Abstract
This discussion paper proposes that a meaningful distinction between science and technoscience can be found at the level of the objects of research. Both notions intermingle in the attitudes, intentions, programs and projects of researchers and research institutions—that is, on the side of the subjects of research. But the difference between science and technoscience becomes more explicit when research results are presented in particular settings and when the objects of research are exhibited for the specific interest they hold. When an experiment is presented as scientific evidence which confirms or disconfirms a hypothesis, this agrees with traditional conceptions of science. When organic molecules are presented for their capacity to serve individually as electric wires that carry surprisingly large currents, this would be a hallmark of technoscience. Accordingly, we propose research on the ontology of research objects. The focus on the character and significance of research objects makes this a specifically philosophical project.
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Notes
Funded by the French and German Research Councils, ANR and DFG, the project “Genesis and Ontology of Technoscientific Research Objects” is set to develop a number of case studies in a larger collaborative setting. For more information see http://www.goto-objects.eu.
This definition does not make any assumptions as to whether this work of purification ever succeeds, nor does it commit science or philosophy of science to a realist metaphysics. Indeed, the differences and debates between various brands of realism, conventionalism, instrumentalism, constructivism arise within the scientific enterprise—they result from the question what the work of purification can achieve, and how the “signs of the real” should be interpreted.
An anonymous reviewer suggested a way of refining the question here that might be especially fruitful for a project dedicated to the ontology of research objects: The question of realism versus positivism or constructivism arises in respect to the problem of reality (Realität) as an object of representation. In contrast, research that engages the agency or efficacy of things that function outside the laboratory is interested in actuality (Wirklichkeit). However, some theories of reality assume that what is actually and efficaciously the case affords the only “signs of the real” that serve as the evidentiary basis for representations of reality.
Ludwig Wittgenstein, in particular, articulated this ontology: “The world is the totality of facts, not of things.”—“It is essential to a thing that it can be a constituent part of an atomic fact.”—“Objects I can only name. Signs represent them. I can only speak of them. I cannot assert them. A proposition can only say how a thing is, not what it is” (Wittgenstein 1958, 1.1, 2.011, 3.221).
For a critique of this story-line see Rabinow (1997).
How do the ways of “foregrounding” different aspects of the same research relate to the distinct definitions of science and technoscience? Take the example of “control.” We stated that the sciences aim for true representations, the technosciences for capabilities of control, but we did not use this to define the difference. After all, according to certain pragmatist and empiricist accounts of science, one ascertains the correctness or adequacy of a representation by taking as evidence a resulting capability to control. According to our definition, then, this is the decisive difference: In the case of those pragmatist and empiricist accounts of science control validates propositions and is not knowledge in its own right. In the case of technoscience, however, control is knowledge in its own right and the task for the philosophy of technoscience is to reconstruct the underlying epistemology, notions of validation etc. Having done this for technoscience, we can turn back to look at the sciences and ask whether there, too, is operative “under the surface,” so to speak, that other epistemology according to which the achievement of control is knowledge in its own right, indepedently of whether it validates a proposition. This is how “foregrounding” works and it leaves quite intact, of course, the notion that the sciences are oriented to the ideal of purification and thus to representations and propositions that are true or false.
However, it could be argued that such a top-down approach, in which objects embody idealized ontological frameworks, should be complemented by a more bottom-up approach, where one would investigate how research objects may prove able to reconfigure the overall map of knowledge, including the guiding ideals of science and technoscience. This is not only a purely methodological “top-down versus bottom-up” problem but concerns the status of ontology in respect to epistemology. Is the ontology of objects framed by a prior epistemological standpoint, or do the objects constrain the epistemic strategies of science and technoscience? To what extent and how exactly are technoscientific objects plastic to human ends and modalities of access—as opposed to the much emphasized resistance or recalcitrance of scientific objects? Do technoscientific attempts at mastering complexity encounter something like a “plastic stubbornness” of technoscientific objects? Here, different approaches come to mind, such as “existential pluralism” (Souriau 1943), “agential realism” (Barad 1999), or “object oriented metaphysics” (Harman 2005). This problem could also be addressed by reconstructing “biographies of objects” (Daston 2000).
Arguably, the ontology of facts is underpinned by an ontology of data where data are thought to be meaningless unless apprehended in the shape of propositions that organize them as facts.
An extreme illustration of this point was provided by Nobel-laureate Gerd Binnig, one of the inventors of the scanning-tunneling microscope, suggesting that a rock is not a rock but could be anything else (2004, 7).
To be sure, we are not assuming that, in fact, the technosciences can overcome notions of a limited world and discover unlimited resources for endless novelty and surprise. Obviously, such ideas can be criticized as technoscientific hubris. We do claim, however, that the notion of limits (as in conservation laws) are not constitutive for technoscientific research practice, while they may well be necessary preconditions for the representation of the world.
It might appear far-fetched to speak of “magical thinking”in respect to technoscientific research practice. But the far-fetched comparison makes a point about inferences from the similarity of two physical systems, e.g., from the similarity of cancer in the oncomouse and a human, or from the similarity of a dynamic behavior in silico and in vivo (of a simulation model in a computer and of a physical process in an experimental system). Precisely because these similarities are constructed with the help of research technologies, one can take them as indicative of a shared reality that makes these systems similar. (Compare to this the skeptical rejection of inferences from similarity in modern theories of knowledge: similarity judgments are thought to be reducible to statements of the form “identical in specific respects, different in other respects” and not to signify anything sui generis—see Goodman 1972 in contrast to Foucault 1973, esp. 17–25).
“In many cases the outcome of activating a disposition does not depend on any particular human situation, interest, or construction. However, in some cases the phenomenon has a specifically human aspect. Compare the generic outcome that ice of a certain thickness can bear a certain weight per unit area, expressed in a generic disposition, with the claim that ice of that thickness affords walking for a person. Generalizing the notion of an affordance we can say that an apparatus/world complex can afford things. For instance, wheat, yeast, and a stove can afford loaves of bread. A lathe can afford chair legs, and a discharge tube can afford gamma rays. […] The phenomena that are produced in an [apparatus/world complex] are the manifestations of affordances. These are dispositions that bring together two sets of causal powers that cannot be disentangled. There are the powers of the material stuff organized as an apparatus and the powers of the world realized in the phenomena.” (Rom Harré 2003, 37f.).
Here the concept of “nature” follows an Aristotelian conception whereby every thing has its own nature and no longer refers to a homogeneous space of lawful regularities.
This and the next paragraph have been adapted from Nordmann 2010a.
This first production of immediacy can be said to be ‘analogic’ in two senses: it is based on the STM’s operation as an analogue to sensing, and it takes recourse to analogies between the experiment and the model.
To be sure, more sustained reflections of microscopy indicate that the question about realism and truth is based on a misleading dichotomy. For much instrument-aided observation one can say that it does not provide straightforward access to something given, but that it is not therefore an inferential construction of something invented.
Compare Rom Harré’s account of the difference between instruments that function like probes (the thermometer, the light microscope) and a complex of apparatus and world that makes a phenomenon available for research and development, for observation and intervention. As we saw above, he says of the latter complexes that they afford a thing or an activity (Harré 2003).
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Bensaude-Vincent, B., Loeve, S., Nordmann, A. et al. Matters of Interest: The Objects of Research in Science and Technoscience. J Gen Philos Sci 42, 365–383 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10838-011-9172-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10838-011-9172-y