Plato's Approach to Technology

In the Statesman, Plato gives both a definition and a classification of his contemporary technology. The importance of this text comes from the fact that his purpose is not to define and classify technology but to show how one can analyze the art of the statesman. Therefore, he gives just a didactic example which means that the conception exposed here is a piece of common knowledge. Thus, Plato only clarifies what is commonly thought of technology. He refers to craftsmanship, carpentry and manufacture as the “practical actions... [that] complete those material objects they [the artisans] cause to come into being from not having been before” (258e). Thus, for Plato the technology is understood as the practice of creating and perfecting material objects that do not exist naturally. This practice is linked to a practical knowledge, a “knowledge... naturally bound up with practical actions” (258e). Knowledge, especially mathematical knowledge, is an important part of technological endeavour:

if someone is to take away all counting, measuring, and weighing from the arts and crafts, the rest might be said to be worthless... All we would have left would be conjecture and the training of our senses through experience and routine. We would have to rely on our ability to make the lucky guesses that many people call art, once it has acquired some proficiency through practice and hard work (55e, my emphasis).

If one is to eliminate knowledge from crafts, these will become worthless because all that is left is lucky guess and conjecture. However, for Plato, technology is a systematic endeavour that uses principles in making things. The principles, the knowledge that the artisan uses is mainly mathematics. Therefore, technology is mathematically embedded. Plato criticizes the (probably) popular view of technology as based only on routine, experience and lucky guesses, in which no real knowledge is involved. Although knowledge is involved in craftsmanship and Plato stresses that, in the Republic Plato shows that the type of knowledge that the artisan, the practical man, possess is impure and corrupt:

no one with even a little experience of geometry will dispute that this science is entirely the opposite of what is said about it in the accounts of its practitioners... They give ridiculous accounts of it, though they can't help it, for they speak like practical men, and all their accounts refer to doing things. They talk of 'squaring', 'applying', 'adding', and the like, whereas the entire subject is pursued for the sake of knowledge (527a, my emphasis).

The geometry of the artisan is an ignoble form of the real science and the craftsman does not possess the proper language and the principles of science. The practical geometry of the artisan is even the opposite of the real science because it is a geometry of the things that become, that come into being, while geometry as such is a science of being qua being, of the incorruptible: “If geometry compels the soul to study being, it's appropriate, but if it compels the soul to study becoming it's inappropriate” (526e). This distinction will be further used to argue for the low status of the artisan in the city.

In the Statesman, Plato discovers by analysis seven great technological classes based on the intended use of the things made: “it would be most appropriate if we put the [1] 'first-born' class of things at the beginning and after this [2] 'tool', [3] 'vessel', [4] 'vehicle', [5] 'defense', [6] 'plaything', [7] 'nourishment'” (289b). These seven classes comprise all that can be called 'craftsmanship' or, in contemporary terminology, technology. Of these classes, Plato distinguished tools-making as a special class because the production of tools is the basis of technology. Tool-making is called “contributory causes of production” (281e) because tools are used in all other classes. Without tools, no other technological class would be possible. Consequently, no civilization would be possible: “we must put down as being contributory causes all the sorts of expertise that produce any tool in the city whether small or large. Without these would never come to be a city, nor statesmanship” (287d). However, in the end of his analysis of technology, at 289b, he changes the order of classes, considering that obtaining the raw materials is the primal technological class. Nevertheless, this contradiction amounts to the view that technology necessarily proceeds from tools and raw materials in order to pursue further. The other important ingredient for making things is, as stated at 258e and 55e, the practical knowledge of the artisan.

Plato consequently classifies technology in seven domains based on the teleology of artefacts, on what they are good for. 'Tools' are the things made for “the purpose of causing the coming into being” (287e); the 'vessel' class comprises the things made “for the sake of preserving what craftsmen have produced” (287e); the 'vehicle' class comprises products of carpentry, pottery and bronze-working, which “it is all for the sake of some supporting or other, always being a seat for something” (288a); the 'defense' class comprises things made “for the purpose of defending”, “all clothing, most armor, and walls, all those encirclements made out of earth, or out of stone, and tens of thousands of other things” (288b); the 'playthings' class is “a fifth class of things to do with decoration, painting, and those representations that are completed by the use of painting, and of music, which have been executed solely to give us pleasures”, “not one of them is for the sake of a serious purpose, but all are done for amusement” (288b); the 'first-born' class consists of “gold and silver and everything that is mined”, “art of tree-felling”, “the art of stripping off the outer covering of plants”, “the art of the skinner”, and all the arts that “make possible the working up of classes of composite things from classes of things that are not put together” (288e); and finally, the 'nurture' class comprises “the arts of the farmer, the hunter, the trainer in the gymnasium, the doctor and the cook” (289a)¹. Technology comprises all human made products and the associated practices, whatever the mode of production, that are somehow necessary to human life.

To these Platonic technological classes, a new class will be added during Renaissance, that of scientific instruments, the class of things created to study nature.

An important part of Plato's approach to technology is the stress he puts on the lower social and ontological status of artisan. This is a recurrent theme that lasts until Renaissance and even beyond. As we already mentioned, one Platonic reason for this contempt is the fact that artisans deal only with becoming while the highest purpose of life is Being and the incorruptible Ideas. The science involved in craftsmanship is of a lower form because it deals with becoming and not with being. Another argument against the artisans is that they are not the real experts in their own domain: “a user of each thing has most experience of it and ... he tells a maker which of his products performs well or badly in actual use” (601d). In other words, the artisans are inferior to the users of technology and they should follow the users' prescriptions. Another argument against artisans is that they are only imitators of nature:

When a craftsman discovers the type of tool that is naturally suited for a given type of work he must embody it in the material out of which he is making the tool. He mustn't make the tool in whatever way he happens to choose, but in the natural way (389c).

This argument also deals with the relationship between technology and nature. Technology should imitate nature because the artefacts have pre-existing models in the natural world and the artisan should only discover these models. Moreover the artisans should be faithful to nature and should not bring any innovations because the natural way is the best one.

Finally, in the Laws, Plato explicitly regards craftsmanship as a disgrace for a citizen and argues for the ignobleness of such endeavour: “As for craftsmen in general, our policy should be this. First, no citizen of our land nor any of his servants should enter the ranks of the workers whose vocation lies in the arts or crafts” (846d). He specifies punishments for the citizens that would become artisans: “If a citizen born and bred turns his attention to some craft instead of to the cultivation of virtue, the City-Wardens must punish him with marks of disgrace and dishonour until they've got him back on the right lines” (847a). Plato argues in the Republic that the reason for banning artisans from citizenship is that they are made out of different base materials and that that diminishes their civil capabilities: 

'All of you in the city are brothers' we'll say to them in telling our story, 'but the god who made you mixed some gold in those who are adequately equipped to rule, because they are most valuable. He put silver in those who are auxiliaries and iron and bronze in the farmers and other craftsmen' (415a, my emphasis)

1Based on this classification, one can add, beside tools, raw materials and knowledge, a fourth important element of technology: the purpose of the thing made. But, this would amount to the Aristotelian analysis of the four causes, the efficient cause, the material cause, the formal cause and the final cause, which is not an explicit feature of the Platonic text.