The Competitiveness of Nations in a Global Knowledge-Based Economy
Don Ihde
Instrumental Realism:
The Interface between Philosophy of Science and
Philosophy of Technology
Epilogue:
Philosophy
of Technology beyond Philosophy of Science
Indiana University Press
Bloomington, 1991, 136-141
The
focus upon the interface between philosophy of science and philosophy of
technology through the technological embodiment of science in instruments is an
important but narrow focus. It is
important because as argued by our instrumental realists, it is really
science’s technologies which have been much of the basis of uncovering the new.
This is particularly the case in the now
large dimensions of the macro- and micro-levels of reality beyond the reaches
of unaided perception at the very base of scientific progress. This new or re-balanced focus as opposed to
the preoccupations of an older philosophy of science is intrinsically
important. And when
this leads, as it has here, to the ambiguity of the scientific object which is
“real” but produced, then the incarnation of science as technoscience
is even more marked.
Yet
the focus is also narrow. This is
because, even with instrumentation, there are related and secondary phenomena
which also need to be noted. And as the
location of a region of overlap between philosophy of science and philosophy of
technology, this interface as developed is only suggestive.
At
the beginning, I remained within the umbra of science’s instrumentation and its
effects. The dominant view of science
held by most philosophers would hold that the primary trajectories of a
science-technology relation are those which can be circumscribed by the overall
idea of a science-driven technology. This
occurs at the simplest level in the notion of “pure” science eventually
producing some “applied” effect. I began
this primer by questioning that set of priorities. By now it should be clear that there is
another direction of effect; there is also a technology-driven science.
At
the highest altitude, such a perspective was suggested most radically by Heidegger,
who holds that what we take to be science - even in its most theoretical heart
- is an effect of a technological way of taking things, of “revealing a World.”
But at a lower and much more concrete
level we also have noted how parts of our world are instrumentally and
technologically revealed and even produced.
Instruments,
our instrumental realists have pointed out, are the
essential means for that world-revelation. Yet here too the focus has been perhaps too
narrow. At the beginning, even if recognizing
more complexity in principle, the choices of illustrations concerning
instruments may have been overly cautious and simple. Most of the examples in the first books are a
little like Heidegger’s equally favored selection of simple tools in the
workshop, with associated fears of larger technologies such as dams on the
Rhine or atomic bombs. While fears about
larger and more complex instrumentation do not trouble our authors, there
remains something of the smaller and more manageable to the examples selected
by all of our instrumental realists. Telescopes
and microscopes - even if updated in high-tech ways to include electron and
sonic microscopy and spectral and light-enhanced telescopy
- remain central. And with the
hermeneutic variety of indirectly “read” instruments, we remained with
thermometers or display panels.
Not
that more could be done with even these examples: Use and design were dealt
with differently by different authors. And one secondary area of what I call technology-driven
science also was located. Some, and increasingly many scientific phenomena are clearly
technologically carpentered phenomena. Heelan makes this
sort of carpentry central, but Hacking and Ackermann also recognize at least
one class of scientific phenomena which would not be known or would not exist
without technologies. And most recognize
the historian’s adage about “science owing more to the steam engine than the
steam engine to science.” One of the
carpentered examples is clearly that of the laws of thermodynamics arising in
relation to steam engine performance rather than nature observation. The same technology-driven modelling
is taken to be excessive in Dreyfus’s critique of artificial intelligence. He clearly doubts that the laws of
psychodynamics will arise in conjunction with computer modelling.
But beyond sensory enhancement lies a
whole realm of technology-artifact-produced science. This, too, is part of the interface between
philosophy of science and philosophy of technology in the shadows of
instrumentation within the large laboratory.
These
phenomena lie within the direct examination of instrumentation, and they have
been noted in various ways by each of our authors. But there is also a more subtle, secondary
effect which ought to be pointed up as belonging to technology-driven science. It is what I call the inclination of a
trajectory. Such inclinations are
related to the capacities opened up by instruments, capacities of a
technological possibility leading to the productive capacities of experimental
science.
At
the highest and most general altitude, if it is true that research programs in
the sciences are more and more concerned with the macro-and micro-levels, is
not this itself an indicator of following a technologically possible
trajectory? Does the array of instrumentation
“suggest” just such a direction? Even in
the case of our simpler
instruments, just such a trajectory may be detected in the early
stages. Magnification “suggests” more
magnification; resolution more resolution, until eventually, we reach not only
the historic refinements of microscopes and telescopes, but their contemporary
variants which also present whole-image results isomorphic with ordinary vision
- NMR, songrams, etc. This is following a technological trajectory
with its fascination. But it is also a
subtle indirect and secondary effect of a technology-driven science.
In
the just-cited examples, we remain within the narrowly focused domain of
science’s instrumentation - but science is more than technologically embodied. It is also institutionally technologically
embedded. That was clearly
recognized both by the new generations of discourse and power praxis
philosophers of science such as Rouse, Gutting, et al., and by the sociology of
science thinkers. Here we focused upon
such praxes in the laboratory, the experiment. To Galison and Latour I could have added others who have not yet produced
books. Indeed, in this series Robert
Crease now joins the writers in experiment, with his The Nature of
Scientific Experiment.
[1]
Today’s Big Science is so closely tied to Big Technology that
one can meaningfully speak of a single, complex phenomenon whch
is both a scientific technology and a technological science: technoscience.
Not
that our instrumental realists have overlooked this complexity within Big
Science. Ackermann had already accounted
for some of the social construction in science and its embeddedness
in the political matrices of our times. Heelan and Hacking are today engaged in book projects
focusing precisely upon the larger socius of experiment
and corporate science. [2]
And my recent Technology
and the Lifeworid places science in the context
of multiple world cultures. [3]
There
is even a sense in which the embeddedness of science
in corporate modes is as old as its beginnings in the Renaissance, although
without the levels of complexity and megascale
technologies as in the last five decades. One finds our Galileos
and da Vincis courting, in
anticipatory fashion, precisely the equivalents of today’s “military-industrial
complex,” about which Eisenhower warned us. At its birth, one could say that science
foresaw itself as power- and money-oriented. Big Science is corporate-structured and
concretely overlaps in both style and organization other corporate structures
of clearly less “theoretical” bent. These
factors which today disturb social consciousness are part of the context for
the internal modes of contestation and exclusion which the hermeneutic
philosophers of science and the sociologists of science detect in the high-ante
stakes within laboratory science.
This
fact points to an entirely different interface area between philosophy of
science and philosophy of technology but one which does not so neatly overlap,
as in the examples explored more deeply here within the confines of epistemology
and ontology. The issues
surrounding Big Science-Big Technology are unavoidably linked to
social-political and ethical philosophies in ways which go beyond most extant
philosophy of science.
If
the dominant strands of philosophy of science have heretofore been insensitive
to or forgetful of the science/technology interface in instrumentation, these
same strands have been equally negligent with respect to the social structures
and operations of science in its now dominant corporate form (excluding some
strands of Popperian, Marxian, Critical Theory, and
Feminist philosophers also recognizable as important minoritarians).
Within the philosophy of science, only
recently and primarily from the discourse-praxis and hermeneutic philosophers
of science, have these issues been seen to be deeply intrinsic to the
institutions of science itself. But
ethics, social-political philosophy, and concerns for social effects
frequently
have been central to much philosophy of technology.
In
short, much philosophy of science has concentrated upon the process of
discovery, and that, within fairly narrow boundaries. It might be said, in contrast, that in its
more dominant concerns, much philosophy of technology has concentrated upon the
impact and effect of science-technology or technological science. It has, in effect, taken Big Science much
more for granted than any of the dominant or older strands of philosophy of
science.
It
might be said that insofar as Big Science belongs to, or even creates, Big
Technology, what many of the philosophers of technology have discerned by way
of such big effects has stimulated alarm. Big Science-Big Technology has become a global
force which poses effects upon global political and environmental levels. It is these phenomena which have drawn much of
the attention within philosophy of technology.
Unfortunately,
it has also led to extremes which are the counterparts of the narrow,
propositional, and theoretically preoccupied parts within philosophy of
science. Only in this case the figures
drawing attention have been largely dystopian and
technologically negative critics, convinced that technology is negatively
affecting the essence of the human (Jonas), narrowing options to monodimensional choices (Marcuse),
overwhelming nature itself (Ellul), etc. Thus, to the often sterile tone of much
philosophy of science is counterpoised an alarmist dystopianism
within some philosophy of technology.
Yet,
just as philosophy of science in even its most narrow concerns continues to
deal with issues of importance, however badly contexted,
the same may be said to be the case with the extremism
associated with some philosophy of technology. Big Science-Big Technology has become a global
force, and it does have an effect upon the natural and social environment. And these issues must be recognized and
discussed within a philosophy of technology, which is necessarily broader than
philosophy of science per se - at least, so long as philosophy
of science remains theory-centered. Were
philosophy of science to concentrate upon technoscience,
the outcome might bring together in a new way what now remain separate but
related disciplines.
I
shall point to three such areas within such a technoscience
approach. The examples I select are all
central to much philosophy of technology in its ethical, social-political
concerns. One of those concerns relates
to the environment, a frequently treated issue in philosophy of
technology writing. My examples are: (a)
PCB5 and the array of chemically created compounds which are toxic and do not
occur in nature but are artifacts of technoscience
production; (b) nuclear energy and warfare products which imply large
social-political results; and (c) industrially produced aerosols, particularly
those which affect ozone in the atmosphere. In each of these cases, the product is one
which does not occur within nature or within earth’s environment. These products, not unlike the produced entities
becoming paradigmatic as results of experiment, are technoscience
entities. The product is created or
produced through technoscience, and in each case
there is, or is implied, a global effect. I am pointing to this simply as an important
philosophy of science/philosophy of technology interface. The nest of issues is large, complex and
urgent. But it is also an index for
taking note of the areas where the latter subdiscipline
does not overlap the former. There is a
sense that philosophy of technology is and ought to be broader than philosophy
of science. It is somewhat like the
analogy between culture and religion: everyone has a culture, but not everyone
is religious; everyone is involved with technology, but not all with science.
Philosophy
of technology, if it is to deal with the broader issues of technology within
human life, must turn its focus to issues of daily life, to the ethical impact
of technologies - whether science-produced or not - and to the whole range of
interfaces of technology and our lifeworld.
There
is an existential quality to concerns which arise out of the broader
areas of philosophy of technology, related to the way in which technologies
have a way of “putting our bodies on the line.” Concern for the natural and social environment
is merely the broadest and most far-reaching of these existential implications.
More regionally, but clearly relating to
domains open for philosophy of technology, are those related to medicine,
wherein the creation of new scarcity, life/death boundary, the artificial
prolongation of “vegetative” life, and a host of other issues have given birth
to a species of high medical technology ethicians. A second area of interest, only recently
coming into philosophical purview, is the role of media. Here again is a technology-saturated
phenomenon which in many ways parallels precisely the one discussed here
concerning instrumentation. It might be
said that in
particular, cinema, television, and the auditory media, have
enhanced and expanded (and transformed) a lifeworld
in this mundane, daily sense in ways similar to the ways instrumentation
changed classical science. There are
embodiment, hermeneutic, and highly “carpentered” aspects to such media
phenomena which could, and should, serve as interesting variants upon themes previously
discussed here. This is particularly so
with the differences between what is presumably the “world-exhibiting” the
“world inventing” aims of similar instrumentation differently contexted.
The
global, environmental, and regional medical and media regions do not exhaust
what could, and should, be dealt with by a sensitive discipline in the
philosophy of technology. These areas,
however, point to a greater breadth, essential to philosophy of technology,
than is found in philosophy of science. The
task is one of “reading” the world through technology.
Because
philosophy of technology is still in its infancy but is simultaneously engaged
in such a broad enterprise, it is not surprising that it should remain as yet preparadigmatic. This
can be an advantage, in that this new subdiscipline
can learn from many sources. I have
suggested that it has learned some things from the traditions of Euro-American
philosophy - in part, one could say that philosophy of technology comes more
fully out of that tradition than most subdisciplines
have. But I also have suggested that
even the older strands of Euro-American philosophy have not been as acutely
aware of technologies in a more primary sense as they might have been. There have been indirect lessons from the new
philosophies of science as well as the history of technology.
The
other side also should be emphasized: Philosophy of science could learn a great
deal from a “reading” of the world technologically, through interpreting things
via their enmeshment with artifacts. I
have suggested that the sense of concreteness, the sense of a certain
“materiality” which arises from phenomenology in particular, may turn out to be
much larger than is either expected or than is practiced today in the still
separated professional and social practices of the philosophers who identify themselves with either subdiscipline.
The deeper recognition of a thoroughly
technologically embodied and embedded science is a first attempt
at shading in this middle area.
This
primer has been an initial look at the juncture of the concrete praxes of technoscience as it interfaces with the necessary emphasis
upon materiality within philosophy of technology. And unlike even a little over a decade ago, a
growing company has been found occupying this new territory.
141
Notes
1.
Robert Crease is a colleague of Heelan’s and mine at
Stony Brook. He currently is the
official historian of the Brookhaven National Laboratory as well as assistant
professor of philosophy. In addition, I
should like to point to a former student of Hacking, Davis Baird, now an assistant professor at the University of South
Carolina. Baird is the author of “Five
Theses on Instrumental Realism,” PSA,
Vol. 1, 1988, in which he thought he had coined the term “instrumental
realism.” We met for the first time in
the spring of 1988 (1 have used the term since 1977).
2.
After the 1979-1985 period examined concerning my original list of instrumental
realists, a great many philosophers of science began to turn to special
interest in the experiment. This
includes the subsequent projects of both Heelan and
Hacking. Heelan
is at work on a book, tentatively titled After
Experiment, and has published an article, “After Experiment: Realism and
Research,” American Philosophical
Quarterly, Vol. 26, No. 4, October 1989, in which he places the role of
instrumental realism in the complex social context of modern experiment .
Similarly, Hacking has published a recent article in which he deals with the
issues of “lenses” in astronomy.
3.
Especially relevant to scientific instrumentation, however, is Chapter 5, “A
Phenomenology of Technics,” which, while not
restricted to scientific instruments, expands upon and refines much of the
earlier phenomenology of instrumentation found in Technics and Praxis.
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