The first concrete plan for this book was conceived during my year as a Fulbright Visiting Research Chair. For this, I gratefully acknowledge the support of the people at the Fulbright Foundation and at Fulbright Canada. A draft was written during a sabbatical year from Nipissing University.
My ideas for this project came over many years, but began to take form under the supervision and guidance of Tom Darby and Randy Newell. I give special thanks to my close colleague and friend Toivo Koivukoski for conversations that helped me sharpen and clarify my arguments. Thank you also to Daniel Quinlan at the University of Toronto Press for his patience and perseverance.
While this book is an original work, some of the ideas and research appeared in previously published articles, including “Techne, Technology and Tragedy,” Techne: Research in Philosophy and Technology 7, no. 3 (Spring, 2004): 91–112; “Phronesis, Democracy, and Technology,” Canadian Journal of Political Science 37, no. 4 (2004): 997–1016; “The Politics and Philosophy of the Anti-Science Education,” Techne: Research in Philosophy and Technology 9, no. 1 (2005): 27–43; “Heidegger’s Essentialist Responses to the Challenge of Technology,” Canadian Journal of Political Science 40, no. 2 (2006): 487–505; and “The Tragic Double Bind of Heidegger’s Techne,” Phanex: The Journal of the Existential and Phenomenological Theory and Culture Society 1, no. 2 (2007): 94–112.