Consideration of “Philosophy of Technology” in Planning for the Country Engineering Education: An Obligation

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Abstract

“Philosophy of technology” is a new branch of the human knowledge which with this specific title has only 30 or 40 years old in the literature of the world thinkers. However, the “technology” is one of the modern world phenomena, which from 19th century drew the attention of the thinkers and was analyzed by romantists, Marx and Heidegger and in 20th century was considered more but the using of the specific title of “Philosophy of technology” was spread out from the 70th decade. “Philosophy of technology” focuses on the role of technology in human knowledge, activities and environment. The human makes the technology, forms it and is also affected by it. The technologies which surrounded our world change our attitude, life and culture. Understanding, evaluation and criticizing of these mutual effects on the individual, social and political life is one of the aims of “Philosophy of technology”. This shows the importance of the introduction of “Philosophy of technology” to the engineering students at least as an arbitrary course and for this; the big universities of the U.S. and Europe put this subject among the courses of not only the humanity studies such as philosophy sociology, anthropology and ecology, but also the science and technology. Fortunately, this progress is gradually shown in our country as well. This article wants to explain more the “what” and “why” of the “Philosophy of technology” for engineering students and tries to open the main questions that the technology confronts to in challenge with metaphysics, politics and so on.

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