research
Research/Forschung
The following survey of current research projects belongs to the larger research agenda of History and Philosophy of Technoscience. Its questions include all the ones that are raised by the History and Philosophy of Science – and then some. These are questions of epistemology (objectivity of knowledge, characteristic modes of inference and evidentiary warrant, the role of theory, the concepts of explanation and understanding, qualitative and quantitative reasoning), questions of ontology (constitution of research objects, dispositions and affordances, structure-property relations, conservation principles), or questions of representing and intervening (simulation modelling, visualization techniques, media practices, research technologies, design).
The interest of this research agenda is to evaluate in which ways the answers to these questions turn out very differently when one does not foreground theoretical physics or evolutionary biology, but foregrounds instead synthetic chemistry or nanotechnology. To the extent that these answers signal a marked difference between the scientific enterprise and technoscientific innovation, this may speak more generally to the status and value of science in contemporary society.
nanoScience and Technology Studies (nSTS)
Visit the Büro für interdisziplinäre Nanotechnikforschung (nanoOffice) here.
The nanoOffice at Darmstadt Technical University hosts the second annual conference of S.NET – the Society for the Study of Nanoscience and Emerging Technologies. The conference takes place Sept. 29 to Oct. 2, 2010. The conference is supported by a grant from the German Research Council (DFG).
Heinrich Hertz and Ludwig Wittgenstein
BiCoDa Alliance
A DFG-funded workshop for the initiation and consolidation of this cooperative venture between the University of Bielefeld (Martin Carrier et al.), University of South Carolina in Columbia (Davis Baird, Michael Dickson, Ann Johnson et al.) and Darmstadt Technical University took place Sept. 30 to Oct. 4, 2009.
The BiCoDa Alliance considers how science-technology interactions shape research-practice today and in the past. This “technological” perspective adds a distinctive “t” to the History and Philosophy of Science – in the context of the Alliance, HPS becomes HPtS.
GoTO – Genesis and Ontology of Technoscientific Objects
The ontology of the technosciences differs from the ontology of modern science. Aside from its philosophical interest, this difference deserves attention because these objects challenge received ways of thinking about the natural and the artificial, science and engineering, substance and potentiality.
This French-German collaboratiion between Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent, Astrid Schwarz, and Alfred Nordmann is jointly funded by ANR and DFG. With the contribution of international collaborators it will produce a collective volume that promotes the philosophy of technoscience and a systematic understanding of a type of objects that commands considerable attention in our contemporary world. The three-year project begins in August 2010.
Associated with GoTO is a book-project with Astrid Schwarz (philosophy): Plenty of Room in Limited Space – Excess, Control, and the Eros of Technoscience.
I know what I don't know?" Acknowledgement, Incorporation, and Communication of Scientific Ignorance
– with Nina Janich (principal investigator, linguistics) and Liselotte Schebek (environmental sciences)
Recent Partnerships in EC-funded projects (FP6 and FP7)
BMBF-commissioned study on Models for the Regulation of Nanotechnology
The study was produced in 2007/08 by the www.nanobuero.de in close collaboration with Andreas Lösch (lead author) and Stefan Gammel. Along with an extended synopsis in English and various background readings, it was published in Stefan Gammel, Andreas Lösch, Alfred Nordmann (eds.) Jenseits von Regulierung: Zum politischen Umgang mit der Nanotechnologie (Beyond Regulation: On the Governance of Nanotechnologies), Heidelberg: Akademische Verlagsgesellschaft, 2009.