Where does technology start?
Mediation between the immaterial and the material
According to Aristotle, there are 4 types of causes that make an object “technical”:
- Causa materialis: the material conditions allowing for certain possibilities
2. Causa formalis: the pre-determined form of the resulting product
3. Causa efficiens: the “common sense” cause that requires performing an action for the formation of the resulting product
4. Causa finalis: the purpose for which the product was created
All four causes would be necessary for the successful creation of a technical object. From there, we can then easily derive what technology means: it’s the productive activity that combines all those causes and forces.
All of those correspond also to artistic practice. What is the difference to art or the artistic object then? That is clearly something we can find in the causa finalis. What art exactly is might worth discussing in another post but clearly, the creation of a chair brings forth a concrete utility for everyday life. On the other hand, the aesthetic value of a painting might cover different purposes.
Humans as deficient beings
Arnold Gehlen’s main theme that seems to underpin his body of works is the human as a deficient being. The whole human culture is just a product of deficient characteristics of the human body that force us to adapt by acting in accordance with intellect. Consequently, the whole of technology becomes a necessity for the human race to compensate for organic deficiencies.
Being active becomes an existential necessity and techniques evolved to help us act upon nature in order to survive. Gehlen describes three categories for such techniques:
- Supplementation: techniques that are not possible due to our organic deficiency, for example, making fire.
2. Potentiation: augmenting an existing skill with a tool, for example, hitting something with a stone is more efficient than with the bare hand.
3. Relief: making existing organic characteristics unnecessary, for example, a cart that allows us to not haul anything anymore.
The resulting world of technology is then for Gehlen the “big human” as a mere copy of humans itself becoming the nature artificielle.
After describing this, Gehlen continues with predicting trends that evolve from this substitution of the organic. On one hand, organically grown material is increasingly replaced by synthetic ones, for example, evolving from wood to metal. For good reason, we started describing technological periods of the past as Copper Age, Bronze Age, Iron Age, etc. All these marked technological bumps.
Mediation
What both of these aspects show seems to be an act of mediation. Through the lack of organic objects, the technical object is created in its place. From organic to inorganic material and from the lack of organic form to the ideal, the purpose of a product is chosen between supplementation, potentiation, and relief.
Technology as a productive activity, combining the 4 types of causes, resembles very much the way nature is acting to produce anything. Material, form, and forces are all naturally given to fulfil certain necessary purposes of organic life. Where we continue is to complete things where nature stopped and choose possibilities in the production nature hasn’t chosen yet. The term nature artificielle very much fits this perspective.
Finally, as the last step of this mediation, production itself is an act of bringing an idea to life. The concrete chair is just an instantiation of chairs while a concrete tree is just an instantiation of trees. The idea is baked into the material as if the development of technology is just our nature — a human with a nature that lacks nature.
