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The Fukushima disaster invites us to look back and probe how
nuclear technology has shaped the world we live in, and how we have
come to live with it. Since the first nuclear detonation (Trinity
test) and the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, all in 1945,
nuclear technology has profoundly affected world history and
geopolitics, as well as our daily life and natural world. It has
always been an instrument for national security, a marker of
national sovereignty, a site of technological innovation and a
promise of energy abundance. It has also introduced permanent
pollution and the age of the Anthropocene. This volume presents a
new perspective on nuclear history and politics by focusing on four
interconnected themes–violence and survival; control and
containment; normalizing through denial and presumptions; memories
and futures–and exploring their relationships and consequences.
It proposes an original reflection on nuclear technology from a
long-term, comparative and transnational perspective. It brings
together contributions from researchers from different disciplines
(anthropology, history, STS) and countries (US, France, Japan) on a
variety of local, national and transnational subjects. Finally,
this book offers an important and valuable insight into other
global and Anthropocene challenges such as climate change.
The Fukushima disaster invites us to look back and probe how
nuclear technology has shaped the world we live in, and how we have
come to live with it. Since the first nuclear detonation (Trinity
test) and the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, all in 1945,
nuclear technology has profoundly affected world history and
geopolitics, as well as our daily life and natural world. It has
always been an instrument for national security, a marker of
national sovereignty, a site of technological innovation and a
promise of energy abundance. It has also introduced permanent
pollution and the age of the Anthropocene. This volume presents a
new perspective on nuclear history and politics by focusing on four
interconnected themes-violence and survival; control and
containment; normalizing through denial and presumptions; memories
and futures-and exploring their relationships and consequences. It
proposes an original reflection on nuclear technology from a
long-term, comparative and transnational perspective. It brings
together contributions from researchers from different disciplines
(anthropology, history, STS) and countries (US, France, Japan) on a
variety of local, national and transnational subjects. Finally,
this book offers an important and valuable insight into other
global and Anthropocene challenges such as climate change.
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. Together they offer fascinating stories and
novel analytic concepts, all the while opening up a space for
reflecting on the specific character of technoscientific objects.
With their promise of sustainable innovation and a technologically
transformed future, these objects are highly charged with values
and design expectations. By clarifying their mode of existence, we
are learning to come to terms more generally with the furniture of
the technoscientific world - where, for example, the 'dead matter'
of classical physics is becoming the 'smart material' of emerging
and converging technologies.
Air-pumps, electrical machines, colliding ivory balls, coloured
sparks, mechanical planetariums, magic mirrors, hot-air balloons -
these are just a sample of the devices displayed in public
demonstrations of science in the eighteenth century. Public and
private demonstrations of natural philosophy in Europe then
differed vastly from today's unadorned and anonymous laboratory
experiments. Science was cultivated for a variety of purposes in
many different places; scientific instruments were built and used
for investigative and didactic experiments as well as for
entertainment and popular shows. Between the culture of curiosities
which characterized the seventeenth century and the distinction
between academic and popular science that gradually emerged in the
nineteenth, the eighteenth century was a period when scientific
activities took place in a variety of sites, ranging from
academies, and learned societies to salons and popular fairs, shops
and streets. This collection of case studies describing public
demonstrations in Britain, Germany, Italy and France exemplifies
the wide variety of settings for scientific activities in the
European Enlightenment. Filled with sparks and smells, the essays
raise broader issues about the ways in which modern science
established its legitimacy and social acceptability. They point to
two major features of the cultures of science in the
eighteenth-century: entertainment and utility. Experimental
demonstrations were attended by apothecaries and craftsmen for
vocational purposes. At the same time, they had to fit in with the
taste of both polite society and market culture. Public
demonstrations were a favourite entertainment for ladies and
gentlemen and a profitable activity for instrument makers and
booksellers.
Air-pumps, electrical machines, colliding ivory balls, coloured
sparks, mechanical planetariums, magic mirrors, hot-air balloons -
these are just a sample of the devices displayed in public
demonstrations of science in the eighteenth century. Public and
private demonstrations of natural philosophy in Europe then
differed vastly from today's unadorned and anonymous laboratory
experiments. Science was cultivated for a variety of purposes in
many different places; scientific instruments were built and used
for investigative and didactic experiments as well as for
entertainment and popular shows. Between the culture of curiosities
which characterized the seventeenth century and the distinction
between academic and popular science that gradually emerged in the
nineteenth, the eighteenth century was a period when scientific
activities took place in a variety of sites, ranging from
academies, and learned societies to salons and popular fairs, shops
and streets. This collection of case studies describing public
demonstrations in Britain, Germany, Italy and France exemplifies
the wide variety of settings for scientific activities in the
European Enlightenment. Filled with sparks and smells, the essays
raise broader issues about the ways in which modern science
established its legitimacy and social acceptability. They point to
two major features of the cultures of science in the
eighteenth-century: entertainment and utility. Experimental
demonstrations were attended by apothecaries and craftsmen for
vocational purposes. At the same time, they had to fit in with the
taste of both polite society and market culture. Public
demonstrations were a favourite entertainment for ladies and
gentlemen and a profitable activity for instrument makers and
booksellers.
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. Together they offer fascinating stories and
novel analytic concepts, all the while opening up a space for
reflecting on the specific character of technoscientific objects.
With their promise of sustainable innovation and a technologically
transformed future, these objects are highly charged with values
and design expectations. By clarifying their mode of existence, we
are learning to come to terms more generally with the furniture of
the technoscientific world - where, for example, the 'dead matter'
of classical physics is becoming the 'smart material' of emerging
and converging technologies.
Offering an overall insight into the French tradition of philosophy
of technology, this volume is meant to make French-speaking
contributions more accessible to the international philosophical
community. The first section, "Negotiating a Cultural Heritage,"
presents a number of leading 20th century philosophical figures
(from Bergson and Canguilhem to Simondon, Dagognet or Ellul) and
intellectual movements (from Personalism to French Cybernetics and
political ecology) that help shape philosophy of technology in the
Francophone area, and feed into contemporary debates (ecology of
technology, politics of technology, game studies). The second
section, "Coining and Reconfiguring Technoscience," traces the
genealogy of this controversial concept and discusses its meanings
and relevance. A third section, "Revisiting Anthropological
Categories," focuses on the relationships of technology with the
natural and the human worlds from various perspectives that include
anthropotechnology, Anthropocene, technological and vital norms and
temporalities. The final section, "Innovating in Ethics, Design and
Aesthetics," brings together contributions that draw on various
French traditions to afford fresh insights on ethics of technology,
philosophy of design, techno-aesthetics and digital studies. The
contributions in this volume are vivid and rich in original
approaches that can spur exchanges and debates with other
philosophical traditions.
Offering an overall insight into the French tradition of philosophy
of technology, this volume is meant to make French-speaking
contributions more accessible to the international philosophical
community. The first section, "Negotiating a Cultural Heritage,"
presents a number of leading 20th century philosophical figures
(from Bergson and Canguilhem to Simondon, Dagognet or Ellul) and
intellectual movements (from Personalism to French Cybernetics and
political ecology) that help shape philosophy of technology in the
Francophone area, and feed into contemporary debates (ecology of
technology, politics of technology, game studies). The second
section, "Coining and Reconfiguring Technoscience," traces the
genealogy of this controversial concept and discusses its meanings
and relevance. A third section, "Revisiting Anthropological
Categories," focuses on the relationships of technology with the
natural and the human worlds from various perspectives that include
anthropotechnology, Anthropocene, technological and vital norms and
temporalities. The final section, "Innovating in Ethics, Design and
Aesthetics," brings together contributions that draw on various
French traditions to afford fresh insights on ethics of technology,
philosophy of design, techno-aesthetics and digital studies. The
contributions in this volume are vivid and rich in original
approaches that can spur exchanges and debates with other
philosophical traditions.
This volume opens the readers' eyes to the central role of
materials in human societies and in the environment by telling the
life stories of fifteen materials. In this rich collection of
stories, materials are found at the complex interface between
nature and society. They are not just atomic structures with a set
of properties and behaviors. They capture the attention of nations
worldwide because materials have major impacts on our welfare and
can affect international peace and security.Between Making and
Knowing: Tools in the History of Materials Research (Part of A
World Scientific Encyclopedia of the Development and History of
Materials Science)
From the earliest use of fire to forge iron tools to the medieval
alchemists' search for the philosopher's stone, the secrets of the
elements have been pursued by human civilization. But, as the
authors of this concise history remind us, "disciplines like
physics and chemistry have not existed since the beginning of time;
they have been built up little by little, and that does not happen
without difficulties." Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent and Isabelle
Stengers present chemistry as a science in search of an identity,
or rather as a science whose identity has changed in response to
its relation to society and to other disciplines. The
authors--respected, prolific scholars in history and philosophy of
science--have distilled their knowledge into an accessible work,
free of jargon. They have written a book deeply enthusiastic about
the conceptual, experimental, and technological complexities and
challenges with which chemists have grappled over many centuries.
Beginning with chemistry's polymorphous beginnings, featuring many
independent discoveries all over the globe, the narrative then
moves to a discussion of chemistry's niche in the
eighteenth-century notion of Natural Philosophy and on to its
nineteenth-century days as an exemplar of science as a means of
reaching positive knowledge. The authors also address contentious
issues of concern to contemporary scientists: whether chemistry has
become a service science; whether its status has "declined" because
its value lies in assisting the leading-edge research activities of
molecular geneticists and materials scientists; or whether it is
redefining its agenda. A History of Chemistry treats chemistry as a
study whose subject matter, the nature and behavior of
qualitatively different materials, remains constant, while the
methods and disciplinary boundaries of the science constantly
shift.
What do you associate with chemistry? Explosions, innovative
materials, plastics, pollution? The public's confused and
contradictory conception of chemistry as basic science, industrial
producer and polluter contributes to what we present in this book
as chemistry's image as an impure science. Historically, chemistry
has always been viewed as impure both in terms of its academic
status and its role in transforming modern society. While exploring
the history of this science we argue for a characteristic
philosophical approach that distinguishes chemistry from physics.
This reflection leads us to a philosophical stance that we
characterise as operational realism. In this new expanded edition
we delve deeper into the questions of properties and potentials
that are so important for this philosophy that is based on the
manipulation of matter rather than the construction of theories.
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