Research Objects in Their Technological Setting.
- 1st ed.
- 1 online resource (283 pages)
- History and Philosophy of Technoscience Series .
- History and Philosophy of Technoscience Series .
Cover -- Title -- Copyright -- Contents -- List of figures -- Notes on contributors -- Introduction: The genesis and ontology of technoscientific objects -- PART I Horizon of possibilities -- 1 The pyramid and the ring: A physics indifferent to ontology -- 2 Cancer stem cells: Ontology matters -- 3 Robots behaving badly: Simulation and participation in the study of life -- 4 Vanishing friction events and the inverted Platonism of technoscience -- 5 From the birth of fuel cells to the utopia of the hydrogen world -- PART II Arenas of contestation -- 6 Heroin: Taming a drug and losing control -- 7 Long live play: The PlayStation Network and technogenic life -- 8 A biography of a disorder that didn't want to be diagnosed -- 9 The plasticity and recalcitrance of wetlands -- 10 The life and times of transgenics -- 11 Cardboard: Thinking the box -- PART III Multiple temporalities -- 12 The multiple signatures of carbon -- 13 Monitoring and remediating a garbage patch -- 14 Polar ice cores: Climate change messengers -- 15 Nuclear waste: An untreatable technoscientific product -- 16 Biography of a 'sand heap': Staging the beginnings of nature -- Index.
What kind of stuff is the world made of? What is the nature or substance of things? These are ontological questions and they are usually answered with respect to the objects of science. The objects of technoscience tell a different story that concerns the power, promise and potential of things - not what they are but what they can be. Seventeen scholars from history and philosophy of science, epistemology, social anthropology, cultural studies, and ethics each explore a research object in its technological setting, ranging from carbon to cardboard, from arctic ice cores to nuclear waste, from wetlands to GMO seeds, from fuel cells to the great Pacific garbage patch.