Philosophy of Technology in Spanish Speaking Countries ed. by Carl Mitcham

Abstract

178 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE impossible to say which will loom largest in the future” (p. 319). This remarkable, if ambiguous, volume nevertheless remains a vital contri­ bution to assessing that future, one that deserves the attention of all who would think as clearly and deeply as possible about the character and consequences of our technological world. Carl Mitcham Dr. Mitcham is Hennebach Visiting Professor in Humanities at the Colorado School of Mines. His most recent book is Thinking through Technology: The Path between Engi­ neering and Philosophy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994). Philosophy of Technology in Spanish Speaking Countries. Edited by Carl Mitcham. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1993. Pp. xxxvi + 318; notes, index. $142.00. Philosophy of Technology in Spanish Speaking Countries is a collection of essays intended as an introduction for English-speaking readers to the results of philosophical reflection on technology and technologi­ cal issues in Spain and Latin America. Unlike most edited volumes, this book is both directly and indirectly the fruit of the editor’s per­ sistent and well-known efforts to bridge the linguistic and cultural gap between Anglo-Saxon and Hispanic philosophical traditions. Some of the articles are contributions to recent international enter­ prises—conferences and monographic issues of journals—in which Carl Mitcham has played an important organizational role, and the remainder have been selected partly as the result of his efforts in studying the several stems of today’s philosophy of technology and their roots. The main characteristic of this book, as might have been expected, is its heterogeneity. Since Mitcham collected articles not written ex professo for this volume but already written—and most already pub­ lished—in Spanish, the differences in scope, length, and even date of composition are significant. We find analytical studies of technology among more metaphysically oriented ones. Some of the authors deal with issues of technological development in Latin America, while oth­ ers focus on technology as a rather universal phenomenon, without a special concern for its social and cultural context. Only a handful of essays deal with particular technologies, while most treat technol­ ogy in the abstract, without reference to specific artifacts or techno­ logical systems, or even particular time periods. Most of the authors show no interest at all in pursuing a historically informed philosophi­ cal reflection, nor do they, in my opinion, offer much of interest to historians of technology who do not have a strong concern for philosophical issues. The editor grouped the essays according to the geographical origin of the authors. Twenty articles come from what Mitcham calls the five centers of reflection on technology in Spanish-speaking coun­ TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 179 tries: Chile, Costa Rica, Mexico, Spain, and Venezuela. The last four essays come from “Other Americas,” including the United States. The arrangement is related to what is perhaps the main goal: to stress diversity as the most important achievement of this volume, in an attempt to show the international character of the philosophy of tech­ nology. I do not mean to deny such a diversity, which is certainly a valuable thing. But I have some quibbles as to the arrangement of the articles and the overall quality of the contributions. The geographically based arrangement tends to obscure a fundamental distinction between two different kinds of essays: some, which we might call situated approaches to the technological phenomenon, criticize technologyrelated concepts such as “development” and/or analyze the implica­ tions of Western technology for Latin America—see, for instance, the articles by Marcos García de la Huerta, Luis Camacho, and Leopoldo Molina. Other articles, whether they are critical of technological de­ velopments or not, avoid any explicit grounding in a Latin American experience. In my opinion, the volume would have benefited from a greater attention to this dichotomy in the editor’s introduction. In a time when multiculturalism, knowledge- and technology-transfer, and science and technology in the periphery are becoming important topics in science and technology studies, this would have been a good opportunity to take on these issues. What lies beyond the influence of the editor is the quality of the contributions, which I find in general mediocre. For one thing...