Technological Understanding: On the cognitive skill involved in the design and use of technological artefacts

Although several accounts of scientific understanding exist, the concept of understanding in relation to technology remains underexplored. This paper addresses this gap by proposing a philosophical account of technological understanding: the type of understanding that is required for and reflected by successfully designing and using technological artefacts. We develop this notion by building on the concept of scientific understanding. Drawing on parallels between science and technology, and specifically between scientific theories and technological artefacts, we extend the idea of scientific understanding into the realm of technology. We argue that, just as scientific understanding involves the ability to explain a phenomenon using a theory, technological understanding involves the ability to use a technological artefact to realise a practical aim. Both theories and artefacts are tools, and using them successfully requires the cognitive skill of understanding. Technological understanding is thus conceived as the ability to recognise how a practical aim can be achieved by using a technological artefact. In a context of design, this general notion of technological understanding is specified as the ability to design an artefact that, by producing a phenomenon through its physical structure, achieves the intended aim. By analogy with De Regt's criterion of the intelligibility of theories, we give, as a precondition for technological understanding, a criterion for the intelligibility of a technological artefact. We illustrate our concept of technological understanding through two running examples: magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and superconducting quantum computers. Our account highlights the epistemic dimension of engaging with technology and, by allowing for context-dependent specifications, provides guidance for testing and improving technological understanding in specific contexts.