Hand's End: Technology and the Limits of Nature

Rothenberg develops a praxis-oriented theory of the nature of, and relations among, technology, science, nature, and human nature. Technology is not just applied science, where science discovers the character of an independent natural world. Rather, the manner in which humans come to understand nature is dependent upon the successful ways in which we come to use and transform nature. When we are able to successfully make something, do something, bring some part of nature under our control, we think we understand nature. We then project the principles of our highly successful technologies on to nature as a whole, thus reconfiguring the world conceptually as well as physically.