Skip to main content

Advertisement

SpringerLink
Log in

Smaller is Better? Learning an Ethos and Worldview in Nanoengineering Education

  • Original Paper
  • Published:
NanoEthics Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

In this article, I draw on ethnographic research to show how a particular ethos and worldview get produced in the context of “technical” education in a department of nanoengineering. Building on feminist science studies and communication theory, I argue that the curriculum introducing undergraduate students to scale implicitly teaches them an abstract and universal notion that smaller is better. I suggest that rather than smaller is better, a perspective that embraces context and specificity—such as the question “when, how, and for whom is smaller better?”—would ground nanoengineering in a more reflexive, pluralistic, and democratically oriented mode of world-building.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. See Toumey [44], Junk and Riess [24], and Milburn [26] for discussions of how Feynman is made into the father figure of nanotechnology.

  2. See Winner [47] for a discussion of socially determined technological limits.

  3. For discussions of “constitutive exclusions,” see Barad [6]. For discussion of universal assumptions in western scientific practice, see Haraway [19], Harding [20], Reardon [39], and a theorization of feminist epistemology by Longino [30].

  4. Goodwin [15] argues that through highlighting, pointing, and work-specific practices of making sense of graphical images, professions produce an apparatus of vision that allows them to see the objects of knowledge central to their profession.

  5. See Milburn [26] for a discussion of how “nanovision” brings the future into present reality. See Adams, Murphy, and Clarke [3] for a discussion of anticipation in technoscience.

  6. See Barad [6] for a discussion of how scale, understood geometrically, suggests a spatial construction that is inherently exclusionary, whereas a topological analysis emphasizing ‘connectedness’ understands different scales as intra-actively produced. This is particularly apropos for thinking about nanoengineering, which is definitionally premised on the uniqueness of the nanoscale, and the ways in which it helps to produce the scales of nanomatter, nanoengineer (the person), nanoengineering (practices/community of practitioners), NanoEngineering (department/institution), nanotechnology industries, and nanotechnology-infused sociotechnical worlds.

  7. I have chosen not to name—even with pseudonyms—any of the students I interviewed to protect their identity. Each quote provided in this paper is from a different student.

  8. I have not independently verified this. In a preliminary search of companies that do RFID tracking for pharmaceuticals, I saw only references to using such devices in pharmaceutical and food packaging, not in individual pills.

  9. For Bakhtin, authoritative discourse refers to utterances that are fixed, often embodied by authoritative figures such as teachers and pastors. James Wertsch, writing about and quoting Bakhtin, writes that “instead of functioning as a generator of meaning or as a thinking device, an authoritative text ‘demands our unconditional allegiance,’ . . . It is ‘fused with its authority—with political power, an institution, a person—and it stands or falls together with that authority’” [46, p. 22]. This moment is one in which the professor is uttering authoritative speech in relation to the students, even as it is dialogic in relation to broader nanotechnology discourses.

  10. Not discussing the political here implicitly reinforces the idea that technology is apolitical. See Erin Cech for a discussion of how ideologies of meritocracy and depoliticization within engineering cultures frame social justice issues as “irrelevant to engineering practice” [10, p. 67].

  11. I have conducted over 80 interviews with nanoengineering students, faculty, and administrators, interviewing some students annually as they proceeded through the 4-year undergraduate major. Though students had a variety of responses when I ask them to define nanoengineering, they most commonly included some version of “engineering on a very small scale”, regardless of whether the student was in their first, second, third, or fourth years.

  12. The discourse that produces the dual identities of disruption and continuity in reference to scale does similar political work as that which claims nature as a nanotechnologist and nanotechnology as natural—fitting together the promise of revolutionary innovation with the security of incremental progress and/or progress that fits within a natural order. See Nordmann [36] for a discussion of the construction of “with nature beyond nature.”

  13. See Horton [22] for a discussion of how such visual juxtapositions enact a “scalar collapse” that privileges the scale of the human.

  14. Recall that the NNI’s vision invokes the language of controlling matter, and Feynman’s speech also refers to the “problem of manipulating and controlling things on a small scale” [13, p. 1].

  15. This is further evidenced by the departmental website: “[Nanoengineering] attempts to manipulate the ‘growth’ of materials on the nanometer scale, mimicking the processes of nature, which could potentially lead to a vast array of revolutionary materials and products that would benefit all other aspects of engineering, medicine, and other technologies, and everyday life” [31]. That is, the products of this world-making will be ubiquitous and, by definition, good.

  16. I observed this class 2 years in a row, and both times, this image evoked laughter by the students.

  17. The label again signals a connection to the previously referenced NNI image. Though the things represented are different, both images include pictures of “natural” and manmade objects.

  18. This is not to say that it necessarily achieves the goal of making students feel a naturalized, embodied relationship to the nanoscale. In interviews, students consistently related difficulty in conceptualizing or communicating the nanoscale aside from repeating the kinds of comparisons they have been taught, for example, how many nanometers comprise a dimension of a virus or a human hair.

  19. Every student whom I have asked has confirmed that these problems presented no challenge, mathematically. These students had already taken rigorous mathematics and physics classes, and most of them described the task of calculating the height of the campus library in millimeters as “easy.” To be sure, based on my observations in a nanoengineering laboratory that chemically synthesizes nanostructures, it seems clear that such laboratory work frequently requires scale-conversion calculations and that this is a basic skill that students need. Yet for a week and a half, much of the students’ in-class work, homework, and midterm examination is focused on these problems. It was for this reason that I asked the professor about his goal for these lectures on scale and scale-conversion problems, and why I ultimately decided to look more closely at what work they were doing.

  20. On “socio-ideological consciousness,” see Bakhtin [4, p. 276].

  21. This phrasing in used in a textbook in the curriculum but is also articulated in classroom contexts where, for example, geckos are invoked to demonstrate “nano” in nature. See Hornyak [21].

  22. This historical timeline is similar to the one used by the National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI). However, in my field site, Fantastic Voyage [25] is presented as an important element, situated between Feynman and Moore’s law, whereas it is not included by the NNI. See http://nano.gov/timeline (last accessed 3 August 2014).

  23. This student had completed the second-year nano curriculum, therefore I am designating them as a “second-year student” even though their actual status is more ambiguous.

  24. See Barad [5] for a detailed discussion of how agential literacy, extending her philosophy of agential realism, differs from scientific literacy.

  25. See Thorpe and Gregory [43] for a critique of how “public engagement” as a mode of democratizing science can actually be a form of cooptation and control, preparing citizens to become consumers of technoscientific products.

  26. The professor in this course frequently invokes the term “nano dream”, spelled as either one or two words, and concludes the class with an injunction to the students to follow their nanodreams.

  27. This sentiment—variously articulated—is widespread in STS, Constructive Technology Assessment (CTA), and Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI). For example, see Brune et al. [8] for a discussion of ethical vision assessment, particularly the recommendation “to not communicate futuristic visions without pointing to the ‘meta-knowledge’ about the visions: premises, presuppositions, values involved, uncertainties etc.” [8, p. 431]. See Adam and Groves’ [2] analysis of care as a mode through which responsibility can be refigured around interdependence rather than autonomy. Through care in this sense, one might examine nanodreams from multiple perspectives. Additionally, a “political imaginary of care” would consider “not only what a given technology might contribute to the fulfillment of human needs, but how it will affect the agency and identify of its users” [16, p. 199]. See Owen et al. for an examination of responsible innovation as entailing engagement that is “anticipatory, reflective, inclusively deliberate, and responsive” [38, p. 29, emphasis included], and Guston’s further examination of anticipation and the politics of novelty [17]. See Rip for a discussion of CTA and reflexivity [40]. See Barad’s discussion, building on the work of Judith Butler, of constitutive exclusions in relation to responsibility in science [6].

References

  1. Adam B, Groves C (2007) Future matters: action, knowledge, ethics. Supplements to The study of time, vol 3. Brill, Boston

  2. Adam B, Groves C (2011) Futures tended: care and future-oriented responsibility. Bull Sci Technol Soc 31(1):17–27. doi:10.1177/0270467610391237

    Article  Google Scholar 

  3. Adams V, Murphy M, Clarke A (2009) Anticipation: technoscience, life, affect, temporality. Subjectivity 28:246–265

    Article  Google Scholar 

  4. Bakhtin MM, Holquist M (1981) The dialogic imagination: four essays. University of Texas Press, Austin

    Google Scholar 

  5. Barad K (2000) Reconceiving scientific literacy as agential literacy: or, learning how to intra-act responsibly within the world. In: Reid R, Traweek S (eds) Doing science + culture. Routledge, New York, pp 221–258

    Google Scholar 

  6. Barad KM (2007) Meeting the universe halfway: quantum physics and the entanglement of matter and meaning. Duke University Press, Durham

    Book  Google Scholar 

  7. Berne RW (2006) Nanotalk: conversations with scientists and engineers about ethics, meaning, and belief in the development of nanotechnology. Lawrence Erlbaum, Mahwah

    Google Scholar 

  8. Brune H, Ernst H, Grunwald A, Grünwald W, Hofmann H, Krug HF, Janich P, Mayor M, Rathgeber W, Schmid G, Simon U, Vogel V, Wyrwa D (2006) Nanotechnology assessment and perspectives Wissenschaftsethik und Technikfolgenbeurteilung Bd 27

  9. CDC workplace safety & health topics nanotechnology FAQ. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. http://www.cdc.gov/niosh/topics/nanotech/faq.html. Accessed 25 Sept 2014

  10. Cech EA (2013) The (mis)framing of social justice: why ideologies of depoliticization and meritocracy hinder engineers’ ability to think about social injustices. In: Lucena J (ed) Engineering education for social justice: critical explorations and opportunities. Springer, New York, pp 67–84

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  11. Cranston E Nanocellulose. McMaster University Industry Liaison Office. http://milo.mcmaster.ca/portal/collaborate/nanocellulose-1/nanocellulose-sheet. Accessed 25 Sept 2014

  12. Etzkowitz H (2008) The triple helix: university-industry-government innovation in action. Routledge, New York

    Book  Google Scholar 

  13. Feynman RP (1960) There's plenty of room at the bottom. Eng Sci 23(5):22–36

    Google Scholar 

  14. Gibbons M, Limoges C, Nowotny H, Schwartzman S (1994) The new production of knowledge: the dynamics of science and research in contemporary societies. SAGE Publications, London

    Google Scholar 

  15. Goodwin C (1994) Professional vision. Am Anthropol 96(3):606–633

    Article  Google Scholar 

  16. Groves C (2013) Horizons of care: from future imaginaries to responsible research and innovation. In: Konrad K, Coenen C, Dijkstra AB, Milburn C, Lente HV, Society for the Study of Nanoscience and Emerging Technologies Conference (eds) Shaping emerging technologies : governance, innovation, discourse. Studies of New and Emerging Technologies / S NET, vol 004. AKA IOS Press, pp 185–202

  17. Guston D (2013) Daddy, can I have a puddle gator?: creativity, anticipation, and responsible innovation. In: Owen R, Bessant JR, Heintz M (eds) Responsible innovation: managing the responsible emergence of science and innovation in society. John Wiley & Sons Inc., Chichester, pp 109–142

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  18. Haraway DJ (1988) Situated knowledges: the science question in feminism and the privilege of partial perspective. Fem Stud 14(3):575–99

    Article  Google Scholar 

  19. Haraway DJ (1989) Primate visions: gender, race, and nature in the world of modern science. Routledge, New York

    Google Scholar 

  20. Harding S (1993) Rethinking standpoint epistemology: what is “strong objectivity”? In: Alcoff L, Potter E (eds) Feminist epistemologies. Routledge, New York, pp 49–82

    Google Scholar 

  21. Hornyak GL (2008) Introduction to nanoscience. CRC Press, Boca Raton

    Google Scholar 

  22. Horton Z (2015) Collapsing scale: nanotechnology and geoengineering as speculative media. In: Konrad K, Coenen C, Dijkstra AB, Milburn C, van Lente H (eds) Shaping emerging technologies. Governance, innovation, discourse. IOP Press, Berlin

    Google Scholar 

  23. Johnson DG, Wetmore JM (2008) STS and ethics: implications for engineering ethics. In: Hackett EJ, Society for Social Studies of Science (eds) The handbook of science and technology studies, 3rd edn. MIT Press, Cambridge, pp 567–581

    Google Scholar 

  24. Junk A, Riess F (2006) From an idea to a vision: there’s plenty of room at the bottom. Am J Phys 74(9):825–830. doi:10.1119/1.2213634

    Article  Google Scholar 

  25. Kleiner H, Fleischer R (1966) Fantastic voyage

  26. Milburn C (2008) Nanovision: engineering the future. Duke University Press, Durham

    Google Scholar 

  27. Mirowski P (2011) Science-mart: privatizing American science. Harvard University Press, Cambridge

    Book  Google Scholar 

  28. Mirowski P, Sent E-M (2008) The commercialization of science and the response of STS. In: Hackett EJ, Society for Social Studies of Science (eds) The handbook of science and technology studies, 3rd edn. MIT Press, Cambridge, pp 473–498

    Google Scholar 

  29. Mody CCM, Kaiser D (2008) Scientific training and the creation of scientific knowledge. In: Hackett EJ, Society for Social Studies of Science (eds) The handbook of science and technology studies, 3rd edn. MIT Press, Cambridge, pp 377–402

    Google Scholar 

  30. Longino HE (1990) Science as social knowledge: values and objectivity in scientific inquiry. Princeton University Press, Princeton

    Google Scholar 

  31. NanoEngineering Department Mission Statement. http://nanoengineering.ucsd.edu/about-us/mission-statement. Accessed 25 Sept 2014

  32. National Nanotechnology Initiative Nanotechnology Benefits. http://nano.gov/you/nanotechnology-benefits. Accessed 2 Aug 2014

  33. National Nanotechnology Initiative Nanotechnology Facts. http://nano.gov/nanotech-101/nanotechnology-facts. Accessed 31 Jul 2014

  34. National Nanotechnology Initiative Slideshow. http://nano.gov/slideshow-archive. Accessed 25 Sept 2014

  35. National Nanotechnology Initiative Size of the Nanoscale. http://nano.gov/nanotech-101/what/nano-size. Accessed 1 June 2015

  36. Nordmann A (2010) Enhancing material nature. In: Kjølberg KL, Wickson F (eds) Nano meets macro: social perspectives on nanoscale sciences and technologies. Pan Stanford Publishing, Singapore, pp 283–306

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  37. Nowotny H, Scott P, Gibbons M (2001) Re-thinking science: knowledge and the public in an age of uncertainty. Blackwell, Cambridge

    Google Scholar 

  38. Owen R, Stilgoe J, Macnaghten P, Gorman M, Fisher E, Guston D (2013) A framework for responsible innovation. In: Owen R, Bessant JR, Heintz M (eds) Responsible innovation: managing the responsible emergence of science and innovation in society. John Wiley & Sons Inc., Chichester, pp 27–50

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  39. Reardon J (2004) Decoding race and human difference in a genomic age. J Feminist Cult Stud 15(3):38–65

    Google Scholar 

  40. Rip A (2008) Nanoscience and nanotechnologies: bridging gaps through constructive technology assessment. In: Hoffmann-Riem H, Biber-Klemm S, Hadorn G et al (eds) Handbook of transdisciplinary research. Springer, Netherlands, pp 145–157. doi:10.1007/978-1-4020-6699-3_9

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  41. Sahu SK, Tiwari M, Bhangare RC, Pandit GG (2013) Particle size distribution of mainstream and exhaled cigarette smoke and predictive deposition in human respiratory tract. Aerosol Air Qual Res 13:324–332

    Google Scholar 

  42. Sunder Rajan K (2006) Biocapital: the constitution of postgenomic life. Duke University Press, Durham

    Book  Google Scholar 

  43. Thorpe C, Gregory J (2010) Producing the post-fordist public: the political economy of public engagement with science. Sci Cult 19(3):273–301

    Article  Google Scholar 

  44. Toumey C (2008) Reading Feynman into nanotechnology: a text for a new science. Techne 12(3):133–168

    Google Scholar 

  45. Van den Hoven J (2007) Nanotechnology and privacy: instructive case of RFID. In: Allhoff F (ed) Nanoethics: the ethical and social implications of nanotechnology. Wiley-Interscience, Hoboken, pp 253–266

    Google Scholar 

  46. Wertsch J (2001) The multivoicedness of meaning. In: Wetherell M, Taylor S, Yates SJ (eds) Discourse theory and practice: a reader. Sage Publications, pp 222–235

  47. Winner L (1986) The whale and the reactor: a search for limits in an age of high technology. University of Chicago Press, Chicago

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Valerie Hartouni, Colin Milburn, and my reviewers for their generous feedback and support.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Communication #0503, University of California, San Diego, 9500 Gilman Drive, La Jolla, CA, 92093-0503, USA

    Emily York

Authors
  1. Emily York
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Emily York.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

York, E. Smaller is Better? Learning an Ethos and Worldview in Nanoengineering Education. Nanoethics 9, 109–122 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11569-015-0232-3

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11569-015-0232-3

Keywords

Search

Navigation