COSMOTECHNICS
A thought on
ANGELAKI. Journal of the Theoretical Humanities. volume 25 number 4 august. 2020
Yuk Hui | COSMOTECHNICS
As a result of the Cosmotechnics concept, I have been exposed to a radically different way of thinking that I would consider a necessary step in my own understanding of technology, its impact on modern societies, and how it has dominated societies at different levels, and even regions and cultures throughout history until today.
Cosmotechnics explores how technology has been defined and identified through philosophy, anthropology, and history. It could be argued that there is a rapture in the definition of modern technology and how it differs from the actual essence of the Greek word “Techne”.
A convincing demonstration has been made by André Leroi-Gourhan that the discovery and use of tools have been the determining process behind hominization in the anthropology of technology. In his view, the technique is the externalization of memory and the extension of organs.
In this interpretation, technology is anthropologically universal.
Accordingly, the way in which we execute the explanation of what we call a “technical tendency” and a “technical fact” is not wrong as long as we recognize that it will reveal different meanings from various regions and cultures, since culture is, in my opinion, the context in which infrastructure and development can flourish.
At this point, I would like to refer to a part of the article directly:
“In the history of technology, Joseph Needham raised a haunting question, namely, by asking why modern science and technology weren’t developed in China and India, while at the same time showing a large amount of scientific and technological development in China before the sixteenth century.”
Related to what I mentioned recently about the vital role of culture and region in planting technological development and also Needham’s idea, we cannot compare Chinese science and technology (or in my opinion any other significant nations/society) with the Western version, since they are rooted in different epistemologies and philosophies, Yuk Hui made a critical question, which is, “In this sense, how can one rearticulate these differences?”
Essentially, the cosmotechnics definition seeks to unify the gap between cosmic order and moral order through technology to reposition and constrain it through the universal concept of technology.
When it comes to technology, the methods employed and anthropological assumptions are more or less the same from China to the United States: population control, the delusion of totality, exceeding human limits, and omnipotence.
In contrast to this reasoning, Yuk Hui argues that technology should be rethought in its diversity and locality, by taking into account “cosmotechnics”, which in fact, is local.
- The Chinese, for instance, had a different concept of morality than the Greeks did.
Cosmotechnics therefore immediately raises the issue of locality in order to determine the relationship between technology and locality, which, in turn, will enable technology to be differentiated.
It might sound irrelevant, but at the end of this text, I would like to refer to a discussion about technological utopias, “The Dream of Cosmotechnics”, by Yuk Hui and Eugene Kuchinov, in which even a small portion of this discussion would provide us with valuable insight into the new way of thinking.
Can we think of technology not as a universal, but as a multitude?
Imagining the world beyond both the planetary universalism of Western technology and the narrow world of “national” technology. A utopian technological imagination is required in this context.
Furthermore, we need to be aware of the fact that there is no completion of thinking because completion means its own fulfillment which leads this re-discovering and re-assembling to death!
Please if you are interested in this concept also dig through this text, written by Julius Gavroche, “From the Universality of Progress to Cosmotechnics”:
Yuk Hui: From the universality of progress to cosmotechnics Links to an external site.
Also, watch this conference from Yuk Hui: