Technology and science epistemology, rationality and the empirical turn

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Today there is a deep and growing interest in understanding technology and its role in society. We witness an immense number of philosophical studies of technology covering a wide range of issues such as the connection and difference between science and technology, the discrepancy between the idea of scientific progress and technological development, and the nature of technology itself. For a long time the paradigm of knowledge was located in the natural sciences. Consequently, technology was perceived as "applied science". Today the increased interest in technologies has led to philosophical analysis of the epistemological basis of engineering knowledge and the study of its particular development. Now we find that the direct dependence of technologies upon science is put in question in favour of various accounts of their interdependence and entangled histories. At the Copenhagen Conference on the Philosophy of Technology (13-15 October, 2005), a number of leading scholars on philosophy of technology and engineering were gathered around the common interest in these and related questions. They had been asked in advance to present their latest views upon and to discuss the interrelationship between scientific knowledge and technological knowledge, to locate paradigms and trace some of the original and innovative trends in the philosophy of engineering and technology today. In this special edition of Synthese we present the captivating outcome of this unique meeting. To facilitate the understanding and encourage the discussion of the contributions, we have decided to present the content under the following three headlines: Engineering Knowledge, Technological Change After the Empirical Turn and Limits to Scientific and Technological Rationality.