Hans Lenk Knihy

The chimpanzee on the cover contemplates a human skull, reflecting on the inscription "Eritis sicut deus" ("You will be like God(s)"). This echoes the biblical snake's seduction of Eve, promising knowledge of good and evil. Such a prediction resonates with the themes of Harari’s work, raising the question of whether this wisdom is a curse or a blessing. It prompts a Hamlet-like dilemma: to be or not to be, to survive or perish in an ecological crisis. Human complacency has reached alarming levels, and the question arises whether humanity will preserve or destroy the beauty of our planet, as seen from space. It’s time for us to unite in a monumental effort to ecologically save our "spaceship Earth," its climate, and natural environments. We must take responsibility not only for ourselves but also for other species and ecosystems. This meta-responsibility calls for a stewardship that extends to all beings on our planet. We need to focus on the imperative task of "learning to be human," as emphasized at last year's World Congress of Philosophy. As the "third chimpanzee," we must think and act humanely towards fellow humans, societies, and the environment. The journey towards Concrete Humanity is urgent and essential.

In the last decades there have been quite a few new accents in the philosophy of technology and philosophy of science amounting, e. g., to the so-called schools of the “New Experimentalism”, “New Instrumentalism” and, recently, “New Mechanism”. All these emphasize the impact of instruments, experiments and “mechanisms” of the respective technologies and potentialities opened up by the progress and development of ever-improving measuring instruments, procedures etc. In addition to these practice-oriented views this book also accentuates the processand action-orientation including practical responsibility problems as well as dynamic systems models from an epistemological perspective of the methodological scheme-interpretationist approach developed by the author.

The 21 st century is shaped by globalisation, worldwide electronic information dissemination and planetary presence of media and IT networks. The information society became a high-tech industrial or systems-technological super-information society with ubiquitous IT accessibility. Attending to techno-science super-structures and systems technocracies the book tackles problems of social responsibility, humanitarianism, ecological policies, and a philosophy of technology, planning, risk assessment, decision-making, globalisation, creativity, achievement-orientation, etc. for a humane future orientation. Philosophy should go systems- and practice-oriented, normative and optimistic again.

The Proceedings of the Karlsruhe Academic Session (1997) of the International Academy of the Philosophy of the Sciences cover the topic of philosophy of technology. Half a dozen of other pertinent topical papers have been added in order to extend the topics dealt with and to reach a rather comprehensive overview of this multi-ramified field. Nowadays philosophy of technology is not only confronted with new, anthropological and social as well as political problems to deal with, but also with methodological problems of the mutual interactions between science and technology, with problems of reliability and viability of technology assessment, e. g. with risks, environmental and social impact assessments. The importance and necessity of a philosophy and a practice-oriented ethics of technology will drastically rise and grow in the near future.