Towards the Critique of Technological Reason

This chapter begins with a discussion of Bogdanov’s general theory of organization and his highly original proof of inexhaustible creativity and proceeds to examine the contemporary ‘end of science’ and ‘limits to growth’ debates. Examining a wide range of issues in epistemology, the philosophy of science, and the foundations of mathematics, we show that the potential limits to scientific and technological progress are typically explored in the heteronomous frameworks of practical constraints external to its intrinsic logic. At the same time, the (philosophically naïve) arguments from the allegedly theoretical perspective are typically construed within a narrowly defined branch of fundamental science and are either incomplete or inconsistent. What is required is a meta-scientific, epistemic analysis of scientific/technological progress, its qualitative scope, and temporal extent.