Description
Book SynopsisAdvancements in science, technology, and engineering are ubiquitously embraced across the globe. Their promises—more material goods, longer and healthier lives, more convenience, and more pleasure and less suffering—and their overall track record of results have largely insulated them from critical evaluation. The problems they cause are often depicted as flaws with a particular technology in some context, and their resolutions are proposed as better technologies or different deployments. This diagnosis is accepted by most people, who, while bombarded with messages of the salvific power of STEM, know little about what its practitioners do or how most technologies work.
This edited volume transcends the mood of technological optimism and disciplinary captivity to develop a critical, broad, and diverse understanding of how science, technology, and engineering have transformed human experiences, practices, and values, with an emphasis on ethics, religion, and policy. The escalating intensity of these transformations on more aspects of human existence—a trend accelerated by responses to COVID-19—and growing recognition of the severity and extent of their accompanying psychological, social, cultural, and environmental consequences make this effort timely. The chapters, many written by prominent intellectuals, draw on a range of disciplinary and cultural resources and most will likely be intellectually important and well-received individually. Taken together, the book will provide an unsurpassed composite, cross-disciplinary, and cross-cultural view of science, technology, and engineering and the transformations they cause.
The book includes twenty-seven chapters by scholars from the United States, Latin America, China, and Europe. The contributions use resources from diverse disciplines and traditions to help readers to think through the always changing sociotechnical milieu in which we live and work.
Table of ContentsForeword
Carl Mitcham
Preface
Glen Miller, Helena Mateus Jerónimo, and Qin Zhu
Chapter 1: Editors' Introduction
Glen Miller, Helena Mateus Jerónimo, and Qin Zhu
Part I: Philosophy and Technology
Ch 2: The Enigma of Technology
Andrew Feenberg
Chapter 3: Organization as Technique: A Blind Spot in the Philosophy of Technology
Daniel Cérézuelle, translation by Christian Roy
Chapter 4: Technology as Process
Mark Coeckelbergh
Chapter 5: Political Philosophy of Technology: After Leo Strauss
Carl Mitcham
Chapter 6: The Nuclear Menace and the Prophecy of Doom
Jean-Pierre Dupuy
Chapter 7: The End of Technology and the Renewal of Reality
Albert Borgmann
Part II: Philosophy and Engineering
Chapter 8: An Engineer Considers Technological (Non)Neutrality: “But Where Are the Values?
Byron Newberry
Chapter 9: How Engineers Can Care from a Distance: Promoting Moral Sensitivity in Engineering Ethics Education
Janna van Grunsven, Lavinia Marin, Taylor Stone, Sabine Roeser & Neelke Doorn
Chapter 10: Parallel Steps toward Philosophy of Engineering in China and West
Nan WANG and LI Bocong
Chapter 11: The Development of the Philosophy of Engineering in China: Engaging the Scholarship of Carl Mitcham
Tong LI and Yongmou LIU
Part III: Religion, Science, and Technology
Chapter 12: Christianity, Power, and Technological Domination: A Typological Approach to the Church
José Antonio Ullate
Chapter 13: Technology in Cosmic Terms: The World Council of Churches in Amsterdam, 1948
Jennifer Karns Alexander
Chapter 14: Beyond Tools, Means, and Ends: Explorations into the Post-Instrumental Erehwon
Jean Robert
Chapter 15: Understanding Bureaucratic Order: The Theological Paradigms of Modern Hierarchy
Sajay Samuel
Chapter 16: What Religion, What Technology? A Wittgensteinian Approach
Andoni Alonso
Chapter 17: Bioethics, Philosophy, and Religious Wisdom: A Critical Assessment of Leon Kass’s Thought
Larry Arnhart
Part IV: Science and Technology Studies
Chapter 18: Ethics and the Search for Scientific Knowledge: The Whole Truth and Nothing but the Truth?
Carlos Verdugo-Serna
Chapter 19: A Short History of Science, Truth, and Politics in the United States, 1945–2021
Daniel Sarewitz
Chapter 20: Moral Narratives of Technological Change in the Early Green Revolution
Suzanne Moon
Chapter 21: Momentum, Interrupted: Developing Habits of Discernment in Engineering and Beyond
Jen Schneider
Chapter 22: Innovation Policy Driven by the Market: The Second Great Disembeddedness
José Luís Garcia
Part V: Science and Technology Policy
Chapter 23: Irrational Energy Ethics
Adam Briggle
Chapter 24: Paradoxical Policy in Sub-Saharan Africa: Women’s Farming, Oil, and Sustainable Development
Tricia Glazebrook and Gordon Akon-Yamga
Chapter 25: The Pandemic and Clamor for Vaccines: Ethical-Legal Considerations for Intellectual Property Rights and Technology Sharing
Pamela Andanda
Chapter 26: An Effective History of the Basic-Applied Distinction in “Science” Policy
J: Britt Holbrook
Chapter 27: Technological Risks, Institutional Wariness, and the Dynamics of Trust
José A: López Cerezo
About the Contributors
Index
About the Editors
