A lecture on technoscience by Professor Alfred Nordmann
Abstract
The so-called technosciences like nanotechnology or synthetic biology are commonly associated with "emerging" technologies, that is, they are defined in temporal categories as heralds of the future. Upon closer scrutiny, however, they pursue the conquest of space, seeking to ensure that novel effects learn to travel, first among laboratories and beyond that to the world at large. Their project is one of hegemony, globalization, colonization. At the same time, narratives of inescapable catastrophe give way to narratives of proper stewardship.
Speaker: Alfred Nordmann, Professor of Philosophy of Science and of Technoscience at Darmstadt Technical University.
Professor Nordmann has been working at the intersection of philosophy of technology and philosophy of science. He explores conceptions of scientific objectivity as well as epistemological, metaphysical, aesthetic aspects of technoscientific research. He has published extensively on philosophical and societal aspects of technoscience and converging technologies, as well as on the philosophies of Heinrich Hertz and Ludwig Wittgenstein.