Semantic Change in the Language of Technology

Abstract

Abstract problem of semantic change in science has been widely examined at the intersection between philosophy of language and philosophy of science. Philosophers have been concerned with the change of meaning of theoretical terms in scientific theories, but the interesting question is whether we can identify a similar phenomenon in technological knowledge, since admitting that there are semantic changes in technology might violate the common sense intuition that technology is the totality of artifacts and as such, lacks semantic properties. However, if technology is as complex a phenomenon as science and there are also technological theories, it becomes reasonable to expect semantic changes in its domain. This view can be supported by the thesis of the incommensurability of theories Kuhn used to argue that there is no common language to enable the translation of terms ordinarily used in scientific theories. Kuhn did not extend the scope of the incommensurability relation to the domain of technology, though he analyzed some technological cases to illustrate the nature of this semantic phenomenon. Controversial as it might look, this chapter shall show that the history of technology provides enough evidence for the thesis that there are profound semantic changes in technology or, in other words, that there is technological incommensurability. The chapter explains how this thesis works in technology domain by means of two historical cases: the substitution of the contact theory of the voltaic battery by the so-called chemical theory and the transit of the material theory of heat to thermodynamics.