Origin and scope of Technique
Desde el dominio del fuego hasta la invención de la rueda y la metalurgia, la técnica marcó el proceso de liberación del hombre frente a la naturaleza.
The material foundation of this triumph lay in the powerful human brain, whose more complex structure than that of its rivals led Linnaeus, the great classifier of living beings, to confer upon the species the epithet Homo sapiens, the “reasoning man.” Yet even more urgently than reasoning about nature, primitive man had to act within it in order to survive amid surrounding dangers. From this reasoning action emerged the tools of our Paleolithic ancestor: axes, harpoons, stone knives. However rudimentary, these tools held a dual and far-reaching meaning: they separated man from the rest of creation, which knew no other instrument-maker, and they marked the beginnings of technique, materializing the first step in humanity’s ascent to mastery over nature. We do not know what the second step toward that objective was, nor when it occurred. There is little doubt, however, that some of humanity’s greatest technological achievements took place in the twilight of prehistory. Among these ancient advances, one exerted a more powerful influence than all others upon human destiny: the conquest of fire. Its acquisition made it possible to cook food, deepening the biophysical divide that already separated man from the animal kingdom. It also added an element of security to the life of the primitive tribe, illuminating the night, driving away real dangers such as predatory animals, and dispelling imagined dangers, the demons believed to inhabit the darkness.
Obtained by rubbing pieces of wood together or by striking flint against stone, fire was difficult to produce, and once ignited it had to be constantly maintained and fed. This task, entrusted in Paleolithic tribes to women, is very likely linked to the early formation of the family and the home, a word that still retains in its root the concept of fire. Transporting fire was even more cumbersome than kindling it; this difficulty undoubtedly contributed to the gradual transformation of nomadic tribes into sedentary communities. Extracting metals from ores, as achieved in Egypt and Mesopotamia from the fourth millennium before Christ, and ultimately harnessing steam as a source of energy, were among the later developments derived from the conquest of fire. In view of its many and far-reaching consequences, this prehistoric achievement undoubtedly constitutes the starting point of humanity’s dominion over the forces of nature, marking a fundamental event in the development of technique and civilization. The acquisition of fire was an anonymous and collective conquest, like many other fundamental inventions. It may appear almost miraculous that this prelude foreshadowed the most unforeseen adventure: humanity’s rise to dominion over the planet. Only a few tens of thousands of years—a very brief span in geological chronology, whose units are millions of years—were required to elevate man above all other living beings and make him master of the Earth.
When Hero of Alexandria, one of antiquity’s engineers, invented his celebrated aeolipile, a precursor of the steam turbine, he did not conceive it for practical utility. Like his other automata, it was designed as a curiosity to amuse spectators. A society based on slavery or feudalism could dispense with labor-saving machines. However significant the increase in available energy brought about by technical resources, this reveals only one aspect of technical progress. Another equally characteristic aspect of the ever-growing power of technique lies in the progressive liberation of humanity from limitations imposed by nature that long seemed immutable. This process of liberation, particularly striking in recent decades, has unfolded along several dimensions: it reduces distances and durations, overcoming constraints of space and time; it replaces natural substances with synthetic materials; it opens within the atom an inexhaustible source of energy independent of solar radiation, formerly the sole source of all energetic forms; and it begins to free humanity from the bonds of Earth’s gravitational field, pointing the way toward the planets.
In the later development of civilization, and in all irrigation-based cultures—Egypt, Mesopotamia, China, and India—a series of mechanical inventions of immediate application emerged, such as the wheel, the pulley, the inclined plane, the lever, and the gear. In Greece and Rome these inventions were further developed and widely applied to diverse activities. The process through which humanity initiated its liberation from nature’s constraints—a process still incomplete—reached its most important stage, after the discovery of fire’s potential, during the transition from barbarism to civilization in agricultural and pastoral cultures. This period was marked by the invention of elements foundational to all subsequent technological development. Pottery, metallurgy, and glassmaking enabled the manufacture of agricultural tools, implements for trade and warfare, and luxury objects of great economic importance in early urban civilizations. In the same period appeared writing, the calendar, and the textile industry. These inventions, along with many others of lesser foundational significance, shaped the dawn of the Neolithic era. Pottery became, in that period, the first mechanized industry, thanks to the wheel, as evidenced in Egyptian reliefs from the Twelfth Dynasty depicting potters at wheels not very different from the primitive models attempted thousands of years earlier.
