GRADUATE SCHOOL

Mid Semester AY 2021

Elective 8
Science, Technology and Society

Chapter 4
The Human Person Flourishing in Terms of
Science and Technology
A Written report

Submitted by:
NENITA MARIE Q. ALONZO

Submitted to:
ANGELINA P. LUMANLAN, MAEd

Chapter 4 The Human Person Flourishing in Terms of

Science and Technology
 a. Technology as a Mode of Revealing

b. Technology as Poiesis

c. Questioning as the Piety of Thought

d. Enframing: Way of Revealing in Modern technology

e. Human Person Swallowed by Technology

f. Art as a Way Out of Enframing

Technology as a Mode of Revealing

a state where people experience positive emotions, positive psychological functioning

and positive social functioning, most of the time," living "within an optimal range of
human functioning."An effort to achieve self-actualization and fulfillment within the
context of a larger community of individuals, each with the right to pursue his or her own
such efforts. It involves the rational use of one's individual human potentialities,
including talents, abilities, and virtues in the pursuit of his freely and rationally chosen
values and goals.

Human civilizations and the development of science and technology

 Human person as both the bearer and beneficiary of science and technology.

 Human flourishes and finds meaning in the world that he/she builds

 Human may unconsciously acquire, consume or destroy what the world has to
offer

Science and Technology

 must be treated as part of human life that needs reflective and meditative
thinking.

 must be examined for their greater impact on humanity as a whole

Meditative thinking

• kind of thinking that thinks the truth of being, that belongs to being and listens to
it.

Martin Heidegger

• a German philosopher and a seminal thinker in the Continental tradition of

philosophy.

• widely acknowledged to be one of the most original and important philosophers

of the 20th century
Heidegger’s View on Technology

 He strongly opposes the view that technology is “a means to an end” or “a

human activity.

 Heidegger points out, technological objects are means for ends, and are built
and operated by human beings, but the essence of technology is something else
entirely.

Revealing

Revealing is his translation of the Greek word alètheuein, which means ‘to discover’ – to
uncover what was covered over. Related to this verb is the independent noun alètheia,
which is usually translated as “truth,” though Heidegger insists that a more adequate
translation would be “unconcealment

What is reality?

 according to Heidegger, it is not given the same way in all times and all cultures
(Seubold 1986, 35-6).

 not something absolute that human beings can ever know once and for all

 is relative in the most literal sense of the word – it exists only in relations.

 inaccessible for human beings. As soon as we perceive or try to understand it, it

is not ‘in itself’ anymore, but ‘reality for us.

 everything we perceive or think of or interact with “emerges out of concealment

into unconcealment,

 by entering into a particular relation with reality, reality is ‘revealed’ in a specific

way.

 technology is the way of revealing that characterizes our time.

 technology embodies a specific way of revealing the world, a revealing in which

humans take power over reality.
While the ancient Greeks experienced the ‘making’ of something as ‘helping something
to come into being’ – as Heidegger explains that modern technology is rather a ‘forcing
into being’.

Technology reveals the world as raw material, available for production and
manipulation.

Why is Technology not a human activity?

According to Heidegger, there is something wrong with the modern, technological

culture we live in today. In our ‘age of technology’ reality can only be present as a raw
material (as a ‘standing reserve’). This state of affairs has not been brought about by
humans; the technological way of revealing was not chosen by human ather, our
understanding of the world - our understanding of ‘being’, of what it means ‘to be’ -
develops through the ages. In our time ‘being’ has the character of a technological
‘framework’, from which humans approach the world in a controlling and dominating
way.

Human Flourishing in Science and Technology

Poises

 In philosophy it is "the activity in which a person brings something into being that
did not exist before."

 etymologically means "to make".

 poiesis as the blooming of the blossom, the coming-out of a butterfly from a

cocoon, the plummeting of a waterfall when the snow begins to melt

Modern Technology to Martin Heidegger

 Challenging since it is very aggressive in activity.

 A mode of revealing – never comes to an end and happens on our own time.
  Challenges nature and demands resources for human consumption and storage.

 The age of switches, standing reserve and stockpiling for its own sake

Questioning as the Piety Of Thought

 the quality of being religious or reverent

 a belief or point of view that is accepted with unthinking conventional reverence

Piety for Heidegger

 Piety is obedience and submission

 be submissive in what his/her thoughts and reflections elicit.

 who or what we essentially in the world

 Questioning to know the truth of who he/she is as a being in this world.

Human beings and everything around us, are made of the same substance that
constitutes the stars: therefore, we are stardust. It is when we start questioning that we
submit ourselves to our thoughts.

Enframing: Way of Revealing in Modern Technology

 way of revealing in modern technology

 way of looking at reality

 human orientation in technology

 the essence of technology

 putting nature in a box or in a frame so that it can be better understood and

controlled according to people’s desire

 Poiesis is concealed in enframing as nature is viewed as orderable and

calculable system of information

 done because people want security.

Calculative Thinking

 One orders and puts a system to nature so it can be understood better and
controlled

Meditative Thinking

 one lets nature reveal itself to him/her without forcing it.

 what we have in mind when we say that contemporary man is in flight from
thinking.

Human Person Swallowed by Technology

Before humans need a technology in order to meets the connectivity, humans made
technology but it consumed us. We say technology is scary because of the new
innovations and the future innovations that will be made, but it is not. What’s scary how
we acquire the convenienc3 it offers to us.

Technology consumes us in a way where it made us become.

 Dependent to technology

 Fearful of missing out

 Connected but alone

 Distant to people near us

We need to open up the possibility on relying to technologies while not becoming

enslave to them and seeing them manifestation of an understanding of being
technology isn’t just changing society –it’s changing what it means to be human.

Art As a Way Out of Enframing

 With art we are able to see the poetic in nature, in reality.

  It leads us away from calculative thinking towards meditative thinking.

 Through meditative thinking, nature is art par excellence.

 Nature is the most poetic

Poiesis and Enframing

 Enframing, as a mode of revealing tends to block poiesis.

 Poetry found in nature can no longer be appreciated when nature is enframed.

 In modern technology, the way of revealing is no longer poetic, it is challenging.

References:

https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/philosophyof-technology/0/steps/26314

Heidegger, Martin. “The question concerning technology (W. Lovitt, Trans.) The
question concerning technology: and other essays (pp. 3-35).” (1977).

Seubold, Günter. Heideggers Analyse der neuzeitlichen Technik. Freiburg-

München: Alber,1986.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/229569355_A_Field_Guide_to_Heideg
ger_Understanding_'The_Question_Concerning_Technology‘

https://www.iwm.at/wpcontent/uploads/jc-09-03.pdf