Cris Crissman's Library tagged no_tag →  View Popular

I would add to Jarratt’s point the intimate connection between technology and practice. In the case of the sophists, their use of writing and their views on technology were intimately tied to their intellectual program and to their reception by aristocrats such as Plato. The platonic system not only separates practice off from theory, it separates technology off from theory.{13} Plato did not merely attack the sophistic emphasis on teaching and social involvement; he also attacked the technological innovation of writing. Writing, in the time of Plato, was the Greek equivalent of distance education, and Plato viewed it as haughtily as many academics view distance education today.{14} I would argue, in fact, that the “democratic political content” of the sophistic program, and the need to re-examine the relationship between theory and practice, are inextricably tied to technology. Technology, I will argue, cannot be separated from theory or politics any more than teaching can. One reason that a reconsideration of Greek thought in the 5th century is relevant is that their society was under the influence of a radical new technology, writing, in a manner comparable to the influence of the computer on our own society. In this context, Dewey’s critique of Plato is revealing because it analyzes how theory, practice, technology and politics played out in the time of Plato.

For Dewey, then, technology is not different in kind from theory. The two are inextricably linked, and both have as their goals the resolution of practical problems. Dewey claims that the long tradition of dualism with respect to both body/mind, theory/technology and theory/practice can be traced to this mislocation of technology by ancient Greek philosophers. As Hickman notes, from a pragmatist perspective knowing, knowledge, theories, and metaphysical systems are themselves technological artifacts or tools, and much of pragmatism is an attempt to replace such traditional theories of knowledge with theories of inquiry. One can see, then, how much the traditionally-divided histories of thought and theory, on the one hand, and practice and technology, on the other hand, would be collapsed, for on the pragmatist view such things as theories, practices, and printing presses are all of a kind (Hickman, Dewey’s Pragmatic Technology 18-19).