Technoscience and the 'other' continental philosophy

Continental Philosophy Review

Volumn 33, Issue 1, 2000, Pages 59-74

  Ihde, Don ^a  

^a STONY BROOK UNIVERSITY   (United States)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 39149085401     PISSN: 13872842     EISSN: 15731103     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1023/A:1010092421546     Document Type: Article

References (30)

1. The term, technoscience, was coined by Gaston Bachelard in his early works on contemporary science. It reflects the binding of late modern science to its technologies and is a term now used by many writers, including Bruno Latour, We Were Never Modern (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993);
2. Donna Haraway, Modest Witness@Second Millenium (London: Routledge, 1997);
3. Andrew Pickering, The Mangle of Practice (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995);
4. and Don Ihde, Expanding Hermeneutics (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1998).
5. See my Consequences of Phenomenology (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1986). "American Continental Establishment" is a phrase I first used in describing the Anglo-American/Euro-American conflicts of the 1970's. I prefer the term, "Euro-American," to "continental," since it better balances the reference to Anglo-American traditions, but "continental" has become so entrenched that I shall sometimes use the terms interchangeably.
6. In much of this article, I am relying upon my own experience over some six years of travel which has included conferences, lecture tours, summer workshops, and InterNordic Seminars. I have visited over 20 departments and institutes in Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Holland, the United Kingdom, and Germany, with continuing commitments into 2002.
7. The exceptions with SPEP are the more traditionally conceived phenomenology and feminism, which list far fewer figure/texts and more problems and themes than other groupings. There is precedent especially for the former, in that many of the mid-century emigrant scholars (e.g., Aaron Gurwitsch, Herbert Spiegelberg, Erwin Strauss) encouraged doing rather than commenting on phenomenology. In 1991, SPEP initiated "Scholars Sessions" to highlight the coming to prominence of North American Euro-American philosophers; but this practice has so far failed to carry over into the figure/text practices of the rest of the program.
8. For example, Julia Kristeva is in a Department of Texts and Documents, and Michel Serres, in a Social Sciences Department. One might also remember that Merleau-Ponty's first appointment at the Sorbonne was to a chair in child psychology and pedagogy.
9. For example, Paul Ricoeur was only added to the Philosophy Department at the University of Chicago after many years in the Divinity School, and Derrida's visits have often been sponsored by comparative literature programs.
10. As is well known, the current collection of "Science Warriors" typically list postmodernists, feminists, and deconstructionists as the relativistic enemies of science. The battle was sparked by physicist Alan Sokal's spoof in Social Text 46/47 (1996), "Transgressing the Boundaries: Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity" (pp. 217-252), and it has spawned a cottage industry of ill-formed arguments concerning late modern science and the social scientific and humanistic disciplines. To my mind, the sins of the postmodernists - and many have been uncovered - are at least matched by the hermeneutic naivete of Sokal and his insensitivity to the uses of metaphor and literary innuendo.
11. See, e,g., the reviews of the controversy by Val Dusek, "When Learned Armies Clash by Night," Continental Philosophy Review 31/1 (1998), 95-106;
12. and Babette E. Babich, "Physics vs. Social Text: Anatomy of a Hoax," Telos 107(1996), 45-61.
13. See, e.g., Iris Marion Young's trilogy of articles, "Throwing Like a Girl," "Breasted Experience," and "Pregnant Subjectivity," in Throwing Like a Girl and Other Essays In Feminist Philosophy and Social Theory (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990).
14. On the famous "Chicken Debate" between Harry Collins and Steven Yearley on the British side and Michel Gallon and Bruno Latour on the French, see Andrew Pickering, Science as Practice and Culture (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992).
15. Bruno Latour, We Have Never Been Modern and Science in Action (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987);
16. Pickering, The Mangle of Practice; Donna J. Haraway, Simians, and Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature (London: Routledge, 1991);
17. Don Ihde, Technology and the Lifeworld. From Garden to Earth (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991);
18. and Andrew Feenberg, Questioning Technology (London: Routledge, 1998).
19. Vogel argues for a postmodern conception (or better, deconstruction) of "Nature" in Against Nature: The Concept of Nature in Critical Theory (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996);
20. and Zimmerman has been a primary exponent of a "green" Heidegger [see, e.g., Contesting Earth 's Future: Radical Ecology and Postmodernity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994)].
21. In the UK, Cambridge University is an especially interesting case, since its HPS program has been rated, by the 1998 Council of Vice Chancellors within the UK, as the number one philosophy department in England, above the associated Cambridge philosophy department itself, which remains traditionally analytic.
22. As a frequent outside evaluator, I have found that another difference between European and North American programs is that in the former, many more have scientific backgrounds, whereas in the latter, especially among younger practitioners, primary training has been in the humanities and arts.
23. In North American, late 20th Century philosophy of science, while usually pragmatic, problem oriented and fillibilist, retains the traditional image of science as largely "theory driven." Those who dissent from this picture are typically associated with more continental and pragmatist orientations (e.g., Robert Crease, Hubert Dreyfus, Joseph Rouse, Robert Scharff, and this writer). There are, however, a few notable exceptions with Anglo-American backgrounds, among them, lan Hacking, Robert Ackermann, and Peter Galison. For general discussion, see Rouse, Engaging Science: How to Understand Its Practices (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1996), Part I.
24. See, e.g., Albert Borgmann, Technology and the Character of Contemporary Life': A Philosophical Inquiry (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), esp. pp. 196-210.
25. In a recent Dutch introduction to the philosophy of technology, Van Stoommachine tot Cyborg (Amsterdam: Ambro, 1997) Hans Achterhuis argues that the more pragmatic, less dystopian, and more empirical approach of recent North American philosophy of technology is more appropriate to the current situation
26. [revised edition, From Steam Engine to Cyborg: American Philosophy of Technology, Irans. Robert P. Crease (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, forthcoming)].
27. The most thorough history of North American philosophy of technology is Carl Mitcham, Thinking Through Technology: The Path between Engineering and Philosophy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994).
28. See, e.g., the special issue of Man and World 30/3 (1997
29. reprinted as Hermeneutics and the Natural Sciences, ed. Robert P. Crease (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1997).
30. The Technoscience Research Group at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, perhaps the first organization of its kind in North America, has been especially active in arranging such visits, thus far both for long term Visiting Scholars from Denmark, Holland, Hungary, and Korea and shorter term researchers from Sweden, Germany, Hungary, Australia, and England. Starting in 1999, this Group became a permanent part of the Philosophy Department's graduate program. It has secured substantial grants from the National Science Foundation and the National Research Council, and its intensive seminars on topics, major figures, and problems have already had a spill-over effect upon graduate student interest.