The Philosophical Richness of Technology

Headline, 20th July, 1976: VIKING I LANDS ON MARS. Certainly a triumph of space technology. But philosophically significant? Doubtful, but then we should not look for philosophy in material objects other than human brains. If we look for philosophy at the right spots in the technological process we are bound to find some, for there is philosophy in or behind every piece of human knowledge and in or behind every step of rational action. We shall find philosophy, for instance, in the policy making that ended up in the decision to build and send off Viking I, as well as in the technological research that went into the implementation of that decision—and I am using the term ‘philosophy’ in its technical acceptation not in the popular one. Indeed one of the assumptions in planning the Viking I venture was that there might be life on Mars after all.