Notes
- . In his own way Victor Ferkiss advocates an interdisciplinary systems approach when he argues that the root failure of current political liberalism, conservatism, and socialism is that they restrict political philosophy only to power relationships among people: “To talk about power relationships among people while ignoring the power which nature and technology have over the fate of human beings, and the way in which relationships among human beings influence nature and technology, is to ignore two of the three basic actors in the drama of human history.” Ferkiss then goes on to suggest that “any contemporary political philosophy… must [as one of its tasks] set forth the premises of the value‐system which will enable us to deal effectively with the humanity‐technology‐nature relationship” (The Future of Technological Civilization [New York: George Braziller, Inc., 1974], p. 7).
- . Naturwissenschaft means “natural science,” while Geisteswissenschaft refers to both the “social sciences “and the “humanities.”
- . The root of technology is the Greek word techne, which means art, skill, or craft and which can be used to refer to both the “hard technologies” that operate on material things and the “soft technologies” that work to promote or alter people's attitudes, perceptions, and values.