Depending on how one construes the kinship relations, technology has been either the stepchild of philosophy or its grandfather. In either case, technology has not been taken into the bosom of the family, but has had to wait for attention, care and feeding, while the more unclear elements - science, art, politics, ethics - were being nurtured (or cleaned up). Don Ihde puts technology in the mid…
Expanding Hermeneutics examines the development of interpretation theory, emphasizing how science in practice involves and implicates interpretive processes. Ihde argues that the sciences have developed a sophisticated visual hermeneutics that produces evidence by means of imaging, visual displays, and visualizations. From this vantage point, Ihde demonstrates how interpretation is built into t…
With Existential Technics, Don Ihde advances his reflections on the role technology plays in human life. Heretofore primarily the province of Continental thinkers, philosophy of technology is a growing preoccupation of North American philosophers. This collection of essays is a philosophical reflection on and critique of human experience from a clearly American perspective guided by phenomenolo…
Husserl's Missing Technologies looks at the early-twentieth-century "classical" phenomenology of Edmund Husserl, both in the light of the philosophy of science of his time, and retrospectively at his philosophy from a contemporary "postphenomenology." Of central interest are his infrequent comments upon technologies and especially scientific instruments such as the telescope and microscope. Tog…
A revised form of phenomenology, postphenomenology aims to overcome the limitations of subjectivism and its largely dystopian stance toward science and technology. Timely and insightful, this book provides a useful introduction to postphenomenology, asking how it can effectively transform classical phenomenology into a new and concrete reflection upon technoscience. Tracing the modern history o…
While some people think that our new technologies which texture our lifeworld disembody human experience, and while others think that eventually we will be able to 'upload' our very embodiment into these technologies, this collection of chapters takes a close postphenomenological account of a myriad of these technologies as we interface with them. Beginning with cinema and the "Matrix Trilogy,"…
Even before we humans became modern as homo sapiens we were busy inventing technologies. But our technologies also invent us as humans. And as we reflect upon this process, too often our interpretations have taken utopian or dystopian directions: our technologies will make life infinitely better and lead us into utopian realms, or our technologies will condemn us to alienation or even destroy o…
Dr. Ihde brings an enlightening and deeply humanistic perspective to major technological developments, both past and present." ―Science Books & Films "Don Ihde is a pleasure to read. . . . The material is full of nice suggestions and details, empirical materials, fun variations which engage the reader in the work . . . the overall points almost sneak up on you, they are so gently and gradu…