Alfred Nordmann

Whether “biomimetic” or “bioinspired,” the projects of bioengineering tend to refer their devices or inventions to the biological systems that provide models or originals for detachable functionalities. And yet, they do not satisfy the picturing relation of original and copy. They are mimetic or imitative in the sense of reenacting a function in a different setting with its own principles of composition or its own parameters that select for salience. The taking up of salient features for the purposes of producing a performance of functionality results not in the copy of an original but in its parody. Parodies are not judged for their veracity but for their effectiveness. They have a heuristic value in the context of design and for knowing the world through making and building. In somewhat experimental fashion, this paper seeks to develop a vocabulary for the parodistic qualities of Synthetic Biology, genome editing, or other bioengineering practices. In order to do so, it introduces categories from aesthetics to qualify modeling relations, one of these categories being the notion of “parody” itself.

Au cours des dernières décennies, la philosophie des sciences est devenue la philosophie des sciences particulières. En conséquence, certaines des questions majeures de la philosophie des sciences sont adressées à la recherche en nanosciences et technologie. C’est le cas notamment des questions concernant la nature de la connaissance, le rôle de la théorie, les pratiques expérimentales et observationnelles. Ces questions habituelles suscitent des réponses inattendues, suggérant que la nanotechnoscience est un exemple non pas d’une science mais d’une technoscience.

This is a paper, on the face of it, about Wittgenstein’s Tractatus and its contribution to the philosophy of technology. As such, it advances a three-fold claim: Especially the early Wittgenstein was not a philosopher of technology. Though he does not recognize philosophical problems of technology—for example, of engineering knowledge—he is keenly aware of the limits of philosophy. Thus, he inadvertently opens up a perspective for the philosophy of technology, after all. By drawing out the implications of this perspective for a conception of ‘working knowledge’ and thus of working orders of things, this paper ends up promoting a research program for the philosophy of technology.

Mit Robotik, Digitalisierung, softwaregesteuerten Präzisionsinstrumenten und hochkomplexen Simulationsverfahren wird heute Technik zur treibenden Kraft der wissenschaftlichen Forschungspraxis. Gleichzeitig sieht sich die universitäre Forschung wachsenden gesellschaftlichen Einflüssen ausgesetzt und nähert sich selbst immer mehr der Industrieforschung an, woraus sich neue Fragen nach den Werten und der Objektivität der Wissenschaft ergeben. Derartig weitreichende Veränderungen haben zahlreiche Spekulationen darüber provoziert, ob sich in der Wissenschaftsgeschichte gegenwärtig ein Epochenbruch vollzieht. Dieser Sammelband setzt sich aus philosophischen, historischen und kulturwissenschaftlichen Perspektiven mit den Epochenbruchthesen auseinander, bestätigt und bestreitet ihn. Die Beiträge in diesem Band setzen sich mit der These vom Epochenbruch vor dem Hintergrund verschiedener Disziplinen auseinander, darunter Wissenschaftsphilosophie und -geschichte, sozialwissenschaftliche Untersuchungen über Wissenschaft sowie kultur- und medientheoretische Studien zu Wissenschaft und Technik. Die erste Gruppe der Beiträge versucht, die These von einem Epochenbruch im Ganzen zu beurteilen. Den Anfang bilden mehrere Beiträge, die die Debatte eröffnen, indem sie starke Thesen für oder gegen die Vorstellung vorlegen, dass sich das wissenschaftliche Unterfangen in den letzten Jahrzehnten völlig neu orientiert hat. Die Autoren in der zweiten Gruppe setzen sich unter einem spezifischen Gesichtspunkt mit der These auseinander. Sie stellen bestimmte Konzepte in den Mittelpunkt, greifen spezifische technische Entwicklungen heraus oder betrachten einzelne Praktiken und Anwendungskontexte. Diese spezifischen Konzepte, Technologien und Praxisbereiche dienen als Testfeld für die umfassendere These.

Ludwig Wittgenstein's 'Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus' is one of the most important books of the twentieth century. It influenced philosophers and artists alike and it continues to fascinate readers today. It offers rigorous arguments but clothes them in enigmatic pronouncements. Wittgenstein himself said that his book is 'strictly philosophical and simultaneously literary, and yet there is no blathering in it'. This introduction, first published in 2005, considers both the philosophical and the literary aspects of the 'Tractatus' and shows how they are related. It also shows how the work fits into Wittgenstein's philosophical development and the tradition of analytic philosophy, arguing strongly for the vigour and significance of that tradition.

Changing Perspectives – From the Experimental to the Technological Turn in History and Philosophy of Science. In the 1960s the philosophy of science was transformed through the encounter with the history of science, resulting in a collaborative venture by the name of “History and Philosophy of Science” (HPS). Philosophy of science adopted ever more regularly the format of the case study to reconstruct certain episodes from the history of science, and historians were mostly interested in the production of scientific knowledge. The so‐called “experimental turn” of the 1980s owed to this interaction between philosophy and history. Its guiding question remained quite traditional, however, namely “How do the sciences achieve an agreement between representation and reality?” Only the answers to this question broke with tradition by focusing not on theory but on the role of instruments and experiments. – Roughly 30 years after the experimental turn, another transformative encounter appears to be taking place. HPS is being transformed in the encounter with philosophy of technology. From the point of view of philosophy of technology, the question does not arise whether and how the agreement of mind and world, representation and reality can be achieved. When things are constructed, built or made, human thinking and physical materiality are inseparably intertwined. Instead of seeking to describe a mind‐independent reality, technoscientific researchers are working to acquire and demonstrate capabilities of experimental or predictive control. When science is regarded as a kind of technology, a program of study opens up for epistemology and so do avenues for the historiography of science. History of science might now show how the problems and procedures of the sciences arise from and impinge back upon a world that is itself a product of science and technology. It thereby abandons its traditional HPS niche existence and joins forces with environmental history, history of technology, social, labor, and consumer history.

It requires objectivity to acquire scientific knowledge of facts, it requires Sachlich­keit or a feeling for the mechanism to acquire technical knowledge of how things work together in a system or device. Each of these epistemic ideals is normatively charged but only the notion of scientific objectivity considers knowledge production as a historical process. And while scientific objectivity served as an ideal for communicative rationality in an open and democratic society, Sachlichkeit underwrites the search for innovative solutions in contemporary knowledge societies. This article draws on the work of Alexander Kluge and Ludwig Wittgenstein to delineate the normative dimensions and claim to validity of Sachlichkeit