Poiesis Prax (2003) 1: 263–273 DOI 10.

1007/s10202-003-0025-6
Original paper

Technology and levels of culture

Peter Janich

263
Abstract In public opinion, as represented by everyday speech, the relationship
between technology and culture is characterized by mutual exclusion. The
argument against that stance is made in two steps: (1) technology as a result of
goal-oriented rational action is a constitutive part of culture; (2) cultural devel-
opment can be described through an action theoretical model of technological
development. Thus, technology being of the form of culture comes to be the
reason for culture being of the form of technology.

Zusammenfassung Das Verhältnis von Technik und Kultur ist in der öffentlichen
Meinung, wie sie sich durch den Gebrauch der Alltagssprache zeigt, als gegen-
seitige Ausschließung bestimmt. Dagegen wird hier in zwei Schritten argumen-
tiert: (1) Technik ist als Ergebnis zweckrationalen menschlichen Handelns ein
konstitutiver Teil der Kultur; (2) Kulturentwicklung lässt sich nach einem Modell
der Technikentwicklung mit handlungstheoretischen Mitteln beschreiben. Die
Kulturförmigkeit der Technik wird damit zum Grund für die Technikförmigkeit
der Kultur.

Résumé Le rapport entre technique et culture est défini dans l’opinion publique,
telle qu’elle se manifeste dans l’usage de la langue courante, comme exclusion
mutuelle des termes. Le présent article en revanche argumente en deux étapes: (1)
la technique en tant que résultat de l’action humaine rationnelle et soumise à un
but est un élément constitutif de la culture; (2) l’évolution de la culture peut être
décrite au moyen d’instruments de théorie de l’action suivant un modèle d’évo-
lution technique. La forme culturelle de la technique explique ainsi la forme
technique de la culture.

The relationship between technology and culture is defined, in today’s public

opinion, by a number of solidly established clichés. Everyday German speech

Published online: 6 May 2003

Ó Springer-Verlag 2003

Peter Janich
Lehrstuhl I für Philosophie, Universität Marburg, Blitzweg 16,
35039 Marburg, Germany
E-mail: janich@mailer.uni-marburg.de
 (of Technik and Kultur) offers a host of suggestions, which can serve as an indicator,
as it were, for what one has always thought as long as one was not asked about it.
This essay aims to undertake a philosophical reflection on the relationship
between technology and culture. The route to this end will lead from technology
being of the form of culture to culture being of the form of technology, but let us
not forestall. First, we are dealing with clichés proffered by both everyday and
educated speech, especially in German.

1
Kultur
Kultur is now a fashionable word, omnipresent in combinations such as Streitkultur
(conflict culture), Unternehmenskultur (corporate culture), Badekultur (spa
culture), Esskultur (food culture), etc. Everything can be associated with culture in
264 this way, as it seems, and made more interesting and worthy in the process.
However, this word-politics or word-psychology shall not be the subject here.
The word ‘‘culture’’ is also used for designating certain responsibilities. There
are culture departments, culture policies, culture desks at major newspapers,
ministers for culture, and culture budgets: Kultur is a public concern.
Technology, though, is conspicuously absent from it. Only when a technology is
old, retires to museums and becomes protected ‘‘heritage’’ (i.e., when technology
becomes beautiful) is it accepted as part of culture. The technology of industrial
production, the technology under the car bonnet or computer technology, on the
other hand, does not enter our mind when the word Kultur is mentioned.
It is of course worth recalling the origins of the word. It derives from the
Latin verb cultivare, meaning man interfering with nature for his own purposes.
The farmer or cattle rancher, but also the quarry worker and the road
builder—everyone making a living by helping himself from natural resources is
a ‘‘cultivator’’. In today’s German, this meaning is only preserved in the con-
texts of bacteria cultures (Bakterienkultur) or fruit-growing cultures (Ob-
stbaumkultur).
This brief reminder of the descent of the word, culture, already shows that
Kultur originally described what Germans now call Technik.

2
Technik
The German word Technik derives, via the French language, from the Greek
adjective technike and the noun techne, meaning ‘‘artificial’’ and ‘‘art’’, respec-
tively, with their Latin equivalents artefactum and ars.
In the division between nature and culture, made prominent by Aristotle, in
particular, the technical, artificial is that purposefully and artfully produced by
man against nature. Actions of skillful manufacture, poiesis, lead to (Latin)
artifacts, i.e., technical products.
Already for Aristotle1, the contrast between nature and technology was a
contrast of aspects. Thus, one and the same object processed by human craft
could gain artificial properties while maintaining some natural ones.

1
Aristotle treats technology in a number of contexts, for instance in his lecture on physics,
in Metaphysics (book lambda, 3.1070a) (Technology as what is produced by the acting
human being, in contrast to what has emerged by nature) and in the Nicomachean Ethics,
where technology is described explicitly as what, through poietic production, contrasts with
practice. See Janich 1996; Janich 1998a, and Janich 1998b.
 In modern everyday German, we can distinguish three different meanings of
Technik or technisch (technical): Firstly, one speaks of Technik in the sense of
mastering a scheme of actions, for instance where one thinks of the technical
skillof a pianist, painter, dancer or singer, or of any artistic or craftsman-like
performer. Secondly, the word Technik is used in the context of established
processes, e.g., some metal or plastic casting technique or certain information
techniques (quite often in a not very language-conscious mix-up with the word
‘‘Technologie’’). Finally, Technik also means technology, the entire body of
products of craftsmanship and engineering.
Textbooks of the engineering sciences, in the widest sense, also make an effort
to develop a concept of Technik and to offer a definition as comprehensive as
possible. They usually state technology that is what transports, transforms and
stores matter, energy and information. This definition is a provocation to the
language-conscious philosopher, insofar as the three (supposed) object areas of 265
matter, energy and information relate to three words playing very different roles
in the technical and natural sciences. Energy is a parameter explicitly defined and
measured in physics. The word matter (Stoff, Materie; in English books ‘‘sub-
stance’’), on the other hand, is frequently used in introductions to chemistry,
however, without receiving a definition within any of the specialized sciences2.
Information is defined secondarily, at best, either as a fundamental concept of a
field of science calling itself mathematical theory of communication, or referring
to a highly successful engineering discipline, and burdened as such with a trail of
unresolved language-philosophical issues3. Thus, the definitions of ‘‘Technik’’
coming from the engineering sciences are at least inhomogeneous if not entirely
ill-considered.
Considered philosophically, the word Technik in the three usages mentioned
above always and ultimately refers to the mastering of means to ends, be these
means schemes of action (as for the pianist), processes (as in casting techniques)
or technologies as products and consequences of actions (as for products of
design engineering).
While it was pointed out above that the original meaning of the word ‘‘Kultur’’
corresponds exactly to what is now called Technik, it now turns out that Technik
in turn describes precisely what is at the core of culture. In other words, a first
careful glance at the meanings of the words shows a direct contradiction to the
usages of everyday and educated German.

3
German educated speech
In contrast to the Romance and Anglo-Saxon languages, German makes a clear
distinction between ‘‘culture’’ and ‘‘civilization’’. Hearing the word Kultur, the
educated German thinks of Bach, Goethe, and Dürer; (‘‘technische’’) Zivilisation,
on the other hand, means cars, central heating, and water closets.
In this, it is already forgotten that ‘‘civilization’’ (as a form of established
technology) derives from the Latin civis, meaning Bürger (citizen), an inhabi-
tant of a citadel (Burg or castle) or of a walled city. Today, nobody lives in
castles or within town walls anymore, but we do live in cities. I am not
dwelling on the transition from the bourgeois (the inhabitant of a castle or city)

2
See Psarros 1999 and Hanekamp 1996.
3
Janich 1998c; Janich 1999.
 to the citoyen, the enlightened (state) citizen of the French Revolution4. Again,
this brief glance on the original meaning of the word ‘‘civilization’’ indicates
that it does not relate to products of crafts or engineering but to the ordered
coexistence of human beings in an urban society and hence to customs,
morals, law, and state.
Thus, a cursory inspection already shows that Technik, the establishment of
which manifests itself as civilization, was removed, exiled from Kultur, as far as
the German language is concerned. The cultural character of technology and
civilization is overlooked, ignored, or at least underrated in customary German
usage.
These three findings on the keywords culture, technology and German speech
of civilization shall now be followed by a constructive, philosophical critique,
which will be executed in two steps. First, technology will be identified as a
266 cultural achievement. In the second step, I will propose a technology model for
culture. In this way, the initial promise will be kept, i.e., to progress from tech-
nology being of the form of culture to culture showing the form of technology.

4
Technology as a cultural achievement
Technology (techne), in its original meaning defined by Aristotle, is the coun-
ter-concept of nature. Nature is what carries in itself the reason for all change
including, apart from qualitative change and spatial movement, the reason for
becoming and passing away, the reason for its own existence. The technical, on
the other hand, is what man produces against nature. Technology is goal-ori-
ented rational action, which is, since Aristotle, of particular epistemological
importance because man can understand nature only modeled on his own
capacity for action, his technical intervention and hence on the bringing about
of natural sciences.
In contrast to this, naturalists assume that technology is nothing but the ap-
plied laws of nature, used according to human ends, existing entirely independent
of the human being and only realized, at best, by humans in the natural sciences5.
Against this conflict between a culturalistic religion and a naturalistic one, it
can be argued that one thing is not at issue: Technik (in the three meanings
explained above), including the technical tools used in scientific research, is in
existence not by nature but through human action. Human beings are artisans,
engineers, technicians, and laboratory scientists.
The above-mentioned struggle between the religions comes to a head when the
concept of action is concerned6. Is ‘‘action’’ something specifically human and
cultural, or is it natural in the same sense as the movements and the behavior, the
products and phenomenal forms of animals and plants are natural?
The by far dominant view today postulates that animals, in their achievements,
are very similar to humans and can be regarded as examples, at least, in which we
may or shall see the preliminary stages of evolution towards humanity according
to natural laws. The technical products of human beings are just a little further
developed than those of animals, such as birds’ nests, honeycombs and cobwebs.

4
See Riedel 1971.
5
On the relationship between technology and science, see Janich 1992.
6
A methodical theory of action, with an application in the philosophy of language, is
developed in Janich 2001.
It is indeed a fashionable trend to speak of animal culture in contrast to human
nature7, and to attribute to animals high or supreme competence for instance in
the ever-so-human achievements of deceiving and lying, of aim-oriented cheating
of rivals, and in the consideration of the parent generation teaching the offspring.
According to this fashionable opinion, there is no argument against animals
taking action, having insights and producing their own culture. If this culture
presents itself to humans as zero grade, the reason could still be our lack of
esteem for animals or a deficit in the cognitive skills of humans regarding ani-
mals.
Climbing down from such heights of overstretched biological theory, one can
use the facts of everyday life as an argument: Man must learn to grow into his or
her respective culture. Indisputably, man is distinguished from animals by his
unusually long learning history, his late puberty, his being forced not just to exist
in nature, like a newborn animal, but to orientate and prove himself in his culture. 267
This also involves acquiring the elementary differentiation between actions, for
which humans are credited or blamed by community, and the other activities and
movements, the other processes in and around the human body, the other
occurrences and circumstances.
Naturalists emphasizing a common nature of man and animal tend to overlook
that they, too, are subject to the moral and legal obligation coming from the
community. No scientific explanation of the constitution and performance of the
organism can release you from it. Man is morally and legally responsible for the
consequences of his actions.
Man, in contrast to animals, must therefore labor to acquire a capacity for
action (and distinguishes himself in the community by the degree to which he
succeeds in this): As a self-governing, living individual, he must develop auton-
omy in setting his aims, rationality in choosing his means, and responsibility for
the consequences. None of the three qualifications is applicable to animals’
capacities. The capacity for action is guided by cultural standards; it differs
historically and geographically, socially and politically according to circum-
stances. Still, in a philosophical theory of action, the concept of action, defined by
the attribution of credit and blame, may also contain the following: one can
refrain from actions; one can reasonably ask for actions; actions can succeed or
fail, be it in relation to the aims of the agent or to established rules; actions can be
a success or a failure by achieving their aim or by failing to do so.
These definitions of action, which allow differentiation between action and
scientifically, causally explainable behavior (not to be confused with conduct), is
also relevant to a quite specifically human form of action, which is speech.
Negotiation through speech is also action.
What means this specifically human achievement, the capacity for action, for
the concept of technology?

5
Three types of action for concepts of technology
Actions can be differentiated and classified according to various aspects. Let us
consider here, initially, the comparison between kinetic, poietic, and practical
actions.
Kinetic actions, i.e., actions of movement, must be distinguished from natural
movements of humans and animals. Regarding their natural movement, animals are

7
See for instance: de Waal 2001.
 far superior to humans. Man, though, learns to walk, swim, bicycle, drive cars, and
dance; he develops sports such as figure skating, high diving, golf and tennis, and he
learns to play the piano or the violin, the flute or the trombone. He acquires a
language of gestures, learns writing, and lives his whole live in movements, in which
the natural only occurs in reflexes, for instance when avoiding a fall after slipping on
the proverbial banana skin, pulling back from an electric shock or from a hot object,
closing the eyes in front of a glaringly bright one, and in a plethora of other, naturally
innate patterns of movement. Newborn humans can even dive and swim under
water before losing this natural ability and have to learn it anew as the art of
swimming and diving, breathing and holding the breath.
To describe such abilities, man has only his human language. Therefore, it is
no surprise that he describes his observations concerning, e.g., adolescent birds of
prey or predatory mammals in an anthropomorphic manner as teaching and
268 learning of abilities. In the same way, man tends to describe his observations in
animals in terms of success or failure. Nevertheless, there cannot be any doubt
that, in animals, there is not the least evidence of the three qualifications of the
capacity for action, i.e., autonomy in setting an aim, rationality in choosing the
means, and responsibility for the consequences, which, without question,
characterize even the kinetic actions of humans.

6
Poiesis
Creative action suffers from a fatal, historical burden. The great Greek philoso-
phers regarded personal, physical action as unworthy compared to philosophiz-
ing and politicizing so that they are responsible, despite of their frequent,
explanatory references to crafts, for the depreciation of the banausos (literal:
craftsman). ‘‘Mouthcraft’’ has come to dominate handicraft in European intel-
lectual life. Latin shows itself to be completely confused by turning the Greek
‘‘poiesis’’ into the Latin ‘‘poet’’, who, as a wordsmith, is at best a metaphorical
craftsman.
The differentiation between poiesis and kinesis as aspects of action is not a
trivial one, although not every kinesis is also a poiesis because, for instance,
whistling a tune, which certainly is an action, cannot be called a product. Even
actions with enduring effects (such as arranging books on a bookshelf) do not
constitute a product such as those of the poietic actions of a carpenter or a
bricklayer.
A more precise definition would be to speak of poiesis only where products are
created for the creator’s or others’ use and where these products lend themselves
to a certain re-interpretation as means to (new) ends or purposes.
Poiesis is the prototype of an action for which means-end rationality plays a
central role. A producer first sets himself an aim, then devises a plan accordingly
and finally chooses the appropriate means. In everyday German, the word for
‘‘means’’ (Mittel) is ambiguous: On the one hand, of course, it is the action
leading to the intended aim; on the other, it often denotes the tools necessary or
the materials required for realizing an aim. Some authors use the word Güter
(goods) in this context.
In crafts and technical production, the strict relationship between means and
end is undisputed. Ex post, it is never in question if a means was appropriate for
realizing an aim. This connection is not injective, though, in the same sense as is
assumed for the correlation between cause and effect in causal explanations. It is
rather the case that one and the same purpose can be fulfilled by different means
and, in turn, one and the same means can be suitable for various purposes.
Hence, specific problems come into play where technical action is of essential
importance (as, for example, in experimental sciences).
1. There are principal limits for shaping and prospectively assessing technology8.
Even with the best planning, the inventor and maker of technical products
cannot foresee which reinterpretations the technical means provided for cer-
tain purposes will later receive from other users. In a sense, each product
creates a new historical situation, in which other agents can proceed in a
completely new way. (It is no coincidence that psychologists use the flexibility
of a test subject in re-interpreting means for new purposes as an indicator for
determining the ‘‘intelligence’’ of a test subject.)
2. The reductive approach of the sciences, going from ‘‘higher’’, more complex
levels of description to lower, more ‘‘elementary’’ ones, reaches its limits in the
non-injectiveness of the link between means and end. If, for example, in the 269
natural history of evolutionary biology, a hierarchy of levels of complexity in
organism models is assumed for mapping the development of humanity from
monocellular creatures, one deals with relationships between models9. Higher
system properties ‘‘emerge’’10 from lower ones in the sense of successful mod-
eling of the emergence processes or relationships between two different models of
the same object. Models are, nevertheless, means to an end. One and the same
object to be modeled can be represented by different models as, in turn, the same
model can be suitable for different modeling tasks. This means that it is inade-
quate to reduce the reductive approach of the sciences to a coherent causal nexus
where not just a logical-definitional link between the different system levels is
concerned. The various levels of the system (allegedly) emerging from each other
rather depend on the means-end connections selected in each case and from the
choices made by the scientists in this process.
3. A special case of this connection is the so-called body-mind problem11, which can
be explained through the following simple example: The quality of a simple
calculating machine, that it produces correct results, neither can be derived from
the physical description of the calculator in a logical-definitional fashion, nor
does it follow causally from such description. Obviously, calculators are not
designed to produce arbitrary results; their purpose is to give correct results. The
assertion (on the meta-level in relation to a mathematical statement) that the
result of a computation is correct (or true) cannot follow, in a logical-definitional
manner, from the physical description of the calculator, if only because the word
‘‘correct’’ (or ‘‘true’’) does not occur in it. The correctness of the results cannot
follow causally from the physical description of the calculator, for nobody would
conclude that the physics laws, on which the design and the functioning of the
calculator are based, are disproved, if the calculator is defective, i.e., produces
wrong results. However, if wrong results do not constitute a falsification of

8
Concerning the term Technologiefolgenbeurteilung (technology appraisal: arriving at a
judgment on a technology with regard to its effects) as compared to Technologi-
efolgenabschätzung (technology assessement, TA), see Gethmann et al. 1993; Grunwald
1998; Grunwald and Sax 1994. The connection between technology appraisal and a philo-
sophical theory of action is made in Grunwald 2000.
9
These considerations are treated in detail in Gutmann 1996; Weingarten 1992; Janich and
Weingarten 1999.
10
On a critique of naturalistically interpreted theories of emergence, see also Janich 2002.
11
Janich 1993.
 physical theorems, the reverse conclusion, that from a correct physical
description of the calculator follows the validity of the calculated results, cannot
be drawn. Defective calculators only fail in achieving a human aim, meaning they
are not a suitable tool for mechanically substituting the human achievement of
computing.
Concerning the third form of action, the practical, only one aspect can be touched
upon briefly here. In his Nichomachean Ethics, Aristotle distinguished between
poiesis (including kinesis) and practice. With the action-theoretical tools hinted at
above, this distinction can be captured in the following way: In poiesis, aims are set
and suitable means are searched for. In practice, on the other hand, the aims as such,
their setting, modification, justification, or similar questions are the issue.
It becomes obvious that the classification of actions as kinetic, poietic, or
practical only concerns different aspects of the description of, in some cases, one
270 and the same context of action. Even where aim-oriented, manual production is
performed by means of physical movements, these are generally subject to a
requirement of justification.
Quite often in the debate about the relationship between the humanities or
cultural sciences and the natural or technical sciences, one comes across the
stance that always looking to the purpose, instead of focusing on (morally wor-
thy) purpose-free action, is a sign of a lowly mind. Such views feed on a simple
mix-up. Aim-oriented does not mean beneficial or harmful. The question whether
natural and technical sciences are of benefit or harm in their achievement de-
pends on an assessment of their research aims and the side effects of realizing
these aims. That the research itself is goal-oriented rational, and hence its actions
guided by purposes, is of no relevance in this context.
Beyond that, one may certainly ask why practices, in which a (moral, legal, or
political) justification is the issue, must not themselves be goal-oriented rational;
but such questions cannot be followed up here. We rather continue by using the
three meanings of the word ‘‘Technik’’ in the action types kinesis, poiesis, and
practice for defining a concept of levels of culture.

7
Levels of culture (Kulturhöhe12)
The sequential order of component actions plays an essential role in any action. As a
matter of fact, everyday human life, any professional activity (from crafts through
science to politics), does not consist of isolated, single actions but of chains of
actions, the success of which, i.e., achieving the aim, frequently (even if not in all
cases) depends on the adherence to practical sequences of the component actions:
To make a long jump, one first has to run up, then jump, not the other way round.
Any attempt to tag, or even define, the direction of events (including actions)
in scientific terms, through the second law of thermodynamics, would be a nat-
uralistic fallacy. For the undisputed, infinitely reproducible observation of certain
courses of events involved here (e.g., that hot and cold water in a container always
mix to become warm water, but un-mixing warm water never yields one portion
of hot water and one of cold water) always requires a unique description of the
states described, clearly identifying the earlier and later states. This description

12
The term Kulturhöhe was first used in Janich 1998a. This was followed by a debate that
was recently continued in Gutmann et al. 2002, there, e.g.,H. J. Schneider, Technikgeschichte
als Paradigma für Kulturverstehen?, pp 302–321.
must be invested by the describing and acting human. Actions are themselves of a
temporal, more precisely a modal-temporal structure: Man always acts to achieve,
prevent, or maintain something (in the future). To this end, one calls upon the
capacity for action, which was acquired in the past. Thus, action brings the
sequence of events into existence in a unique order.
This becomes dramatically important in the realm of poiesis. Hugo Dingler13
was the first to point this out with his operationalism (for instance in the field of
rationalizing geometry). One of his examples is the following: Whoever wants to
create a painted wood sculpture has first to do the carving before he can do the
painting. When building a house, the foundation has to be laid first, then the walls
have to build, and then the roof; the roofing is always carried out starting from
the gutter and finishing with the ridge, in relation to the purpose of the roof,
which can generally be assumed to be protection against rain and snow.
Thus, the poiesis is the prime example for the order in a chain of component 271
actions, which can only be violated on the penalty of failure. Philosophy goes on
from this to a ‘‘principle of methodical order’’, which prohibits mentioning in
descriptive or prescriptive speech any sequence other than the ones leading to
success.
In fact, this is this is acknowledged without reservation: Nobody would accept
instructions for use, a construction manual, or a cooking recipe that leads to
failure through prescribing the wrong sequence of steps. Reports, stories, or
narratives would not be accepted if a permutation of steps led to something else
than the claimed result.
With this fundamental principle of methodical philosophizing, technical ad-
vance can now be characterized as achieving a level of culture. Two simple
examples14:
– The wheel is a poietic product. Assuming the definitional postulate that wheels
either freely rotate on axles or are fixed on freely rotating axles, there ca be no
wheels in nature (due to the metabolic coherence of organisms). The history of
the development from the cart via the pulley to the hoist, and from there to the
cogwheel and the worm gear is a methodical-constructive chain of new defi-
nitions of use of a technology that had already been achieved.
– Another example, which is also irreversible, even if it depends on contingent,
empirical discoveries, is the metal wire. On mastering the manufacture of
metallic wires for mechanical applications, the discovery became possible that
such wires also conduct electrical charge (it has been known since ancient
times that rubbing a pelt on a piece of amber (electron) causes the amber to
attract, against gravitation, fibers and hairs). Thus, wire is re-interpreted from
a means for mechanical fastening to a conductor of electricity, i.e., for new
purposes and technologies.
These two examples, the wheel and the wire, the constructive and the empir-
ical, show the same form of a technical rationality of action claiming, from a level
already achieved, new aims by re-interpreting available means. The steps are
reversible in each case. Statements about the earlier use in the means-end scheme
are not falsified (in Popper’s terms). Neither is there a transition between para-
digms, in Th. S. Kuhn’s terminology. We rather see a coexistence of different

13
Dingler 1911, 1955.
14
The two examples are explained in more detail in Janich 1998a.
 applications of the same means—as Ludwik Fleck, the true father of the concept
of the incommensurability of different paradigms, asserted as a fruitful situation
for the field of medicine. Wheels continue to be used for carts, hoists, gears, etc.;
wires are still used for fences and other mechanical purposes, but also as electrical
conductors. Nevertheless, the methodical order among the different levels of
development allows us to distinguish uniquely and irreversibly a technical pro-
gress (within the respective strand of development). Again, it should be added
that this insight, even if presented using archaic examples, also applies to steps of
development seen, e.g., in the most recent automotive or computer technology.

8
Conclusion: the technicality of culture
The examples mentioned above are meant to emphasize an aspect of culture
272 usually neglected in the discussion. They are not competition for other aspects of
cultural history such as, for instance, intellectual history or the history of art.
However, these other aspects are also left to be examined as to whether their
development can also be adjudged to be of the form of technology.
First of all, the methodical order of kinetic, poietic, and practical action should
be pointed out here. An inspection of the ontogenetic acquirement of the capacity
for action in the individual biography can be analogized towards phylogenetic
history (without asserting an analogy with Ernst Haeckel’s fundamental bioge-
netic law, according to which ontogenesis is a repetition of phylogenesis.) There is
a kind of fundamental law in cultural history, stating that each individual ‘‘must
acquire’’, in order to achieve, the level of culture of his community by proceeding
through an individual history of learning.
What W. Goethe may have meant in his call, ‘‘What you have inherited from
your fathers, you must earn in order to possess!’’, turns out to be a requirement
on the individual to acquire a technical competence of participation in the life of
our civilization. Hence, the issue is not only the acquirement of moral and legal,
social competences but also the achievement of capacities for action, which can be
described adequately as technical ones, where ‘‘technical’’ does not just refer to
technology but also comprises a communicative speech competence.
Taking the route from the culturality of technology to the technicality of cul-
ture can help to enlighten and redress the reflection deficit revealing itself in the
German language, from everyday and educated speech to naturalistic and for-
malistic interpretations of science, and even to naturalistic views of the world and
humanity. This is relevant not only for the technical sciences but also for the
cultural sciences and the philosophy of culture15.

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