Aesthetics and epistemology in technological education: elements from Freire and Marcuse

Abstract

Briefly speaking, Aesthetics is an area of philosophy that studies Art and Beauty (and its inherent contradictories). Their interrelations with education, and especially with the scientific-technical education, have been explored by some authors, but their focus rarely considers the ideological and epistemological dimensions of this more subtle articulation. Those aspect have been overlooked mostly in the training of engineers, architects and designers. Equally remarkable is the arbitrary disjunction between Aesthetics ('feelings'), Ethics ('values') and Logic ('truths') that characterizes much of our culture and our curricula, especially those of epistemological uncritical nature. This study comes to the conclusion that critical STS (Science, Technology and Society) perspective on Technological Education, in which it considers aesthetic aspects, invites a liberating educational approach in the sense given by Paulo Freire. It also recognizes interfaces with the Critical Theory of the Frankfurt School, especially the philosophy of Herbert Marcuse. We suggest the need to rethink the practical implications of these coincidences and intersections. Critical STS must argue, starting with elements of the philosophy of technology, including aesthetics, what are the consequences of the 'unidimensionality' for a project of man and society.