Laev kui tehnika. Maailma tunnetamine laeva juhtimise kaudu / Ship as Technics: Cognising the World via Operating a Ship

Abstract

Teesid: Laev ja tema juhtimine (navigeerimine) on tehniliselt keerulised ja mitmetahulised, toimides üpris keerulises keskkonnas, kus neile mõjuvad paljud tegurid. Neid hoomama ja valdama õppimine on pikaajaline protsess. Laevajuht peab laeva kui kompleksse tehnika kaudu õppima tunnetama teda mõjutavat maailma ja selles õigesti toimima. Ameerika tehnikafilosoofi Don Ihde käsitluses on tehnoloogia loodud suhteid inimese ja maailma vahel nelja sorti: kehastus, tõlgendus, teisesus ja taust. Analüüsin laeva põhjalikumalt nende suhtetüüpide raamistikus. Ühtlasi toon esile kitsaskohti Ihde skeemis.

A vessel and operating it are complex, multifarious technics subject to multiple factors from the rather complex environment that they inhabit. Learning to cognise and master those technics is a long process. The ship operator, as a beginner, has to learn to perceive and comprehend the world affecting the vessel and to operate the vessel correctly as a response to influences from the world. At first, the aspiring navigator may not discern the various affects of the environment to the ship from one another and from those of their own actions with the control mechanisms. The relation that arises between the operator, the ship’s control mechanisms, the ship, and the environment, remains enigmatic. I analyse those relations in terms of Don Ihde’s phenomenology of technics: types of relations that he has discerned between human, technics and the world. I indicate some shortcomings in Ihde’s schema and the real imbroglio of the relationships in actual situations.

The American philosopher of technology Don Ihde has conceived four types of relations that technics creates between humans and the world: embodiment, hermeneutics, alterity, and background. In embodiment relations, the human embodies, as it were, the technics that mediates the world to them, and the technics amends or enhances human capabilities. Examples are glasses that help vision and the hammer that helps hammering nails, whereby the technics themselves withdraw – they, ideally, are not perceived, while their user’s attention is on the world they mediate. In hermeneutic relations, technics is the focus of attention and perception, but it refers to the world outside it, conveying it in a specified manner. Such are thermometers, charts and texts: we gain information about the world with their aid. In alterity, technology is again in focus, but without referring to anything outside it – it is the destination of human interaction. Such are, for instance, computer games and idols. In background relations, technology is a mere background to human doings, like junk or light.

Ihde has an example of a vehicle as embodiment technics (creating embodiment relation) through which the driver perceives the world. Could such an approach also hold good in case of a watercraft? He mentions three kinds of perception that a vehicle enables or creates that I call environment perception, path perception and dimensional perception. What diverges most from land vehicles in case of vessels may be path perception: for watercrafts, the path or way (fairway) is not always clearly defined but has to be practised visually; the surface of the path – waves – must be taken into account for the particular ship (and sometimes this will prohibit sailing); in addition, ships’ path has depth, as they themselves have draught and underwater shape, and this relation between the ship and water considerably affects its operation. Also environment and its perception are more important and complicated than on land, since the wind greatly affects the ship’s movement.

Another distinction that must be made in Ihde’s category of embodiment relation that he does not expand on is that between manipulational embodiment and perceptual embodiment. The former concerns tools that are explicitly meant for bringing about changes in what is external to the tool’s user. A ship, just like a land vehicle, is such a tool: it is meant for carrying people and things across water. As such, it is subjected to rules and laws that regulate the above aspects (environment, path, dimensions) and their operation.

Ihde’s example of a control mechanism links a vessel to hermeneutic technics: moving a gear stick forward or backward should make the boat move forward or backward correspondingly. Also many other examples related to navigation that he gives elsewhere can be thus interpreted, as can other control mechanisms on a vessel, such as the helm (rudder). A ship’s bridge itself is full of technics that provide its operator with information both about the ship as well as its environment: the state of the engines, rudder angle, gear, course, rate of turn, speed, location (navigational chart), depth, wind. Those help the first type of relation that was observed between the navigator and the world: perceiving the world by means of the ship as embodiment technics. Also hermeneutic technics outside the ship, especially navigational aids, serve this type of relation, specifically the path perception.

A beginner has an alterity relation to the ship as they get to know it, but not without reference to the outside world as the environment in which the ship moves and that provides reference to this movement. The ship as a background is a wreck, a dwelling place, or residual ghost undulation perception.