[On technology].

Abstract

Based on conceptions forged in classic Greece, the article affirms the idea of technology as a "way of doing" that is underpinned by forms of organization produced by the society where the technology has emerged and by the knowledge produced in each era. Emphasizing aspects of specific moments in Western history, it goes on to identify relations between technology and science--understood here as the search for maximum rationality. The article questions certain positions which would seem to contend that techno-science contributes to the production of social inequalities and injustice, given a kind of collusion between knowledge and power. In the case of medicine, it is held that modern science has paved the way for ever more efficacious technology for intervention that benefits humankind; furthermore, the failure to solve all of humanity's problems derives much more from the political character of these inequalities than from any specific role that science and technology could play in achieving such a solution.