Translated of: Du mode d'existence des objets techniques.

Includes bibliographical references (p. 269-271).

On the Mode of Existence of Technical Objects -- Introduction -- Part I Genesis and Evolution of Technical Objects -- Chapter One Genesis of the technical object: the process of concretization -- I. The abstract technical object and the concrete technical object -- II. Conditions of technical evolution -- III. The rhythm of technical progress; continuous and minor improvements; discontinuous and major improvements -- IV. Absolute origins of the technical lineage -- Chapter Two Evolution of technical reality; element, individual, ensemble I. Hypertely and self-conditioning in technical evolution -- II. Technical invention: ground and form in the living and in inventive thought -- III. Technical individualization -- IV. Evolutionary succession and preservation of technicity. Law of relaxation -- V. Technicity and evolution of technics: technicity as instrument of technical evolution -- Illustrations -- Part II Man and the Technical Object -- Chapter One The two fundamental modes of relation between man and the technical given -- I. Social majority and minority of technics -- II. Technics learned by the child and technics thought by the adult -- III. The common nature of minor technics and major technics. The signification of encyclopedism -- IV. Necessity of a synthesis between the major and minor modes of access to technics in the domain of education -- Chapter Two The regulative function of culture in the relation between man and the world of technical objects. Current problems -- I. The different modalities of the notion of progress -- II. Critique of the relation between man and the technical object as it is presented by the notion of progress arising from thermodynamics and energetics. Recourse to Information Theory -- III. Limits of the technological notion of information in order to account for the relation between man and the technical object. The margin of indeterminacy in technical individuals. Automatism -- IV. Philosophical thought must carry out the integration of technical reality into universal culture, by founding a technology -- Part III The Essence of Technicity -- Chapter One The genesis of technicity -- I. The notion of a phase applied to coming-into-being: technicity as a phase -- II. The phase-shift from the primitive magical unity -- III. The divergence of technical thought and of religious thought -- Chapter Two Relations between technical thought and other species of thought -- I. Technical thought and aesthetic thought -- II. Technical thought, theoretical thought, practical thought -- Chapter Three Technical and philosophical thought.