Technical change, innovations and technological causality-An empirical and philosophical enquiry

This work clarifies the nature of technological development. It is argued that often unexpected and partially random coincidences play a central role when creative and innovative processes are triggered. Yet, the overall industrial structure, which manifests itself through these random processes is not casual, but structurally logical. An extensive conceptual survey is carried out to construct a proper framework based on the technical norms depicting the phenomenon. The peculiar dynamics of technological development is viewed through various and diverse technological parallaxes, which enables the empirical research to focus on the essential. By concentrating on the decision processes leading to technological actions in thirteen case studies the general features of technological causality are derived. The differences between physical and technological causality are analyzed in order to prepare ground for modelling the subject mathematically. Relying on the evolutionary paradigm, a dynamical model based on nonlinearities expressed by differential equations is constructed and simulated. The model is verified by an analogous test with empirical statistics. A tentative description of technological evolution with respect to biological evolution coincludes the modelling phase. The hypotheses expressed in the thesis are supported with strong inductive corroboration.