Bernadette Bensaude Vincent

The politics of buzzwords at the interface of technoscience, market and society: the case of 'public engagement in science'.

Emerging technologies such as genomics, nanotechnology, and converging technologies are surrounded by a constellation of fashionable stereotyped phrases such as ‘public engagement in science’, ‘responsible innovation’, ‘green technology’, or ‘personalised medicine’. Buzzwords are ubiquitous and used ad libitum by science policy makers, industrial companies in their advertisements, scientists in their research proposals, and journalists. Despite their proliferation in the language of scientific and technological innovation, these buzzwords have attracted little attention among science studies scholars. The purpose of this paper is to try to understand if, and how buzzwords shape the technoscientific landscape. What do they perform? What do they reveal? What do they conceal? Based on a case study of the phrase ‘public engagement in science’, this paper describes buzzwords as linguistic technologies, capable of three major performances: buzzwords generate matters of concern and play an important role in tryi...Emerging technologies such as genomics, nanotechnology, and converging technologies are surrounded by a constellation of fashionable stereotyped phrases such as ‘public engagement in science’, ‘responsible innovation’, ‘green technology’, or ‘personalised medicine’. Buzzwords are ubiquitous and used ad libitum by science policy makers, industrial companies in their advertisements, scientists in their research proposals, and journalists. Despite their proliferation in the language of scientific and technological innovation, these buzzwords have attracted little attention among science studies scholars. The purpose of this paper is to try to understand if, and how buzzwords shape the technoscientific landscape. What do they perform? What do they reveal? What do they conceal? Based on a case study of the phrase ‘public engagement in science’, this paper describes buzzwords as linguistic technologies, capable of three major performances: buzzwords generate matters of concern and play an important role in trying to build consensus; they set attractive goals and agendas; they create unstable collectives through noise.

Ethical Perspectives on Synthetic Biology

Synthetic biologists are extremely concerned with responsible research and innovation. This paper critically assesses their culture of responsibility. Their notion of responsibility has been so far focused on the identification of risks, and in their prudential attitude synthetic biologists consider that the major risks can be prevented with technological solutions. Therefore they are globally opposed to public interference or political regulations and tend to self-regulate by bringing a few social scientists or ethicists on board. This article emphasizes that ethics lies beyond prudence and requires a cultural evaluation of the modes of existence of the various microorganisms designed by synthetic biologists, independently of their potential applications.

From self-organization to self-assembly: a new materialism?

While self-organization has been an integral part of academic discussions about the distinctive features of living organisms, at least since Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Judgement, the term ‘self-assembly’ has only been used for a few decades as it became a hot research topic with the emergence of nanotechnology. Could it be considered as an attempt at reducing vital organization to a sort of assembly line of molecules? Considering the context of research on self-assembly I argue that the shift of attention from self-organization to self-assembly does not really challenge the boundary between chemistry and biology. Self-assembly was first and foremost investigated in an engineering context as a strategy for manufacturing without human intervention and did not raise new perspectives on the emergence of vital organization itself. However self-assembly implies metaphysical assumptions that this paper tries to disentangle. It first describes the emergence of self-assembly as a research field in the context of materials science and nanotechnology. The second section outlines the metaphysical implications and will emphasize a sharp contrast between the ontology underlying two practices of self-assembly developed under the umbrella of synthetic biology. And unexpectedly, we shall see that chemists are less on the reductionist side than most synthetic biologists. Finally, the third section ventures some reflections on the kind of design involved in self-assembly practices.

The moral economy of synthetic biology

In merging engineering and biology and electing design as the main focus of research, synthetic biology is likely to bring deep changes in the set of norms and values that used to rule scientific research. Is it generating a new profile of biologist? Based on Lorraine Daston’s concept of the moral economy of science, this paper explores the affects, values and norms attached to the research activities of synthetic biologists. It endeavors to disentangle the values and norms underlying their writings and interviews More broadly, the purpose is to follow the genesis of a moral economy of science based on a specific case.

Of Times and Things. Technology and Durability

To fully accomplish the “thing turn” in the philosophy of technology this paper invites shifting the attention from humans towards the world. The concept of world here refers to the complex made of the Earth with all things and living beings, including humans; it ignores the great divide between nature and society or culture. In this worldly perspective, the thing turn means adopting the perspective of things and raising questions such as how artifacts come into being, how they intervene within the world, how they change it. Such issues are vital to prevent the alienation of technology both from nature and from human beings.

Toward a Philosophy of Technosciences

The term “technoscience” gained philosophical significance in the 1970s but it aroused ambivalent views. On the one hand, several scholars have used it to shed light on specific features of recent scientific research, especially with regard to emerging technologies that blur boundaries (such as natural/artificial, machine/living being, knowing/making and so on); on the other hand, as a matter of fact “technoscience” did not prompt great interest among philosophers. In the French area, a depreciative meaning prevails: “technoscience” means the contamination of science by management and capitalism. Some even argue that “technoscience” is not a concept at all, just a buzzword. In this chapter, on the contrary, we make the case for the constitution of a philosophical concept of technoscience based on the characterization of its objects in order to scrutinize their epistemological, ontological, political and ethical dimensions.

Is There a French Philosophy of Technology? General Introduction

The existence of a French philosophy of technology is a matter of debate. Technology has long remained invisible in French philosophy, due to cultural circumstances and linguistic specificities. Even though a number of French philosophers have developed views and concepts about technology during the twentieth century, “philosophy of technology” has never been established as a legitimate branch of philosophy in the French academic landscape so far. This book, however, demonstrates that a community of philosophers dealing with various issues related to technology and built up on the legacy of the previous generations has emerged. In gathering scholars with quite diverse theoretical backgrounds and matters of concern, this volume outlines a coherent, albeit heterogeneous, philosophical trend. Five chief characteristics are identified in this introduction: (i) a close connection between history and philosophy, with a focus on the temporalities of technology, (ii) the prevalence of the anthropological approach to technology whether it be social anthropology or paleoanthropology, (iii) a focus on technological objects that we characterize as a “thing turn” a la francaise, (iv) the dignification of technoscience as a philosophical category, and (v) a pervading concern with ethical issues based on the anthropological interpretation of technology and quite distinct from current trends in applied ethics.