Chasing Technoscience: Matrix for Materiality

Don Ihde, Evan Selinger

Indiana University Press, 2003 - Philosophy - 249 pages

"... an original, quirky, and illuminating collection of material concerning the relatively new and exciting field of technoscience studies.... [T]he editors’ choice of multiple approaches to the work of four major figures is wholly suited to clarifying their unorthodox and consequently somewhat elusive philosophical positions." —Robert Scharff

Although often absent from the considerations of philosophers, sociologists, and anthropologists, the material dimension plays an important and even essential role in the practices of the sciences. Chasing Technoscience: Matrix for Materiality begins to redress this absence by bringing together four prominent figures who make technoscience, or science embodied in its technologies, a central theme of their work. Through lively personal interviews and substantive essays, the ideas of Andrew Pickering, Don Ihde, Donna Haraway, and Bruno Latour are brought to bear on the question of materiality in technoscience. The work of these theorists is then compared and critiqued in essays by colleagues. Chasing Technoscience is a ground-breaking, state-of-the-art look at current developments in technoscience.

Contents

• Interview with Bruno Latour: 15
• The Promises of Constructivism: 27
• Interview with Donna Haraway: 47
• Reconfiguring Kinship: 58
• Interview with Andrew Pickering: 83
• Imagination Metaphysics and the Mangle: 96
• Interview with Don Ihde: 117
• If Phenomenology Is an Albatross Is Postphenomenology Possible?: 131
• Philosophically Assessing Haraway: 147
• Rortean Links between Ihde and Haraway: 167
• Do You Believe in Ethics? Latour and Ihde in the Trenches of the: 182
• Haraways and Latours: 195
• Ihde and Pickering: 213
• CONTRIBUTORS: 241

About the author

Don Ihde is Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. He is Director of the Technoscience Research Group at Stony Brook and is affiliated with the History of Science and Women's Studies programs. He is the author of thirteen other books, including Instrumental Realism and Technology and the Lifeworld (both Indiana University Press).

Evan Selinger is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Philosophy at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, where he is writing his dissertation on the topic of expertise and authority. His publications include "Dreyfus on Expertise: The Limits of Phenomenological Analysis," which appeared in Continental Philosophy Review.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Chasing Technoscience: Matrix for Materiality; Philosophy of Technology; The Indiana series in the philosophy of technology
• Editors: Don Ihde, Evan Selinger
• Edition: illustrated
• Publisher: Indiana University Press, 2003
• ISBN: 0253216060, 9780253216069
• Length: 249 pages
• Subjects: Philosophy / General; Philosophy / Methodology; Technology & Engineering / Social Aspects