Alfred Nordmann

Responsible innovation, the art and craft of anticipation

Anticipation is required for anticipatory governance and generally considered to be a cornerstone of responsible innovation, but is it necessarily anticipation of the future? In regard to emerging technologies, responsible research and innovation appear to call for judgments of what these technologies might or will effect in the future. The paper questions this assumption by clarifying the meaning and scope of anticipation. One can learn to anticipate what can happen in the world as we know it. But emerging technologies are thought to change the world in relevant ways which is why the question of the future is raised in the first place. Though anticipation does not reach as far as a changed world in the future, this is not necessary for anticipatory governance or for anticipation as part of responsible research and innovation.

A forensics of wishing: technology assessment in the age of technoscience

If one considers the Collingridge dilemma to be a dilemma awaiting a solution, one has implicitly abandoned a genuinely historical conception of the future and adopted instead a notion of the future as an object of technical design, the realisation of technical possibility or as wish-fulfilment. The definition of technology assessment (TA) as a successful response to the Collingridge dilemma renders it a technoscience that shares with all the others the conceit of being able, supposedly, to shape the future. An alternative way of pursuing TA begins with an analysis of our age of technoscience, including its impoverished conception of the future. A critical appreciation of this conception gives rise to a forensics of wishing.ZusammenfassungWer das Collingridge Dilemma für ein Dilemma hält, das lösungsbedürftig ist und vielleicht sogar gelöst werden kann, hat sich bereits von einem historisch verstandenen Zukunftsbegriff verabschiedet und sieht Zukunft stattdessen als Gegenstand technischer Gestaltung, als Realisierung eines implizit schon gegebenen grenzenlosen technischen Potenzials, als Wunscherfüllung. Wenn sie vom Collingridge Dilemma ausgeht, wird die Technikfolgenabschätzung eine Technowissenschaft wie jede andere und macht sich ihren Hochmut angeblicher Zukunftsgestaltung zu eigen. Eine Alternative besteht darin, von der Analyse unseres Zeitalters der Technowissenschaften auszugehen und aus der Kritik des verarmten Zukunftsbegriffs eine Forensik des Wünschens zu entwickeln.RésuméSi nous considérons que le Dilemme de Collingridge est un dilemme en attente d’une solution, nous aurons, de manière implicite, abandonné une véritable conception historique de l’avenir et, à la place, adopté une notion de l’avenir en tant qu’objet de conception technique ou de réalisation de possibilité technique ou de réalisation d’un souhait. La définition de l’évaluation de la technologie en tant que réponse réussie au Dilemme de Collingridge le rend une technoscience qui partage avec tous les autres la vanité d’être capable, soi-disant, de former l’avenir. Une manière alternative de poursuivre l’évaluation de la technologie débute avec une analyse de notre ère de la technoscience, y compris sa conception appauvrie de l’avenir. Une appréciation critique de cette conception donne lieu à un débat sur le souhait.

Was ist TechnoWissenschaft? — Zum Wandel der Wissenschaftskultur am Beispiel von Nanoforschung und Bionik

Bionik und Nanoforschung setzen auf synergetische Effekte aus neuen disziplinaren Konstellationen. Indem ihre Problemstellungen uber traditionelle Forschungszusammenhange hinausgehen, stehen Bionik und Nanoforschung als „TechnoWissenschaften“ womoglich fur einen grundsatzlichen Wandel der Wissenschaftskultur. Die Feststellung eines derartigen Wandels setzt eine historische Perspektive voraus, die angesichts einer gegenwartig erst im Aufbruch befindlichen Forschung noch gar nicht zur Verfugung steht. Die These vom Wandel der Wissenschaftskultur kann hier also noch nicht abschliesend begrundet, aber wenigstens plausibel gemacht werden: Stellt das traditionelle Wissenschaftsverstandnis die Formulierung und Prufung von Theorien und Hypothesen in den Vordergrund, zeichnen sich die TechnoWissenschaften durch ihr qualitatives Vorgehen bei der Aneignung neuer Handlungs- und Eingriffsmoglichkeiten aus.

Lure of the “Yes”: The Seductive Power of Technoscience

What are the forces that determine the development, diffusion and appropriation of emerging technologies? This question becomes particularly pressing and particularly difficult to answer with respect to the current status of nanotechnology. This technoscientific enterprise is marked on the one hand by nearly unanimous endorsement and on the other hand by an apparent absence of power. The following reflections serve to address this challenge by suggesting a suitable theoretical framework that is needed at least to complement extant accounts of power implicit in current regimes of knowledge production. The proposed framework posits a seductively structured space of options. This space is unbounded, and demands no determinations, decisions, claims, or contestations.

Goodbye and farewell: Siegel vs. Feyerabend∗

In his review (Inquiry 32 [1989], pp. 343–69) of Paul Feyerabends Farewell to Reason, Harvey Siegel makes a fairly simple point: Feyerabend provides a bad argument for a good cause. In particular, Siegel maintains that the argument suffers, first, from self‐inflicted depreciation: having been rendered impotent by Feyerabends views of objectivity and rationality, what claim to persuasion can his argument possibly hold? And second, the argument is said to be incoherent: instead of respecting and leaving alone diverse cultures and traditions as required by his views, Feyerabend fails to honor the right of people in several ways by formulating from afar abstract principles of cultural autonomy. Having debunked the argument, what remains is at least a semblance of agreement when Siegel identifies a shared concern with the value of cultural diversity on a world‐wide scale. In response to Siegel this paper argues: yes, in an important sense, Feyerabends argument is admittedly impotent and admission of that is...

Science in the context of application

Part I: Changing Conditions of Scientific Research 1. Science and Technology 2. The Role of Instruments 3. Institutional Changes in Applied Research 4. Shifts in the Ontology: Part II: Science, Values, and Society 5. Commercialization, Politicization and Medialization of Research 6. Freedom of Research or social Accountability 7. Historical Transformations in Science.

Science in the Context of Application: Methodological Change, Conceptual Transformation, Cultural Reorientation

The heavy application pressure under which science operates, its increased dependency on technical apparatus for experimentation, visualization, and modelling, and its technological ambitions to manage the complexities of highly developed societies have prompted claims to the effect that science as such has undergone a profound methodological and institutional transformation during the past decades. Application-oriented research is not the same as “applied science” in that it does not consist in the transfer of basic knowledge to practical challenges. Instead, application-oriented research emphasizes intervention to the point that theoretical representation may be receding into the background. Shaping the world, rather than understanding it, appears to be the chief objective of contemporary science. The contributions to the volume attempt to identify, explore and assess the changing conditions of scientific research. The three central questions asked are: Does science proceed differently, and if so, how? Does science affect society differently, and if so, how? Is science conceived differently, and if so, how?

From Metaphysics to Metachemistry

In 1940 appeared La Philosophie du Non by Gaston Bachelard. The American edition of 1968 translates the title obviously enough as The Philosophy of No and 10 years later, the German followed with Die Philosophie des Nein. And yet, Die Philosophie des Nicht would have been more appropriate and in English - impossible though it sounds - Philosophy of Non. After all, taking his cue from non-Euclidean geometry, Bachelard revels in the “non” of non- Aristotelian logic, non-Cartesian epistemology, non-Baconian science, non-Kantian ontology, non-Newtonian mechanics, and non-Lavoisian chemistry. In all these cases, the “non” does not signal a negation or antithesis but marks Euclidean geometry as a special case of a differentiated non-Euclidean geometry, Lavoisian chemistry as a limited set of practices which is dialectically reflected in non-Lavoisian chemistry, etc.

Another New Wittgenstein: The Scientific and Engineering Background of the Tractatus

Introduction In recent years an entirely “New Wittgenstein”1 has grown up around the idea that the Tractatus should be read as a critical engagement with Frege’s notion of ‘elucidation’ and thus with a particular conception of philosophy. This is supposed to solve the puzzle of how Wittgenstein’s sentences can really be nonsensical while there is yet a way to understand their author and learn to see the world right (TLP 6.54).2 Less conspicuously than this “American” school of interpretation,3 there has also grown up in recent years another New Wittgenstein. This one brings together rather heterogeneous strands of investigation. They help solve a puzzle that has been declared to be unsolvable by Brian McGuinness: How did Wittgenstein become a philosopher rather than an engineer? McGuinness argues that looking for a cause here, e.g., for the question or intellectual problem that prompted the transition, is a misguided attempt to construct a kind of teleology:

Facts-Well-Put

In this paper we elucidate a particular type of instrument. Striking-phenomenon instruments assume their striking profile against the shifting backdrop of theoretical uncertainties. While technologically stable, the phenomena produced by these instruments are linguistically fuzzy, subject to a variety of conceptual representations. But in virtue of their technological stability alone, they can provide a foundation for further technological as well as conceptual development. Sometimes, as in the case of the pulse glass, the phenomenon is taken to confirm conflicting theoretical views; sometimes, as in the case of the Lichtenberg-figures, it holds out the false promise of crucial theoretical importance; sometimes, as in the case of the airpump in the 18th century, it emphatically short-circuits theory and human ingenuity, giving a voice to nature herself; and sometimes, finally, as in the case of the quincunx, the phenomenon stands in for theoretical accounts. We propose and develop the salient features of these instruments demonstrating their importance to our understanding of science.