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The Greek Concepts of “Nature” and “Techn “Technique ique”” Wolfgang Schadewaldt The two concepts “nature” and “technique” – whether taken separately or as mutually interrelated – present themselves to public consciousness with a particular urgency at the the present time. During the past generag eneration it seemed that the overwhelming discoveries of science would lead to a totally new conception of nature, while industrial indus trial technique or technology, building upon the discoveries of science at the same time that it makes them possible, is in the process of bringing about a far-reaching transformation of the whole of human existence. Thus both concepts, nature and technique, are becoming crucial issues for the thinking of our age. Yet both have their origins in ancient Greece, and like all ancient Greek concepts, are not merely words but forms of thought, categories, schemes, and ways of looking at what is, by which the Greeks two and a half millenia ago sought to explain explai n the oncoming reality and to master it by thought. Perhaps in this matter it would be worthwhile to use philological studies to go to the root of the ideas id eas of “nature” and “technique,” “technique,” and from their origins to illuminate things which have become commonplace, in fact only too commonplace, in our everyday existence.
The Concept C oncept of “Nature” among the Greeks 1 The word “nature,” by which we generally designate the totality of all things existing around us (sometimes including man, at other times excluding him) is the Latin word which practically all European languages have adopted. But the conception is Greek and lies in the word phýsis, which the Romans rendered by their word natura .The fact that the European nations and (so far as I know) other languages hardly had any word of their own to rival r ival it, is of some significance; it witnesses the uniqueness of the Greek conception of the world involved in natura-phýsis, as well as the effectiveness of this view of the world. In Latin natura (derived from nasci , “to be born”) originally belonged to the language of the farmer and the breeder who used natura in a concrete way to designate the uterine orifice of a female quadruped. 1 Designating the place through which birth happens and from which the succession succes sion of births proceeds, natura was
Wolfgang Schadewaldt, “The Concepts of ‘Nature’ and ‘Technique’ according to the Greeks,” trans. William Carroll, in Research in Philosophy and Technology 2, ed. Carl Mitcham and Robert Mackey (1979), pp. 159–171. Reprinted by kind permission of the author.
Philosophy of Technology: The Technological Technological Condition: An Anthology, Second Edition. Edited by Robert C. Scharff and Val Dusek.
© 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2014 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
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used quite early to translate the Greek phýsis, so that its original concrete meaning was expanded to include a new general content. As such it designated the creative origin of everything which is and, in another sense, the inborn character, because it also determines the constitution of the thing brought forth.
2 When we turn to the root word phýsis, it must first be pointed out that the Greek term is never used, as “nature” now is in common speech and scientific ter minology, to designate a realm of objects. Phýsis is never that “nature” out there where people make Sunday excursions, “in” which this and that occurs or this and that is such and such. Phýsis comes from the Greek verb phýo, which means something like “bring-forth,” “put forth,” “make to grow,” chiefly in the botanical realm where the tree puts forth leaves, blossoms, branches, and then in the zoological realm in respect to hair, wool, wings, horns. Moreover, the noun phýsis, like all Greek constructions with -sis [similar to English gerunds], does not mean some object or material thing, but a comingto-pass, an event, a directing activity, a Wesen [being or essence] – if we understand this word in its original active meaning, which is preserved in verwesen [to administer, manage]. Thus in the most general sense phýsis means a process of coming-to-be or originating – génesis as the Greeks expressed it, something which was the object of inquiry for those who first thought about nature – but an originating process and a coming-to-be as is to be found exhibited in the phenomena of growing and putting forth. The characteristic of growth is that it always comes about from something else. That is, all growing is a growingforth, and in the last analysis presupposes a common origin – the uterine orifice of phýsis-natura. Again it is characteristic of the coming-to-be process of growth that out of something already formed it always tends toward some new form and shape. This entire comingto-be and directing activity of phýsis comes about by its own agency, so that the source of that movement which is this coming-to-be lies in the thing itself which comes-to-be. Aristotle also deliberated over phýsis with that extraordinary clarity which was his great strength. On the basis of previous linguistic usage he advanced, in his famous definition of phýsis,2 the following three closely connected meanings of nature.
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Phýsis for Aristotle first meant broadly the coming-tobe and being or essence [ Wesen] of all things which are,
which as such bear within themselves the source of motion – whereas the processes of coming-to-be and production in technique do not proceed by their own agency, but are initiated at some point by man. Accordingly, not only the realm of life (i.e. plant and animal organisms) belongs to phýsis, but also that of chemical, physical, and atomic changes on earth as well as in the farthest reaches of the cosmos, all of which, like the cosmos in its entirety, are self-moved – or, possibly, originate from a “first mover,” which Aristotle assumes in his theology and which for him is the deity. Secondly, phýsis-natura is for Aristotle the primary, as yet undifferentiated material ground of all coming-to-be, out of which genesis and growth come about, hence the elements understood as the primal matter ( próte hýle ) which persists in all the particularizations of the things which emerge out of it. This meaning takes account of the fact that the directing activity and the being or essence of phýsis always comes about from a material substrate, which we must not, however, understand as inert matter. But this meaning points toward another. To complement the notion of a material ground from which the growth and coming-to-be of phýsis comes about, the concepts of form and shape ( eîdos and morphe ) enter in. These are the end and purpose, the télos, of all comingto-be in nature. For Aristotle and the Greeks, the whole self-movement of nature is not simply effected in the sense of being caused, but ordered or directed in a purposeful manner. At one point Aristotle remarks unequivocally that there are these two kinds of causality in nature, and that when one speaks of nature one must at least try to take account of both, whereas all who fail to do this have actually said nothing about nature.3 In accordance with this general view the individual natural object also has of itself its own phýsis or nature in that it has its specific growth – that is, by virtue of the above mentioned self-movement it has proceeded from the elemental material ground which also persists in the specific character of the individual natural object; and it actualizes itself in final form, for instance, in the fullygrown mature state of a plant or animal. And this final form, the entelechy, is so decisive for the organism that a natural object can only be said “to have its nature” when it attains to this final form. Henceforward, in Greek, “nature” can go on to designate the established, permanent, essential form and fundamental character of any thing which is.
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Timaeus, derived the structure of the “world-soul” which
3 It is not possible in these few pages to pursue the entire history of the concept and the idea of phýsis in all its diverse ramifications. But at least let it be stressed that, in the venerable place where we first meet the word it designates, in a remarkably characteristic fashion, the living growth-form or growth of a plant. In the Tenth Book of the Odyssey,4 the god Hermes plucks the magic herb moly from the ground to give it to Odysseus. “And he showed him its phýsis” the poet says. “It was black at the root, and like milk were its blossoms.” The root and blossoms, the bottom and top of the plant, stand for its entire build; and this “build,” the living structure, the growth-form is precisely the phýsis which the god shows to the hero in a perfectly matter-of-fact way. Conceiving phýsis to be a living as well as formed growth the Greeks further perceived it as a mysterious, living, directive order in particular things which have of themselves come into being – something which becomes a standard for anyone who, like Heraclitus, seeks to analyze and explain each particular thing according to its nature (katá phýsin). Heraclitus who in the fluent reciprocity of opposites finds proportionality, lógos, as that which rules and endures, can accordingly arrive at the proposition that “Phýsis loves to conceal herself.”5 That is, its lawlike, living order is always “behind” everything, no matter how much we may strip it down. Its directing activity can be exhibited yet not fathomed; phýsis is an “open mystery.” For the rest, it is the Greek physicians particularly who, on the basis of their experience with the human organism, have contributed to the elaboration of the concept of phýsis. For instance, one of them denies that a certain illness, epilepsy, is of a particularly divine origin. “Illnesses,” he says, “are all divine as much as human, but each nevertheless has its own living laws, phýsis, and thus may also be conquered by the physician’s art.” 6 A renowned physician, in agreement with this, expressed his conviction “that one cannot acquire a more exact knowledge concerning nature from anywhere else than from medicine.”7 Later, phýsis is extended to the totality of what is, the entire visible kosmos which, is phýsis in its totality (hóle phýsis) or phýsis of existing things (phýsis tôn ónton), now emerges not only as kósmos, order, but precisely as living growth, striving from form to form. The Pythagoreans, guided by observations of musical phenomena, established number and symmetry as the ultimate ground of this ontological growth, and then upon this foundation Plato, in the dialogue of his old age,
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penetrates and embraces the cosmos as well as the structure of the four elements from fundamental mathematical forms and symmetries. He thus founded that mathematical view of nature which, in scientifically rendered form, has proven so extraordinarily successful in contemporary science and technology. For the Greeks phýsis in its “necessity” emerges as divine and superior to all human laws; 8 one even speaks of a “law of phýsis”9 Aristotle also observes that phýsis gives evidence of divine causation,10 and says that “everything which is by nature, bears in itself something divine.”11 And in what was for the Greeks a very characteristic as well as instructive union of empirical observation of natural phenomena with the contemplation of their rational activity, this soberly observant thinker, especially in his writings on natural science, pursues the “activity” of nature when he remarks that it “is architectonic;” that it creates, orders, designs; 12 that it teaches, and especially gives instruction to technique; that there is nothing unordered in its domain; 13 that it shuns the unlimited;14 that is predominates as the creative power in each individual thing, plant and living creature;15 that it is provident,16 and always fashions “for the sake of” something; 17 that it fashions by correct reasoning (eulógos);18 that “like god” it makes nothing at random,19 nor creates anything accidentally, superfluously, purposelessly;20 that it does not proceed by episodes like bad tragedy,”21 but strives in everything for what is beneficial22 and has the best in view. 23 It is an activity of directing which as a comprehensive and purposeful directing that creates from form to form is, Aristotle says, ultimately “dependent upon god as its prime mover.”24 Man is placed into the totality of this directing activity of phýsis. Thus the conception of phýsis as a self-moved process of creating from form to form also influences the domains of ethics and aesthetics, and Aristotle can say that nothing which is contrary to nature can be good (“right”).25 Heraclitus can put forth the significant proposition that “Sound thinking is man’s greatest power, and his highest aptitude consists in the fact that he has the capacity to say what is, and that he can fashion creatively by hearkening to nature.”26 As we know, Heraclitus strongly influenced later Stoic philosophy which regarded all of nature as penetrated by the divine lógos, and established as a guideline for the upright and blessed life the dictum that one must live “in harmony with nature,” a principle which has influenced the most diverse kinds of naturalistic ethics in the modern period.
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4 The Greek view of nature which has been generally described became the foundation of our modern conception of nature when in the Renaissance people turned anew to antiquity and to its cosmological thought. But a few things had happened in the meantime. And so it came about that our modern conception of nature more and more abandoned the comprehensive wholeness of the ancient Greek phýsis, the wholeness and unity of form and motion, law and life, causality and purpose; and that chiefly in developing the modern dualism between thought and extension we have separated nature and spirit, nature and freedom, the I and the world, subject and object, from one another. We have taken man out of nature, placed him over and against it, and reduced the consequently profaned nature to a mere object of human knowledge. Goethe, who with his notion of the “imprinted From which unfolds itself through living,” understood the ancient phýsis better than anyone else, and was thinking of this modern reduction when in his later years he once lamented the fact “that Nature, who makes us to create, is no longer Nature at all, but a being completely different from that with which the Greeks were occupied.”27 This reduction of nature to what is calculable has, as is plain to see, proven to be extraordinarily successful. It has brought us the most astounding discoveries, and placed in our hands the greatest means of power – although at the cost of an impoverishment that is hard to estimate. Today, however, we are experiencing how our most advanced science, following its own rigorous development of problems is in the process of overcoming this dualism of subject and object and is necessarily drawing man, as the observing subject, back into the act of nature’s transition into appearance and knowledge.28 And thus it almost seems as if we have attained to a point higher on the spiral approaching the Greeks’ view of phýsis, from which even the things set forth here may take on some new actuality.
The Concept of “Technique” among the Greeks 1 By its very etymology the concept of technique points more directly than that of nature to its origin in the language, thought, and world-view of the Greeks.
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To begin with etymology, we find at the very beginning an Indo-European stem that was pronounced approximately tekp, and meant “woodwork” or “carpentry.” It appears in Latin in the word for weave, texo (hence our “textile”); while Old High German dehsala. “hatchet,” and Middle High German dehsen, “to break flax,” go back to the same stem. In ancient Greek the stem appears early in tékton, the “master builder” and “carpenter,” whom Homer already knows and honors in his poetry.29 This tékton survives in our “architect” and “tectonic.” But to tékton belongs the important téchne , which designates the art or skill of the carpenter and master builder, and more generally the art of every kind of production. The word then comes to mean on the one hand a concrete sense of “craftsmanship” and “trade” of every kind, and on the other hand the ability to devise strategems and hatch plots, and in general a “clever, crafty machination.” From téchne the adjective technikón is formed in Greek, which in addition to aptitude for the art of production also designates the general aggregate of what is in accord with and suited to art or skill. By the way of the Latin “technica ars ,” the art of skilled production, the word passed to the French who, in a period of extraordinary technical activity during the 17th century, developed the term technique , which in the early 18th century was taken over into German as Technik , to designate the entire domain of all those procedures and actions related to skill production of every kind. Finally, for us today Technik means in a still more general sense the sum and substance of all means and modes of procedure whose mastery is the condition for what is in the highest sense the competent practice of an art or skill. And so we speak of “masterly technique” in the case of the athlete and the musician as well as the poet.30 We may note at this point that “machine,” which is closely bound up with “technique,” likewise is ultimately Greek in origin. At the beginning, already in Homeric Greek, we find me chos, which means something like “expedient or remedy in a difficult situation.” A further construction from me chos is me hane , which likewise has the primary meaning of a “remedy,” “clever expedient,” or “cleverly contrived means” by which one gets anything. But this word signifying “means by which one gets” is already used in classical fifth century Greece for the concrete “machine,” the stage machine and the war machine. The Romans, accordingly, adopted it on loan in the word machina, which by way of the French machine has passed into German with its French pronunciation.
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Another direct descendent from the ancient me chane persists in “mechanics,” “mechanical,” “mechanistic.” In our “mechanisitic” world-view which was established by Newton this term has attained great importance, while the expression “merely mechanical,” on the other hand, disparagingly means an unconscious, indifferent, purely routine activity; and as designating the precise but lifeless course of mechanical processes, it came to mean the opposite of “organic.” In Greek the word órganon originally meant a mere instrument or tool. But because from Plato on it was applied especially to the organs of the body, chiefly to those of perception, the word rose to mean the parts of the living organism, whereupon “organic” has come to mean the natural living functional system as opposed to the “mechanical.” So much then for the general survey of the concept of technique and some related concepts in ancient Greek and in their remarkably diverse history up to their present usage. ́
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2 In order to discuss more closely now the central concept téchne , let us first say something about how Greek thinkers and philosophers, especially Aristotle, conceptually refined the long familiar notion of téchne and assigned it a special place among other concepts of action and production. At first sight téchne presents itself to us as a particular kind of knowledge, as opposed to other kinds of knowledge. T échne is that knowledge and ability which is directed to producing and constructing, and thus occupies a sort of intermediate place between mere experience or know-how, emperiría , and theoretical knowledge, episte me . T échne differs from theoretical knowledge, episte me , in that the latter has to do with what is immutable, purely existent and primary, in all its relations and implications (i.e., mathematics), whereas téchne , as “productive knowledge,” bears upon the domain of what is mutable, in the process of becoming, and comes to be. T échne , builds upon emperiría , experience. But whereas mere experience, which rests upon what is retained and associated in memory, regards only the particular instances and their connection, téchne proceeds from many particular cases to a universal concept.31 Thus the medical practitioner with mere experience only knows that chicken is good for a weak stomach. But the physician, who is in possession of téchne , knows furthermore that chicken is a light food and why it is
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light and why the stomach is weak.32 Whereas experience knows only the “that,” téchne knows also the “why,” the reasons, and in this respect approaches theoretical knowledge, episte me .33 Thus téchne is expressly defined as a knowledge and ability which has come about by habit, i.e. has passed into flesh and blood, and which is directed to a producing, but in connection with a clear course of reasoning concerning the thing itself, which the man of mere experience does not have in view. 34 A knowledge that is likewise productive but which, however rich and diverse it may be, has a false idea of the thing itself remains simply atechnía, blunder.35
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3 In a second respect téchne , as the process of production by which something comes to be, belongs in the large, diversely activated domain of the mutable with its various processes of coming-to-be. Here too téchne assumes a kind of intermediate position between those processes which merely result because this and that coincide in such and such a fashion – which the Greeks conceived as týche , mere coincidence or “chance” – and the regular, vital processes of nature, phýsis, which we have treated in the first section. As every technician and all those who practice a skill know, happy coincidence still plays a considerable role in our methodical technique, or technology. And so Aristotle too approves the words of the tragic poet: “Téchne loves happy chance, as happy chance loves téchne .”36 But the directing activity of téchne actually comes much nearer to the directing activity of nature than to chance; indeed, both téchne and nature proceed in a fundamentally identical manner. Both the manner by which nature generates and that by which technique produces are alike in that by the agency of something and out of something a something is realized. 37 They differ in the fact that in nature the agent’s source of motion lies in the natural object itself, whereas in téchne it has its source in the thinking soul of him who initiates the technical process; i.e., the production. In the cases of both nature and téchne we are concerned with the realization in matter of a figure or for m, which is the end. In nature the origin and development toward this end, the form or configuration (the eîdos,) takes place by itself. In technique the end-form is principally conceived and constructed in man’s act of thinking. We speak of the plan, the design, the construction. The way of constructive thinking then proceeds from the end-form; whether house,
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station, hospital, or school; step by step forward through the different means of realization, finally to the matter, the ultimate building material. The procedure of technical actualization then goes back the same way, from the procurement and preparation of the material, through its compounding according to the stipulations of the design first conceived and elaborated in thought, to the realized structure, which then stands there as hospital, station, or school.38 Because in téchne man intervenes as the one who must, from the needs of his condition, first conceive in thought an object to be made, then determine its design and carry out its construction, the process of production in téchne is more complicated than that of generation in nature. But the production process itself takes place in a manner directly analogous to the processes of generation and coming-to-be in phýsis. Thus the Greeks arrived at the principle that téchne imitates nature,39 which when correctly understood amounts to saying that téchne in its process of production proceeds analogously to the natural processes of generation. At the same time, however, the Greeks observed that téchne perfects that which nature by itself was unable to achieve.40 This “perfecting” is clearly conceived in terms of what is useful to man. For nature when left to itself pursues its own way in simple, unvarying fashion. But what is useful to man is as variable as man himself. Therefore, when it is a matter of bending the simple directing activity of nature out of its own way to the uses of man which it resists, difficulties arise; and this is where technique intervenes, by inventing expedients, “machines,” which with the means of nature bend nature to serve human purposes. Thus a tragic poet has already said the same thing – “by téchne we master that to which we are subject by nature.” 41 Example: the lever, which enables us to move great loads with little expenditure of force. 42 This is the way in which téchne , by proceeding analogously to nature on the one hand, brings nature to perfection – in terms of human needs – on the other.
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4 From what has been said so far, the Greek concept of technique is characterized by the twofold relationship of technique first to theoretical knowledge and then to the processes of nature. Because the Greeks understood both relationships together in the notion of téchne , it could never happen for them that technique would seek to set itself up independently over against theoretical
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knowledge, or that it would totally lose nature from view and see it merely as a furnisher of energy and raw materials to be “mastered.” Because the Greeks included a relationship to theoretical knowledge in their concept of technique, it came about that for the Greeks – and only for the Greeks – the old handicraft, operating on the foundation of a strictly empirical and traditional knowledge, became an integrated part of technique as a science. In technique as thus understood the Greeks came to see a very lofty kind of knowledge and at the same time a quite definite humanism. Thus Socrates in his search for the genuinely knowledgeable man is disappointed when he approaches politicians and poets, but among the handicraftsmen [Techniker , men of technique] he finds genuine knowledge of their business, as he himself says. Only the handicraftsmen, too, spoil this knowledge when they presume, on the basis of their sound specialized knowledge, to know and judge of everything 43 – or, in modern terms, to set up their technical knowledge as absolute. As for the human dignity of technique, for the Greeks this is attested to from Homer onwards by the lively, even good-humored interest which poets as well as prose writers take in all aspects of making and producing. Generally speaking, the chief concern with which the Greeks enter the world, in contrast with the older civilizations of the Or ient, is the interest in man as “man in his world.” Also involved in this interest is their interest in all occurrences of production and making, whether it be the way in which Homer depicts how Hephaestus forges the shield for Achilles44 and Odysseus builds his ship; 45 or Herodotus with joy and wonder describes such astonishing technical feats as the Athos canal, 46 the Hellespont bridge,47 an aqueduct tunnel on Samos; 48 or Aeschylus in his plays depicts the fire signal which in the shortest time brings the news of victory from Troy to Argos,49 and in his Prometheus explains the fundamental human mission of technique, which with the aid of fire has not only led man out of a primitive cave existence into civilization but has also made him into a free being as well. 50 To be sure,Aeschylus also points to the demonic which lurks in technique, as when Prometheus brought fire to men only by a misdeed – theft from the hearth of the gods. Sophocles also gives valid testimony to the perilous mongrelism of technique, in the famous choral ode of the Antigone .51 He speaks of the deinóte s of man which has led to technique. Dei-nóte s, literally “terribleness,” comprises at once the “ability” and the “monstrous”
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(uncanny) power which technique has placed into man’s hand. It has made him master of land and sea, enabled him to set up state and culture and even to take up arms against death. But since man “with the inventiveness of techniques holds in his hand something clever beyond expectation,” he stands where the path forks toward good and evil.’ 52 This expresses with great exactness the perilous problematic of technique which engages us even today. This problematic too,
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along with the twofold relation to theoretical knowledge and the directing activity of nature, belongs to the Greek notion of technique, which in this context proves to be singularly instructive. By the simplest pattern, as it were, this notion brings into view the possibilities and the limitations of technique, and discloses that perspective from which, as a great power of man, it becomes effective in the totality of things human through its correctly conceived use.53
Notes
This essay includes two lectures originally delivered over the North German Radio Network, June 25 and July 10, 1959. It is translated here by permission of the publisher from Wolfgang Schadewaldt, Natur, Technik, Kunst: drei Beiträge zem Selbstverständnis der Technik in unserer Zeit (Göttingen: Musterschmidt, 1960), pp. 35–53. Translation copyright by Carl Mitcham and Robert Mackey. Wolfgang Schadewaldt’s Hellas und Hesperien, 2 vols. (Zurich and Stuttgart: Artimis Verlag, 1970), includes the following related works: “Das Welt-Modell der Griechen” (vol. 1, pp. 601–625), “Die Anforderungen der Technik an die Geisteswissenschaften” (vol. 2, pp. 461–484), “Die Welt der modernen Technik und die altgricchische Kulturidee” (vol. 2, pp. 485–497), “Natur – Technik – Kunst” (vol. 2, pp. 497–512), and “Zu Werner Heisenbergs Darstellung der Entwicklung der modernen Atomphysik” (vol. 2, pp. 525–527). 1 For this important fact I am indebted to the erudition of my friend Ernst Zinn. 2 Physics II, 1–2, 192b8–194bl5; Metaphysics V, 4, 1014b 16 ff. 3 Parts of Animals I, 1, 642a14 ff. 4 Odyssey X, 302 ff. 5 Fragment 123, Diels-Kranz. 6 The Sacred Disease, 329. 7 Hippocrates, De Prisca Mediana, 20. 8 Cf. for instance the tragedian Euripides, Trojan Women , 866 f. 9 Plato, Gorgias 483e–f; Aristotle, De Caelo I, 1, 268al4. 10 Nicomachean Ethics X, 9, 1179b21. 11 Nicomachean Ethics VII, 13, 1153b32. 12 Parts of Animals 1, 5, 645a9; II, 14, 658a23 and 32; II, 16, 659b35; and Eudemian Ethics VII, 14, 1247a10. 13 Generation of Animals III, 10, 760a31. 14 Generation of Animals I, 1, 715b14. 15 Generation of Animals II, 4, 741a1. 16 De Caelo II, 9, 291a24. 17 On Sleeping and Waking 2, 455b17. 18 Parts of Animals II, 9, 654b31; Generation of Animals II, 6, 742b23 and 4, 740a28. 19 De Caelo I, 4, 271a33. 20 De Caelo II, 8, 290a31 and 11, 291bl3; and On the Soul III, 9, 432b21 et passim.
21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28
29 30
31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38
Metaphysics XIV, 3, 1090bl9. On Generation and Corruption II, 10, 336b28. Parts of Animals II, 14, 658a23. Metaphysics XII, 7, 1072bl3. Politics VII, 3, 1325b10.
Fragment 112. See Ernst Grumach, ed., Goethe und die Antike, eine Sammlung (Berlin, 1949), “Maximen und Reflexionen,” Nos. 1364–66, p. 230. [This no doubt refers to some theories of Heisenberg and Heidegger. For Heidegger’s discussion of physis see An Introduction to Metaphysics (New York: Doubleday Anchor, 1961), p. 11 ff. and “On the Being and Conception of FusiV in Aristotle’s Physics B, 1,” Man and World 9, no. 3 (August 1976): 219–270 – Editors.] Odyssey XVII, 382 ff. [The English “technology” has a somewhat different history. It is ultimately derived from the Greek technologia , meaning “a systematic treatment” – especially of grammar. In fact, its first Greek occurrence is in Aristotle’s Rhetoric (1354bI7, 1354b26, and 1356a11). However, its Latin form with basically the same meaning, does not occur till very late, after 1500. And as late as 1683 it is still used in Twells’ Examination Grammar in this sense. But by the beginning of the seventeenth century it already has been extended to include the systematic study of the practical or industrial arts. For some reason similar constructions in other European languages – cf. German Technologie . French technologic – have never achieved the same currency as the English. – Editors.] Metaphysics I, 1, 981al ff. Nicomachean Ethics VI, 7, 1141b18. Metaphysics I, 1, 981a24–b9. Nicomachean Ethics VI, 4, 1140al0 ff. Nicomachean Ethics VI, 4, 1140a20 ff. Nicomachean Ethics VI, 4, 1140al8 ff. [Aristotle is quoting Agathon. – Editors.] Metaphysics VI, 7, 1032a11 ff. Metaphysics VI, 7, 1032b1 ff.
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39 E.g., Physics II, 2, 194a21. 40 Physics II, 8, 199a15 f. 41 [Antiphon, as quoted by pseudo-Aristotle, Mechanical Problems 847a21.] 42 Mechanics I, 847a13 ff. 43 Plato, Apology of Socrates. 22c–d. 44 Iliad XVIII, 478 ff. 45 Odyssey V, 243 f. 46 Herodotus, Histories VII, 22 f. 47 Histories VII, 36. 48 Histories III, 60. 49 Aeschylus, Agamemnon, 281 ff. 50 Prometheus Bound , 248 ff. and 443 ff. 51 Sophocles, Antigone , 332 ff. 52 [Schadewaldt’s German translation of Antigone 365–6, when literally rendered into English, reads “with the inventiveness of technology, holds in his hands an intellectual means never anticipated.” The Greek text of A. C. Pearson (Oxford): sofon ti to macawoew tecnas uper elpia
Literal translation: “having, in the inventiveness of téchne , something cunning beyond expectation.” – Editors.]
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53 Some bibliographical references on the notion of phýsis and téchne among the Greeks: Edmund Hardy, Der Begriff der Phýsis in der griechischen Philosophic (Berlin: Weidmann, 1884); H. Siebeck, “Über die Entstehung der Termini natura naturans und natura naturata,” Archiv fur Gesc hichte der Philosophic 3 (1890): 370–378; John Walter Beardslee, The Use of FusiV in 5th Century Greek Literature (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1918) [PhD dissertation]; A. N. Whitehead, The Concept of Nature (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1920); John Dewey, Experience and Nature (Chicago: Open Court, 1925); Morris R. Cohen, Reason and Nature: An Essay on the Meaning of Scientific Method (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1931); Freder ick J. E. Woodbr idge, Nature and Mind (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1937); Hans Diller, “Der griechische Naturbegriff,” Neue Jahrbiicher 114 (1939): 241–257; R. G. Collingwood, The Idea of Nature (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1945); H. Bartz and W. Rüegg, eds., Natur und Geist (Zurich, 1946); P. Weiser, Nature and Man (Oxford, 1947). – Hermann Diels, Antike Technik; sieben Vorträge , 2nd ed. (Leipzig and Berlin: B. G.Teubner, 1920); Albert Rehm and Kurt Vogel, “Exakte Wissenschaft,” in Einleitung in die Altertums-missenschaft , ed. A. Gercke and E. Nordern, vol. II, part 5, 4th ed. (Leipzig and Berlin: B. G. Teubner, 1933), esp. pp. 55 f., 71 ff.
