The previous post mentioned one of Wu’s core objections, namely, his view that science is singular, whereas technology is plural. At the time he gave an example: branches of science such as physics, chemistry, and biology ultimately promise that they can be reduced to a unified foundation, and therefore their historical development is also interconnected. But what about the relations among various technologies, such as between mobile phones and cooking technology? If various concrete technologies are mutually independent, then where does their unity in history come from?
My brief reply at the time was this: the reason various technologies can be “unified” is that “life” is unified. And I also gave examples to show that mobile phones and cooking do indeed have a relation—for example, among people who now use smartphones more and more, the proportion who cook for themselves is often lower and lower. Ordering food online has already changed the eating habits of otaku and office workers.
Class was almost over then, and I did not have much time to say more, so let me continue here. First, Wu’s explanation of the historical unity of science in terms of the reducibility promised within scientific theories is rather old-fashioned. Kuhn and the later SSK have already broken with this view. One basic insight extended from Kuhn’s theory of paradigms is that the unity of a scientific community is a sociological question, sustained by “paradigms” rather than by certain theoretical contents. The reducibility of science is merely a dogma within scientific theory; in terms of actual historical unity, such promises serve no function. Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy both promise the same God, yet their historical development tends toward division rather than unity. The reason the development of the history of science has moved toward unity is not that scientists in different fields share a common creed; on the contrary, common creeds are themselves the product of history.
In fact, a related debate had already taken place a few years earlier at the Lushan Conference. At that time it was Wu who questioned Zhang Xianglong’s interpretation of Kuhn. Wu opposed Zhang’s emphasis on “pre-ruleness”; he believed that consistency does not merely include following rules, though following rules is the simplest way to realize it. But from Zhang’s perspective (and mine), Kuhn’s theory does not add just a little something beyond rule-governedness; rather, it wholly rejects the view that unity is maintained by rules. It precisely holds that the pre-rule “paradigm” is more originary than determinate rules.
Where is this originary, pre-rules consistency grounded? Zhang’s distinctive explanation at the time was: it is grounded in the “family”; family life provides a unified paradigm. My direction is actually the same as Zhang’s, but I do not want to emphasize “family” so deliberately. Instead, in a more general sense, I emphasize “life”; the technological environment is even more basic than the family environment. I believe that the technological environment provides the pre-rules paradigm through which science acquires unity. That is why I can directly apply Kuhn’s paradigm theory to the history of technology, because at the same time this also interprets Kuhn’s theory in terms of technological paradigms.
The family paradigm emphasized by Zhang obviously has a multi-layered structure: a family of three has its unity, an extended family made up of grandparents and relatives also has its unity, larger clans and communities have corresponding unity, and even ethnic groups, nations, states, and so on can establish corresponding degrees of consistency at different levels. The technological environment I speak of is, of course, also plural. Kuhn’s scientific paradigms likewise have a similar plural structure. Therefore the “scientific revolutions” Kuhn speaks of are plural: in every small field, so long as there is a corresponding unified community—that is, so long as some consistent paradigm exists—there can be a “revolution.” Wu believes that Kuhn’s contribution lies only in clarifying “that one” scientific revolution, merely turning science into “two” rather than “many”; this is undoubtedly a gross misreading of Kuhn. Indeed, in recent decades Kuhn has faced many criticisms. If my theory of the history of technology is to continue to use Kuhn, then it too will face the same criticisms, but I think that is precisely what makes it meaningful. Kuhn’s contribution has to a very large extent been misread in just this way—perhaps Kuhn’s own retreat in his later years was also a case of “sacrificing the marshal to save the chariot,” and by bringing Kuhn into the history of technology, I can recover Kuhn’s most important contribution.
In short, the unity of science is the consistency of the scientific community, and the consistency of the scientific community is sustained by “paradigms.” A “paradigm” is pre-theoretical and pre-rules; it is a model absorbed in practice and in life, through constant exposure and imitation. A paradigm does not teach people which dogmas to believe or which rules to acknowledge; it teaches people how to do things.
What I have said above is Kuhn’s insight; what follows is the extension Kuhn himself did not yet clarify: is a “paradigm” a “thing”? Obviously it is not some set of dogmas, but is it some concrete person? In my view, a paradigm is not only pre-rules, but also pre-objective. A paradigm is not a concrete object. Although in many situations the “master craftsman” who instructs you by word and example, and leads you into the trade, is precisely the “paradigm” you follow in order to enter the community, in general it is the “situation” itself that is the paradigm.
The word “paradigm” comes from tables of inflection in grammar; Kuhn used it to explain that learning a language does not depend on memorizing determinate rules, but on being able to actually use it. But mastering a set of concrete examples and sample sentences is still not enough. In the final analysis, what is needed to learn a language is to enter the “context.”
The master craftsman is part of the environment; one’s peers are part of the environment; explicit rules are also part of the environment; material conditions and technical implements are also part of the environment. It is all these things together that guide you and constrain you in “how to do things.”
A “paradigm” is an “environment.” Entering a scientific community and learning a technology are the same thing: one must be able to conform to the paradigm, or rather, adapt to the environment.
Science as a whole can be regarded as a technology or a series of technologies—for example, the technology of knowing nature, the technology of calculation and prediction, and so on. Whether we define technology as “means toward an end” or as “something one can learn,” we can regard science as a technology. So simply opposing science and technology is asymmetrical; it is symmetrical to compare science with another technology or series of technologies—for example, compare science with “cooking technology,” and then see which side is more singular and which side is more plural.
Is “cooking technology” “one” or “many”? At the level of artifacts, “mobile phone” seems to be one thing, whereas cooking technology includes pots, bowls, pans, and many other things. But on closer thought, a “mobile phone” is not just one thing either. The physical difference between the old “brick phone” and the iPhone may even be greater than the difference between a pot and a bowl. Mobile phones are also “many,” and “cooking technology” is also “many.” Even “pots” are “many,” and “bowls” are “many”: there are iron pots, copper pots, nonstick pots; there are frying pans, woks, hotpot pots……
So, among so “many” technologies, how does the “one” come about? For example, Wu’s “cooking technology” is just “one” term, referring to “one” kind of technology, a “unit” that can be singled out independently and set alongside other technologies such as “mobile phones.” How is this unit demarcated?
As the name suggests, the unity of “cooking technology” is sustained by the activity of “cooking.” Cooking is a practical activity, linked with other activities such as buying groceries and eating, and connected with other technological artifacts such as markets, kitchens, refrigerators, dining tables, cafeterias, tap water, natural gas, and so on. Only within a meaningful whole made up of interlocking links, only within a living environment that includes a series of links from buying groceries to eating, can the life-activity of cooking be defined, and thereby the series of technological artifacts designated by “cooking technology” be defined as well.
This is Heidegger’s so-called “being-in-the-world.” There is no “one” of an activity or an artifact that simply stands there already-made and fixed; every being exists as a link in a world of meanings, and every technical artifact displays itself in the corresponding life-context “as” some technology (for example, as cooking technology).
And the world as world does not arise because one isolated thing after another first exists, and then, when collected and stacked together, forms the whole world. The wholeness of the lifeworld comes first; it is only through humans’ “intermediary,” “de-distancing and orientation,” or, in other words, the activity of “de-mediation—inter-mediation,” that the boundaries of various things are demarcated. The “one” of words or things is grounded in the “one” of life. Each link in life, or rather each specific way of life, reveals a class of things related to it.
And how is the “one” in life possible? This in turn depends on “memory”—a life can only be recognized as “one” if it can be “re-presented”; a link in life is a fragment or unit that can be re-presented in memory. And technical artifacts, as “tertiary retention,” in turn prescribe the form of memory. Every technology provides a form of memory; through a technology, we can re-present a certain fragment of life in a specific way.
This is a kind of “circle”—the “one” of life determines the “one” of technology, while the “one” of technology shapes the “one” of life.
When I told Wu that technology is unified because life is unified, that was not a temporary evasion, but my basic position. The unity of life includes a plural structure, for example family and school, eating and work, entertainment and socializing……Life has different aspects and different links, but all these links are, in the final analysis, interconnected. The “reducibility” in this sense is much more fundamental than the reducibility of modern reductionist science. Different links in life are ultimately not reduced to some rule or object, but to the whole lifeworld into which we are thrown, to the so-called “destiny,” or rather, to our historical situation.
It is not at all strange that the development of smartphones affects the practical form of cooking technology. Think again of the “big pot meals” of several decades ago. “Big pot meals” were also a kind of cooking technology, yet they became a symbol of an entire social system and even of an era’s spirit. Only when we analyze a particular technological activity from an isolated, ready-made standpoint does it become difficult to understand the universal connections among technologies.
So, the history of technology not only shares with the history of science a unity; ontologically, the unity of technology is even more originary.
Translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The original text is authoritative.
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