A Companion to the Philosophy of Technology

1. Types of Knowledge in Technology

In this article we shall take technological knowledge to be the knowledge that is involved in the designing, making and using of technical artifacts and systems. Both engineers and users of technology can have such knowledge. For instance, engineers know about theories in natural sciences; they know how to solve design problems; they are acquainted with technical norms and standards; they know about economics and about legal matters; and they know how to translate clients’ desires into technical specifications. Users know what technical devices, machines and systems are for; they know which actions need to be executed in order to make an artifact work; and they sometimes know how to maintain or repair the artifact. This quick survey already shows that the types of knowledge involved in the design and use of technical artifacts are varied. The challenge to philosophy (of technology) is to identify the characteristics of these types of knowledge and to investigate whether they can be accounted for by existing theories of knowledge. At face value, technological knowledge appears to have a distinct nature in that it involves descriptive and normative elements. Knowledge of the behavior of artifacts as described by the natural sciences is of a descriptive nature, while the knowledge that “screwdrivers of this brand are always good” is of a normative nature. The latter example indicates that some types within the domain of technological knowledge are ...