Science is highly dependent on technologies to observe scientific objects. For example, astronomers need telescopes to observe planetary movements, and cognitive neuroscience depends on brain imaging technologies to investigate human cognition. But how do such technologies shape scientific practice, and how do new scientific objects come into being when new technologies are used in science? In How Scientific Instruments Speak, Bas de Boer develops a philosophical account of how technologies shape the reality that scientists study. We should understand scientific instruments as mediating technologies. Rather than mute tools serving pre-existing human goals, scientific instruments play an active role in shaping scientific work. De Boer uses this account to discuss how brain imaging and stimulation technologies mediate the way in which cognitive neuroscientists investigate human cognitive functions. The development of cognitive neuroscience runs parallel with the development of advanced brain imaging technologies, drawing a lot of public attention-sometimes called "neurohype"-because of its alleged capacity to demystify the human mind. By analyzing how the objects that cognitive neuroscientists study are mediated by brain imaging technologies, de Boer explicates the processes by which human cognition is investigated.

How should we understand the experience of encountering and interpreting images? What are their roles in science and medicine? How do they shape everyday life? Postphenomenology and Imaging: How to Read Technology brings together scholars from multiple disciplines to investigate these questions. The contributors make use of the "postphenomenological" philosophical perspective, applying its distinctive ideas to the study of how images are experienced. These essays offer both philosophical analysis of our conception of images and empirical studies of imaging practice. The contributors analyze concrete examples from a variety of fields of science and medicine, including radiology, neuroscience, cytology, physics, remote sensing, and space science. They also include examples of imaging in everyday life, from smartphone apps to animated GIFs. Edited by Samantha J. Fried and Robert Rosenberger, this collection includes an extensive "primer" chapter introducing and expanding the postphenomenological account of imaging, as well as a set of short pieces by "critical respondents": prominent scholars who may not self-identify as doing postphenomenology but whose adjacent work is illuminating.