  There are three knowledge-constitutive interests, each rooted in human existence and expressed in a particular type of scientific or scholarly inquiry. The first is the “technical interest,” the “anthropologically deep-seated interest” we have in the prediction and control of the natural environment. This interest structures modes of inquiry and knowledge-production in the “empirical-analytic” sciences, that is, the natural sciences and types of social science that aim at testable general explanations (in contrast to the interpretive social sciences, which aim at cultural understanding, and the “normative-analytic” sciences, such as rational choice theory, which rely on formal modeling and deduction based on counterfactual axioms; see 1988a, 43ff). As a deep-seated structure constitutive of knowledge, the technical “interest” refers not to the motivations of scientists or specific disciplinary aims, but rather to a way of approaching nature and society as objects of possible knowledge: in tying knowledge-production to controlled observation and methodical experimentation, the empirical-analytic sciences deploy basic species-capacities to master the natural world via feedback-monitored instrumental action. To be sure, Habermas's analysis relies heavily on a hypothetico-deductive model that was in serious trouble even as he wrote. But his core idea is arguably broader in scope: the empirical-analytic sciences are distinguished by their treatment of the object domain as governed by predictable law-like regularities that allow for certain types of methodologically controlled techniques of inquiry that would be inappropriate for the interpretive sciences. Thus the technical interest applies not only to sciences that promise technological benefits, but also to sciences like paleontology.