Ken Archer's fPET-2010 presentation

2. Regress results in Essence or First Principles of a Thing

3. Thus ultimately concerned with what things are, as this “whatness” accounts for how things move and act (hylomorphism)

4. Assumes things (substances) have identity

6. Subject is Predicate Subject=Predicate (Leibniz)

7. Goal is computational discovery of equations that describe laws of nature (Newton)

8. More concerned with how things work that what things are (Bacon)

9. Replaces identity of substances with material extension

12. Aristotle’s description of useful arts (N. Ethics)

13. Why didn’t a trial work? Because that’s how this type of thing works.

14. Shared assumptions of regressive analysis implicit in trial and error

16. Why didn’t a trial work? Because I haven’t created the systemic conditions that make this work.

17. Shared assumptions of decompositional analysis in trial and error (but engineering still separate from science)

19. Engineering no longer a distinct discipline from science as it had historically been

20. Technical analysis seeks to be identical with algebraic, decompositional analysis of mathematical science

22. Technology should certainly incorporate scientific knowledge of laws describing how things work. But true technical analysis is not complete without artful, practical knowledge, acquired through trial & error.

23. Post-scientific technical analysis is increasingly regressive, as applied science is increasingly viewed as incomplete.

25. More clinicians assuming human body oriented towards health, even thriving, instead of a complex of material systems that is agnostic towards life or death

27. More software engineers view code as intentional, not formal

29. More process/quality analysts and managers assuming workers generally oriented towards good work, instead of a unit of energy (e.g. Taylor)

31. Critique of technology as desiring mastery of nature (arising from environmental concerns for sustainability, the concerns of classical philosophers of science, etc) appears true.

33. All this means, though, is that the experiential intuition and regressive analysis of what accounts for a thing’s activity is performed no longer by scientists but by practitioners of the sciences in their technical applications. Technology becoming more humanistic.

34. When technology is regarded by its practitioners as a mere application of science, it is not applying a complete science, but an incomplete science of mathematical discovery animated by the mastery of nature.