Dialectics of Technoscience

Dialectics is a philosophical method developed by Hegel (1770–1831), but building on an intellectual tradition whose origins can be traced back to ancient Greece. Dialectics was initially practiced as an educational technique for conducting philosophical discussions. For Hegel, however, dialectical processes can be discerned in the dramatic unfolding of nature, history and human thinking as such. The first dialectical thinker, in the genuine sense of the term, according to Hegel (1971), was Heraclitus (535 – c. 475 BC), in whose “obscure” aphorisms Hegel recognises the awareness that dialectics is more than merely a technique to foster critical reflection. Heraclitus already refers to a basic logic guiding the dynamics of nature as such, to a λόγος at work in actual processes of becoming and change, giving rise to contrasting and contradictory developments (“objective dialectics”, as Hegel phrases it). For dialectical thinkers, the dialectical method is fundamentally in tune with nature, because nature as such is inherently dialectical. Hegel considered Aristotle as ancient philosophy’s most thoroughly dialectical thinker, as we have seen, while Hegel himself is regarded as a modern Aristotle (Beiser, 2005, p. 57; Pippin, 2019, p. 301).