Lecture VIII (Nr. 0077)

[74] technical elements in nature. Now this means the technical is a creative reality. And I emphasize this so much because I want to warn my theological friends against a shallow contempt of the technical, which has often spread and has led to a confronta- tion or contrasting of the technical and the human, or the spiritual. If higher organs are developed which can do more, in technical terms, the other organs are reduced, sometimes to a complete disappearance. New devices are produced by nature, and older devices are dropped. Think, for instance, of the device we call the human brain, and which has, as an intrinsic consequence, the dropping of many powers which we find in higher animals. In the human brain, with the help of this means for ends, this technical organ, a change happens in the relation of means and ends. In nature, insofar as it has technical elements in itself, means and ends are always identical. The organs--for instance the eyes--are parts of that for which they are used, namely the living structure, the living totality. And the whole is the basis for the development of every organ. Everything in a living organism is used for the living organism and EVERYTHING IN IT, so that here the means become ends, and the ends become means. Now this situation is not true any more after the human brain has appeared, in the development of the living substance on earth. In man this identity of means and ends is dissolved. The means serves an end which is not itself. After reaching the end, the means can disappear--the tool can be thrown away, or it can be used for another end. But IT IS NOT USED FOR ITSELF. Now this is a fundamental change. And this is a change on which all technological development is based. In man we can distinguish the technical as an element in all human activity; there is no human activity in which there is no technical development at all, in which there are no means for ends. This gives two types of technical functions. The one is the technical element in ALL human activity--for instance in my speaking here to you; and the other is the production of the tools by changing a part of the encountered reality for a purpose.