Employing characterology

The rational, verifiable account of the characteristics or properties of phenomena, often with a view to exercise control over them.

In a chapter called The Characterology of Technique, Jacques Ellul describes traditional techniques as well as the characteristics of modern technique and identifies them as: (1) automatism of technical choice; (2) self-augmentation; (3) monism; (4) the necessary linking together of techniques; (5) technical universalism and (6) the autonomy of technique.