But the interesting thing is that Bloordoes not direct the question, nor address his argument, to philosophers but to sociologists.4 These very sociologists had refrained from including the analysis of knowledge in their field of work.

But if Bloor did not address his argument to philosophers in the first place, their answer was as rapid as it was blunt: in absence of a plausible program of sociology of knowledge, and of empirical literature on which to base it, philosophers would reject the "sociological temptation" and refrain from searching for the roots of rational explanation of human beliefs in sociological soil. The "intellectual historian" ought to devote his attention to a "rational historiography of ideas" because of its greater success ratio compared to cognitive sociology.5 This negative answer to Bloor's question global rejection is the initial philosophical position towards SSK. And this answer is the explicit target of Shapin's (1982) well known paper, where he responds in a similar blunt fashion to at least a part of the objection, the supposed lack of empirical literature. But, at the same time, paraphrasing in the title of his paper the title of Lakatos's (1971) influential paper, Shapin addresses himself to the very source of the philosophical reaction. The importance of Lakatos's paper resides, in the first place, in its decisive support for the demand by Kuhn of "a role for history" in science studies; this support will be, in turn, a decisive step in the process of the naturalization of philosophy. But the influence of Lakatos's paper in the later development of philosophy of science has another side; with the same firmness with which he opens the door to history, he closes it to sociology, transferring the radical dividing line between descriptive and normative to one between internalism and externalism. If Shapin, in turn, hopes to produce some impact by paraphrasing the title of Lakatos's paper, it is, so to speak, to reopen a door that Lakatos had closed. He hopes to attain for sociology what Lakatos had for history.

The '80s

This paper by Shapin marks the beginning of a decade of changes and novelties in both SSK and philosophy of science. Concerning SSK, at the beginning of the decade, well known anthologies6 appeared that, as Giere (1988) claims, constitute "a sure sign of a movement's reaching maturity (or at least reaching for maturity").7 Throughout the decade, several important books8 appeared that show, in the words of Bloor (1991), that "the main proof of the possibility of the sociology of knowledge is its actuality."9 All of these works, including the anthologies, show the broad diversity and divergences that had characterized this movement since its beginning regarding both the theoretical claims and analytical tools, and the empirical fields of exploration. Although this diversity makes it difficult to speak of SSK as a single movement or program, its protagonists have seen it as a positive sign, and have worked as if they were members of a movement whose convergences were more important than the divergences.

Regarding philosophy of science with its even more obvious diversification the change that I want to emphasize here has to do with what is now call its naturalization.11 Yet although naturalization is a clear bet for working empirically and interdisciplinarily in science studies and, therefore, an arena where one could hope that there exists a place for sociology philosophers' reaction against SSK remains the same as at the beginning. This is no longer expressed as an explicit rejection; it is, rather, a matter of completely ignoring SSK. In the philosophical literature of the '80s, there exist no references to SSK;12 if anything, we hear only the distant sound of the controversy rationality versus relativism.

The '90s

At the beginning of the present decade, one can appreciate a few significant changes. In the field of SSK there is a change from the initial defensive attitude to the security that comes from the fruitful works of the preceding decade. Thus Bloor (1991), for example, says: "The cumulative effect of these [works] has been to alter the terms of the debate. It has tipped it in favor of the strong program"; however, he admits immediately: "This is despite inevitable and healthy differences of opinion as well as many unsolved problems."13 Barnes (1990), for his part, claims that the sociological approach to knowledge has inspired, and is confirmed by, an important number of empirical works. The remaining resistance and misunderstanding, he says, is due to a "long-established notion of evaluation"; yet, he adds, "it is as the plausibility of this individualistic rationalist account of evaluation in science has declined that the alternative sociological conception has come to be taken seriously."

Other important news in the sociological field has to do with the nature and range of internal divergences. As I have said before, since the beginning there has been an explicit acknowledgment of the existence of such divergences although also an explicit agreement about the priority of convergences over divergences. It is the consensus around this agreement that has changed recently. What are these divergences? For Barnes (1990) the main internal divergence in SSK resides among those like himself in the Strong Program who look for a general explanatory theory, and those who, on the other hand, claim that sociological analysis must consist of and limit itself to a descriptive task.15 For Woolgar, instead, there exists a general agreement among sociologists in their interest in the sociological analysis of the technical content of knowledge; the main difference consists of spelling out "what exactly such contents' might be and how they should best be studied." A sociohistorical explanatory argument based on interests, he says, is "undermined by incongruent causal and realist assumptions."

Latour's case is somewhat different. He began working independently of SSK, joined it later, but now seems to be moving away from it. He or what is now called the Paris School sees SSK as undermined by traditional conceptual dichotomies such as subject/object, Nature/Society precisely the ones which the current authority of natural scientists relies on.

Pickering's case is also different; beginning as a militant protagonist of SSK, this author now complains that SSK as its very name suggests promotes a view of science studies that gives priority to its conceptual product, i.e., knowledge. In so doing, he says, it has given a weak, idealized, and reductive view of science, that, for this very reason, turns out to be useless "to catch up the richness of the doing of science," namely: "the dense work of building instruments, planning, running, and interpreting experiments, elaborating theory, negotiating with laboratory managements, journals, grant-giving agencies, and so on." Pickering, then, now challenges that the analysis of science-as-knowledge of traditional SSK could be useful for the understanding of science-as-practice; this last, he claims since it requires a new set of principles, analytical tools, and work agenda makes a separation from the originary root necessary.

What about the impact of the '80s works of SSK on philosophy of science? Indeed, it has not been very great. Yet it is quite interesting to note in recent philosophical literature increasing references to SSK, even if only to mark distance. Far from the initial global disqualification and/or ignorance, some philosophers have made SSK in general or some of its subprograms in particular the main target of their arguments. So, for example, Earman (1992) gives it the status of "the most elusive and insidious opponent." In the same book, Boyd claims that, "The conception of science as a matter of social construction is worthy of serious elaboration and criticism." Niiniluoto (1991), for his part, sees SSK as a branch of naturalism, different from the philosophical one in that for the former "scientific beliefs have no special relationship with reason, truth or reality"; he acknowledges the interest of SSK's case studies, but considers them insufficient to justify its "radical conclusions."Kitcher's (1991) view seems more neutral, where he merely distinguishes a propositional model of knowledge in which it appears as a set of well founded true beliefs, and knowledge as a property of individuals from the view of knowledge as a social realization. Another reference of this last author, showing the current impact of SSK on the philosophical community, is from his (1993). Here, in the context of acknowledging that there could be, in science studies, other interesting issues besides the cognitive one, this author says: "Philosophers have ignored the social context of science; the point, however, is to change it." Although Kitcher's sentences clearly imply his rejection of SSK whose concern is precisely with the cognitive issue in which it does not separate knowledge from its social context it is very significant that a reference to social context as an issue that concerns philosophers even appears. Never before the existence of SSK had philosophers acknowledged that this also could be a philosophical issue.

Adelaida Ambrogi Alvarez, University of the Balearic Islands

Pickering (1992, p. 1) speaks of the field now commonly called sociology of scientific knowledge (SSK) as "a new approach to thinking about science" that differentiated itself from contemporary philosophy and sociology of science in two ways: first, in that "scientific knowledge itself had to be understood as a social product"; and second, in that "SSK was determinedly empirical and naturalistic."2 In this paper I intend to explore the nature of the divergences between SSK and philosophy of science. This exploration intends to illuminate the relationship between the two, a relationship that, from the beginning, has been marked by an open and bitter controversy which has ignited more fire than illumination of key points.

I will begin with a summary of the history of the relationship between the two. I intend to show that, during its development, there were significant changes in both fields; I will also display the internal development of each field, as well as although to a lesser degree the relationship itself. In the second part of the paper I will enumerate some of what seem to be the key points that differentiate philosophical from sociological studies. As we will see, the basic ideas of the sociological program appear, implicitly or explicitly, to be violating ideas that have traditionally governed the philosophical approach to science. This is precisely what would explain and make reasonable the strong resistance with which SSK has been met since the beginning. Yet the changes that have occurred meanwhile in the philosophy of science itself especially those which have led to what is known as naturalization, have challenged the feasibility of some of those old basic ideas. It is thanks to these last changes, I will claim in the conclusion, that SSK might be able to find a "natural" place in the empirical and interdisciplinary study of science that philosophy itself has promoted under the name of naturalization.

PROCEEDINGS OF A MEETING OF THE INTERNATIONAL
ACADEMY OF THE PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE,
KARLSRUHE, GERMANY, MAY 1997

INTRODUCTION

Evandro Agazzi, University of Fribourg, and Hans Lenk, University of Karlsruhe

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In philosophy proper, thus far, technology and technics have been rather poorly represented. Their stature is low because of a tendency to class them amongst merely practical things in merely practical realms�while "real philosophy" is thought of as dealing with fundamental, primarily theoretical problems. And this is so despite a respectable tradition in the modern era, notably highlighted by Immanuel Kant, of granting primacy to practical philosophy (unfortunately, most often only in principle or in theoretical terms).

With the exponentially-increasing growth in the realm of industrialization, it has become clear that technology will inevitably gain a prominent and important place in the modern world. Nonetheless, problems of technology have been largely ignored by philosophers. Although a few specialized books on philosophy of technology were published in the nineteenth century (for example, by Beckmann in 1806 and Kapp in 1877), they were largely ignored by mainstream philosophers. Only relatively recently have philosophers with international reputations begun to emphasize the importance�indeed, the central role�of technology in the history of humankind, and notably in the modern era.

Karl Jaspers and Martin Heidegger have stressed technology as the fate of humankind. Jaspers called technology "the main problem" (Hauptproblem) of our modern situation. And Heidegger (in Vortr�ge und Aufs�tze, 1967, p. 72) called "technique," or technology, our "perfected metaphysics" (vollendete Metaphysik). According to Heidegger, technology is "essentially" identical with modern metaphysics, providing for us a kind of metaphysical constitution of the world that is presupposed as the fundamental core of any human possibility or opportunity of action or potentiality of world-making. In technology, humans confront nature, they corner it like game brought to bay�and they do so according to a fundamental necessity of anticipatory confrontation, where instrumentation offers the conditions or requirements for human action, even survival. Thus, technology, with its ever-increasing growth and acceleration, seems not to remain a mere universe of instruments. Instead, it seems to impose itself as a fundamental trait or factor of modern world-making�at least if we are thinking about changing the world or reshaping its character.

In this sense, technology seems to have become the total fate of humankind. Is it a good fate or a bad fate? That is a question that is gaining ever more prominence, especially as all of us, because of overpopulation problems on a planetary scale, become quite literally dependent on improvements in technology�which then requires the controlling of its rampant proliferation or acceleration.

In contradistinction to Heidegger's diagnosis, that technology has become the metaphysical fate of Being today, independent of human life and action, we believe that technology and the technological world are human- made; if technology has any "ontological" or "metaphysical" character, it is only because humans have granted it such, based on human or anthropological (not metaphysical) considerations. Humans today are, indeed, dependent on technology; however, on the other hand, humankind has never had greater scope for action, greater energy, or greater potential than is the case today. And this is precisely (for good or ill) because of the increase of technological power, as technology gets ever more systematized and takes over more and more realms.

What all of this means is that, even if technology is the fate of humankind, the fateful aspect is of secondary importance: our world is human-made, and we must shoulder our responsibilities. Humankind cannot avoid or evade its responsibility precisely for the technological world, for all the features of technology. Neither can the human race overlook its duties toward the environment�at the global, regional, or national level�while attributing technological development to some non-personal, non-human factor (like Heidegger's fate of Being). It is not Being but humans who have expanded their powers at an exponentially accelerating rate; and it is this technological growth, with its drastic encroachments on nature and the global ecosystem, that we have to fear. In proportion to the growth of the power of technology, human�yes, humankind's�responsibility must grow at the same pace.

On the other hand, problems of the responsibility for large-scale technological development and environmental degradation�problems of maintaining the biosphere as "humanity's living room" (along with all the plant and animal species with which we must coexist)�seem to fade away, to escape being assigned to any individual bearers. Technological power seems to run rampant, to escape domestication or taming or getting worn down by any responsible human action.

This leads to a further development. A worldwide "technopolitics" seems to be called for in order to avoid the traps that nature and society lay before us in the form of human disillusions, pollution, and the exhaustion of systems and natural resources. World-scale technology assessments, and social and environmental impact assessments have become a matter of necessity. In particular, preventive measures to avoid imminent problems of climate and the environment are urgent issues now. Traditional social and political structures, including nation states and loose confederations, do not seem adequate to deal with the dramatic, ever-accelerating problems of the contemporary world on planet Earth.

To that extent, Jaspers and Heidegger were right on at least one point: a philosophy adequate to deal with technological problems cannot any longer rely, for ethical responses, on the practical reason of individual persons' insights. Politically pressing problems of major import�planning, just distribution, public participation, effective social organization�all of these are now urgent on a world scale. But large-scale problems of this nature have scarcely been mentioned in traditional philosophy of technology of the Jaspers/Heidegger sort. Meanwhile, they have taken center stage in the international political arena�as in the world environment and world climate conferences at Rio de Janeiro and Kyoto.

Another point: it is not only the environment and the biosphere that have been shaped by technological development with its systemic interconnections and interactions. The social, political, and information realms have also come to be characterized by new features�especially information networks and related systems technologies, which have gained prominence and had ever-increasing impacts in recent decades. Even traditional technologies have come to be dominated by computer and information technologies, by multimedia electronic systems�and by the managerial approach associated with them. And this trend, like the others mentioned here, is also accelerating exponentially.

Technics are older than science, and the technics of ancient history were later transformed by craft techniques; then these gave way to science- based technology. Now it has become all too apparent that systems technologies�computer-generated, computer-assisted, and computer-guided on the basis of information, software, and systems management�have come to dominate the scene. And all of this requires management by large, complex, dynamic social systems�so-called "socio-technical systems"�that in turn require large-scale organization, systems management, and even systems engineering. In fact, systems engineering�involving large-scale organization, management, and information-based strategies such as operations research�has become increasingly prominent and important.

All of these developments call for new methods in the philosophy of technology. Not only does philosophy of technology have new anthropological, social, and political problems to deal with; it must also wrestle with complex and new methodological problems. These involve relationships and interactions between the sciences and various technical disciplines, as well as problems of the reliability (even the continued viability) of traditional technology assessment, environmental impact assessment, social impact, and planning methodologies.

This leaves many tasks to be undertaken, much business to be done by philosophers of technology, both now and in the future. So it seemed natural and worthwhile for the International Academy of the Philosophy of Science to address these problems of a new and modern philosophy of technology. This world-renowned organization took up the challenge at an international conference in Karlsruhe, Germany, May 20-26, 1997, under the title, "Advances in the Philosophy of Technology." More than 65 participants� philosophers, scientists, and graduate students from 22 countries�took part in the sessions, which touched on all the topics mentioned here, but in a practice-oriented fashion. Everything from general topics�such as the relations between science and technology, technology and culture, and the ethics of technology�to special fields of applied technology was dealt with. A selection of papers from the conference is presented here in the Society for Philosophy and Technology's quarterly electronic journal. These papers will fill all four issues of volume 4 of the journal.

On behalf of the Academie Internationale de Philosophie des Sciences, we thank all the speakers at the conference, the contributors to this volume, and the Society for Philosophy and Technology, including the general editor of its publications and its current president, Paul Durbin.

We would like also to add one final note. The board of the Academy chose Karlsruhe for this conference because of the long history of the University of Karlsruhe, founded in 1825 as the first Technical University in Germany. For over a century, Karlsruhe has been recognized not only for its engineering and technical contributions, but also for work in Engineering Philosophy, Engineering Ethics, and Philosophy of Technology. Especially noteworthy have been contributions of Eberhard Zschimmer and Simon Moser. One of us (Hans Lenk) will summarize some of these accomplishments in one of the papers included here.