ABSTRACT
This part introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters. The part deals with two writers, Ernst Kapp and Arnold Gehlen, who are most commonly associated with the movement in Germany known, especially after the turn of the century, as philosophical anthropology. A different theory with a somewhat more limited scope which has been developed in the anthropological tradition, especially by Gehlen, deals with the relationship between actions in their role as elements of technical operations, and the structure of scientific theories and experiments. Kapp thus uses the concept of organ projection in order to reconstruct the development of technology as a complete and continuous process. Kurt Lenk finds a similar concept of technology-compatible nature in Descartes in the fact that: "Nature is no more the objectively given, but the objectively possible". Kapp must be given the credit for having put technology as a theme firmly on the philosophical agenda.
