1,721,083 research outputs found
Is Technology an Autonomous Process? Technology, Scientific Experiment, and Human Person
Full text linkDespite the many turns that philosophy of technology has undergone in recent decades, the question of the nature and limits of technological determinism (TD) has been neglected, because it was considered as solved and overcome, and therefore not worth further discussion. This paper once again raises the problem of TD, by trying to save the opposing, but complementary elements of truth of the two main forms of TD that I shall call “nomological” and “normative”: (a) technology is all-pervasive and has an inexorable capacity for extending itself into every field of human life, and (b) we have a capacity to counteract and orient technology, at least in some measure. In order to reconcile these seemingly inconsistent claims, the key move for my argument is a brief analysis of the notion of scientific experiment from the perspective of the distinction between the context of discovery and the context of justification. As a result, two senses of technology are distinguished, which I shall call respectively “reflective” and “methodological.” From the point of view of this distinction, the all-pervasiveness and inexorability of technology and the in principle irreducibility of human persons to technology—which nomological and normative TD assert dialectically one against the other—can be reconciled. Among other things, this requires the rejection (in one fundamental sense) of the widely held assumption, made both by nomological and normative TD, that technology is a cultural field whose contents can be neatly separated from the rest of human culture. This thesis should be replaced by the more qualified claim of the reflective unity and the methodological multiplicity of technology
The Janus-Faced Nature of Philosophy of Science: Eleven Theses
Full text linkElsewhere I have tried to provide the justification of both the irreducible (transcendental) distinction of science and philosophy and their inevitable (naturalistic) complementarity. Unlike empirical science, philosophy has no limit whatever as far as its possible objects are concerned. To say that there is no limit whatever to the possible objects of philosophy is to say that, strictly speaking, it has no object at all and must find its object outside itself, that is, in common sense knowledge and the natural and human sciences. Against the background of this conception, the paper argues that philosophy of science, as a critical reflection on common sense knowledge and the natural or human sciences, inherits from philosophy in general this two-faced Janus nature, which in the philosophy of science shapes the epistemological status of the discipline in an even more prominent way. To show this in detail, the paper enunciates eleven theses that derive from the intimate connection of unity and distinction that exists between philosophy of science on the one hand and the particular and specialized scientific knowledge on the other
La Bibbia nelle letterature germaniche medievali
Full text linkÈ certamente un luogo comune affermare che la Bibbia è il testo fondamentale della cultura occidentale. Il fatto che si tratti di un luogo comune, tuttavia, non rende l’affermazione meno vera: per tutta l’epoca medievale il testo biblico è fondamento imprescindibile delle credenze socialmente accettate, è modello di comportamento etico, è repertorio di storie esemplari che permettono di assegnare un senso agli eventi storici come al vissuto quotidiano. La partecipazione dei popoli germanici alla costruzione del sistema culturale europeo, dalla tarda antichità fino all'età moderna, è percorsa e pervasa dai processi di traduzione, rielaborazione e riuso dei libri dell’Antico e del Nuovo Testamento. I contributi raccolti in questo volume offrono apporti interessanti e spesso originali ai molti ambiti di discussione sul testo biblico, inserendo così la riflessione dei filologi germanici italiani nel più ampio dibattito internazionale e contribuendo in misura significativa a svilupparlo e ad approfondirlo
- …
