Editing Technology (section)

== Etymology ==
''Technology'' is a term dating back to the [[Renaissance|early 17th century]] that meant 'systematic treatment' (from [[Ancient Greek|Greek]] {{lang|grc|Τεχνολογία}}, from the {{Langx|el|{{wikt-lang|el|τέχνη}}|tékhnē|craft, art}} and {{wikt-lang|grc|-λογία}} ({{transliteration|grc|-logíā}}), 'study, knowledge').''<ref name="Liddell 1980">{{cite book |last1=Liddell |first1=Henry George |author1-link=Henry Liddell |last2=Scott |first2=Robert |author2-link=Robert Scott (philologist) |title=Greek-English Lexicon |title-link=Greek-English Lexicon |edition=Abridged |publisher=[[Oxford University Press]] |year=1996 |orig-date=1891 |isbn=0-19-910205-8 |oclc=38307662}}</ref>''<ref>{{Cite encyclopedia |title=technology |encyclopedia=The Oxford English Dictionary |editor1-last=Simpson |editor1-first=J. |editor2-last=Weiner |editor2-first=Edmund |publisher=Oxford University Press |year=1989 |isbn=978-0198611868}}</ref> It is predated in use by the [[Ancient Greek]] word {{wikt-lang|grc|τέχνη}} ({{transliteration|grc|tékhnē}}), used to mean 'knowledge of how to make things', which encompassed activities like architecture.<ref>{{cite book |author=Aristotle |author-link=Aristotle |editor-last=Brown |editor-first=Lesley |translator-last=Ross |translator-first=David |year=2009 |title=The Nicomachean Ethics |page=105 |publisher=[[Oxford University Press]] |isbn=978-0-19-921361-0 |lccn=2009005379 |oclc=246896490 |series=Oxford World's Classics}}</ref>

Starting in the 19th century, continental Europeans started using the terms {{lang|de|Technik}} (German) or {{lang|fr|technique}} (French) to refer to a 'way of doing', which included all technical arts, such as dancing, navigation, or printing, whether or not they required tools or instruments.{{Sfn|Salomon|1984|pages=114–115}} At the time, {{lang|de|Technologie}} (German and French) referred either to the academic discipline studying the "methods of arts and crafts", or to the political discipline "intended to legislate on the functions of the arts and crafts."{{Sfn|Salomon|1984|page=117}} The distinction between {{lang|de|Technik}} and {{lang|de|Technologie}} is absent in English, and so both were translated as ''technology''. The term was previously uncommon in English and mostly referred to the academic discipline, as in the [[Massachusetts Institute of Technology]].<ref name=jstor40061169>{{Cite journal |last=Schatzberg |first=Eric |year=2006 |title="Technik" Comes to America: Changing Meanings of "Technology" before 1930 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/40061169 |journal=Technology and Culture |volume=47 |issue=3 |pages=486–512 |doi=10.1353/tech.2006.0201 |jstor=40061169 |s2cid=143784033 |issn=0040-165X |access-date=10 September 2022 |archive-date=10 September 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220910165857/https://www.jstor.org/stable/40061169 |url-status=live |url-access=subscription }}</ref>

In the 20th century, as a result of [[Progress|scientific progress]] and the [[Second Industrial Revolution]], ''technology'' stopped being considered a distinct academic discipline and took on the meaning: the systemic use of knowledge to practical ends.<ref>{{harvnb|Salomon|1984|page=119}}: "With the industrial revolution and the important part England played in it, the word technology was to lose this meaning as the subject or thrust of a branch of education, as first in English and then in other languages it embodied all technical activity based on the application of science to practical ends."</ref>