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Material hermeneutics and Heelan’s philosophy of technoscience

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Abstract

This essay raises the question of material hermeneutics in Heelan’s philosophy of techno-science. For Heelan, a continental philosophy of technoscience, referring to Husserl and Heidegger and especially to Merleau-Ponty, features hermeneutic contexts of mathematics and measurement as well as laboratory observation, including what the later Heelan spoke of as “portable laboratories,” for the sake of objectivity and “meaning making.” For Paul Feyerabend, this material practice corresponded to the use of both techniques of observation and instrumentation, and not less “propaganda” in the case of Galileo which practice for Heelan included the ontological status of measures and numbers as well as apprenticeship in what Heelan called “contingent local practical cultural milieus.” The essay includes a discussion of Heidegger on mathematics and Bruno Latour on pasteurization.

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Notes

  1. Augustine, Confessions, I. 8, cited in Wittgenstein 1958, 2.

  2. “2. Let us imagine a language for which the description given by Augustine is right. The language is meant to serve for communication between a builder A and an assistant B. A is building with building stones: there are blocks, pillars, slabs and beams. B has to pass the stones, and that in the order in which A needs them. For this purpose, they use a language consisting of the words ‘block’, ‘pillar’, ‘slab’, and ‘beam’. A calls them out; B brings the stone which he has learnt to bring at such-and-such a call (Wittgenstein 1958, 3).

  3. See here on Heidegger and questioning, Babich (2017a, b, c and 1999). And see, in connection with Derrida, Blok (2015) as well as Hurst (2018) raising the question of identity in today’s political world of refugees and others.

  4. See Irrgang (2009) and see also Verbeeck (2005) and Borgmann (2005).

  5. Florman tracks a pro-engineering trajectory (Florman 1976). More insightful might be Clifford Stoll 1996, if the hint of critique proved so damning that Stoll currently makes his living selling Kline bottles, yet another instantiation, if one will, of ‘portable laboratories.’

  6. See in particular Simondon (2017).

  7. Kapp has recently been translated into English, including Siegfried Zielinski’s ‘media-archaeological’ postscript (Kapp 2018, 251–266) and one can trace a parallel to George Basalla’s similarly morphologically inclined, Evolution of Technology (1988).

  8. The motto from Reitlinger reads: “Die ganze Menschengeschichte, genau geprüft, lässt sich zuletzt in die Geschichte der Erfindung besserer Werkzeuge auf” (Kapp 1877).

  9. See for example David Berry’s 2014 work on the ‘philosophy of software.’ In addition, Yuk Hui 2016 integrates a reading of Simondon and Stiegler with Leibniz and a good deal of so-called ‘object-oriented ontology.’

  10. See Tripathi 2016 as well as Bateman 2018 and Romele 2020.

  11. This is a direct reference to be sure to a particularly ‘object’ problem. See, using Charles Saunders Peirce, Bruhn and Syn 2018. Although often a wiki-driven schematicism, see, usefully, Monnin 2010.

  12. See in addition to Jean Baudrillard and Ivan Illich, Introna and Ilharco 2006; Richardson 2012; Cook 2017, and on screen autism and GPS, Babich 2019a, b, c and with reference to medical technology, see Babich 2018. Cf. too Vial 2019.

  13. This extends from the pop to the recondite, from Alexander Galloway’s “We are the Gold Farmers” in Galloway 2012, 120–143, though one wishes there had been a tag/reference to Je Gin’s Chinese Gold Farmers (Gin 2006) in addition to Gin’s 2007 video documentary. Otherwise, in addition to Wolfgang Ernst, see Albery, et al. 2017, Berry on computational industries in 2014, 23–51 and Hansen 2016.

  14. It is from Claude Bernard, quite including his context, that Georges Canguilhem takes the term.

  15. Only few philosophers consider this at all but see A. W. H. Bates 2017 as well as LaFollette and Shanks 1994. Cf. too, for discussion, Babich 2019c.

  16. For one overview, see Johnson 2014 and Babich 2017a.

  17. Anders 1956a, as well as Anders 1956b. For an overview, including a discussion of the suppression of Anders’ work, see Babich 2019b.

  18. See Blok 2017 as well as the contributions to Strack 2000.

  19. See Georges Friedmann, for a reflection on the division of the act of production as such from the point of view of labor (as opposed to management). Cf. Friedman 1962 and see Simondon 2005 as well as Bardin and Carrozzini 2017.

  20. See for a discussion of Latour, Babich 2017a, b, c.

  21. Kochan 2010 does not reference Heelan in his reading between Heidegger and Latour.

  22. Cartwright held Heelan to blame when she (fortuitously) failed to obtain an appointment at Stony Brook. Heelan, who taught and cited Cartwright’s work, was not instrumental in that decision.

  23. Hacking 1983. Gary Gutting, Joe Rouse, and Robert Crease, although expressing interest in hermeneutic philosophy, reflect their original formation in analytic philosophy of science. If Heelan was generous to them, this was unreturned.

  24. For an overview and further literature, see Babich 2015, 2017a and c.

  25. See on Gadamer, Heelan 1991. And for a reading of prejudice as this plays a role in excluding hermeneutic philosophy of science, see on Heelan and Markus, Babich 2017a.

  26. See for a discussion Heelan 2014.

  27. Citing Galileo’s Sidereal Messenger in Feyerabend, 1993, 84.

  28. Both Heelan and Feyerabend cite the third chapter of Vasco Ronchi’s, Histoire de la lumière (1956). Cf. “Evidence from Perceptual Illusions” in Heelan 1983.

  29. Here, it can be worth looking at Heelan (1998).

  30. See: Fuller (1987). Heelan’s 1983 book developed out of an earlier study on the “Pictorial Space of Vincent van Gogh,” published in the Art Bulletin in 1972, and again in the 1980s. See Heelan 1983 for details, including images, 114–128, and see Margolis 2003 on Heelan’s reading of Van Gogh in addition to Blatt 1994. Additional resources on the fascinating implications of Heelan’s research are available today, see Dorn 1990.

  31. Gibson (1955).

  32. Gibson’s wife, the psychologist, Eleanor Gibson, better known to some because of her work, joint with her husband, on the cliff experiments with infants, writes about this in her foreword to Gibson (1982), x–xi.

  33. See “Seeing is Not Believing” on visual illusions for pilots, “If you experience a visual illusion during flight (most pilots do at one time or another), have confidence in your instruments and ignore all conflicting signals your body gives you. Accidents usually happen as a result of a pilot’s indecision to rely on the instruments.” Federal Aviation Administration (2011).

  34. This informs Heelan 1983 as well as his earlier work on measurement, science, and art, and directly from Heelan to be sure, a reference illuminating Antonio de Nicolas 1986. A recent article undertakes to rediscover this aspect of Merleau-Ponty using the language of ‘new ontologies’ in their discussion of the “measuring body,” Hoel and Carusi 2018. Mentioning only stock references (Jakob von Uexküll and George Canguilhelm), Hoel and Carusi do not take note of Heelan’s sustained analysis of the same.

  35. See Rasmussen, 1999, Breidenmoser et al. 2010, see especially on the essential role of artifacts, the contributions to Wülfingen 2017, especially Chadarevian 2017. And see Keirl 2014.

  36. See further, Michael Schwab’s discussion of Rheinberger in Schwab 2019, esp. 162f.

  37. Thus, as a student of György Lukács, informed by a Marxist’s material sense of science, György Markus denied the possibility of a hermeneutic philosophy of science. When Heelan engaged the argument, Markus offered no response (and non-response, i.e., non-engagement is, quite as Hegel tells us, the academic power move). See Babich 2017c 176f.

  38. This today must be extended, thinking of the proportionality of human tissue involved in creating pig chimeras to produce organs suitable for (xeno-)transplantation. See the conclusion of Babich 2018.

  39. See Heidegger, 1966 18. See, however, with respect to technology and communication of the same, chapter 4 of Bertolloti 1984 and Anders 1987.

  40. This contention hardly matches analytic philosophers of science, and for the same reason, one cannot ‘translate’ Heidegger in terms recognizable by mainstream [analytic] philosophy of science.

  41. See for a recent discussion, Haack 2016 along with Sorrell’s earlier (and still useful) 1991.

  42. “When we are dealing with scientists, we still admire the great genius and virtue of one man and too rarely suspect the importance of the forces that made him great. We may admit that in the technological or scientific fields a multitude of people is necessary to diffuse the discoveries made and the machines invented.” Latour 1984, 14.

  43. ‘Mobbing’ is done in perfect good conscience. Thus, so-called AIDS denialism is titled to evoke association with holocaust deniers. See Bialy 2004 on the molecular chemist, Peter Duesberg; cf., Babich 2015.

  44. For a discussion of Fleck, see Babich 2003. See also Kuhn 1979 and more recently Rietman 2018 who notes Latour’s 2005 postscript for the French translation of Fleck.

  45. See Latour 2011.

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Babich, B. Material hermeneutics and Heelan’s philosophy of technoscience. AI & Soc 38, 2177–2188 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00146-020-00963-7

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