This article began as an attempt to sketch out a thread for the soon-to-be-written *A General History of Technology*, while trying to apply the strategy of “intentional history.” After discussing it in a seminar, I found that there were still many gaps in the logic after the four causes. I had originally wanted to fill them in before posting, but now I feel it would be very hard to add anything, and I’m afraid the whole thing would need to be reorganized from scratch. So I’ll just post the unfinished essay for now.
0. Intentionality
The origin of technology is a historical and archaeological question, but first of all it is a philosophical or phenomenological question.
When archaeologists strive to find clues to the origin of technology in the remains of primitive humans, they have already long had a firm grasp of what technology is; when historians begin a history of technology from the Stone Age, they have already classed the stone axe and the steam engine as belonging to the same category.
So the philosopher’s question is: where did “technology,” as an idea, “originate”?
Jacob Klein, in his interpretation of Husserl’s *The Origin of Geometry*, argued that “Husserl’s thought is directed throughout his life toward the question of origins.” Husserl’s method of “phenomenological reduction” consists in bracketing the objectivity of a certain object and then pursuing its “intentional origin,” that is, tracing the “sedimented history” of its “constitution.” This sedimented history does not occur in objective time, but is constituted in inner time-consciousness.
This whole line of thought sounds obscure and difficult, but in short it is still an extension of the question posed by transcendental philosophy: “…how is it possible?” Hence the “intentional history” advocated by Klein is also called “transcendental history.”
In phenomenology, human consciousness is by no means, as representationalists imagine, a projection of the ready-made external world onto a ready-made screen inside the head. Phenomenology first brackets the “external world” — it is meaningless, or at least meaningless for philosophical reflection, to step outside the human point of view and speak from God’s standpoint about an absolutely objective external world. Further, phenomenology holds that the “inside” of consciousness is by no means a flat screen; consciousness has “thickness.” The presentation of every object of consciousness has a certain structure, and layer upon layer of presuppositions sediment down, constituting the stage on which the corresponding object can appear.
This “Copernican rotation,” namely shifting the foundation of certainty in knowledge from “the thing-in-itself” to “the structure of consciousness,” originates in Kantian philosophy. But unlike Kant, phenomenology holds that the structure of intentionality is not confined to the two fixed forms of time and space. Every kind of thing has its own different intentional structure. We can neither once and for all find a base that guarantees the certainty of all knowledge, nor are we without any place to seek certainty.
For example, Klein discovered that modern algebra takes “symbolic abstraction” as its presupposition. This differs from the way ancient people understood numbers and symbols, and algebraic thought based on symbolic abstraction in turn laid the foundation for analytic geometry. In actual history, we can find some historical events to support intentional history; for example, the contributions made by Euclid and Viète at different stages exemplify different links in the gradual sedimentation of intentional history.
From the standpoint of intentional history, when we inquire into the origin of modern mathematics, we can discover certain necessities; for instance, the idea of “symbolic abstraction” is a necessary precondition. But in actual terms, whether the crucial contribution was made by the European Viète or by the Chinese Wei Xiaobao is to a large extent accidental. Therefore, actual historical writing of course depends much more on the arrangement of historical materials than on philosophical speculation, but these concrete materials ultimately need to be situated within some intentional-historical structure.
For example, without the thread of intentional history, the significance of Viète’s work would be hard to display. The reason historians judge Viète’s work worthy of writing about, and thus single him out from the vast sea of historical materials, is that his work filled in the corresponding link in intentional history. In this sense, intentional history comes before the actual work of historiography.
“Intentional history” presents a certain necessity, but this necessity is by no means a ready-made conclusion that becomes certain once constructed, much like theoretical science lays the foundation for the applied sciences related to it, yet theoretical science and applied science often develop simultaneously, confirming or correcting one another. In this sense, actual historical work in turn comes “before” intentional history, and we often, under the stimulus of continuously updated historical materials, critically examine and reconstruct “intentional history.”
Another point that remains unclear in Husserl and Klein is that although “intentional history” is certainly a kind of “intellectual history,” it is not necessarily a “history of ideas.” Intellectual history investigates “the transcendental conditions of something as an idea,” but these “transcendental conditions” are not necessarily merely things of the mind; they can also be media or technical environments.
Just as human beings can never grasp the “objective world” with absolute precision, our grasp of intentionality can never be foolproof or absolutely under control. “Intentional history” does not aim to provide a “universal” historical “model” that works everywhere and at all times; rather, it aims to offer a thread for narrating history, or a thread for understanding the historicity of our present situation.
Such historical threads are endless. No idea descends out of thin air; ideas have their own “history” and their own “origin.” Hence every *History of …* contains an intentional history.
*A History of Technology* is of course no exception. When we regard something as technology, how is that idea possible? Below I attempt to analyze the “origin of technology” from the angle of “conceptual presuppositions,” and to corroborate it with actual history.
Today, the word “technology” “roughly includes four aspects of meaning: first, skills, abilities, arts, and techniques related to the practical activity of the individual body; second, methods, means, and approaches embodied in action and doing things; third, objectified tools, equipment, facilities, and apparatus; fourth, industrial technology, engineering technology, and modern technology applying modern science.” The first two meanings are older (already contained in the Chinese 技, 术 and the Greek *techne*), while the latter two are modern meanings derived by extension.
But the modern extended meanings are not accidental; they all have their own “origin.” New meanings are built upon older meanings, and their extension and distortion are perhaps not accidental. Below we try to pursue the internal logic of the constitution of the concept of “technology” and the formation of the modern technological world.
1. Finitude
The very possibility of meanings such as technique and skill depends on the most basic presupposition of human finitude; that is to say, our abilities are always limited. If someone who has “technology” can accomplish certain things in a more ingenious, quicker, or less effortful way, that means we originally could only accomplish those things in a clumsy, slow, and laborious way, or perhaps could not accomplish them at all. The meaning of technology lies in enhancing our abilities, but this precisely presupposes our “inability.”
An omnipotent God does not need “technology”; if he thinks of something, it comes to be; whatever he says, that is what it becomes. But human beings are not omnipotent. Finite people who want something must suffer, must labor, and therefore there is room for easing that labor, that is, for the use of technique.
In actual history, the human species first appeared with the characteristic of deficiency.
Stiegler cites the myth of Epimetheus: when the gods created the various animals, Epimetheus was responsible for assigning each kind of animal a skill. As a result, through a moment’s negligence, Epimetheus forgot to assign any skill to human beings. He then discovered that humans had neither strength nor speed, neither fangs nor claws, and even lacked the fur needed for warmth; they were truly pitiful. Prometheus simply could not bear it, so he stole fire and gave it to humanity.
This myth is highly symbolic. It suggests that human reliance on technology stems precisely from human lack. Human bodies are deficient in skill, clumsy and slow, and by nature cannot beat other animals, so they have no choice but to rely on cleverness to win.
2.Externality
Since technology is needed because of the “inability” of the individual human being, this means that technology is something that does not originally belong to this person, something external to the human being. Technology strengthens human ability, but this strengthening does not operate by acting on human genes; rather, it acts as something “added on,” something “extra.”
This externality of technology presents a certain paradoxical condition: on the one hand, technology strengthens a certain human ability; on the other hand, this strengthening is always half-within-reach and half-out of reach, and a person may at any moment lose the technology on which they depend, in which case that ability becomes even weaker.
For example, bow-and-arrow technology strengthens the ability to fight beasts, yet once a hunter is stripped of his bow and made to fight beasts barehanded, his ability is likely to be even weaker than that of someone who has never had a bow at all.
This paradox produces a history of technology in which human power grows greater and greater on the one hand, while on the other hand human beings become increasingly weak. Cast a modern adult who is adept with electronic technology into the primeval jungle, and his ability to survive may well be inferior to that of a five-year-old child from a primitive tribe.
So does technology make people stronger or weaker? This way of asking presupposes that human beings can be assessed separately from technology.
However, the “externality” of technology is not precisely manifested as a separation between human beings and technology. If one merely says that technology is something outside the body, then a tree is external to a bird, soil is external to an insect, and so on — all are relations of mutual externality. What is meant here by externality is not so much that technology is external to human beings as that technology makes human beings “externalized.” As Stiegler says, “human existence is existence outside oneself.”
Measuring a person is very different from measuring an animal. Although we can also measure a human being from the angles of physique, skin color, hair, and so on, the more important aspects of being human are precisely manifested where they are external to the body, such as what one is doing, what one has done, and what one will do. A hero becomes a hero by virtue of his achievements; a writer becomes a writer by virtue of his works. Through technology, human beings can project their existence outward.
In actual history, tattoos, clothing, totems, statues, and the like are ancient ways by which people mark themselves through external things.
3. Transmissibility
Above I mentioned human “lack” and “overflow.” Because we lack, we need technology; and through technology, human beings can extend themselves outward.
This alternation between internalization and externalization constitutes the history of the development of the relation between human beings and technology. Human beings need to learn technologies that are not innate, and at the same time they extend themselves beyond their own lives by mapping their knowledge and experience onto technology.
Thus technology is always transmissible. Private language is impossible, and private technology is impossible too. Technology must be transmissible. Of course, if the teacher’s expressive ability is insufficient, or the student’s learning ability inadequate, so that technology cannot be effectively transmitted, that is another matter. But if we assume that everyone’s intelligence and bodily capacities do not differ greatly, then a technology learned by someone at some time and place can, in principle, always be re-enacted by someone else at another time.
Perhaps there are some tricks, some skills, that were invented in a flash of inspiration by some person. But no matter how much they flash into being, as long as they are tricks, they can always be used repeatedly. A technology that works only once and then never again is not technology at all; it is only luck and accident. Only when these technologies can be “remembered” and reproduced do they deserve to be called technologies.
As Stiegler reveals, technology is nothing other than externalized memory. People can retain memory outside themselves so that it can be called back at any time.
Every artifact is an extension and fixation of some ability. For example, in every hammer there has sedimented the knowledge human beings have accumulated over thousands of years about hammering; every person who can hammer with a fist may learn to use a hammer. The learning process is one of internalizing these external things into one’s own behavior or habit, while also externalizing one’s own body. For instance, I may adjust the weight and length of a hammer according to my bodily habits; I may install software and upgrade hardware according to my preferences for a computer; and I may at any time feed back my experience of use to other people, including the makers of the artifact and the teacher who taught me how to use it. After receiving feedback, they may in turn pass on new things to me or to the next learner… The whole process of learning and using technology is a two-way mutual adaptation, moving from inside to outside and from outside to inside, and the shape and material of the hammer at my side are precisely one of the products left behind after countless generations of use and learning.
In actual history, human biological traits have promoted transmissibility. Compared with other animals, human beings have a long childhood and a long old age (in fact, menopause exists almost only in humans). A large part of a human life may be spent without reproductive capacity. So where lies the evolutionary advantage of children and the elderly? It lies precisely in the transmission of technology. Although neither the old nor the young have the highest foraging efficiency, the interaction between these two stages is just right for transmitting foraging techniques.
The oldest stone tools all show regional characteristics. Dozens of generations within the same region may have made stone tools in similar ways, which demonstrates the existence of transmission. Of course, the transmissibility of technology only became increasingly evident after the late Neolithic period, when people began to live in settled communities. Monuments, tombs, writing, and architectural technology, and so on, all display transmissibility very prominently.
4. Causality
Since technology is something that is used by the incapable to extend themselves outward and can be reproduced across generational transmission, this requires a certain pattern-recognition of causality. That is to say, I should grasp this: it is through this technology that I completed this end; and then, when I once again seek to achieve the same end, I can rely on the same technology. Only by discerning causal association patterns of the form “through … technology to achieve … end” in different circumstances.
“The process of toolmaking already requires a kind of ‘advance foresight.’ Before making a tool, the toolmaker must have a representation of the shape of the tool to be made, and then process the tool material according to that representation. This advance foresight also becomes part of the process of toolmaking, fixed after repeated repetition and transmitted to later generations together with the pattern of toolmaking.”
From a biological perspective, Lewis Wolpert proposed that the origin of technology is related to belief in causality. He believes that animals hardly possess a concept of causality; they can only understand some immediate associations, such as pressing a button and food falling down. But animals cannot understand by what “mechanism” pressing the button brings about the food falling down. So with respect to the intermediate links between two directly experienced associated events, animals are often entirely helpless. Human beings are different. Human understanding of causal connections is not merely reactive but explanatory. For example, a human child may discover that a button activates a lever, and the lever pushes out the food; then they grasp a mechanism. So when the lever jams and the button stops working, human beings will immediately bypass the button and push the lever directly, whereas animals are often helpless in the face of this.
Human beings, having understood causal mechanisms, are better at improving and combining technologies. Therefore, humans very early on made “compound tools” (for example, a stone axe fixed to a long wooden handle), and also made tools for making tools (for example, a stone mortar specially used to grind stone axes). They even gathered stone materials from 10 kilometers away and piled them up in preparation for future fabrication.
Heidegger also approached technology by way of causality, pointing out that technology is unconcealment, the mode in which truth happens. Put simply, technology is the grasp of the identity of things; every effective technology has seized upon some identity, and every technology stores a “mechanism.” In this sense, science is one kind of technology; the difference is only that science, when grasping causal mechanisms, makes greater use of written symbols and the aid of mathematics.
4.5 Nesting?
5. Professionalization
Division of labor is the inevitable trend of technology. As long as technology requires learning, some people will learn more and some less; some people will excel at or master a particular technology, while others will be completely unable to handle it. Thus it is only natural that people divide labor according to technical specialties.
Many remains from the Stone Age show traces of “handicraft specialization,” meaning that some people produced far more tools than they needed for their own use.
On the other hand, since technology always grasps some repeatable mechanism, and since this grasp can be externalized and transmitted, it will establish some kind of fixed standard beyond any particular person.
For example, the more similar weapons are in structure, the more martial arts can likewise be performed and transmitted in similar ways. The more effectively martial arts can be re-enacted and transmitted, the more this promotes the standardization of weapons, and vice versa. When standardized weapons are combined with standardized martial arts, trained armies come into being. Like attracts like, and people group according to their kind; soldiers therefore tend to distinguish themselves from others by their similar experiences and routines of life.
Human professions and technological patterns mutually fix one another, and thus the order of technology in turn constrains and shapes human beings.
For example, the city is the most representative solidification of order. The construction of the city transmits the different functions and hierarchical structures of different districts, and this order fixed in the material world in turn constrains people: as city-forming enclosed spaces emerge, the concentration of power and the differentiation of social strata become developmental trends. The differentiation of strata and the division of professions begin to sort people into different ranks. And this division among strata or occupations in turn forms areas of unequal wealth and differing functions within the city, thereby solidifying and maintaining social division of labor and stratification.
Solidification and restriction are not always bad things. It is precisely because human culture is constrained by corresponding orders that it has the chance to be handed down more stably. Only with inheritance can there be development; only with limitation can there be freedom. How to create an appropriate tension between order and freedom remains an important issue for modern people.
6. Autonomy
The professionalism and exteriority of technology both embody its autonomy; and the autonomy of technology is by no means the exclusive prerogative of modern technology.
The complexity of the causal mechanisms of technology, together with the possibility of division of labor, determines that human mastery of technology can be broken down into many relatively independent links. For example, once a wooden stick and a stone axe can be combined to achieve a better effect, then at any moment the making of the wooden handle and the grinding of the stone axe can also be split into two different specialties, handled separately by the carpenter and the stonemason.
The problem, however, is that the intimate relationship between the wooden stick and the stone axe is one thing, while the relationship between the carpenter and the stonemason is another; and these two groups of makers have nothing to do with the person who uses the axe (for example, a woodcutter or an axeman). Perhaps the carpenter and the axeman are people of higher status, while the stonemason and the woodcutter are slaves; the relationship among objects follows a different logic from the relationship among people.
The stonemason still needs tools for making tools in order to grind stone implements, and the “lathe” on which this stonemason relies for work may in turn involve yet another series of technologies. As technological complexity increases, it becomes ever harder for any single person to grasp independently every link from fabrication to use. So how is technological improvement possible?
If the links of technology grow increasingly complex, so much so that the maker does not even know how the final product will ultimately be used at all (indeed, the maker at one stage of an assembly line may not even know what the final product is), while on the other hand the person using the technology knows nothing whatsoever about how it is made, then the demands they put forward may go in completely opposite directions. For example, the user may hope that weapons can be long or short, and unbreakable, yet he does not know that there is simply no material capable of making such weapons; whereas the maker of the handle may hope to use softer materials in order to shape them more effortlessly, regardless of whether the finished weapon has any lethality.
Of course, in the case of the stone axe, perhaps a few kinds of people sitting together and chatting for a bit can clear up the misunderstanding. But when facing more complex situations, the opinions of different participants are difficult to coordinate; and when they cannot even gather together to communicate, whose direction should technological improvement follow? The final result is probably that no one has sufficient knowledge or authority to guide the evolution of technology, but rather many different possible directions of technological development compete simultaneously in the social environment, like nature’s survival of the fittest: the technology best adapted to the environment wins out.
More importantly, the environment to which technology must adapt is, after all, also an environment composed of various technologies—for example, the broad axe paired with the shield, the spear paired with horseback riding. In an environment lacking warhorses, the broad axe has more room to show its usefulness; but in an environment with abundant warhorses, the spear is obviously more marketable…
In other words, the evolution of technology will be “selected” by the technological environment, rather than selected by certain specific people. In this sense, technological autonomy is inevitable.
7. Totality?
Translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The original text is authoritative.
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