A Companion to the Philosophy of Technology

Philosophy of Technology

There is a debate among historians of Islamic technology over the meaning of the mechanical arts (hiyal), particularly with respect to the building of elaborate models of clever machinery (mechanical clocks and the like) as in al-Jazari’s thirteenth-century Compendium of Theory and Useful Practice in the Mechanical Arts (al-Jami’ bayn al-’ilm wa’l-’amal fi sina’at al-hiyal), where hiyal (singular hila) means “artifices” or “devices.” Jazari’s definition of technology is a man-made device that performs actions contrary to the natural forces of nature, his example being the lever. His patron had praised him for making models and bringing them forth from potentiality (theoretical principles) into actuality (practical applications). Each hila gives palpable form to a specific concept of physics, according to al-Farabi and other medieval Muslim philosophers, following Aristotle’s Mechanical Problems.

Ibn Khaldun, the great fourteenth-century polymath, expounded a philosophy of the craft trades in some detail, mixing Aristotelian explanation with his theory of the rise and fall of dynasties. In the Muqaddimah, he states that, first, crafts – which are concerned with both action and thought – have to be learned. That is, there is a mental component of technology (‘ilm) that informs the mastering of a specific craft practice (‘amal). Once mastered, such skills become rutinary and are performed by habit: “A habit is a firmly rooted quality acquired by doing a certain ...