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What kind of stuff is the world made of? What is the nature or substance of things? These are ontological questions and they are usually answered with respect to the objects of science. The objects of technoscience tell a different story that concerns the power, promise and potential of things - not what they are but what they can be. Seventeen scholars from history and philosophy of science, epistemology, social anthropology, cultural studies, and ethics each explore a research object in its technological setting, ranging from carbon to cardboard, from arctic ice cores to nuclear waste, from wetlands to GMO seeds, from fuel cells to the great Pacific garbage patch.
Sommario
List of Figures
List of Contributors
Introduction: The Genesis and Ontology of Technoscientific Objects
PART I
Horizon of Possibilities
1
The Pyramid and the Ring: A Physics Indifferent to OntologyPeter Galison
2
Cancer Stem Cells: Ontology MattersLucie Laplane
3
Robots Behaving Badly: Simulation and Participation in the Study of LifeChristopher Kelty
4
Vanishing Friction Events and the Inverted Platonism of TechnoscienceAlfred Nordmann
5
From the Birth of Fuel Cells to the Utopia of the Hydrogen WorldPierre Teissier
PART II
Arenas of Contestation
6
Heroin: Taming a Drug and Losing ControlJens Soentgen
7
Long Live Play: The Playstation Network and Technogenic LifeColin Milburn
8
A Biography of a Disorder that Didn't Want to be DiagnosedSimone van den Burg
9
The Plasticity and Recalcitrance of WetlandsKevin C. Elliott
10
The Life and Times of TransgenicsHugh Lacey
11
Cardboard: Thinking the BoxCheryce von Xylander
PART III
Multiple Temporalities
12
The Multiple Signatures of CarbonSacha Loeve and Bernadette Bensaude Vincent
13
Monitoring and Remediating a Garbage PatchJennifer Gabrys
14
Polar Ice Cores: Climate Change MessengersAant Elzinga
15
Nuclear Waste: An Untreatable Technoscientific ProductSophie Poirot-Delpech
16
Biography of a 'Sand Heap': Staging the Beginnings of NatureAstrid Schwarz
Index
Info autore
Bernadette Bensaude Vincent is Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at University Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne. Her research topics span from the history and philosophy of chemistry to materials science and nanotechnology with a continuous interest in science and the public issues. Among her recent publications:
Chemistry. The Impure Science, (co-author J. Simon, 2008);
Matière à penser. (2008).
Bionanoéthique (2008),
Les Vertiges de la technocience. (2009),
Fabriquer la vie. Où va la biologie de synthèse (co-author D. Benoit-Browayes, 2011).
Sacha Loeve is Associate Professor of Philosophy of Technology at University Lyon 3. Since his Ph.D. on molecular nanomachines (2009), he practices a 'fieldwork philosophy' centred on objects and primarily interested in rethinking technology as a narrative logos of technics. His publications include works on Gilbert Simondon, nano-objects, images and technology, pharmacotechnology, synthetic biology, Moore's Law and electronic waste.
Alfred Nordmann is
Professor of Philosophy at Darmstadt Technical University, after receiving his Ph.D. in Hamburg (1986) and several years on the faculty at the University of South Carolina (1988-2002). In the field of History and Philosophy of Science and of Technoscience he is interested primarily in the questions of knowledge and objectivity, explanation and understanding under representational and technological conditions of knowledge production, see
Science Transformed (co-edited with Hans Radder and Gregor Schiemann, 2011) and
Science in the Context Application (co-edited with Martin Carrier, 2011).
Astrid Schwarz holds the chair of General Science of Technology at Brandenburg Technische Universität Cottbus-Senftenberg. In her resarch she asks questions about the status and power of concepts, models, and objects in the process of generating, stabilizing and demarcating scientific knowledge. Recently, she focuses on debates around green cultures and ecotechnology, as well as on gardens as models to act in the Anthropocene. Her last book was
Experiments in Practice (2014).
