Samenvatting
This chapter develops a descriptive theoretical structure for human factors. The structure is based on a view of technology as the principal method through which humans expand their bounds of perception and action but also as the medium through which control is arbitrated in systems of increasing complexity and abstraction which explore the new `territory' revealed. The theory presents a broad rationale for the contemporary impetus in human factors and historical motivations for its growth. It is suggested that human factors is unlike other traditional divisions of knowledge and is more than the mere haphazard interdisciplinary collaboration between engineering and the behavioral sciences.