The key objective of this volume is to allow philosophy students and early-stage researchers to become practicing philosophers in technoscientific settings. Zwart focuses on the methodological issue of how to practice continental philosophy of technoscience today. This text draws upon continental authors such as Hegel, Engels, Heidegger, Bachelard and Lacan (and their fields of dialectics, phenomenology and psychoanalysis) in developing a coherent message around the technicity of science or rather, "technoscience". Within technoscience, the focus will be on recent developments in life sciences research, such as genomics, post-genomics, synthetic biology and global ecology. This book uniquely presents continental perspectives that tend to be underrepresented in mainstream philosophy of science, yet entail crucial insights for coming to terms with technoscience as it is evolving on a global scale today. This is an open access book.
In: Zwart , H 2022 , ' Lacan's Dialectics of Knowledge Production : The Four Discourses as a Detour to Hegel ' , Foundations of Science . https://doi.org/10.1007/s10699-022-09832-6
In Seminar XVII, entitled The reverse side of psychoanalysis , Jacques Lacanpresents his famous theorem of the four discourses. In this rereading I propose todemonstrate that Lacan's theorem entails a transferable dialectical method for studyingprocesses of knowledge production, enabling contemporary scholars to develop adiagnostic of the present, notably scholars interested in issues such as the vicissitudesof knowledge production under capitalism, the crisis of the university and theproliferation of electronic gadgets. In short, I will argue that Lacan's theorem of the fourdiscourses entails a dialectical diagnostic of technoscientific knowledge during latecapitalism. First, the four discourses will be briefly outlined, emphasising the extent towhich they entail, albeit in an ambivalent manner, a return or detour to the logic ofHegel. Subsequently, each discourse will be presented in more detail, emphasisinghow they allow us to come to terms with the current status of technoscientificknowledge. Special attention will be given to the political backdrop of the seminar: thecrisis of the university. Finally, I will discuss the historical dimension, outlining both thepredecessor of the four discourses and their current predicament under neoliberal/capitalist conditions.
In: Zwart , H 2022 , Dialectical Materialism . in Philosophy of Engineering and Technology . Springer Nature , Philosophy of Engineering and Technology , vol. 38 , pp. 67-109 . https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-84570-4_3
Although Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels strictly speaking never used the term, "dialectical materialism" refers to the philosophy of science and nature developed in (and on the basis of) their writings, emphasising the pivotal role of real-world socio-economic conditions (e.g. labour, class struggle, technological developments). As indicated by their correspondence (Marx & Engels, 1983), their collaboration represented a unique intellectual partnership which began in Paris in 1844 and continued after Marx's death, when Engels took care of Marx's legacy, notably the sprawling mass of manuscripts which he managed to transform into Volume II and III of Capital. While their joint effort (resulting in no less than 44 volumes of collected writings known as the Marx Engels Werke, published by Dietz Verlag Berlin) began as co-authorship, they eventually decided on a division of labour (with Marx focussing on Capital), although reading, reviewing, commenting on and contributing to each other's writings remained an important part of their research practice. As a result of this division of labour, while Marx focussed on political economy, Engels dedicated himself to elaborating a dialectical materialist philosophy of nature and the natural sciences, resulting in works such as the Anti-Dühring and his unfinished Dialectics of Nature (published posthumously), although Engels (a voracious intellectual) wrote and published on may other topics as well, so that his output can be regarded as a dialectical materialist encyclopaedia in fragments. Again, although I will start with an exposition of dialectical materialism, my aim is not to contribute to scholarly discussions on dialectical materialism. My focus is on the how and now, and my aim is to explore how to practice dialectical materialism of technoscience today (cf. Žižek, 2014/2015, p. 1; Hamza, 2016, p. 163).
From a contemporary perspective, the current COVID-19 pandemic is undoubtedly an extraordinary event, but historically speaking pandemics are periodically recurring phenomena and intimately connected with socio-economic processes of globalisation. Therefore, history may serve as a backdrop for coming to terms with the present, by comparing current challenges with previous events that are both sufficiently similar and sufficiently different. In this article, the COVID-19 crisis will be assessed from a humanities perspective, using a pandemic drama entitled Children of the Sun (written by Russian novelist and playwright Maxim Gorky in 1905) as a critical mirror. In Gorky's play, the pandemic as a disruptive event reveals a number of tensions and divides, between science and society first of all, but also between socio-economic classes and subcultures, which become interconnected through globalisation but evolve at an uneven pace. Thus, Gorky's drama addresses a number of themes that are still relevant for COVID-19 controversies, such as the relationship between basic and applied research, global competition and vaccine development, science and suspicion, and the socio-economic unevenness between the global North and the global South.
AbstractGaston Bachelard (1884–1962) occupies a unique position in the history of European thinking. As a philosopher of science, he developed a profound interest in genres of the imagination, notably poetry and novels. While emphatically acknowledging the strength, precision and reliability of scientific knowledge compared to every-day experience, he saw literary phantasies as important supplementary sources of insight. Although he significantly influenced authors such as Lacan, Althusser, Foucault and others, while some of his key concepts ("epistemological rupture," "epistemological obstacle," "technoscience") are still widely used, his oeuvre tends to be overlooked. And yet, as I will argue, Bachelard's extended series of books opens up an intriguing perspective on contemporary science. First, I will point to a remarkable duality that runs through Bachelard's oeuvre. His philosophy of science consists of two sub-oeuvres: a psychoanalysis of technoscience, complemented by a poetics of elementary imagination. I will point out how these two branches deal with complementary themes: technoscientific artefacts and literary fictions, two realms of human experience separated by an epistemological rupture. Whereas Bachelard's work initially entails a panegyric in praise of scientific practice, he becomes increasingly intrigued by the imaginary and its basic images ("archetypes"), such as the Mother Earth archetype.
