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Radovan Richta
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- History of technology is a more general article on a similar topic.
Radovan Richta (June 6, 1924 - July 21, 1983) was a Czech philosopher who coined the term technological evolution; a theory about society's replacement of physical labour with mental labour.
Richta's first work was Člověk a technika v revoluci našich dnů ("Man and Technology in the Revolution of Our Day"), published in 1963. This work did much to bring the concept of technology into the forefront of philosophical thought during the 1960s. Richta then went on to publish Civilizace na rozcestí ("Civilization at the Crossroads") in 1966. "Crossroads" was a compilation work published by 60 authors (including and lead by Richta) that "attempt[ed] to analyze the social and human implications of the scientific and technological revolution" (Crossroads, Third expanded edition. Trans. Marian Slingova, 13). The concepts touched on in "Crossroads" are considered by some philosophical historians to be very ground-breaking for their time.
Richta became the director of the Philosophical Institute of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences (CAS) in 1968. As such he developed the famous term of "Socialism with a human face" serving as a motto of the Prague Spring period.
- Czech Philosophy in the XXth Century, an essay outlining the meaning and consequences of Richta's writing (see Chapter 13).