[73] So has also the technical emphasis of the modern world since the Renaissance^a. Contemplation became a help for transformation, but not a purpose in itself. I will now discuss the logical structure of the technical realm and then its creative greatness, its estrangement, and its possible healing in relation to man's ultimate concern. If I give you a little of the philosophy of the technical realm, then I don't do it in itself in order to give this in itself, but in order to prepare the second consideration, namely how this is related to the religious symbolism, to man's ultimate concern. So first: philology^b and philosophy^c of the "technical." The word comes from the Greek τευχα [?] which means "succeeding," "reaching something." Wherever adequate means are used in order to bring something into being, there we have the technical structure. If we give this definition--reaching something, or forming something, with adequate means--then we have a very large concept of the technical, and certainly we need it. Our next statement can be: τεχναζει η φυσις which means, nature uses technical means; or more exactly, nature is technical in one of its elements. Every new form in the biological realm, every new genus and species, develops new organs--feet, hands--and in man it develops the hands by liberating them from the need to walk on them and climb with them. It makes something new out of this organ, a means for the end of grasping things. And the power of grasping is of course the root of all technology^d. Or there are other pre-formations of technical products. We are now observed by a technical camera* in the background of this room, but the TECHNICAL camera is only a continuation of the natural camera, which is the eye of living beings, especially the human eye; and the bodily form and wings of birds pre-form the airplane, so that in nature you can follow this through in innumerable cases (I can give you only a few examples). All technical development is a continuation of these natural *Earlier in the lecture, a "Life" magazine photographer had entered the classroom, disrupting things, to photograph for an article on Harvard Divinity School which appeared in a December 1955 issue. -- Ed.