Aristotle

Aristotle's account of making rests on his doctrine of four causes — material, formal, efficient, and final — applied to the act of production. When a craftsman shapes bronze into a statue, the bronze is the material cause, the imagined figure the formal cause, the craftsman's action the efficient cause, and the intended purpose the final cause. None of these alone is sufficient; technology, for Aristotle, is the simultaneous presence of all four. This puts technē in a distinctive position: it is not blind nature, which lacks intention, nor pure contemplation, which lacks a product, but a purposive activity that mirrors natural generation while being irreducible to it.

Crucially, Aristotle distinguishes technē from both episteme (scientific knowledge) and empeiria (experience). Experience knows that a remedy works; technē knows why it works and can therefore teach and generalize. This epistemic dimension is what makes technology more than skilled habit: the carpenter who understands the principles of wood, joint, and load can innovate; the one who merely repeats gestures cannot. For Aristotle, the origin of any technology therefore lies in the moment an artisan grasps the universal principle behind a particular action — the moment making becomes knowledge.