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The conception of the nature of modern technology and the understanding of its history is largely determined by Marx: technology is instrumental appropriation of nature and its development was driven by the bourgeoisie and capitalism. To this familiar conception the article opposes the concept of two technology types, which we find in the early modern engineer Salomon de Caus: useful and enjoyable technology. Enjoyable technology, which serves pleasure and not production, originates in the orientation to curiosities and representation at royal courts, limited neither by guild conservatism nor by considerations of profit. Precisely for this reason courtly technology was particularly creative. Against this historical background the article examines contemporary technological developments in the period of the transformation of capitalism into the aesthetic economy, in which technology development (apart from war) increasingly serves pleasure. Technology becomes plaything and life-style gadget. An explicit consumption of technology has emerged, in which Marx’s ideal obsolescence plays a leading role.

This article investigates the possibility and potential of a critical theory of nature and technology. A blind acceptance of the uninhibited development of the forces of production led traditional critical theory to neglect these areas, which it assigned to the domain of the natural sciences. The recognition that nature is socially constituted compels a reformulation of the interest in reasonable conditions that guided the older critical theory. The article asks what criteria offer themselves for determining what would be reasonable in our relations both to the nature that we ourselves are, the body, as well as to the nature that we ourselves are not. Such questions might revitalize critical theory in the very moment it threatens to become historically obsolete.

This article charts the emergence since the 1950s of a new value category, staging value, which arises when capitalism moves from addressing people's needs to exploiting their desires. Staging values serve the intensification and heightening of life rather than the satisfaction of primary needs. The article reevaluates successive theories on the relationship between aesthetics and the economy in the light of these changes, and suggests the continued relevance of critical theory in the era of the aesthetic economy.

This article deals with the question of what type of ethics may be efficient to cope with actual problems in advanced societies, i.e. environmental problems, social conflicts, the usage of new technologies. The answer given is that it is not morality or ethical decisions that count but the customary (das Übliche). But the customary is a rather precarious resource. This is not only because it may turn out to be the particularistic orientation of social groups, like those of companies, political parties, or even peer groups but also because it is eaten up by the progress of modernity. This is shown by comparison with the historical forerunner of the customary, namely what has been called ethical life (substantielle Sittlichkeit) by Hegel.

In this essay, I plan to critically discuss the widespread introduction of the computer into the classroom in modern society. I conceive of modern society as a knowledge society. The specific question I want to raise concerns discourse now dominant among policy makers who push for the extensive use of computers and the internet by students. In particular, do computer skills represent, in addition to the traditional cultural techniques of reading, writing and arithmetic, a fourth cultural technique? The answer to this question I want to advance requires a brief detour. I want to respond to the question about the possible ascendancy of a fourth cultural technique by offering, first, some observations about the notion of the knowledge society and, second, the difference between knowledge and information. The Concept of the Knowledge Society In recent years, the concept of the knowledge society has enjoyed a boom in a number of the developed countries. The academic world has naturally reacted gratefully to this success, although it is by no means certain that the critical potential which has been present in this concept since its introduction (1) has been recognized. Rather, the Ministry of Science and Technology in Germany, for example, has used the concept to increase its own relative departmental strength and to legitimate certain programs, in particular the program "Schools to the Net" (Schulen ans Netz). From a policy point of view, the designation of the present society as the knowledge society is intended to prepare for a restructuring of the educational system. The central tenet of this restructuring, which has already begun, is the view that the ability to manipulate data, in other words, competence with computers and the media, will represent society's crucial human capital in the future. The concept of "the knowledge society "--simply represented a prestigious, forward, looking banner under which the computer might make its entry into schools! In this way, because of the positive connotations attached to the idea of knowledge, the concept of the knowledge society has been able to assume ideological functions. Moreover, in the political sphere it has been used purely descriptively, to designate a certain mega-trend -- namely the growing importance of access to knowledge for social prosperity. In view of this it should be borne in mind that the theory of the knowledge society was originally intended as a critical theory of society. The term "knowledge" was chosen instead of terms such as "information" or "science" to indicate that there are alternative forms of knowledge, that hierarchies develop between these forms of knowledge and that these hierarchies, in marking the status of different areas of knowledge, take on social significance. Against this background processes of the "scientification" of human and social relationships can be described critically -- for example, as the growing disempowerment of the individual through dependence on experts . It also becomes apparent that, compared to the older factors of birth and capital, knowledge is gaining importance as a basis both of social power and of personal opportunities. The power aspect of knowledge also has its application in international relations. To preserve and develop this critical potential of the theory of modern society as a knowledge society it is necessary to work with binary concepts, such as the pair "value and price" in the critique of political economy and the pair "body and corporeality" in the critical theory of human nature. In the theory of the knowledge society the crucial pair of concepts is "knowledge and information". These concepts should be so elaborated that they refer to each other while at the same time preserving a clear difference. To achieve this it is not enough to fall back on the traditional philosophical concept of knowledge, because a strong concept of knowledge (equated with science) has evolved in this tradition since Plato (2) -- a concept which has consolidated the hierarchy of forms of knowledge while discrediting and consigning to obsolescence other forms of knowledge in relation to science. …

According to TH. KUHN is should be possible to describe a scientific community or specialty by a set of disciplinary commitments. Whilst KUHN spoke of technical-methodological rules and norms only as something shared by the members of a scientific community, this paper intends to make explicit their social function. By rules for experimentation the identity of the object of inquiry is warranted within a scientific community. A survey of the general rules for experimentation is given in so far as they have been made explicit by the philosophy of science. After this the disciplinary significance of rules for experimentation is studied within a special case: the controversy within experimental psychology concerning simple reactions (TITCHENER/BALDWIN). There is found a strong connection between the orientation of research, the constitution of the object by rules for experimentation, and the formation of scientific schools.

Der wissenschaftliche Fortschritt ist weder notwendig noch zufallig: Es gibt Alternativen in der Entwicklung der Wissenschaft, die nicht nach wissenschaftsinternen Kriterien entschieden werden. Der Begriff der Wissenschaftsalternative wird durch eine Unterscheidung interner und externer Bestimmungsfaktoren des Wachstums und durch eine Topik, die alternative Wissenschaften wissenschaftstheoretisch kennzeichnet, konkretisiert. Die Moglichkeit von Alternativen last sich ablesen an den systematischen Leerstellen der forschungslogischen Erklarungsversuche der Wissenschaftsentwicklung. Die Wissenschaftsgeschichte wird mit den Mitteln der Evolutionstheorie interpretiert: Die tatsachliche Entwicklung kann nur erklart werden, wenn man auf die Umwelt der Wissenschaft rekurriert, die Uberlebensbedingungen fur Theorien, Methoden usw. setzt. Die Moglichkeit externer Steuerung der Wissenschaftsentwicklung mus durch eine Theorie der sozialen Konstitution der Wissenschaft begrundet werden, die plausibel macht, inwiefern Wissenschafts- und Gesellschaftsstrukturen einander so entsprechen, das eine selektive Bestimmung der ersteren durch die letzteren moglich ist.

Contemporary science is characterized by a specific latitude for alternative developments. This means that science is open for external (economic, social, political) purposes to become the guide-lines of the development of theory. The transition to such a structure is here defined as „the finalization of science“. This notion must be distinguished from traditional forms of the „application“ of theoretical results. To explicate it, assumptions are developed relating to the structure and bearing of the self-regulatives operative in contemporary science. Three causes are suggested of the decline in the internal determination of the development of science: The achievement of a state of „theoretical maturity“ in fundamental disciplines (e.g., physics and chemistry); partial renunciation of the demand for causal explication and transition to functionalist sciences (e.g., psychology); the necessity of combining ecological approaches with the traditional analytical premises in different scientific disciplines. The perspective of the finalization of science embodies a growing coincidence of theoretical aims and social norms.

I The Design of Knowledge Society.- The Growing Impact of Scientific Knowledge on Social Relations.- Finite Human Capacities and the Pattern of Social Stratification in a Knowledge Society.- II The Social Role of Men of Knowledge.- Demarcation as a Strategy of Exclusion: Philosophers and Sophists.- Scientists Protect Their Cognitive Authority: The Status Degradation Ceremony of Sir Cyril Burt.- The Reproduction of Objective Knowledge: Common Sense Reasoning in Medical Decision Making.- III Processes of Scientification.- The Scientification of Police Work.- The Scientification of Architecture.- Knowledge Form and Scientific Community: Early Experimental Biology and the Marine Biological Laboratory.