The Qualitative Bump of Technology
Series on Arnold Gehlen
In the second essay of Man in the Age of Technology by Arnold Gehlen, he attempts to explain the technological bump we seem to perceive in modern times. What is the qualitative difference between technology in the Stone Age in the one that evolved since the industrial revolution?
According to him, it isn’t the transition from tool to machine that is responsible for such a bump. If you define a machine simply as a device that transmits forces to perform practical tasks, the problem is that one cannot clearly separate it from animal traps. Even when expanding this definition to the performance of automatic and continuous work, ancient Romans also had a machine that was continuously rotating with the help of water, that is, the water wheel.
So, where is then the less obvious qualitative difference? Starting in the 17th and 18th centuries, the sciences became increasingly analytic and experimental. We used experiments as processes to observe natural phenomena by isolating them and with it, measuring them. Today, this is common sense, but back then, these methods just started evolving. Through this evolution, the sciences were not only based on random observation and speculations anymore.
Technology became more and more important for the sciences, as this isolation process wasn’t possible without it. As a result, technology and science start merging into an inseparable bond. A bond that creates a qualitative bump for the two. On one hand, technology profits from the progression speed of the sciences while on the other hand, science became practical, constructive, and free from speculations.
The next step in the history of modern times was, of course, industrialisation. Out of capitalism and warfare, the interest in such experimental discoveries grew exponentially. The result was the industrial multiplication of certain products. A phenomenon that we can still see nowadays. From the earlier mentioned bonding between science and technology, we came to the point where those two even merged also with industry.
This merging is so deep nowadays that one cannot even separate them in terms of precondition. In other words, they are mutually dependent on each other. That is what Gehlen questions at the end of this essay with the help of an example: what is the foundation for medicinal chemistry? Is it biological and chemical research that gives the theoretical groundwork? Is it the necessary technology for production and distribution? Or is it the industrial company that coordinates and funds both?
