Techne, Technology and Inventiveness

The techne of technology means the making of good things. ‘Technology’ should mean words about such practices. Lingustic confusion about this has been increased by the way in which technology has taken on some of the overweening pretensions of ‘scientism’ — to solve the world's problems. The nature of tools and machines is considered and the way in which these can either make manifest their inner principles or conceal them. A classification of technologies is then developed which goes well beyond the conventional category of ‘usefulness’. This leads to the question of why the new ‘British’ Design Technology curriculum conceives technology so narrowly. It is suggested that the richest forms of children's play usually embody complementary elements of primitive science and analysis, alongside experimental making. The science/ technology distinction is clarified in terms of information flow. Finally the importance of language — ‘conversation between the technes’ — is stressed as a necessary condition for inventiveness. The enterprise is to keep afloat on an even keel; the sea is both friend and enemy; and the seamanship consists in using the resources of a traditional manner of behaviour in order to make a friend of every hostile occasion. (Michael Oakeshott, The Voice of Liberal Learning, p. 150)