Abstract

For us, the word "technique" connotes the world of technological artefacts, each of them having their own function. Nevertheless, this word comes from the old Greek word technè, which meant both arts and technology, and could in the medieval times be accurately translated in latin by "ars". Indeed, "ars" shared the same ambiguity as technè, as does the German Kunst, since künstlich is used as much for "artistic" as for "artificial". But when the "liberal arts" began to include painting, sculpture, and so on, previously belonging to "mechanical arts", those two words split and began to name two different things. In the end, "art" meant only the "artistic" side, and "techniques", the side of technological or technical artefacts. The division between "artefacts" and "objectsof arts" became something taken for granted in European thinking. Of course, this shift had both "internal" reasons, within the artists' practices (concerning the difference between working according to a tradition in order to deliver a piece of art, and working spontaneously in a non-useful fashion, and so on) and some "external" reasons (some craftsmen vindicating privileges due to the special situation of their practice among the group of so-called artists; see Heinich 1999). However, in the present perspective the common root of technology and art in this old experience named technè could prove to be illuminating concerning the status of artefacts.