Technology and Materiality of Scientific Knowledge: A Postphenomenological Analysis (original) (raw)

A REVIEW STUDY ON THE RELATIONSHIP OF TECHNOLOGY WITH SCIENCE AND HUMANITIES

isara solutions, 2013

The present paper is an attempt to explore the various views and beliefs of the relation between science ,humanities and technology. The history of both fields shows that humanities always try to keep track of science, making use of its data and strategies and at the same time keep downgrading science's position. In other words, science is self-sufficient and self-generating.The subjectivity of humanities is quite evident and science is known for its excessive objectivity, it is natural that we come across such cases of misunderstanding and fallacies. Science ignores and slights the humanities as merely imaginary constructs that can not hold before verification. The relationship between science and the humanities has taken a new turn due to advancement of technologies in recent years. Although C.P. Snow’s two-culture debate have been the most popular expression of this relationship during the past half-century. This paper describe the various aspects of relationship between Science and humanities with the intervention of technology. The Science and the humanities differ in the subject of their studies and methodologies used,whereas the subject in science is rather concrete and instruments for its solution are experiments, observation, calculation and modelling, the subject in the humanities tends to be rather abstract and logic contemplation and thinking may serve as instruments. However, both science and the humanities share a quest for knowledge and the truth, defining and tackling a problem, a question, and trying to resolve it. It is firmly believe that science and the humanities are children of the same 'mother' - the human quest for knowledge and understanding the world around us and thus they need and complement each other.

Postphenomenological Method and Technological Things Themselves

Human Studies, 2021

We live in a world where it is impossible to exist without, and beyond, technologies. Despite this omnipresence, we tend to overlook their influence on us. The vigorously developing approach of postphenomenology, combining insights from phenomenology and pragmatism, focuses on the so-called technological mediation, i.e., on how technologies as mediators of human-world relations influence the appearing of both the world and the human beings in it. My analysis aims at demonstrating both the methodological weaknesses and open possibilities of postphenomenology. After summarizing its essentials, I will scrutinize, first, its ability to turn to the technological things themselves and, second, the so-called empirical turn as realized by postphenomenology. By assessing its conceptual framework from the phenomenological perspective, I hope to demonstrate that postphenomenology needs philosophical clarification and strengthening. In short, it needs a more phenomenological, and less pragmatic, approach to technology in its influence on human experience.

Postphenomenology, Embodiment and Technics

Human Studies, 2010

Don Ihde has published two new volumes, which together form a good introduction to his style of philosophy. Whereas the first volume presents the different aspects of Ihde’s distinctive postphenomenological philosophy of technology and is also meant as introductory, the second volume goes more deeply into some of those aspects, a choice that causes some repetition across the two volumes. Ihde writes easily, but the seeming ease and theoretical unpretentiousness should not mislead the reader, since Ihde definitely takes stances, without, however, engaging in extensive dialogue with other positions. Yet, this lack of debate that the reader may experience does not hinder the fact that Ihde’s way of thinking first and foremost opens intellectual doors to others. One should also keep in mind that these two slim volumes extend the long list of books and publications by Ihde, and that Ihde’s position has stabilized or is—in the Husserlian sense—more or less sedimented within a certain circle of philosophers of technology and/or science. Nonetheless, we will also concentrate on those places where Ihde opens doors to the thoughts or ways of thinking of others and where he—maybe unwittingly—enters into dialogue with thinkers he does not mention.

Technoscientia est Potentia?: Contemplative, interventionist, constructionist and creationist idea(l)s in (techno)science

Poiesis & praxis : international journal of ethics of science and technology assessment, 2011

Within the realm of nano-, bio-, info- and cogno- (or NBIC) technosciences, the 'power to change the world' is often invoked. One could dismiss such formulations as 'purely rhetorical', interpret them as rhetorical and self-fulfilling or view them as an adequate depiction of one of the fundamental characteristics of technoscience. In the latter case, a very specific nexus between science and technology, or, the epistemic and the constructionist realm is envisioned. The following paper focuses on this nexus drawing on theoretical conceptions as well as empirical material. It presents an overview of different technoscientific ways to 'change the world'-via contemplation and representation, intervention and control, engineering, construction and creation. It further argues that the hybrid character of technoscience makes it difficult (if not impossible) to separate knowledge production from real world interventions and challenges current science and technology p...

Technoscience, Hermeneutic and Society Oriented to the Person

Filosofija. Sociologija

This article becomes the first step towards technoscience as an opened and inter-penetrated enabler. For this the authors develop a theoretical and hermeneutical analysis of the techno-scientific system. A brief history of the modern occidental science is presented. Later, this article offers the first approach to a trans-subjective or trans-personal theory within the Latin American context. The authors show different reactions to the so-called ‘monologated scientific system’ in relationship to the hermeneutic of the person. Later the authors show a more dialogistic system in which other epistemic views are considered. These are connected with the philosophy of wisdom, the theory of personal care, etc. In this sense, and finally, it is considered that the techno-scientific system could be inter-penetrated for the psychic and social scope. In fact, this affirmation is defended to reach a scientific personal progress in a permanent dialogue with other wisdom knowledge.

The occurrence of technological triad: descriptive concept of today’s totality of reality

Scientific discourse refers to triads as conceptual structures whose purpose is to emphasize the connection between concepts included in the description of a certain phenomenon. The famous Popper’s triad is comprised of the world of physical objects and processes (World 1), the world of mental objects, i.e. subjective human experience (World 2) and the world of objective knowledge (World 3), which can be thought of as all the products of thought – the world of information, knowledge, scientific theories, literature, etc. During the past half-century, Information and Communication Technology (ICT) and new media began to change our reality on all three levels. Using a comparative analysis, this paper will examine the impact ICT and new media have on the Popper’s World 1, 2 and 3. As it will be shown, the modern age offers a new conceptual triad the aim of which is not to stand against the Popper’s triad but to introduce new integral elements that intersect and interact with it. In this new triad the world of physical objects is being replaced by the world of virtual reality (i.e. the Virtual World), the world of mental objects is replaced by transmental objects (i.e. the Transmental World) and the world of objective knowledge is being replaced by the world of digitized data/information/ knowledge in the context of developing AI (i.e. the Digital World). These new architectonic elements build new conceptual structure the aim of which is to define, describe and represent new interrelated concepts essential for better understanding of today’s totality of reality. They form new ontology of the world which describes reality as inseparable from the concepts of information and technology.

(Post)constructivism on Technoscience, „Avant”, Vol. IV, 2013, nr 1, 317-338.

2013

The main aims of the article are as follows: (1) to indicate that cognition (in particular the conditions of effectiveness in laboratory practices) may be satisfactorily modelled from a (properly determined) constructivist perspective (2) to reconstruct the latest tendencies within science and technology studies encapsulated in the term (post)constructivism rather than in the notion of social constructivism, (3) to show how technoscience is conceptualised from the (post)constructivist standpoint. Key words: science and technology studies/sociology of scientific knowledge, (post)constructivism, technoscience, laboratory practices