The annual conference on phenomenology and philosophy of technology has once again come to a successful close. This year it was hosted by Northeastern University and held in Shenyang and Benxi from September 24 to 28.
In my travel notes from the Lushan conference in 2013, I wrote:
Since going to Nanning in 2009 to attend the Third Conference on Phenomenology and Philosophy of Technology, I have now participated in five consecutive conferences. Apart from Nanning, where I only wrote a little “miscellaneous notes,” I wrote full-on conference takedowns for Hailar, Yangma Island, and Guangzhou. It has already become a case of riding a tiger and finding it hard to get off, so this time I still have to write one as well—at least let me keep up this tradition while I am not yet graduated~
As it turned out, I graduated from my doctorate last year, and this tradition was indeed interrupted… Last year’s conference, held at Shennongjia, happened to coincide with the period when I had just finished my PhD and moved to Beijing Normal University for postdoctoral study. During that period I was rather lax and wasted a lot of time; added to that were various other trivial matters. It was only after more than half a month that I felt like starting to write a travelogue, but by then too much time had passed, the vivid impressions had gradually faded, and the motivation to write never quite came back. In the end, the longer I拖延ed the less I could write, and finally I simply defaulted and did not write it.
Perhaps I could take the opportunity to break this tradition, but thinking about it, that still feels a bit regrettable. After all, I did not start writing travelogues because Teacher Wu forced me to; it was because I was interested in doing so myself. The annual travelogue, on the one hand, lets me air my own thoughts and views; on the other hand, it is also an opportunity to learn and improve. Although in the blog I pontificate and comment on everything one by one, in actual conference settings I am in fact very unactive, because the free-discussion periods are often quite tight and I find it hard to seize the right moment to ask the right question. Many ideas only slowly ripen after the conference is over, but once they are fully formed, there is always the urge to voice them, so writing a blog post after the conference is the best way to express them. In addition, although the quality of conference papers generally cannot be said to be very high, the issues involved are all ones we care deeply about, and the teachers can always offer all kinds of resources and insights, so in the process of reading and commenting one can always learn quite a lot.
In short, I plan to continue the tradition of post-conference commentary. Last year’s travelogue certainly cannot be made up for, but if there is a chance, I may dig out a few papers from last year and write some comments on them.
Teacher Wu also wrote a commentary-style summary this time; it may be worth consulting before reading mine.
On September 24, we registered at Northeastern University in Shenyang. I and two fresh young men from Peking University, He Tao and Liu Zheng, booked the same high-speed train. On the same train were three teachers—Duan Weiwen, Meng Qiang, and Wu Tong—as well as Su Li. Teacher Duan had booked a Didi private car in advance, and the other teachers all went together, leaving me and the two fresh young men to take a taxi. Then we discovered that we really were too young: in the train station, a taxi only came once every ten-plus minutes, so there was no way to get in line. In the end we had to take the subway, and then walk for half an hour all the way to Northeastern University.
All along the walk, both sides of the road were lined with all kinds of restaurants, from glittering upscale banquet halls to roadside food stalls, so I was tempted the whole way, but I still held out until we checked into the International Exchange Center and ate the welcome dinner. Because we arrived rather late, the dishes on the table had already gone cold, and we did not eat to our heart’s content. Afterward, we went back to the snack street we had passed earlier for a little extra meal. At the century-old shop “Liangui Smoked Meat Pancake,” each of us had a smoked meat pancake. The meat was okay, I thought, but the pancake was far too greasy—really not the sort of thing that seems as though it could be in business for a hundred years. In any case, we still did not eat well. Later a teacher told us that smoked meat pancakes became popular in times of material scarcity; people found foods with a bit more oil and fat especially tasty, but now we are no longer used to them. Thinking about it, that makes sense—we really are too young.
Back at the hotel to sleep, He Tao was assigned to share a room with Senior Brother Shengli, and Liu Zheng and I were put in the same room.
On September 25, the conference opened. After breakfast we took a bus to the “Oxygen Book Bar” in Xiaoshicheng to hold the meeting. This venue, it was said, was sponsored by a local entrepreneur. The book bar offered coffee and light meals, and there were many books available for open-shelf browsing. The environment felt pretty good, though it probably was not very suitable for so many people to hold a conference in together; both the seating and lunch felt a bit cramped.
First came a welcome address from Professor Tian Pengying of Northeastern University’s School of Marxism. Professor Tian speaks in a very polished, fluent, and pleasant way, but his speech is rather empty. After Professor Tian left, the first small session began under the chairmanship of Teacher Bao.
Session 1 was themed “New Technologies and Phenomenology,” with two young women, Su Li and Wu Ningning, taking the lead, and Teacher Wu Tong standing by in support.
The title of Su Li’s report from Tsinghua University was “Can Immersive Virtual Reality Technology Ultimately Be ‘Immersive’?”
From a phenomenological perspective, Su Li analyzed the development of virtual reality (VR), a cutting-edge technology, and pointed out that “object-oriented VR technology already has a problem at the level of its basic conception.”
Su Li began with the bottleneck of VR technology, namely the problem of “latency.” The so-called latency problem refers to the fact that, because of processor workload, when a user turns their head in a VR environment, the processor’s corresponding response is inevitably delayed, which creates a mismatch between movement and sensation and causes all kinds of discomfort.
Su Li argued that, in a certain sense, the latency problem in VR technology is inevitable. This is because in object-oriented simulation schemes, each link—such as image projection and perceptual response—is understood as an independent informational module. The various links are external to one another, drive one another unidirectionally, and strive to eliminate ambiguity and uncertainty in perception. But this does not correspond to genuine natural sensation. In real perceptual experience, the various senses are mutually linked, and uncertainty and ambiguity necessarily accompany them.
Su Li asked: why is there no latency phenomenon in everyday perceptual experience? If real perception also followed a representationalist model, then latency would probably be unavoidable as well. Yet the model of perception presupposed by VR technology is not real. Drawing on Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology of the body, Su Li reformulated the question. “In VR, bodily movement causes the latency problem; whereas in natural perception, bodily movement is precisely what brings the past into the present, enabling us to obtain experiential meaning.” Based on Merleau-Ponty’s theory of “motor intentionality,” Su Li proposed that there is an important dimension in natural perceptual experience, namely the “virtual dimension.” In other words, we have a virtual body that exceeds our current actual position and provides the infinite possibilities and uncertainty of “I can.” Su Li believed that the virtual dimension of the human body is the key thing that distinguishes us from the locomotor instinct of animals. Human perception is a synthesis of the real and the virtual, of presence and absence; perception is more like a creative expression than a simple stimulus-response process. Yet in the model of perception presupposed by VR technology, what is missing is “the virtual dimension in original perceptual experience through which the body continuously transcends itself and continuously returns to itself, producing polysemy, uncertainty, and ambiguity.” Thus it has gone astray.
Teacher Wu Guosheng “used his position” to arrange for himself an extra-long twenty-minute commentary, because the paper he himself had wanted to submit, “Virtual Communication as Human Experience,” still had not been finished again (why say again?), so this was just the perfect occasion to express some related thoughts of his.
Teacher Wu first affirmed that, among the women scholars in the history of the conferences, Su Li and Wu Ningning had made the greatest progress. They focus on frontier technological questions and possess both practical and theoretical significance.
Teacher Wu believed that the theoretical presuppositions behind contemporary VR and artificial intelligence technologies are the very naive “brain in a vat” theory, or, one might say, a contemporary version of Locke’s blank slate theory: they think the human body, such as the sensory organs, is nothing more than a means of transmitting signals, just like the sensors in VR equipment. The virtual dimension of the body that Su Li emphasized refutes these naive imaginings.
Finally, Teacher Wu raised two questions. The first was that the “latency problem” Su Li emphasized is not necessarily so important; it may merely be a technical problem and could very likely be solved as computer chips develop rapidly. The second was that, if the object of criticism is the philosophical goal of VR technology, then of course the critique is forceful—but there is no need to blame VR technology itself too much. VR technology is also a derivative form of natural experience, just like film, and is a human creation worthy of praise. Film is also a certain rough kind of “VR,” but even this kind of VR can still be “immersive,” because human beings can often actively compress the body’s virtual dimension, and “immersion” does not necessarily have to be a physically comfortable experience. Emotions such as pain and sorrow can likewise be immersive experiences.
This year’s conference placed free-discussion time at the end of each session, often concentrating discussion only after three or four presentations. Teacher Wu said this was to save time, but I still feel it was somewhat a case of more loss than gain. The discussion segment always feels extremely chaotic, and papers presented earliest often lose much of the impulse for impromptu remarks by the time discussion comes around.
I do not remember the discussion segment completely. Teacher Zhang Qiucheng mentioned situations in which natural perception is combined with VR, such as 4D movies. Teacher Sheng Xiaoming, addressing Teacher Wu, pointed out that the “brain in a vat” is only a thought experiment and cannot be called a theoretical presupposition. Teacher Duan Weiwen mentioned issues of realism in situations such as hallucinations and using cannabis.
Su Li pointed out that the key difference between her thinking and the mainstream view of VR technology lies in how one regards the ambiguity and fallibility of perception: are they seen as positive or negative factors? Su Li acknowledged that VR technology has its predecessors, such as film, and can be traced even further back to perspectival painting, but she emphasized that the immersive feeling of sensing the transcendence of things is something any technology finds hard to provide. Su Li said that some developments in VR technology seek to discipline the body, making the body adapt to the VR world in order to obtain realism, but in doing so the dimension of perceptual transcendence and the human being’s original creativity will shrink.
Having gone a year without writing travel notes, I really did seem a bit out of practice. My retelling seems to have become somewhat too verbose. Su Li’s paper did indeed involve many issues, and it is also a topic I am very interested in.
I also think Teacher Wu’s questions were quite good. First, the “latency problem” really is easy to understand as a technical problem, after all. The speed of technological development often exceeds theorists’ imagination. Many behaviors once thought hard to simulate—such as robots that can run, or mechanical prostheses controlled by brain waves—have already been realized. If the crux of the latency problem is merely that chip speeds cannot keep up, then one can imagine that in the not-too-distant future this bottleneck may be overcome. However, we also cannot simply let Su Li bypass the “latency problem.” In fact, the “latency problem” is the core of Su Li’s paper, and all of her arguments unfold around it. So what should we do? I think philosophers should never speak too absolutely when facing technical questions. There is no need to regard anything as something technology can never do, and no need to talk about “what computers cannot do.” But the question can still be raised. For instance, here the key point of the “latency problem” is not that technology can never solve it, but rather why it becomes such a difficult problem in the first place, and where its difficulty lies. For example, teaching a robot to walk is extremely difficult. Why is walking so hard to simulate computationally? Even though people can already send machines accurately into orbit, why is it still so hard to make a robot take two steps like a three-year-old child? This involves issues in philosophy of the body and reflection on bodily knowledge. These philosophical discussions are all worth unfolding. Even if, in the end, technological development does manage to teach machines to walk, that does not negate the earlier philosophical reflection on why “walking is difficult.” So replacing “what computers cannot do” with “why computers find it hard to do something” is much safer. Here, we cannot rule out the possibility that the development of VR technology may ultimately eliminate the latency problem, and may even succeed in producing scene experiences that are impossible to distinguish from the real thing. But we can still say that these difficulties encountered in the process of technological development are hard to understand in traditional theory, whereas from the perspective of phenomenological philosophy of the body they are entirely to be expected; and that is enough to demonstrate the significance of phenomenology.
As for Teacher Wu’s second question, I feel Su Li’s response was not forceful enough. Su Li emphasized that only real experience can make one feel the transcendental dimension of things, but what exactly is the transcendental dimension? Aside from poetic expressions like “the soft force on the leaves,” what does this transcendence actually mean? In fact, we can also see “soft leaves” in a 3D movie, and one can even feel rich layers of perception in a painting. At certain moments, some exquisite works of art or technological masterpieces may even more readily stimulate the viewer’s subtle perception, revealing the rich aspects of things at different levels (and that is precisely the excellence of a work of art as a work of art). If one only says that when we look at images the sense of reality is inferior to looking at natural scenes, that is still easy to understand; but if one says that the so-called “transcendental dimension” is inferior, then it becomes puzzling.
When I was in elementary school, I once visited a planetarium’s simulated starry sky and felt deeply stunned, sensing depth and vastness. If you tell me that the “realism” of that virtual starry sky could not compare with the real starry sky, I can accept that. But if you tell me that my experience on that occasion had no transcendence whatsoever, I would find that hard to accept.
Teacher Wu pointed out that people can “immerse” themselves in a very crude VR environment because “human beings can often actively compress the virtual dimension of the body.” Su Li mentioned that VR technology, through disciplining the body, makes people adapt to the VR environment, seemingly as a response to “active compression,” but this response is also not forceful enough. As Su Li herself pointed out, when we acknowledge the ambiguity of perception, the crucial issue is whether we regard ambiguity as a negative disturbance or a positive component. Here the issue is similar: if we also acknowledge that human beings can actively compress the virtual dimension of the body, then whether this compression is positive or negative is precisely the key issue. Su Li seems to think that such compression is a discipline forced by technology, a suppression of transcendence and creativity—in short, a negative bad thing. But Teacher Wu seems to think—and this is also my view—that this active compression is positive.
What, in fact, is “immersion”? The experience of “immersion” is not precisely to open all the senses equally and maintain equal sensitivity to every kind of perception. On the contrary, “immersion” precisely requires people to spontaneously close off certain dimensions of perception. For example, when I am immersed in the beautiful scenery of a secluded valley with orchids, I may forget the fatigue in my feet, forget the weight of my backpack, forget the hunger in my stomach, even though my body is experiencing all of these every moment. Being immersed in a certain natural environment or practical activity, just like being immersed in a certain VR environment or technical operation, also requires actively compressing some perceptual dimensions. Although these compressed dimensions are never eliminated and instead remain as virtual possibilities, becoming the latent background of perception, in any case some dimensions are always compressed while others are unfolded, and only then can one obtain immersion or any form of experience. And these compressions and unfoldings also require a certain degree of training or adaptation. A fat person who rarely walks mountain paths may, because he is too focused on a heavy backpack or shoes that rub his feet, be unable to feel the beauty of the valley. In a VR experience, if the VR headset, like a mountain climber’s worn-out shoes, is too salient, it will of course also damage the entire experience. There are methods for climbing mountains, and there are tricks for wading through water; to deeply experience any natural environment also requires specific training and adaptation. Therefore, asking the experiencer first to adapt to the VR headset and master certain tricks is not an excessive demand.
Teacher Wu said that VR technology provides a derivative form of natural experience. In fact, any technology provides a form of experience. As for the so-called “original natural experience” that supposedly precedes all “derived technological experiences,” I have always deeply doubted this concept. This so-called “original natural experience” is more like some sort of thing-in-itself-style concept: we can posit its existence in order to understand the various forms derived from it, but what “form” it itself actually is remains unknowable. Some experiences that seem to be original natural experiences in fact are either based on a certain disciplining of bodily techniques, or else have a technological background that is simply not sufficiently foregrounded (for example, lamps, roads, bridges, clothing, shoes, agriculture, forestry…). The mistake of VR technology lies in its extravagant hope of reaching and replacing “original natural experience,” but this is impossible. Yet if we try to refute VR technology by setting up the form of so-called original natural experience in advance, we will probably fall into the same mistake.
The second session was presented by Wu Ningning, who had just graduated from Peking University and is now at Hohai University. The title was “The Virtual Dimension of Technology and the Body”.
Wu Ningning pointed out that the phenomenological philosophers of technology in general—such as Dreyfus, Ihde, and the research conducted before this by Su Li—were all aimed at technological objects rather than experience itself. Their studies all have certain problems, such as presupposing some “real life” as a prototype, thereby regarding bodily experience as one single thing, technological experience as another single thing, and the relation between body and technology as mutually external. Wu Ningning, by emphasizing the virtual dimension of the body, revealed the internal, transformable relation between body and technology.
Wu Ningning believes that the usual interpretation of Merleau-Ponty’s “body schema” has focused only on one of its aspects—namely, that the subject directly obtains the meaning of the world through the body in practice. What Wu Ningning tries to emphasize is its other layer of meaning: that while we directly deal with the world through the body, we are not completely immersed in a direct relation with the world. The body’s openness to the world always leaves some room to spare; this is the body’s virtual dimension. Wu Ningning reinterprets Merleau-Ponty’s Schneider case, arguing that what Schneider lacks precisely is the virtual dimension of the body. Wu Ningning further points out that this duality of “directness” and “virtuality” is simultaneously a feature of both body and technology, because technology is precisely the sedimentation of bodily memory. Technology is an extension of the body; to learn a technique is to let that technique merge into one’s own body and acquire a new motor habit. On the one hand, human beings “directly” deal with the world through technological media; on the other hand, whenever they use any technology, they also always leave some room to spare for it. Technology has never been merely a tool made entirely to fit a specific purpose; rather, while being suited to a specific time and space, it is always open toward an indeterminate time and space. Thus human beings can flexibly use technology to adapt to different contexts, and even more, can constantly improve and create.
Su Li gave Wu Ningning her comments, saying that she had long been influenced by Wu Ningning in this research direction, and that regarding this article she also “couldn’t agree more.” She offered some further thoughts, for example that the concept of “virtual” could be combined with Aristotle’s theory of potentiality moving into actuality, using the logic of generation to reflect on modern philosophy’s essentialist tendency. In addition, she mentioned that one could bring in the relevant theories of Hansen, which Wu Ningning had studied before (mirroring), and suggested that Wu Ningning could further ask how bodily extension is possible, and explore mechanisms of bodily splitting, and so on.
Wu Ningning’s paper can be read together with Su Li’s: Su Li addresses concrete technical issues, while Wu Ningning digs further into the theory. Overall, I basically agree with Wu Ningning’s views. In particular, the body’s virtuality and the idea of technology as “mnemonics” all coincided with my own thinking—actually, they were “conspired” over together; when we were all in Wu’s circle, we discussed these matters a great deal and influenced one another.
Teacher Wu raised two “puzzling points” in response to Wu Ningning’s paper. I quote as follows: “First, why say that this virtuality of the body is in fact the body subject’s own self-awareness? In fact, the duality of the phenomenal body is only an abstraction made for the sake of convenience in speaking; in actual bodily functioning, the two are impossible to distinguish. The body’s self-awareness certainly permeates both its process of dealing with the world and its self-negation. Second, the word ‘virtuality’ definitely does not mean the same thing as the ‘virtuality’ of digital virtual technology, and there is no need to put the two together in the same discussion, otherwise it will only confuse and mislead people. Digital technology can of course stimulate the virtuality of bodily experience, but that has absolutely nothing to do with the ‘virtual’ in virtual technology.”
Let me defend Wu Ningning here. First, in actual operation this duality really is always nested within itself and cannot be separated out; but we can still speak of the two distinctively. Whether they can be separated and whether they can be “distinguished” are two different things—just as the obverse and reverse of a coin cannot be separated, but can be “distinguished,” because “distinguishing” itself is a reflective activity. So-called “self-awareness” is also a reflective activity. This “reflection” does not necessarily mean sitting down in meditation after leaving concrete practical activity behind; rather, it occurs constantly amid practical activity—for example, when one adjusts oneself according to one’s mirror image while looking in the mirror, that “self” is a typical instance of self-awareness coming into view. What Wu Ningning emphasizes is that this self-awareness does not occur when the body’s “directness” is what stands out, but when the body’s “virtuality” stands out; in other words, it is precisely when one becomes aware that the self is the virtual dimension of “I can…” that self-awareness occurs. When directly dealing with the world through the body, on the one hand perception passes directly through the body; on the other hand, in the very act of passing through, there is always room to maneuver. And if there were no such room to maneuver, reflection would have no way at all to return, and only within this space of maneuver can reflexivity emerge, and self-consciousness can turn back toward itself.
As for the second point, namely whether the term “virtuality” is appropriate, Teacher Wu’s confusion is reasonable. In fact, above I often prefer to use concepts such as “room to spare” and “space of maneuver.” When I was interpreting the Schneider case at the time, I even proposed the concept of “the thickness of media.” I pointed out that Schneider’s problem lay in the fact that his “media” were too flat: beyond reaching the goal directly, there was no space to maneuver, whereas ordinary bodily media have all kinds of resistances and room to spare. I think that concepts such as “room to spare,” “space of maneuver,” and “thickness” are all attempts to explain the thing Wu Ningning calls the body’s “virtuality.” Each of these concepts has its own strengths and weaknesses, and the concept of “virtuality” also has its unique advantages. First, as Su Li said, it is easy to combine with Aristotle’s theory of potentiality; second, it indeed expresses a kind of “fictionality.” One of Schneider’s major symptoms is that he cannot “act,” that is, he cannot place himself within a virtual context. In this respect, the revealing power of the term “virtuality” is stronger than any word I have used. Finally, the body’s virtuality and the virtuality of virtual technology are by no means, as Teacher Wu put it, “absolutely unrelated”; on the contrary, they are directly related. For example, Wu Ningning mentions in the article the way one becomes adept at “racing games.” When a novice plays racing games, the whole body moves, whereas a skilled player can subtly control the body, concentrating movement in the fingertips, and through fine fingertip manipulation project one’s motor intention into the racing scene on the screen. Video games provide us with a virtual scene; our objective body of course cannot enter that scene, but precisely because the body has a virtual dimension, our bodily intentionality can enter the virtual world inside the screen. We can “control virtual figures on the screen as if they were extensions of our own arm,” using the fingers to move them the way the arm moves the fingers, extending the “self” into this virtual world. One could say that video games are the unfolding form of the body’s virtual dimension. Of course, in traditional technological objects like canes and hats, we can also find bodily extension, but in electronic technology the virtual dimension unfolded by extension is especially enormous, so much so that it is no longer merely a “dimension” or a “space,” but appears directly in the form of a “virtual world.” Every technology opens up a “world,” or extends a cluster of bodily dimensions, or unfolds a space of meaning. These spaces can be large or small, nested layer upon layer, and “virtual reality” (VR) technology is the extreme form of this unfolding. From fingers, hammers, canes, and cars, to racing games and virtual reality, from virtual dimension to virtual space to virtual world, what is meant by “virtual” is continuous throughout. Teacher Wu’s claim that it is “absolutely unrelated” is obviously a misunderstanding, and Wu Ningning is also too cautious in distinguishing the two kinds of “virtual.” As I see it, there simply are not two kinds of “virtual”; there has always been only one concept of “virtual” that we are talking about.
Next came Tsinghua University Professor Wu Tong’s report, “Mobile Phones and Selfies in the Lifeworld.” Teacher Wu Tong asked why mobile-phone selfies have become so popular, and discussed the relation between selfies and narcissistic complexes, among other things. Teacher Wu Tong’s paper is not strong in theory, but he conscientiously writes and submits a paper for the conference every year. Among the four major “standing committee members” (those who attend every year), Teacher Wu Guosheng’s submitted papers are certainly the fewest; Teacher Li Zhangyin and Teacher Deng Bo also seem to sometimes submit papers that are not fully finished or that were obviously rushed. But Teacher Wu Tong’s papers every time are very complete, well prepared, and can be called the standing committee among standing committees, worthy of study by all teachers and students. As for this article, I obviously cannot be satisfied with it in terms of philosophical depth, but at least it provided us with some material and inspiration. In fact, later on, both in my comments and in my own report, I several times directly used mobile-phone selfies as impromptu examples.
Teacher Duan Weiwen gave a wildly imaginative commentary. To be honest, I was a bit dazed listening to it, but it was also very inspiring. Teacher Duan mentioned Deleuze’s “body without organs,” which is a kind of thought experiment: starting from a body without fixed organs, one reconstructs the body according to human desire—for example, when one is full of sexual desire, “the whole body is a G-spot” (Teacher Duan’s exact words). Technologies like mobile phones can in essence be seen as human beings’ efforts to “reconstruct the body.” At the end, Teacher Duan mentioned that we need to get sick in order to prove that we are alive; in this sense, the alienation of technology is, in a certain way, man’s self-confirmation. “Society” is very sinister: on the one hand it tempts you with desire, and on the other it turns around to educate you and make you feel guilty. Of course, in the middle Teacher Duan also said many other brilliant things, but I don’t remember them very clearly.
After the three reports, there was a collective open discussion. Teacher Li Zhangyin and Teacher Zhang Qiucheng both spoke. I felt that this format was rather chaotic, with the open discussion no longer being part of each paper. So I will only review some questions that left a particularly deep impression on me; in general, I will skip the open discussion section entirely.
After the tea break, the second session also had three reports, under the theme “Science, Technology, and Art,” chaired by Teacher Sheng Xiaoming. As soon as he came on, Teacher Sheng looked quite aggrieved, saying that he was a “virtual chair,” in fact merely a puppet on the strings of the “master” (Teacher Wu).
First was Professor Lei Depeng of Guangxi University, who spoke on “On Husserl’s Method of Historical Reflection on Science.” He sorted through and summarized Husserl’s phenomenological method for the history of science, including the teleological method of interpretation, the method of retrospection, and the method of exemplification.
Teacher Lei’s paper was commented on by me. As for the paper itself, I personally found little novelty in it, and I am not very familiar with Husserl, so I did not discuss his paper directly, but instead talked a bit of my own private material.
I first emphasized the significance of this theme. When we do the history of technology from a phenomenological perspective, we are often met with such doubts: what you are doing is merely philosophy, not history; or rather, it is not solid enough in historical scholarship. This is because intellectual history places more emphasis on the derivation of conceptual logic and is not good at gathering and organizing historical sources. Many scholars trained in history believe that whether history is done well or not depends mainly on mastery of primary sources. Of course, what we do is philosophy, but at the same time, is it history or not? A phenomenological theory of historiography is deeply meaningful. It can allow us to locate our own work more clearly—in a sense, what we do is more basic and more primordial than what those source scholars do. Transcendental history is what makes history possible as history in the first place.
Historical sources in themselves are ahistorical. Even if each item of evidence is arranged in chronological order, if we do not understand the logical connections among them, then a collection of historical materials will not automatically become a history. History as history lies in the linking of sources: one event is connected with the next, and only by telling a story with causes and consequences can we have history. But how are the causes and consequences of history to be pursued? Obviously history is not physics; we cannot use the methods of exact science to determine historical causality, and we cannot perform quantitative experiments. However, we can use phenomenological thought experiments to retrace history. This is the transcendental history, or intentional history, that makes objective history possible.
I explained in the shallowest possible way what “transcendental history” means: “transcendental” refers to what is prior to experience and makes experience “possible.” So we must ask in a transcendental-philosophical way: how were these historical consequences possible? For example, we see many people using mobile phones to take selfies; so how was the popularity of mobile-phone selfies “possible”? We can trace it back from multiple aspects—its technical conditions, social conditions, psychological conditions, and so on. Before the popularity of mobile-phone selfies came the popularity of mobile phones, the rise of social networks, and so forth. In this way these historical events are linked together, forming a story. Of course, the actual development of history contains many contingencies: whether the first mobile phone was produced by Motorola or Nokia—such information is not a topic for “transcendental history,” but is provided by empirical historiography. Yet without the perspective provided by transcendental history, those materials would not be selected and placed in the corresponding chapters of a history book. Transcendental history provides the form, empirical history provides the matter; when the history of ideas is filled out by historical materials, and the two mutually verify one another, only then does a complete historical narrative take shape.
I also mentioned that Jin Shixiang once spoke at the Guangzhou conference about Klein’s phenomenology and the history of science. I had said at the time that it was a talk from last year, but in fact it was from three years ago. Sure enough, because I didn’t write a travelogue last year, my memory is a bit mixed up. But I still clearly remember that when Jin Shixiang gave the talk, the timing was especially unfortunate: the PowerPoint could not be displayed, and it happened to coincide with mealtime, so it did not attract much response. Also, Klein’s Writings on the History of Ideas has already been translated and published by senior brother Bu Tian, and I take the opportunity to recommend it.
After that, senior brother Liu Shengli raised two quite key questions. Teacher Lei seemed to leave early because he had something to do, and did not respond. Senior brother Shengli’s questions were, first, Husserl’s intentional history seems more suitable for modern Western mathematical science, whereas ancient Chinese science does not have a teleological dimension—can it also be applied? Second, how should the contingency of history be grasped?
Indeed, Western history of science is best suited to the method of intentional history, because the development of Western science eventually converges into the rise of modern science. By asking how modern science is possible, or rather how modernity is possible, we can sort out many threads in the history of science. However, ancient Chinese science does not have a similar unity, nor does it finally converge into a single result; so does transcendental history still have significance for the study of ancient Chinese science? My view is that, of course, it does. First, we will immediately discover that the so-called traditional history of Chinese science—things like “In year XX, XX was discovered, XX years earlier than Westerners”—is simply not history at all, but only a simple accumulation of source materials. And the selection of these materials is not based on a historical perspective, but on the perspective of modern science. The reason certain people and events are listed is not because they are “within history,” but because they are “within modern science.”
So how can the scientific achievements of ancient China be brought into “history”? One possibility is to bring them into Western history of science, where they can appear as foils, contrasts, or supporting roles. Another possibility is to narrate with Chinese science as the protagonist, which would necessarily require finding its unique logic—Chinese science is not a transcendental condition for modern Western science, and Chinese science has its own distinctive form. But we can still always ask the question of how history is “possible”; only by starting from transcendental history can one possibly write a history of Chinese science. And at present there is still too little work of this kind. Jiang Xiaoyuan’s history of astronomy was a breakthrough: precisely because he discovered the unique “teleology” of Chinese science, namely political astronomy, he was able to write a distinctive history of Chinese astronomy.
As for the problem of historical contingency, there are two aspects. On the one hand, there is the contingency involved when actual history fills out transcendental history—for instance, whether it was Motorola or Nokia, whether it was Newton or Marton; these are contingent, and there is no problem there. On the other hand, there is the issue of historical plurality: according to the logic of transcendental history, is history a necessary movement? That is to say, regardless of Newton or Marton, regardless of 1687 or 1786, modern science was bound to emerge sooner or later. In my view transcendental history does not promise such a fatalistic view of history. Therefore transcendental history emphasizes the “method of retrospection,” not the “method of deduction.” We can trace back the prerequisite conditions, but we cannot infer necessary consequences from those prerequisite conditions. Those prerequisite conditions are not only not sufficient conditions; they are not even necessary conditions, because there may be many possible preconditions that make something possible, and actual history may have satisfied only one of them. The “causality” revealed by transcendental history is not a necessary-and-sufficient condition in the sense of mathematical logic (my dissertation also discussed this).
Next came Professor Deng Bo of Xi’an University of Architecture and Technology, who spoke on “Cross-Boundary Dialogue Concerning Technology and Art.” The article Teacher Deng brought was a dialogue with a painter, but in his oral presentation he only spoke about his own views. Teacher Deng argued that the human mode of existence is not only technology, but the entanglement of technology and art. This entanglement is embodied in the foundational character of technology for art and the transcending character of art over technology.
Teacher Deng’s report has three problems. First, the dialogue did not really “dialogue”; basically each party just said their own thing, and in the report even the shadow of dialogue was gone. If that is the case, it would be better to write a proper paper. Looking at it now, the function of the dialogue form was only to make the whole article seem even more scattered. In fact, Teacher Deng’s article has many highlights, such as color technology and modeling technology, perspective methods and other perceptual technologies, and so on—but these highlights were buried by the form and theme of the article. Second, the use of Heidegger and Stiegler is somewhat forced, with a bit of a sense of elevating for the sake of elevating, and in some places the context does not quite fit. Third, the core concepts of the entire article, such as foundation and transcendence, still lack clarification. In the end, it seems that the similarities and differences between art and technology were not really made clear, and the reflection on their relationship remains basically within the bounds of common sense.
Art is the “transcendence” of technology—many people say this, but where exactly the transcendence lies is the key question. I once wrote an essay for a discussion with artists, “Art: the Margin of Technology,” which touches on related issues, so let me take the opportunity to plug it here~
Teacher Tian Song, in commenting on Teacher Deng’s report, also pointed out that the dialogue never really got off the ground. In addition, Teacher Tian accused Teacher Deng of having an essentialist tendency, trying to seek a single, consistent definition, while failing to notice that the “art” of modern artists and the “art” of ancient religious artists are not the same thing at all. Teacher Tian suggested that Teacher Deng should not go in for grand narratives, but instead focus on a single case, such as the easel painting mentioned in the text. I also agree with this suggestion: if Teacher Deng were to focus on a case from art history and reinterpret it from the phenomenological and philosophy-of-technology perspective—talking about the “entanglement” between certain specific technologies, such as color technology and perspective, and certain specific arts, such as easel painting—that would be excellent. There would be no need to rush to generalize it into the entanglement between technology in general and art in general.
Finally, Teacher Zhu Baowei from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences gave a talk entitled “Ruminations on Technology and Art.” Teacher Zhu did not submit a paper, but he prepared a lot of material; in the end, he seems not to have spoken much before running over time. Taking “aesthetic redemption” as his theme, Teacher Zhu explored the possibilities opened up by the combination of art and technology. Since there was no text to refer to, and I was also not listening very carefully, and in the end there was no commentary or discussion, I don’t remember much of it.
After the discussion session, we ate on the spot. The meal was a Western-style light lunch provided by the book café, mainly a portion of pasta, a little salad, and fried chicken cutlet. The food came out very slowly and the portions were very small, so it was not especially good. By the way, the other formal meals arranged by Northeastern University over these days were all pretty good.
The theme of the third session in the afternoon was “Ontology of Science and Technology,” and there were four presentations.
First was Professor Sheng Xiaoming of Zhejiang University, speaking on “‘Post-normal Science’: A Perspective from the ‘Lifeworld’.”
Teacher Sheng cited the concept of “post-normal science” proposed by the British scholar Ravetz. Post-normal science was proposed in response to Kuhn’s “normal science.” Its proponent argued that contemporary science is no longer as monotonous as Kuhn depicted it; the “problems” of science are no longer set autonomously by the scientific community. Intervention by government and market has dissolved academic autonomy, and science is no longer confined within academic elites but has become a public undertaking. In addition, many cross-boundary and interdisciplinary studies are no longer regulated by “normality,” and these phenomena have already become the norm rather than abnormal phenomena gestating revolution. According to Ravetz, post-normal science is a return of scientific activity to the open state that existed before science possessed. Teacher Sheng believes that Ravetz’s work to a large extent responds to Habermas’s discussion of science and the “lifeworld”: on the one hand, emphasizing the invasion and colonization of the lifeworld by science; on the other, seeking to re-ground science upon the lifeworld. Teacher Sheng believes that Habermas’s concept of the lifeworld comes from the founder of phenomenological sociology, Schütz, and is closer to Heidegger: “The lifeworld contains the knowledge, skills, and order through which we act; it constitutes the a priori conditions of cognition and communication.” Finally, Teacher Sheng called for a return to the Greek sense of the “agora,” a public sphere formed through the mutual integration of science, society, market, and politics, and for the remaking of a new framework of rules through deliberation.
Teacher Sheng’s student Meng Qiang, now at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, gave a commentary. He declared, “I love truth, but I love my teacher even more,” and there wasn’t much special in the commentary itself. Meng Qiang emphasized that post-normal science is not an ideal but has already become a fact, and that how to bring science back to the agora is a political question.
Teacher Sheng’s report was quite interesting, but it felt as though it involved too many issues, and Teacher Sheng did not fully unpack them. The first question is: what exactly is the relationship between so-called post-normal science and Kuhn’s theory—is it development, modification, or negation? On the surface, it seems to be a kind of development: Kuhn’s normal science fits the science of the past, but circumstances are different now, so a new theory is needed. Yet to what extent Kuhn’s theory is no longer applicable, and why it would no longer be applicable, does not seem to have been examined in depth. In fact, Kuhn never said that the scientific community is isolated from politics and the market; rather, in the stage of normal science, the boundaries of the scientific community are clearer, but that does not mean the two sides of those clear boundaries never interfere with each other. Interventions across boundaries in modern times do seem stronger, but whether they are strong enough to force us to reject the theory of normal science is, I think, highly questionable.
To say that the “problem-solving” task of science today is no longer “autonomously set” by the scientific community—but to what extent were the problems of ancient science “autonomously set” by the scientific community? Leaving the distant past aside, did Kuhn really fail to notice government-driven projects such as the Manhattan Project and the Apollo Program? The development of astronomy, alchemy, military science, cartography, and even mathematics in ancient science was all propelled by politics and the market; by comparison, is contemporary science really so special? The key point is that what Kuhn emphasizes is fundamentally not the “setting” of problems, but a set of norms for distinguishing what counts as a problem and what counts as a solution. For example, “the making of the atomic bomb” was a legitimate “problem” under the paradigm of physics in the first half of the twentieth century, but “the making of a perpetual motion machine” was not. No matter how great the market demand for perpetual motion machines may be, that problem could never be set up, because it is not a typical “scientific problem”; it is not admissible within the paradigm of physics. Ravetz and others saw that science today is in many respects subject to demands and constraints posed by government and the market, but such interactions also existed in the past and are nothing special. The real question is precisely this: since science is so entangled with other public spheres, with so many intersections, why is it still able to stand out in society as “science”? As long as the concept of science still retains its distinctiveness, and scientists still possess a distinct identity, then the concept of a “scientific community” still holds. So what, exactly, makes scientists into scientists? Kuhn’s answer is the “paradigm” of normal science; so what is Ravetz’s answer? What is it in post-normal science that still separates scientists from other groups such as politicians and businesspeople?
As for the “lifeworld,” I am not very familiar with Habermas, but I feel that whether in Heidegger or in Habermas, the “lifeworld” is not a singular “one.” The lifeworld itself is plural, layered, and structured. A scientist’s laboratory life is also a kind of life; political life, economic life, and so on—different ways of life unfold different lifeworlds. To let the lifeworld re-ground science does not necessarily mean putting the foundation of science into the lifeworld of politicians. The intertwining and interpenetration among different lifeworlds is one issue, while the lifeworld’s grounding of science is another.
Then came the report by Meng Qiang, who had just finished commenting, titled “STS and the Ontological Turn.”
Meng Qiang’s paper is a review of the development trends in the Anglo-American field of STS (science and technology studies) over the past few decades. Meng Qiang believes that STS initially was dominated by SSK (the sociology of scientific knowledge), moving toward the “socialization of epistemology,” but that “post-social constructivism” was not satisfied with the socialization of epistemology and went further beyond the framework of SSK, arguing that science is not just “knowledge”; science is first and foremost “practice.” Thus STS cannot remain confined to epistemology, but must move toward ontology. This ontological turn breaks the ontological presupposition of the binary opposition between nature and society in SSK, thereby re-grounding STS.
Teacher Wu Tong was responsible for the commentary, and he raised the question: after the empiricization and socialization of epistemology, is it still epistemology? Is SSK trying to dissolve epistemology through sociology, or reconstruct a “social epistemology”?
I feel that the notion of the socialization of epistemology is valid. Of course, from the standpoint of traditional epistemology, SSK does not have epistemology, but SSK indeed reconstructs the problem of epistemology in its own way. I also think the notion of a turn from epistemology to ontology is valid. In fact, Meng Qiang already gave a talk four years ago at the Yangma Island conference called “Science: From Knowledge to Being,” which was really about the turn from epistemology to ontology. So the only thing that dissatisfied me about Meng Qiang’s report this time was that it seemed to have no particular point. Meng Qiang’s papers over the past few years all seem to follow a similar style: mention grand banners like “farewell,” “turn,” and “from… to…,” and then give some review-like introduction. At first it sounds fine, but after turning so many times, one should also have stood firm and started moving forward. The purpose of our conference is to play the piano, not to repair pianos. Of course, grasping and reviewing the international scholarly field is important, but we cannot keep lingering there forever.
Then Professor Li Zhangyin of Shandong University gave a talk entitled “Understanding and Interpretation in Existential Terms and Their Significance—A Discussion Based on Heidegger’s Being and Time.”
Teacher Li’s paper began in quite a startling way. Teacher Li said that people often misunderstand phenomenology as some obscure, rigid theoretical knowledge, without “grasping it in use,” whereas phenomenology is actually a way of grasping life. To reject phenomenology is actually to reject a grasp on life. In order to grasp life, we need to understand phenomenology and use phenomenology, and that requires us, after becoming familiar with the abstract thinking detached from existence characteristic of modern science, to turn back and relearn how to think in concrete existence, to “practice” phenomenology in our everyday words and deeds. Not only children need practice; adults need it even more…
Teacher Li’s theory of “practice” became a favorite phrase for many teachers to joke about in the days that followed, but I actually very much support Teacher Li’s theory of practice. When Teacher Zhao Weiguo commented, he thought Teacher Li had “elevated” phenomenology too high, as though life would have no meaning if one did not study phenomenology. But in fact, that is really not wrong at all; the so-called “the unexamined life is not worth living” means precisely this. Later, in my own report, I took the opportunity to defend Teacher Li. I have also always said that phenomenological reflection in essence is “relearning.” For example, in our lives we may become addicted to phones, take selfies with our phones, and so on. A life worth living is not necessarily one with phones or without phones, but rather one in which, when you use your phone, you often reflect on yourself, think about how using a phone is possible, and through relearning the phone, understand what it means in my life and what it has changed.
This reflective attitude does not so much elevate phenomenology too highly as lower it; it is not a lofty and inaccessible profound discipline that only a few experts can master, but something everyone can reach and should reach. Phenomenology is nothing but reflection on one’s own life, but such reflection does not aim to conduct rigorous quantitative analysis from an objective perspective beyond life; rather, it starts from life and always points back to life.
Ironically, after this declaration of a return to life, Teacher Li immediately fell back into Heidegger’s texts. Next, with pages full of profound terms marked in English and German, Teacher Li examined some theoretical details in Heidegger, for example arguing that Heidegger’s ready-to-hand/present-at-hand should be translated as sui ji / tuo ji, and so on. I strongly disagree with Teacher Li’s translation, and even if one were to say that Teacher Li’s translation is more reasonable, this kind of concept-by-concept and text-by-text scrutiny is still very far from the so-called “practice of life,” and is closer to the image Teacher Li described at the beginning as phenomenology being “obscure and hard to understand, strange and peculiar.”
Conceptual analysis and textual scrutiny are of course both important and beneficial, but precisely after stressing the “phenomenological practice that does not detach from actual life,” immediately plunging into the mire of abstract concepts is, to put it mildly, a bit ironic. Teacher Zhao Weiguo also commented that this article was “based on too much (Heidegger), and too little practice (actual life).”
The final paper on the first day was my own report (Hu Yilin of Beijing Normal University), “An Outline for a General History of Technology.” I had originally planned to write a paper on the issue of “normal technology and technological paradigms,” but I didn’t manage to write it, so I handed in an existing article to make do. The article is on my blog, with only slight modifications (I have already updated the blog with those changes), so I won’t say much more here.
My article was personally commented on by Teacher Wu Guosheng, and the record in the meeting minutes that he wrote is fairly accurate. I will quote it directly here:
“Hu Yilin’s report conceived a research program for a general history of technology. His article contains many brilliant insights, for example that the purpose of a general history is to help us understand our present circumstances, and that a general history is not a ‘bound volume’ of specialized histories; or again, he says that what is distinctive about human beings is not so much using or creating technology as dwelling in technology and living in technology. The ‘general history of technology’ he constructs is a unique type of history of technology, namely one that presents technology as a living environment in a philosophical spirit of self-reflection and in a galaxy-like manner. In my commentary, I said that this research program is more philosophical than historiographical, and because the diverse philosophical resources have not yet been fully digested, it has not yet achieved some kind of coherence. For example, he says that such a history of technology is less A General History of Technology than A History of General Technology, which makes it into a kind of intellectual history of concepts of technology. This does have a bit of a Husserlian intentional history flavor, but such a history is certainly a ‘precondition for understanding historical details,’ and such a history has no place for ‘revolution.’ The further question I raised is that one may need to consider distinguishing between technology and science. Science is singular, and thus in essence conceptual, with its own objective intentional history; technology is diverse and may not have one objective intentional history. Moreover, a scientific revolution can make old theories false, whereas a technological revolution, if there is such a thing, cannot completely render old technologies obsolete.”
Teacher Wu pointed out a contradiction in my article: earlier, when discussing the relationship between general history and the history of general technology, I said, “Just as a world map is not the precondition for a tourist map of a particular place, general history is also not the precondition for understanding concrete historical details.” Yet later, I elevated the general history of technology to the level of intentional history, and this kind of a priori history is of course a precondition for understanding concrete history. I must admit that this “contradiction” is indeed pointed out correctly. Because of the pieced-together nature of the article, I had not fully harmonized the earlier and later sections. But this contradiction is only superficial; the problem is that my wording was not precise enough. In what sense exactly is a priori history the “precondition” of concrete history? This question is similar to the sense in which phenomenology or transcendental philosophy grounds the natural sciences. On the one hand, the development of science does not require philosophy: physicists do not need to investigate transcendental philosophy in order to carry out specific scientific work; they can “understand” the scientific problems they are tackling. But that understanding is empty. Only by starting from phenomenological philosophical reflection can one understand the root of how specific science is possible. So in the sense that concrete science can develop on its own without regard to philosophy, philosophy is not a precondition for concrete science; yet in the sense that philosophy investigates the ground of how concrete science is possible, philosophy can also be said to be a precondition for concrete science. The relationship I discussed between general history and concrete historical details is similar. In the absence of a genuine general history, we can still compile histories of printing, computers, phones, and so on. In that sense, general history is certainly not the precondition for understanding concrete historical details. And yet how are these concrete histories of technology possible? What perspective and concerns do we rely on when reading or writing concrete histories? What, exactly, is a computer? What is the relationship between the history of computers and the human condition? These understandings of the meaning of history can only unfold within a horizon that has some grasp of general history; in that sense, general history can be said to be the precondition for understanding concrete history. Philosophical reflection is often belated: first we are already ready-to-hand with things, and only then do we look back and reflect on how that ready-to-handness is possible. Thus the rise of transcendental philosophy actually comes much later than empirical science, and phenomenological historiography comes much later than history, yet both boldly claim to investigate “preconditions,” and there is nothing contradictory about that.
As for the claim that intentional history has “no room for revolution,” I also disagree. “From a closed world to an infinite universe” is a “revolution”; the rise of the mechanical worldview is a revolution; the establishment of symbolic algebra is also a revolution. Intellectual history does not exclude the concept of revolution, nor does it conflict with paradigm theory. A so-called “revolution” is not an improvement in some technical detail, but a change in the entire mode of practice and the standard by which things are measured, in a way that is incommensurable. This applies to both the history of science and the history of technology.
I disagree even more with Teacher Wu’s distinction between science and technology. First of all, whether it is appropriate to understand the history of science as singular is a matter on which I reserve judgment. I already discussed this earlier when talking about Teacher Lei’s article: transcendental history emphasizes retrospection rather than deduction. The objectivity of intentional history does not lie in its necessity; intentional history is capable of acknowledging the multiplicity of history.
As for the claim that the Scientific Revolution made the old sciences “wrong,” whereas a technological revolution does not completely discard old technologies, there are many misunderstandings here. First of all, “wrong” and “discarded” are two different things. Newtonian mechanics is regarded as “wrong,” but it has clearly not been “completely discarded”; it still appears in middle school textbooks, and it is still used in some calculations that do not require high precision. Kuhn’s theory precisely reveals that the reason science changes fundamentally is not that “what is right replaces what is wrong.” The judgment of right and wrong itself is a question internal to the relevant scientific paradigm. In Kuhn’s account, after a new science rises, the reason the old science is abandoned is often not that it was “wrong,” but that it was “outdated.” And some old sciences are eventually “discarded” not because of right or wrong, but because the people who trusted and used them all died out.
According to Kuhn, whether a scientific revolution exists is not judged by whether something is “discarded” or not. For example, many symbols in Newton’s fluxional calculus were later “discarded” by calculus, but the transition from fluxions to calculus was not some kind of “revolution.” A data point being discarded and replaced by more accurate data, a method being discarded and replaced by a more effective one—these are precisely the “progress” typical of normal science. A scientific revolution is precisely something that cannot be understood through a pattern of so-and-so being discarded and so-and-so being added. The core of a scientific revolution is incommensurability.
From the perspective of technological revolution, it is precisely only in the stage of normal technology that there is a problem of “elimination”; before and after a technological revolution, old technologies often are not eliminated. For example, the development of computer chips from 286 to 586 is progress in the stage of normal technology; after 586 became popular, 286 faced elimination. But the emergence of tablets and smartphones is not a kind of normal progress. Judged by the standards of earlier computer chips, the ARM chips in mobile devices are actually relatively inefficient and backward chips. The first iPhone, compared with the mainstream computers of the time, had poor performance; compared with the mainstream phones of the time, it was likewise poor in performance. For instance, its antenna problem was widely criticized; on every criterion once used to evaluate phones—call clarity, signal stability, battery endurance, and so on—the iPhone lagged far behind. People accustomed to a way of life organized around old phones initially found the iPhone hard to accept. Only after becoming accustomed to the new way of life established by smartphones did people come to understand the advantages of the iPhone. This is precisely the incommensurability of technological revolution—one cannot measure new technology by the standards used to measure old technology. Old and new technologies have different usage scenarios and construct different life-worlds.
In the essay I mentioned that “a paradigm is not essentially those isolated propositions, but rather the tacit constraints and orientations that the scientific community, as a whole environment, exerts on each participant’s practical activities in different fields.” A technological paradigm is likewise the tacit constraints and orientations that the technological community exerts on each member. For example, swordsmen are a group formed around cold weapons, and musketeers are a group formed around hot weapons. Teacher Wu says old technology will not be discarded—for instance, in the age of hot weapons, a sword can still be used to hack someone to death. Yet the key point is that the corresponding community and its way of life have indeed been discarded. In modern times, the sword has more often become a collectible or an artifact; swordsmen and warriors have long since vanished without a trace. Even if there is some isolated village that still preserves a kind of warrior culture dependent on cold weapons, they are still utterly out of step with the modern world. The marginalization of their situation just proves that a technological revolution has indeed occurred. It is like the possibility that some isolated village still believes in the geocentric theory; that does not negate the fact that the Scientific Revolution has already happened.
The continued usefulness of the sword does not prove that the sword has not become outdated, just as all sorts of outdated ancient sciences still exist today, do they not? But their roles have changed. The Ptolemaic system was originally studied by astronomers; now it is studied by historians of science. The Newtonian system was originally studied by physicists; now it is studied by middle school students. The sword was originally issued to swordsmen and soldiers; now it is played with by collectors and archaeologists… It seems that Teacher Wu views technology as too objectified, as if the properties of the sword as an entity have not changed, and this technical object remains the same technical object as before. But the being of beings really has changed.
In a certain sense, a technological paradigm must come before objectified technological artifacts. Take Mumford’s analysis of modern technology: he believes that a certain specific form of human organization must precede the actual spread of mechanical technology. The concept of the “megamachine” that he proposes may as well be understood as a technological paradigm. The significance of the pyramid lies not in its physical structure and building techniques, but more crucially in the social order organized around the pyramid. The way of life and way of interaction that made the pyramid possible—that is a technological paradigm. The mechanical, rigid way of life established in modern times around the mechanical clock is also a technological paradigm. That is why Mumford says that the clock is the key technology of the industrial age. What is the industrial age? What is the Industrial Revolution? Precisely the rise of a new technological paradigm. If one looks only from the standpoint of objects, then of course the key to the Industrial Revolution is the steam engine; but from the standpoint of technological paradigm, the key is the clock, because the clock is the most typical “paradigm” in this framework.
Teacher Wu also mentioned that, according to my view, a general history of technology could be just a small booklet of a hundred-odd thousand characters, and that the Oxford history of technology would then not count as a general history after all, which is hard to accept. But I really do mean exactly that: a world map can certainly be much more concise than a shopping guide map of a department store, and a map that shows only the outline without marking a single specific object can still be a world map. A general history of technology can of course also be extremely concise; its length has nothing to do with whether it is “general” or not.
The day’s agenda in Shenyang ended, and we immediately took a car to Benxi to check in. The conference over the next two days was held in Benxi, with meetings in the morning and sightseeing in the afternoon. I’ll talk about it in the next blog post~
Translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The original text is authoritative.
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