Don Ihde (January 14, 1934 – January 17, 2024) was an American philosopher of science and technology. In 1979 he wrote what is often identified as the first North American work on philosophy of technology, Technics and Praxis. Before his retirement, Ihde was Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. In 2013 Ihde received the Golden Eurydice Award. Ihde was the author of over twenty original books and the editor of many others. He gave numerous lectures and seminars internationally, and some of his books and articles have appeared in a dozen languages. Ihde died on January 17, 2024, three days after his 90th birthday.

Major concepts and thought

Postphenomenology

Don Ihde uses the methodological tools of phenomenology to analyse technology, and specifically the relations between humans and technological artefacts. Rather than thinking about technology as an abstract category, postphenomenological analysis looks at actual artefacts and the way they interact with users. Technologies, according to this view, mediate our relationship to the world, influencing the way we see it, understand it, and act on it. Other important authors in the field of postphenomenology are Peter-Paul Verbeek and Robert Rosenberger.

Bodies in cyberspace

Ihde's work Bodies in Technology spells out the original exploration of the ways cyberspace affects the human experience. The book explores embodiment in cyberspace with references to human–computer interaction (HCI) research. The main question of the book is the meaning of bodies in technology. Ihde rejects Cartesian dualism. Even to have an out of body experience is to have an implicit 'here-body' from which we experience an 'object-body' over there. He has further explored these arguments in his book Bodies in Technology. Beginning with a "phenomenology of multistability" in the way various "technological media" are perceived, Ihde examines the "roles of human embodiment, perception, and spatial transformations within communication and information media." Ihde argues that movies like the Matrix trilogy play upon fantasy in a technological context and relate to the human sense of embodiment. He stresses an important fact that we have to experience the embodiment where we live, rather than to "plugin" to a technofantasies world.

Technoscience

The study of technoscience examines recent work in the fields of the philosophies of science and technology, and science studies; it also emphasizes the roles of our material cultures and expertise. According to Ihde, science and technology are in a symbiotic relationship, where scientific research relies fully on the development of scientific instruments, the technological development. In a paper "Was Heidegger prescient concerning Technoscience?", Ihde re-examines Martin Heidegger's philosophy of science with a reappraisal of what was innovative, and what remained archaic. Heidegger then is read against the background of the "new" approaches to science in science studies, and against the background of the scientific revolutions which have occurred since the mid-20th century.

Material and expanding hermeneutics

Ihde has introduced the concept of material hermeneutics, which characterises much practice within the domains of technoscience. He rejects the vestigial Diltheyan division between the humanistic and natural sciences and argues that certain types of critical interpretation, broadly hermeneutic, characterize both sets of disciplines. He examines what he calls a style of interpretation based in material practices relating to imaging technologies which have given rise to the visual hermeneutics in technoscience studies. With references to science studies, sociology of science and feminist critique of science, Ihde has presented the idea of expanding hermeneutics, which emphasises praxis, instruments and laboratories over theoretical work. He claims that in science, the instruments and technologies used operate in a hermeneutic way.

Philosophers in "R&D"

Ihde argued on numerous occasions that "if the philosopher is to play a more important role it must not be only in or limited to the Hemingway role. Rather, it should take place in the equivalent of the officers' strategy meeting, before the battle takes shape. I will call this the 'R&D role'". Philosophers should engage with interdisciplinary research and actively participate in research and development work. He has claimed that only by having philosophers in R&D can they have truly new and emerging technologies that are philosophically engaged. Philosophers, precisely postphenomenologists, could help the scientific community to think about the future, rather than only about present-day phenomena or the past.

Selected works

Books

Articles