Van Huyssteen J.W. (editor) Encyclopedia of Science and Religion

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SYSTEMS THEORY

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Bibliography

Banathy, Bela H. Guided Evolution of Society: A Systems

View. New York: Kluwer Academic, 2000.

Berry, Thomas. The Great Work: Our Way Into the Future.

New York: Crown, 2000.

Bertalanffy, Ludwig von. General System Theory: Founda-

tions, Developments, Applications. New York: George

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Bohm, David. Wholeness and the Implicate Order. Lon-

don: Routledge, 1980.

Boulding, Kenneth E. “General Systems Theory—The

skeleton of science.” In Facets of Systems Science, ed.

George J. Klir. New York: Plenum Press, 1991.

Briggs, John P., and Peat, F. David. Looking Glass Uni-

verse: The Emerging Science of Wholeness. New York:

Touchstone, 1984.

Capra, Fritjof. The Web of Life: A New Scientific Under-

standing of Living Systems. New York: Anchor, 1996.

Chaisson, Erich. The Life Era: Cosmic Selection and Con-

scious Svolution. New York: Norton, 1987.

Checkland, Peter. Systems Thinking, Systems Practice. New

York: Wiley, 1981.

Churchman, C. West. The Systems Approach. New York:

Laurel, 1968.

Csikszentmihalyi, Mihalyi. The Evolving Self: A Psychology

for the Third Millennium. New York: Harper Collins,

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Eisler, Riane Tennenhaus. The Chalice and the Blade: Our

History, Our Future. Cambridge, Mass.: Harper, 1987.

Elgin, Duane. Awakening Earth: Exploring the Evolution

of Human Culture and Consciousness. New York:

William Morrow, 1993.

Feinstein, David, and Krippner, Stanley. Personal Mythol-

ogy: The Psychology of Your Evolving Self. New York:

Jeremy Tarcher, 1988.

Flood, Robert L., and Carson, Edwart R. Dealing with Com-

plexity: An Introduction to the Theory and Application

of Systems Science. New York: Plenum Press, 1990.

Gleick, James. Chaos: Making a New Science. New York:

Viking, 1987.

Goerner, Sally. Chaos and the Evolving Ecological Uni-

verse. Langhorne, Pa.: Gordon and Breach, 1994.

Heron, John, and Reason, Peter. “A Participatory Inquiry

Paradigm.” Qualitative Inquiry 3, no. 3 (1997):

274–294.

Hubbard, Barbara Marx. Conscious Evolution: Awakening

the Power of our Social Potential. Novato, Calif.: New

World Library, 1998.

Huxley, Aldous. The Perennial Philosophy. New York:

Harper, 1944.

James, William. The Varieties of Religious Experience: A

Study in Human Nature. New York: Modern Library,

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Jantsch, Eric. Design for Evolution: Self-Organization and

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George Braziller, 1975.

Laszlo, Alexander. “The Epistemological Foundations of

Evolutionary Systems Design.” Systems Research and

Behavioral Science 18, no. 4 (2001): 307–321.

Laszlo, Alexander, and Krippner, Stanley. “Systems Theo-

ries: Their Origins, Foundations, and Development.”

In Systems Theories and A Priori Aspects of Percep-

tion, ed. J. Scott Jordan. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1998.

Laszlo, Alexander, and Laszlo, Ervin. “The Contribution of

the Systems Sciences to the Humanities.” Systems Re-

search and Behavioral Science 14, no. 1 (1997): 5–19.

Laszlo, Ervin. Introduction to Systems Philosophy: Toward

a New Paradigm of Contemporary Thought. New

York: Gordon and Breach, 1972.

Laszlo, Ervin. “The Meaning and Significance of General

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Laszlo, Ervin. The Age of Bifurcation: Understanding the

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Laszlo, Ervin. The Choice: Evolution or Extinction? New

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Laszlo, Ervin. Evolution: The General Theory. Cresskill,

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Laszlo, Ervin. The Whispering Pond: A Personal Guide to

the Emerging Vision of Science. Boston, Mass.: Ele-

ment, 1996.

Laszlo, Ervin. Macroshift 2001–2010: Creating the Future

in the Early 21st Century. New York: toExcel, 2001.

Laszlo, Kathia Castro. “Global Challenges and Human Op-

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sign.” Advances in Systems Science and Applications

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Lowenthal, David. “Lost in the Cosmos? Mind and Purpose

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(1987): 53–65.

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Loye, David. “Scientific Foundations for a Global Ethic at

a Time of Evolutionary Crisis.” World Futures 49, nos.

1–2 (1997).

Macy, Joanna. Mutual Causality in Buddhism and Gen-

eral System Theory. Albany: State University of New

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McWaters, Barry. Conscious Evolution: Personal and

Planetary Transformation. Los Angeles: New Age

Press, 1981.

Merchant, Carolyn. “Environmental Ethics and Political

Conflict: A View from California.” In Contemporary

Moral Issues: Diversity and Consensus, ed. Lawrence

Hinman. Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1996.

Merry, Uri. Coping With Uncertainty: Insights from the

New Sciences of Chaos, Self-Organization, and Com-

plexity. Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 1995.

Milbrath, Lester W. Envisioning a Sustainable Society:

Learning Our Way Out. Albany: State University of

New York Press, 1989.

Morin, Edgar. “From the Concept of System to the Para-

digm of Complexity.” Journal of Social and Evolu-

tionary Systems 15, no. 4 (1992): 371–385.

Ornstein, Robert, and Ehrlich, Paul. New World, New

Mind: Moving Toward Conscious Evolution. New

York: Touchstone, 1989.

Prigogine, Ilya, and Stengers, Isabelle. Order Out of

Chaos. New York: Bantam, 1984.

Richards, Ruth. “Seeing Beyond: Issues of Creative Aware-

ness and Social Responsibility.” Creativity Research

Journal 6, nos. 1–2 (1993): 165–183.

Salk, Jonas. The Survival of the Wisest. New York: Harper,

1973.

Salner, Marcia. “A New Framework for Human Science.”

Saybrook Perspectives (San Francisco, Calif.) Spring

Issue (1996): 6-8.

Teilhard de Chardin, Pierre. The Phenomenon of Man.

New York: Harper, 1959.

KATHIA CASTRO LASZLO

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T = 0

The common notation t = 0 simply means “time

equals zero.” It expresses the radical and funda-

mental conclusion of standard Big Bang cosmol-

ogy. It recognizes the connection between space

and time by implying that the Big Bang did not

occur in time but that time began with the Big

Bang singularity. For many theological thinkers,

the scientific articulation of t = 0 has significant

implications for understanding creation, particu-

larly the idea of a creation out of nothing (creatio

ex nihilo).

See also BIG BANG THEORY; COSMOLOGY, PHYSICAL

ASPECTS; CREATIO EX NIHILO

MARK WORTHING

TACIT KNOWLEDGE

Though it is a psychological fact that human beings

acquire, retain, and employ tacit knowledge, ac-

counts of its nature and function in perception,

memory, cognition, language, and learning vary

across disciplines. In epistemology, the concept of

tacit knowledge was pioneered by the scientist and

philosopher Michael Polanyi (1891–1976) in his

Personal Knowledge (1956) and The Tacit Dimen-

sion (1966). Drawing on Gestalt psychology,

Polanyi developed a theory of tacit knowledge by

extending the perceptual model of attending from

subsidiary clues or particulars (bodily processes,

sensory experiences, memory, intimations) to a

focal whole (pattern, object, entity) to a general

model that holds cognitive processes ranging form

identifying objects, performing skills, solving (sci-

entific) problems to understanding texts or persons.

Tacit knowing is seen to consist in relying on inte-

grated and interiorized particulars for attending to

the comprehensive entity on which these particu-

lars bear, and in terms of which they are (tacitly)

known. Accordingly, a formal definition of tacit

knowledge and its structure may read thus: a per-

son A has tacit knowledge of a collection of sub-

sidiary clues S if (1) S is integrated by A, (2) A is not

directly aware of S, and (3) A has integrated S such

that (4) S bears on a focal whole, F.

On this construal, all knowledge is more or

less embodied and either tacit or rooted in tacit

knowledge. Moreover, tacit knowledge can be

seen as the model of all skillful problem solving, of

which scientific discovery is the paradigm case. In-

quirers follow rules they can hardly specify and are

seldom aware of. In this respect, tacit knowledge is

more like knowing how to do things or what

things are for than propositional knowledge that

something is the case. Near parallels here are

Gilbert Ryle’s distinction between “knowing how”

and “knowing that,” and Bertrand Russell’s be-

tween “knowledge by acquaintance—knowledge

by description.” Finally, the personal character of

tacit knowledge does not make it subjective or

irrational. Acquired in the context of social prac-

tices of learning and inquiry, it is both personal

and social.

The implications of this theory for the dialogue

between science and theology are at least the fol-

lowing. First, by emphasizing that contexts of

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“coming to know” cannot be governed wholly by

general rules, the theory would support historical,

evolutionary, and cognitive approaches to science

and religion, rather than rationalist, metaphysical,

and logical ones. Next, by presenting an alternative

to impersonal and reductionist accounts of science

that focus exclusively on questions of justification

or methodology, the theory influenced many the-

ologians, including Thomas F. Torrance, Ian Bar-

bour, Arthur Peacocke, and Lesslie Newbigin. It

advocates the personal and fiduciary nature of sci-

entific knowing in practice that is not at odds but

consonant with religious understanding. Finally,

tacit knowledge as embodied, personal, and social

points to a common ground for science and reli-

gion, not of a methodological or metaphysical na-

ture, but of an evolutionary, cognitive, and

anthropological nature. Permeating all human in-

quiry—scientific as well as scholarly, aesthetic,

moral, and religious—tacit knowledge shows that

all claims to know and understand are voiced from

within traditions and shaped by values that can

only be upheld within a free society that allows

people to adhere to them.

See also EPISTEMOLOGY

Bibliography

Gill, Jerry H. The Tacit Mode: Michael Polanyi’s Postmod-

ern Philosophy. Albany: State University of New York

Press, 2000.

Polanyi, Michael. Knowing and Being: Essays, ed.

Marjorie Grene. London: Routledge and Kegan

Paul, 1969.

Polanyi, Michael. Scientific Thought and Social Reality: Es-

says, ed. Fred Schwartz. New York: International Uni-

versities Press, 1974.

Sanders, Andy F. Michael Polanyi’s Post-Critical Episte-

mology: A Reconstruction of Some Aspects of Tacit

Knowing. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1988.

ANDY F. SANDERS

TAOISM

See CHINESE RELIGIONS, DAOISM AND SCIENCE IN

CHINA

TECHNOLOGY

The definition of technology is a much contro-

verted topic. At one extreme, the word is used for

an intellectual discipline, analogous to biology or

psychology. This is a refined use, emphasizing the

Greek root logos (word or meaning) combined

with techne (artifice), to focus on the study or sci-

ence of arts and artifices. Thus, distinguished insti-

tutions that offer sustained investigation of practi-

cal arts are often called institutes of technology.

But at the other extreme, the word technology is

often used to refer to concrete objects, tools, and

implements themselves, or their workings. When

archaeologists speak of digging up samples of a

culture’s technology, they are not referring to

learned studies but to pots, tools, or weapons. His-

torians and anthropologists refer to the technolo-

gies of a society as the practical arts and imple-

ments themselves, not studies about them. And

ordinary usage tends also toward the concrete.

When one is baffled by the technology in a new

car, it is the knobs and switches that are at issue,

recalcitrant things.

Another polarity is found regarding the in-

volvement of science in technology. Is technology

(whether a study or a set of artifacts) simply ap-

plied science? If so, then science must have come

first, to be applied, and there could be no presci-

entific technologies. The distinguished institutes of

engineering tend to lean toward this understand-

ing, but historians of human craftsmanship tend to

see important continuities between pre- and post-

scientific arts, and emphasize vital technological

achievements (such as the telescope and micro-

scope) that made science possible, thus predating

and empowering the rise of modern science, not

shrinking to its mere application.

There are other significant disputes over the

essential nature of technology: for example,

whether it must be embodied, somehow, perhaps

in metal or plastic, or whether it can be entirely

conceptual, as in the important Arabic invention of

the number zero, which greatly advanced the cal-

culational power of mathematics. Another example

is the question whether technology can be said to

exist outside the human context, as in the some-

times elaborate constructions of animals like

beavers and many birds, or must it by definition be

the product of human making? This raises the

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broader issue whether technology is ever a natural

phenomenon or is necessarily artificial. Unfortu-

nately, the relatively new field of philosophy of

technology has yet to come to consensus on these

definitional issues.

Technology and language

In the absence of consensus, the process of con-

structing and evaluating a definition is actually clar-

ified. One cannot pretend that a proposed defini-

tion is inevitable, or is the only one that stands to

reason. It becomes more obvious that language is

conventional, that a definition is a rule for linking

concepts together in ways that are clarifying or

helpful. Since what is clarifying or helpful is always

relative to some context-giving purpose, there may

be as many differently helpful resolutions for using

words as there are purposes for doing so. Deans of

distinguished institutions for the systematic study

of industrial arts may find it helpful to use words in

one way; aircraft maintenance personnel may find

it more helpful to use them in another.

Since the purpose in this entry is philosophi-

cal, its aim will be for as much comprehensiveness

as reasonably possible, combined with as much

critical coherence as can be achieved in light of the

variety of data in hand. The norm of adequate

comprehensiveness will warn against premature

exclusions of whole domains from the extension of

the term under discussion, and the norm of critical

coherence will warn against such excesses of in-

clusion as might make the term vacuous by refer-

ring uncritically to everything. For example, if we

are to understand technology from the broad

philosophical perspective, it will probably be more

useful to include prescientific craft traditions within

the concept of technology, to see the internal sim-

ilarities and differences brought by modern sci-

ence, than to exclude the earlier practical arts from

notice by definition. But, contrariwise, since un-

derstanding a subject must allow for contrast with

what is not that subject, it will probably not be

useful to accede to such all-inclusive definitions as

would identify the mind-activated body as the pri-

mary all-purpose tool. This would imply that a

conscious human being is never without tools, is

never in a nontechnological condition. With an

over-broad definition it is harder to express the

significant difference that the introduction of a tool

makes to the naked hand; with an over-narrow

definition it is harder to notice significant similari-

ties between tools of different types.

Venturing our own definition, in this context,

must be an exercise in balance. We must be con-

scious of what we will include and what exclude by

our proposed linguistic rule, and must be ready to

stand by these consequences as long as we support

the rule. For example, the concept of the practical

has been central in all the discussion thus far. If we

make this concept essential, then we exclude from

the concept of technology what is purely theoreti-

cal or aesthetic or otherwise done for its own sake,

without practical motives. If this seems appropriate,

we are entitled to make this decision. Again, the

concept of the purposive runs throughout, implying

intelligent goals as essential to the idea of technol-

ogy. If this cluster of concepts is taken as essential,

then we shall be excluding the purely instinctive

from our definition. This need not eliminate a pri-

ori all animal constructive activities from the do-

main of the technological, but it draws the line at a

new place: To what extent are the apparent artifacts

of animals actually the result of art, or intelligence?

If the human species is not alone intelligent, then

the concept of technology will apply quite naturally

to flexible, environmentally responsive implemen-

tations of animal aims, but will not apply to behav-

iors that are hard-wired, immune to modification in

changing conditions. Is this an appropriate distinc-

tion? If so, we may legitimately adopt it. Finally, the

concept of physical embodiment remains to be re-

solved, whether technology must necessarily be

implemented in material things. If we so decide,

then purely conceptual discoveries or inventions,

like the Arabic zero, will be excluded from the

technological, while the abacus, another great aid

to calculation, implemented variously by pebbles in

sand or beads on wires, will be included. Like all

the other decisions, this is a judgment call. Will it be

more helpful for understanding technology to re-

quire that it be implemented, especially if that re-

quirement can be understood to include not just

metal or plastic but also social and biological im-

plementations, as in the invention of armies and

corporations or in the selective breeding of new

strains of grain or livestock? If the answer is posi-

tive, then this resolution may reasonably be made.

Thus, once we are alert to the conceptual con-

sequences, and accept them, a possible definition

of technology, one that could reconcile a number

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of clashing linguistic intuitions and lay a founda-

tion for further clarifications in this important do-

main, could be: Technology is the practical imple-

mentation of intelligence.

Technology and science

Approaching technology as implemented intelli-

gence aimed at practical goals helps to resolve the

contentious question of its relationship to science.

There is no doubt that the character of technolo-

gies changed radically after the emergence of mod-

ern science. There is also no doubt that prescien-

tific technologies, such as the art of lens making

and glass-blowing, were indispensable to that

emergence, since without them there would have

been no telescopes, microscopes, thermometers,

or barometers to serve the new goals of precise

theoretical intelligence represented by the scien-

tific revolution.

But the differences between the type of intelli-

gence embodied in ancient craft technologies and

in modern high technologies are not in kind but in

goals and norms. Practical intelligence, as old as

our species, is interested in getting jobs done and

clinging to techniques that have been found (usu-

ally by luck, or trial and error) to work. The norm

for such intelligence is practical success, with deep

reluctance to fix what is not broken. Simplicity is

preferred over complication, the how is elevated

over the why, and close enough is favored over

abstract precision. In contrast, theoretical intelli-

gence (rooted in the same ancient quest that some-

times leads to myth-making and sometimes, as in

classical Greece, is disciplined by logic) thirsts for

understanding why, is not satisfied by successful

results alone but wants to know in addition what

makes things happen so, and is willing to take

great pains to achieve precision despite whatever

complexity is required. These two contrasting ex-

pressions of intelligence, usually isolated by so-

cioeconomic class, made an improbable marriage

in seventeenth century Europe, through which the

demand for theoretical precision could be served

by instruments provided by ancient craft traditions,

and the quest for why could be disciplined by at-

tention to the how.

For the first time, practical wants could be sug-

gested by theoretical understanding of the hidden

workings of things. The radio could not even be

desired without first conceiving abstractly of radio

waves. Atomic energy could not be a goal without

the modern theory of the atom. After the emer-

gence of modern science, so-called high technolo-

gies could be led by theoretical intelligence pow-

erfully outfitted by practical intelligence.

Technology and culture. Technology is the im-

plementation not only of intelligence in various in-

teracting modes but also equally of values, goals,

wants, and fears. Without motivating values, intel-

ligence would not be moved to make or do any-

thing. But in culture, values often clash. Early bib-

lical pessimism about technological hubris is

shown in the story of the Tower of Babel (Gen. 11:

1–9), foreshadowing modern negative theological

and philosophical attitudes such as those ex-

pressed by Jacques Ellul and Martin Heidegger. Sci-

ence-led high technologies stimulate even stronger

condemnation from those suspicious of the practi-

cal implementations of human intelligence, but the

involvement of modern science is not essential to

setting off warnings. Agricultural technology, and

urban living itself, is seen as corrupting by the no-

madic and sheepherding author, called J, in early

biblical thought.

More positive theological assessments, ranging

from Harvey Cox’s early enthusiastic embrace of

the liberating technologies of the secular city to W.

Norris Clarke’s more measured approval of human

co-creation through selective technology, also

abound in the literature. Philosophers and social

commentators like Herbert Marcuse, Erich Fromm,

and Bernard Gendron defend in different ways the

technological impulse and its impacts on culture.

The technological impulse, to intervene intelli-

gently in nature by implementing means for

achieving valued ends, is extremely general, how-

ever, and open to indefinitely many expressions.

The qualities of the intelligence being imple-

mented, as well as the values being embodied, are

worthy of analysis and assessment epistemologi-

cally no less than ethically and theologically.

Though the activities of intelligence may bind all

sorts of technologies into a single wide domain, its

implemented expressions through modern science

are strikingly different in standards and conse-

quences from its prescientific embodiments. Artifi-

ciality comes in many degrees, depending on the

extent to which the artificial object is dependent

on the intervention of intelligence for its produc-

tion. A neatly planted orchard, for example, is

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more artificial than a primal forest, but less artificial

than the shopping mall that may replace it. On

such a scale, modern high technology is artificial to

the highest degree because it is completely de-

pendent on the intervention of theoretical intelli-

gence for its existence. Some of the felt discomfort

directed toward such technologies may be rooted

in the cognitive gap between ordinary experience

of the world, familiar to our species from earliest

times, and the theoretical structures inhabited by

scientific intelligence and materialized in scientific

engineering.

Importantly, too, the internal goals of scientific

intelligence tend to favor quantification. Much sci-

ence-led technology may not surprisingly, then,

embody the tendency to favor quantity over more

ineffable qualities, such as the aesthetic or tradi-

tional. Further, scientific values, though powerful

in advancing knowledge, are conspicuously lack-

ing in compassion for its subjects of investigation.

The typical technological implementations of sci-

entific thought, with some exceptions (e.g., anes-

thesia) have not been especially kind or gentle.

We may speculate that if we are to hope for a

kinder, gentler postmodern variety of high tech-

nology, sensitive to qualitative concerns in culture,

there may need to rise a new, postmodern variety

of scientific thinking as well.

See also BIOTECHNOLOGY; INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY;

EPRODUCTIVE TECHNOLOGY; TECHNOLOGY AND

ETHICS; TECHNOLOGY AND RELIGION; VALUE,

CIENTIFIC

Bibliography

Drengson, Alan. The Practice of Technology: Exploring

Technology, Ecophilosophy, and Spiritual Disciplines

for Vital Links. Albany: State University of New York

Press, 1995.

Ellul, Jacques. The Technological Society, trans. John

Wilkinson. New York: Vintage, 1964.

Feenberg, Andrew. Critical Theory of Technology. New

York: Oxford University Press, 1991.

Ferkiss, Victor. Technological Man: The Myth and the Re-

ality. New York: New American Library, 1969.

Ferré, Frederick. Philosophy of Technology. Athens: Uni-

versity of Georgia Press, 1995.

Fromm, Erich. The Revolution of Hope: Toward a Human-

ized Technology. New York: Harper, 1968.

Gendron, Bernard. Technology and the Human Condi-

tion. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1977.

Heidegger, Martin. The Question Concerning Technology

and Other Essays, trans. William Lovitt. New York:

Harper, 1977.

Ihde, Don. Existential Technics. Albany: State University

of New York Press, 1983.

Illich, Ivan. Tools for Conviviality. New York: Harper, 1973.

Leiss, William. Under Technology’s Thumb. Montreal, Que-

bec, and Kingston, Ont.: McGill-Queens University

Press, 1990.

Marcuse, Herbert. One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the

Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society. Boston: Bea-

con Press, 1964.

Mitcham, Carl, and Mackey, Robert, eds. Philosophy and

Technology: Readings in the Philosophical Problems

of Technology. New York: Free Press, 1972.

Pacey, Arnold. The Culture of Technology. Cambridge,

Mass.: MIT Press, 1983.

Schuurman, Egbert. Technology and the Future: A Philo-

sophical Challenge, trans. Herbert Donald Morton.

Toronto, Ont.: Wedge Publishing Foundation, 1980.

Winner, Langdon. Autonomous Technology: Technics-out-

of-Control as a Theme in Political Thought. Cam-

bridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1977.

FREDERICK FERRÉ

TECHNOLOGY AND ETHICS

If the concept of technology includes human arts

and crafts, generally, not simply the science-led

high technology of modern times, then the influ-

ence of technology precedes the dawn of history

itself. This entry assumes the more inclusive sense,

taking implemented intelligent practical purpose as

key to the subject, thus binding both traditional

and high technologies into a common domain for

ethical assessment.

Ethical assessment itself tends to divide into

two great approaches. One tradition looks prima-

rily to the consequences of what is being evalu-

ated. Is an action or policy (or habit or trait of

character, etc.) likely to produce good results? If so,

on this tradition, the action is ethically right,

morally to be approved, because of its conse-

quences. The other tradition focuses primarily on

the type of action or policy under consideration,

whether it conforms to a rule that defines what is

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right. If so, the action reflects what is morally to be

approved, regardless of its consequences.

It is clear that these approaches to ethical as-

sessment can and often do argue past one another.

The first position, here called outcome-ethics (also

often called teleological or consequentialist ethics),

may declare that policy P does no good, while the

second position, here called rule-ethics (also often

called deontological ethics), may insist that policy

P flows inescapably from accepted rule R. Both

may be correct in what they hold. But if they come

to opposing views on the ethical wrongness or

rightness of P, they have missed each other’s point.

Rule-ethics is not interested in outcomes but in the

principle of the thing; outcome-ethics is impatient

with abstract principles, when concrete helps and

harms are at stake.

Reconciling ethical methods

Ethical assessment of technology is made still more

difficult because of tensions within the approaches

themselves. Outcome-ethics is based on maximiz-

ing good, but differences abound on defining this

key term. Pleasure, honor, well-functioning, and

so on, are all possible candidates, but different def-

initions would call for different policies and would

cast different ethical light on the technological

means for achieving them. Defining the good in

terms of honor, for example, might give a positive

ethical assessment to the erection of catapults and

the casting of cannon, while defining it in terms of

pleasure might call for a more negative stance to-

ward the implements of war.

Another difficulty for outcome-ethics, however

the good is defined, is in determining when the

ethically relevant outcome has come out. Events

roll on, and a positive situation (e.g., avoiding the

pains of battle) may be supplanted by a negative

one (e.g., falling under an oppressive conqueror),

which in turn leads endlessly to others. The open-

ness of the future seems to make an ethical verdict

on any outcome only provisional.

If the future is a problem for outcome-ethics,

so also is the past. Taken literally, the measuring of

ethical worth by future outcomes alone seems to

leave the past without ethical significance. A prom-

ise once made would need continual reevaluation

by changing future probabilities. Destructive acts

in the past should be punished, if at all, only by

reference to future good to be achieved; good

deeds, once done, should be rewarded, if at all,

only by looking toward future results.

These counterintuitive consequences are es-

caped by rule-ethics, which does not need a prior

concept of good for its concept of right, does not

make its ethical judgments hostage to a receding

future, and is not required to ignore ethical obliga-

tions from the past. But there are analogous

equally deep problems for rule-ethics, if taken

alone. First, there are many disagreements within

this approach as to which rules should rule. Even

excluding, in this entry, many conflicting claims of

divine commands, profound disagreements may

be expected on the source and authority of prof-

fered ethical principles. Do they rise from an in-

nate intuition? From societal enculturation? From a

rational imperative? How much weight should

these principles, given their sources, command?

How general or specific should ethical rules be?

The more they are detailed and specific, the more

particular circumstances—even outcomes—domi-

nate the rules; the more they are general and ab-

stract, the more ethics loses touch with the con-

crete particularities of life. Rule-ethics gains much

of its power from its principled distance from par-

ticular circumstances, but such distance makes it

vulnerable to the temptations of fanaticism.

Somehow the clashing approaches to ethical

assessment need to be reconciled if past technolog-

ical decisions are to be adequately evaluated and

future policies properly assessed. Technological im-

plements are means to practical purposes. Since

means are always aimed at ends, consequences

must count in technological ethics. But also, since

purposes can be formulated in terms of general mo-

tives, norms must also be applicable to technology.

A balance might be struck by acknowledging

that concrete outcomes are the matter of ethical

concern, while general rules constitute its form.

Outcome-ethics could recognize that among alter-

native outcomes, some might be deeply unfair in

their distribution of the good, and these would be

worse outcomes than more equitable ones. But

fairness is not simply one more addition to the

good; it is a principle or rule on how the good

should be spread. Cost-benefit analyses of techno-

logical outcomes are weak if they ignore the ques-

tion of who bears the costs and who enjoys the

benefits, and whether these are justly propor-

tioned. Further, outcome-ethics needs to consider

rights and wrongs of past technological decisions,

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even if nothing can be done about them any

longer. Recognizing mistakes in the past and for-

mulating guidelines to help avoid similar mistakes

in the future, is an important ethical activity utiliz-

ing norms and principles, not just predictions. In

these ways outcome-ethics (in order to do its own

chosen job well) needs to learn from rule-ethics.

Reciprocally, rule-ethics needs to learn from

outcome-ethics if it is to remain relevant to the

fears and hopes that drive technological activity.

Consequences do matter ethically to real people.

Rules must not be allowed to blind moral concern

from seeing concrete pains. Rules need to be re-

sponsive. This is especially obvious in the context

of high technology, where possibilities of doing

things become practical for the first time. When

entirely new types of doing are contemplated, ex-

isting rule-books may not be adequate for guid-

ance. This does not mean that rules are not rele-

vant. But rules need to be extended, amended, and

reviewed in light of novel facts and unprecedented

possibilities. Modern technology, with its radical

novelties, makes this extension of traditional ethics

(both outcome- and rule-ethics) vital.

Examining historical cases

Over the course of human history, the outcomes

sought by technological implements reflect every

kind of practical good (real, imagined, or perverse)

that human beings are capable of craving. Food,

shelter, the death of enemies, the docility of slaves,

accurate records—a list without end—have been

sufficiently valued so that intelligence has been put

to work creating artifacts to secure them. For one

grisly example, some medieval cities in Europe

maintain so-called police museums displaying the

technologies of punishments once meted out to

malefactors. Cleverly devised implements of tor-

ture, including metal seats for roasting, iron claws

for tearing, racks for dislocating, were the embod-

iment of purposeful design in quest of something

taken by many in that society as a public good. We

may shudder today at these artifacts, and question

whether those goals of inflicting extreme pain

were really good, or whether the larger good of

public order really required such measures, just as

it is possible to shudder and ask the same ques-

tions about the practical intelligence and values

embodied in our publicly approved electric chairs,

gas chambers, and paraphernalia of lethal injec-

tion. Here we encounter the appropriate critical

task of technological ethics. Using the methods of

outcome-ethics, one needs to examine whether the

consequences sought can really be approved as

good over the longest anticipated time horizon,

and if so, whether in fact the means proposed are

the best ones for achieving these critically exam-

ined results. At the same time, using the methods

of rule-ethics, one must ask whether the principle

of fairness is being served in distributing the vari-

ous goods and ills concerned, whether the type of

action contemplated falls under clearly stated and

approved principles, whether these specific princi-

ples can be further justified by a hierarchical order

of still more general norms, and whether this more

comprehensive set of interlocking norms itself is

clear, consistent, adequate to the larger circum-

stances, and coherently defensible to a thoughtful,

unbiased judge.

A famous rejection of industrial technology oc-

curred in the early nineteenth century in northern

England, when the Luddites, followers of a (possi-

bly mythical) Ned Ludd—purportedly a home

weaver displaced by new factory-based ma-

chines—smashed the power looms that threatened

their ways of life. It is likely that this direct action

was motivated more by economic than ethical val-

ues, and it was put down by gunfire and hangings,

but many ethical issues are raised. What were the

ethically relevant consequences of the shift from

home industry to the factory system? One conse-

quence was greatly increased volume of produc-

tion, a prima facie good. Another was the replace-

ment of a society of small producers, owners of

their own looms, with a laboring class, required to

sell their services to others who owned the means

of production. This outcome is prima facie nega-

tive, involving a decrease of dignity, loss of cohe-

sion in family life, and a corresponding increase in

alienation and insecurity. The factory system, and

eventually the assembly line, produce mixed con-

sequences. Ethical examination needs to sort these

out, and weigh them. In terms of principle, as well,

there are profound issues of involuntary social

change forced by technological efficiencies. To

what extent should the autonomy of persons to

choose their basic conditions of life be honored

above the promise of greater economic productiv-

ity? On whom will the burdens fall when technol-

ogy uproots life? Will those who bear these bur-

dens receive a fair share of the new rewards, or

will these flow disproportionately to others?

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Should society provide institutional opportunities

for all the people involved to discuss and decide

these ethically vital questions? Can any society that

fails to do so consider itself genuinely democratic?

These questions reveal a serious general prob-

lem in technological ethics: the arrival of many rev-

olutionary changes as faits accompli. Well before

the appearance of high technologies, simple trial-

and-error discoveries deeply altered valued condi-

tions of life before they could be prevented or

even discussed. Alfred Nobel (1833–1896) was

keenly aware of how much his invention of dyna-

mite would shake the world. The invention itself,

in 1867, was wholly in the craft-tradition, a chance

discovery that nitroglycerine could be absorbed by

a certain porous siliceous earth and thus be made

much safer to use. Various types of dynamite were

used in blasting tunnels and mines, as well as in

cutting canals, and building railbeds and roads.

The consequences of these applications deserve

analysis as ethically quite mixed, socially and envi-

ronmentally, but of course the most spectacular

use of the high explosives stemming from Nobel’s

invention was in war. Nobel himself established his

prizes, including the Peace Prize, to coax the world

toward better outcomes. He even dared to hope

that the power of dynamite would make future

wars unthinkable. In this he was sadly mistaken.

Assessing contemporary challenges

The leap from chemical high explosives to high

nuclear technology may on the surface seem short,

but in fact it represents a qualitative change. The

high explosives of the nineteenth century were

grounded in the same tradition of craft advance-

ment that had characterized human technique from

prehistoric times. A lucky empirical discovery was

noted, remembered, repeated, applied, extended,

and exploited—a paradigm instance of excellent

practical reasoning. The atom bomb, in contrast,

had to await a spectacular achievement in theoret-

ical reasoning about nature even to be conceived.

Specifically, a revolutionary change in understand-

ing the relationship between matter and energy,

wrought in the mathematical imagination of Albert

Einstein (1879–1955), and stated in his famous en-

ergy-mass equation, E = mc

, was a necessary con-

dition for even recognizing the phenomenon of

nuclear fission energy release when it occurred in

German laboratories in 1938, and certainly also for

seeking fission energy as a practical goal. Einstein

himself was skeptical of this practical possibility,

when first alerted to it in 1939 by Niels Bohr

(1885–1962), but he was soon convinced by fur-

ther experiments conducted immediately for him at

Columbia University. Later in the same year, Ein-

stein signed a letter to President Franklin D. Roo-

sevelt alerting him to the danger of allowing Ger-

man scientists to be first in unlocking the huge

energies predicted by his theory. From this warn-

ing sprang the Manhattan Project, at that date the

largest science-led technological project ever

launched. The ethical ambiguities of the atom

bomb, its use in the war against Japan and its role

in deterring a third world war in the twentieth cen-

tury, have been much discussed. Conflicting esti-

mates of the consequences for good or ill, con-

flicting identification of the relevant ethical

principles involved, are well known. Although of a

new type, as offspring of theoretical intelligence,

and of new scales in magnitude and urgency, nu-

clear bomb-making is subject to all the old ethical

concerns.

What adds a special challenge for ethical as-

sessment after the rise of theory-led technology is

a new responsibility of assessing major technolog-

ical innovations after they are conceived in princi-

ple but before they are born in practice. Technol-

ogy policy can be ethically deliberated. Two

examples will serve to illustrate.

Shifting from nuclear fission to fusion, we may

assess the still-unrealized technology of electrical

energy production by controlled thermonuclear re-

action. In 1939, the hitherto mysterious source of

the sun’s prodigious energy output began to be un-

derstood theoretically as coming from energy re-

leased in a process by which four hydrogen nuclei

are joined, when enormously high pressures and

temperatures overcome electrical charge repulsion,

thus forming one helium nucleus. This source is

quite different in principle from the nuclear energies

released when a heavy nucleus, such as the isotope

uranium-235, splits into lighter nuclei. The two dis-

tinct processes are spectacularly combined in ther-

monuclear (so-called hydrogen) bombs, when the

enormous but uncontrolled heat and pressure of a

fission reaction forms the momentary star-like envi-

ronment in which heavy hydrogen isotopes deu-

terium and tritium are forced to fuse into helium.

The theoretical lure to create useful electrical

energy from a controlled fusion process is strong.

The fuel, primarily deuterium, is plentiful, widely

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