WHAT IS TECHNOLOGY

I'll start by providing an overview of Eric Schatzberg's significant new work, Technology, which simplifies and clarifies the development of the term "technology" and its synonyms as categories for actors. Secondly, I will critically examine Schatzberg's work and contend that, although he is useful in classifying earlier perspectives on technology into two categories—the "cultural" and the "instrumental" approaches—he errs in favoring the former over the latter. Third, I propose an expansion of my favored instrumentalist definition that emphasizes a fundamental feature of technologies: their ability to intervene across scales. In doing so, I believe that historians of science and technology can now have a fresh, stimulating area of inquiry to explore.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             For many years, educators teaching the history of technology have found great value in the publications of Eric Schatzberg. His 2006 paper "Technik comes to America: changing meanings of technology before 1930" was the best resource on the topic and required reading for students. It was published in Technology and Culture. Note 1 Schatzberg builds on the overview presented in that paper in Technology: Critical History of a Concept, skillfully incorporating the best recent historiography with his own unique insights. It will serve as the norm for many years to come.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              From an etymological perspective, the word "technology" comes from the Indo-European root tek, which most likely referred to the process of weaving sticks together to construct wooden houses (p. 19). For this reason, the words "textile" and "technology" sound alike. The Greek word techne (tek) originated from the skill of working with wood, but it quickly expanded to include specialized knowledge and the "know how" of creating things that would not otherwise exist. Thus, techne was concerned with the artificial. Still, disagreements had already arisen. According to some of the Hippocratic writers, medicine was a type of technology. However, was rhetoric, say, techne?       While Plato disagreed, Aristotle agreed. Aristotle went one step further in the Nicomachean Ethics, stating that although techne was a type of knowledge (of how to make, an art), it was to be distinguished from episteme (knowledge of the eternal) and phronesis (moral knowledge, knowledge of how to act well). That these three were arranged in a hierarchy was crucial. Being able to act was more beneficial than being able to make. As a result of this hierarchy, means and ends were divided. While the means to an end may be valued, the ends themselves are not, and by focusing on this distinction, technology became "morally neutral" (p. 22).                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             Schatzberg takes care to place these claims in their proper context. Aristotle was defending an aristocratic hierarchy in which those at the top might have had the freedom and time to reflect on the eternal as well as the philosophical certainty of knowing the right course of action, while those at the bottom who had to work hard to provide for their basic needs had technology. However, as Pamela Long and Serafina Cuomo have argued, among others, there were always conflicts within the hierarchy because artisans could occasionally challenge their lowly status and aristocratic society still needed things to be built. Nonetheless, Greek and Roman elite culture shared a disdain for the "banausic"—basic, manual—arts.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    The hierarchy persisted even after Aristotle's fine distinctions were lost, and techne—the Latin translation of ars—grew to encompass all fields of knowledge. Galen covered a wide range of subjects in the second century CE, from medicine, philosophy, and arithmetic (the honorable end, the "liberal arts") to handicrafts and woodworking (the contemptible end). Early mediaeval Europe's flattened hierarchies forced clerical elites and craft workers to interact more, which led to the former reflecting more deeply on the latter. A new category, the "mechanical arts," was created as a result. Schatzberg, like Lynn White and Elspeth Whitney, acknowledges that the theologian Hugh of St Victor, who lived in the twelfth century, had a significant influence in this category. However, in contrast to White, he stresses that the liberal arts remained supreme over the mechanical arts.