Eds.), Discovering the Nanoscale (original) (raw)

Science and engineering, industry and politics, environmentalists and transhumanists are Discovering the Nanoscale. Public debate is widening, policy makers are demanding explicit consideration of ethical, legal, and social aspects, and popular books are explaining the achievements and promises of nanoscience. It may therefore seem surprising that this is the first collection of studies that considers nanoscience and nanotechnologies from the critical perspective of Science and Technology Studies (STS). This is less surprising, however, when one appreciates that such a critical perspective needs to be historically informed and often involves intimate acquaintance with the research process. Accordingly, this book on the historical, analytical, and ethical study of nanoscience and-technology-nano STS, for short-was several years in the making. Though it presents only first results, these results for the most part stem from sustained investigations of nanoscience and nanotechnologies and of the contexts that are shaping their development. Nanoscience and technologies are developing very quickly, and for this reason both pose a challenge to the more reflective approach commonly taken by science studies, while at the same time requiring the perspective provided by science studies scholars. Indeed, this book serves as a corrective to two commonly held, but equally mistaken beliefs. First, many are convinced that nothing meaningful can be said at this early stage of their development about the social and ethical implications of nanotechnologies. While, indeed, not much has come out of nanoscale research as of yet to warrant critical assessment, one can already see what programmatic attitudes go into nanoscale research, what metaphors are shaping it, and what conception of nature is implicit in its vision. This volume shows that all of this is already open to analysis and questioning. The second common misconception points in the opposite direction. It is often assumed that in order to consider ethical, legal, and social aspects of nanotechnologies it is sufficient to know a bit of the science and to have some ethical intuitions. This collection of papers establishes that this is not enough but that one also needs to appreciate nanoscale research and development in the larger context of the changing relations of science, technology, and society. Most public discussion of nanotechnologies, including that of nano STS, concerns what Arne Hessenbruch in this volume calls the "negotiation of novelty". To be sure, nothing would be "wrong" with nanoscience or nanotechnologies, if they turned out to be far less novel and far more normal than some of their propagandists are making them out to be. Indeed, for purposes of rational political discourse it is important to treat them not as unfathomably new but as just so many ordinary innovations that need to be discussed and perhaps regulated in the political sphere, and that await to be accepted, rejected, or modified by consumers in the marketplace like all other innovations. And yet, even if the research, development, diffusion, and appropriation of nanotechnologies ought to be considered in normal rather than mystifying terms, it cannot be denied that, indeed, nanotechnology may herald large changes in a variety of areas from manufacturing to the way research is done to how we conceive ourselves as humans. Even if nanosciences and nanotechnologies are not in principle new but continue familiar trajectories of materials science, synthetic chemistry, solid state physics, surface science, molecular biology, electrical, mechanical, and chemical engineering, and so on, their current prominence and visibility are symptomatic of cultural changes in science and technology and of JAMES F. GROVES, and JEFF SHRAGER present a model of successfully interdisciplinary collaboration between the humanities and nanoengineers for scientific research that is directed towards socially beneficial results. Despite popular portraits of moving atoms around like balls and sticking them together with ultra-precision, successful nanoscience and nanotechnologies depend on advanced theories of molecular, atomic, and sub-atomic behavior that are traditionally provided by chemistry and physics. Is the classical canon of theories and theoretical methods sufficient to cope with the challenges posed by the nanotechnology movement, by its strong technological orientation across the disciplines? In Part II, "Searching for Theories of the Nanoscale", three papers explore how nanoscientific approaches differ from mathematical physics. PIETER VERMAAS argues that, since a theory of nanotechnology requires describing technological functions that cannot be derived from quantum mechanics, new/particular interpretations of quantum mechanics are required. JOHANNES LENHARD points out that nanoscience, because it relies heavily on computer simulations that combine epistemological features of theory and experimentation, is set apart from the received methodology of physics. OTÁVIO BUENO goes beyond physics and argues that John von Neumann's theory of automata and self-reproduction is the historical and methodological background of Eric Drexler's "theoretical applied science" approach to self-assembling devices. More perhaps than any other field of research, nanotechnology lives from the production and mediation of images. Binnig's and Rohrer's Nobel prize winning invention of the scanning tunneling microscope (STM) in 1981 and IBM's logo written with pointy brightblue xenon atoms on a smooth dark-gray nickel surface have been made visually compelling highlights of standard narrations of nanotechnology. In part III "Imaging the Nanoscale", five papers analyze from historical, sociological, epistemological, and artistic points of view images of the nanoscale and the instruments used for their production. They all question popular understandings of the role of STMs in nanotechnology and of "seeing atoms". The first three papers by CYRUS MODY, ARNE HESSENBRUCH and DAVIS BAIRD & ASHLEY SHEW each provide detailed historical narratives of scanning probe microscopy, of the various researchers, communities, companies, and politics involved in its development. Mody concludes that, although the connection to nanotechnology had been contingent, probe microscopists were trying to create their own nano field. Hessenbruch analyses the negotiation of novelty of the instruments' capacities and suggests that this is part of the visionary rhetoric that is generally required nowadays to promote science in the public sphere. BAIRD & SHEW argue that the commercialization and black-boxing of scanning probe microscopes represents an epistemological shift characteristic of post-academic science. The two remaining papers focus on the role of visual images. JOSEPH PITT critically analyses the notion of "seeing atoms" with STMs and argues for a metaphorical reading, because visualization by scientific instruments fundamentally differs from actual seeing. CHRIS ROBINSON relates nanotechnological image production to the broader culture of visual arts, warns of uncritical image use, and suggests distinguishing carefully between schematics, documentation, fantasy, and fine art. Apart from visual images, the language used by nanoscale researchers, visionaries, and politicians in public speeches and publications for broader readerships plays an important role in propagating nanotechnology and negotiating its identity. The term "nano" itself has become a buzz word, prefixed to almost any other term to build compound words that indicate little more than the author's commitment to the nano movement. Powerful old metaphors have been incorporated into the nano discourse and new ones are being created to communicate specific messages. Part IV "Communicating Nanotechnology" presents four critical analyses of the rhetoric of nanotechnology. DAVID BERUBE provides a rhetorical analysis of Eric Drexler's publications on molecular nanotechnology with emphasis on how risks have been communicated to a broader readership. In his discourse analysis of the As Arne Hessenbruch and Ed Munn point out, the negotiation of novelty hinges on contentious claims. To the extent that the papers in this volume sift through such claims and end up taking a stance regarding the novelty and particular interest of nanoscience and nanotechnologies, they leave us with contentious claims of their own. Whether they mark beginnings of nano STS research trajectories or present results of sustained investigations, all of them invite dissent. What this book therefore needs most are readers willing to take on the various claims and counter-claims of the book, to examine them carefully and critically and to constructively move the field ahead. Only then can we say to have "discovered the