Günter Ropohl
German philosopher (1939–2017)
Günter Ropohl (14 June 1939 in Cologne, Germany – 28 January 2017) was a German philosopher of technology.
Biography
Günter Ropohl studied mechanical engineering and philosophy at the University of Stuttgart, where he was a scholar of the philosopher Max Bense. After his PhD (Dr.-Ing.) in 1970, he wrote his Habilitation thesis in Philosophy and Sociology at the University of Karlsruhe (TH) in 1978 under the supervision of Hans Lenk. His work dealt with the systems theory of "Technik" (engl. technique), leading to the concept of general technology.
In 1979, Ropohl became professor at the University of Karlsruhe (TH). Soon after, in 1981, he became professor for Allgemeine Technologie (general technology) and philosophy of technology at the Goethe University Frankfurt, Germany (until 2004). In the 1980s, he visited his colleague and friend Carl Mitcham in the United States. From 1983 to 1991, i.e., during the period of the Cold War, he was course director and visiting lecturer at the Inter-University Centre Dubrovnik (Croatia). In 1988, he was invited as visiting professor at the Rochester Institute of Technology, Rochester NY.
Ropohl was an honorary member of the German Engineering Association (VDI), due to his interdisciplinary engagement for the philosophy of technology.
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This entry incorporates text from “Günter Ropohl” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.