Thinking Through Technology
by Carl Mitcham


Carl Mitcham's book "Thinking Through Technology" [1] deals with the history of philosphical thought about technology, as well as using technology to sharpen philosophical thinking.

Two historical approaches

Historically there have been two broad schools of thought on combining philosophy and technology - the Engineering Philosophy of Technology (EPT) and the Humanities Philosophy of Technology (HPT). One came out of the engineering establishment post World War II: from the work of the Mensch & Technik Committee of the Verein Deutscher Ingenieure. The other came from the philosophy community from John Dewey, John Ihde and others. The author acknowledges that engineer-philosophers like Gordon Rogers and Billy Vaughan Koen have pointed out that EPT pays more attention than HPT to the real world of engineering experience and discovery.

Philosophy though technology

The book provides an introduction to philosophy using engineering as the subject matter and examines what constitutes technology. In this way it builds up a framework for the analysis of technology. It summarises four components of the framework - technology as knowledge, technology as activity, technology as objects and technology as volition (the will to act). The author notes that this framework should be both definite enough to provide some guidance for examining the impact of technology, and also open enough to allow for adjustments brought about by technological change.

Carl Mitcham examines each of these components. In increasing sophistication, types of technology as knowledge are skills and techniques, technical maxims, descriptive laws and technological theories.

Technology as activity is described as crafting, inventing, designing, manufacturing, working, operating and maintaining.

Technology as usage is listed as maintaining, techniques of using, economic using and the management of using.

The treatise then turns to the question of what does it mean to see technology as volition. In doing so, it returns to a deeper consideration of philosophy.

The term volition is defined as; the will to survive or satisfy some basic biological need; the will to control or power [or succeed in the battle with nature]; the will to freedom [or have control over naure]; the pursuit of efficiency, the will to realise self conceptions [of who we think we are]. Volition , it is pointed out, is difficult to quantify. It is highly individual and subjective, it may only be a subjective intent or there may be objective or actual realisation of it, and our individual intents vary in strength and commitment. But describe it the author can, primarily by extending an early Martin Heidegger view on ways of technological practices cast light on the character of society. Carl Mitcham uses this approach to examine how society views technology.

Three historical views of technology

This examination points out three main approaches to how technology has been viewed. The ancient skeptics (Socrates, Archimedes and in more modern times Norbet Weiner) said technology is "bad" because it disrupts social cohesion but is also "necessary" for continued day-to-day survival and defence.

The second view of technology was Enlightenment Optimism (Francis Bacon being the key proponent) where it was seen that it was a God given duty for person-kind to use any and all technology to achieve mastery over nature.

This was followed by a third view, Romantic Unease. which dwells on the detrimental side of technological achievements and undertakes a self-conscious questioning of modern technology and ends up asserting the legitimacy of and importance of imagination and feeling.

So where are we today at the end of this treatise? The conclusion that Carl Mitcham comes to is that in the early 1990's we were in a period where Romantic Unease held sway in the popular imagination but that peoples behaviour followed that of the Enlightenment with the wholesale adoption of ever more technological solutions.


Some twenty years on from this book we can see that technology has not just enhanced the way we do things but through enabling social media it has fundamentally affected the way our social relationships work. We might observe that with the enthusiastic adoption of technology, the Enlightenment views have grown ever stronger while the Romantic Unease might be viewed as a poor second cousin.


Carl Mitcham

Thinking Through Technology : The path between engineering and philosophy

The University of Chicago Press, 1994

ISBN 10: 0-226-53196-1