Technology, Technological Determinism and the Transformational Model of Technical Activity.

realist literature. This is surprising not only because of its central importance to a wide range of disciplines, but also because it seems to be a category about which critical realism has much to say. One aspect of technology that has proved to be especially problematic for commentators to accommodate is that technology’s constitution is as much a part of the social as well as the natural domains. This has caused problems to the extent that accounts of technology implicitly reduce one domain to another or only manage to distinguish one from the other in an unsustainable way (typically, those emphasising the social constitution of technology tend to treat the natural world as ‘constructed ’ in much the same manner as the social world, and those stressing the importance of the material/natural component in technology tend to treat the social world overly mechanistically). This paper draws upon the critical naturalism of critical realism and the transformational model of social activity in particular to develop a conception of technology that avoids these problems. It then draws out some of the implications of this account. In particular, some attempt is made to re-cast claims made by some so-called technological determinists, such as Heidegger and Habermas, who on closer inspection seem to be posing important questions that simply cannot be addressed without the kind of systematic (ontological) elaboration of the social and natural domains that I am suggesting