Introduces contemporary American philosophy of technology through six of its leading figures. The six American philosophers of technology whose work is profiled in this clear and concise introduction to the field―Albert Borgmann, Hubert Dreyfus, Andrew Feenberg, Donna Haraway, Don Ihde, and Langdon Winner―represent a new, empirical direction in the philosophical study of technology that has developed mainly in North America. In place of the grand philosophical schemes of the classical generation of European philosophers of technology (including Martin Heidgger, Jacques Ellul, and Hans Jonas), the contemporary American generation addresses concrete technological practices and the co-evolution of technology and society in modern culture. Six Dutch philosophers associated with Twente University survey and critique the full scope and development of their American colleagues’ work, often illustrating shifts from earlier to more recent interests. Individual chapters focus on Borgmann’s engagement with technology and everyday life; Dreyfus’s work on the limits of artificial intelligence; Feenberg’s perspectives on the cultural and social possibilities opened by technologies; Haraway’s conception of the cyborg and its attendant blurring of boundaries; Ihde’s explorations of the place of technology in the lifeworld; and Winner’s fascination with the moral and political implications of modern technologies. American Philosophy of Technology offers an insightful and readable introduction to this new and distinctly American philosophical turn.Contributors are Hans Achterhuis, Philip Brey, René Munnik, Martijntje Smits, Pieter Tijmes, and Peter-Paul Verbeek. (view table of contents)

philosophers with both hermeneutic-phenomenological and scientific back­ grounds (such as Heelan, Ihde, Theodore Kisiel, Joseph Kockelmans) have begun to read the work of Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Gadamer, and others as also entailing a positive re-evaluation of practices of the natural sciences. A few professional scientists with a scholarly background in hermeneutic­ phenomenological philosophy (among whom is Martin Eger) have begun to do the same. A number of more mainstream philosophers of science are utilizing hermeneutical insights effectively and perceptively (Joseph Rouse), while many sociologically-trained scholars who speak with the terminolo­ gy and often the assumptions of analytic philosophy reveal in their work a deep appreciation for the hermeneutical insight into the nature of his tori­ cally situated knowledge (Harry Collins, Bruno Latour, Andrew Pickering, Simon Schaffer, Steve Shapin and others inftuenced by social constructivism). of these initiatives manifest the rediscovery that all dis course is situat­ All ed culturally and historically. The days are gone when it could be seriously 2 debated whether a hermeneutical perspective on the natural sciences exists. The challenge remains today to understand more explicitly the hermeneutical dimension of the natural sciences in terms of an overarching hermeneutic of all knowledge.

An illuminating portrait of J. Robert Oppenheimer chronicles the story of one of the most charismatic and enigmatic figures of modern physics, from his precocious youth to his seminal role in developing the first atomic bomb, and beyond.

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Discusses the author's experiences with Oppenheimer at Los Alamos (view table of contents)

A philosopher and historian creates a thought-provoking odyssey through two millennia of scientific accomplishment, capturing ten key experiments that changed the world forever, from Eratosthenes's first measurement of Earth's circumference, to Foucault's pendulum, to Galileo's study of the speed of falling bodies, to the realm of quantum mechanics. Reprint. 10,000 first printing.