Re: Techné

From: Mike Lorrey (mlorrey@datamann.com)
Date: Tue Feb 26 2002 - 18:13:04 MST


steve wrote:
>
> Interesting link. Like Damien I have trouble with Heidegger but he is a very
> influential thinker right now. As the linked document says "techne" is a
> Greek word which means 'practical knowledge' ie an activity which contains
> the knowledge of how to do it within itself, so you know it by doing it.
> This is linked to ideas about the nature of art. Peter Drucker has an
> interesting discussion of this. He argues that until the 18th century the
> general belief was that you could only acquire this kind of knowledge by
> doing the activity or observing it directly and then practising/imitating
> it. For Drucker this is one of the main reasons why technological innovation
> was so slow and patchy. The breakthrough is the idea that "techne" can be
> put into printed words and so transmitted rapidly over long distances. This
> is though the "mediation" that Heidegger and others don't like.

So the luddites and other romantic primitivists truly do want to
de-evolve the human race back to pre-history, when there was no
'mediation' through the written word.

It's no wonder I've such hostility for the way Brin seems to celebrate
in his uplift series about the downward path to redemption.



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