A Companion to the Philosophy of Technology

5. The Interwovenness of Science and Technology

The picture that emerges is that instruments are not passive technological spectacles through which we perceive the object of science, i.e. “things” that are universal, eternal, ungenerated and imperishable. The ontological distinction between the objects of episteme and techne becomes blurred once instruments are used in scientific investigations. Much of our empirical knowledge results not from passive observation by means of instruments but from interventions with instruments and technological devices. Observation as a source of empirical knowledge is extended by doing, by interacting and intervening with the world through our instruments. This claim of Hacking (1983) pulls down the traditional distinction between science and technology. The spectacle metaphor of instruments is replaced by a metaphor in which instruments and technological devices provide a material playground where we learn a lot – not about the traditional object of science, but about “things” that are local, generated, variable and perishable, i.e. about the traditional object of techne. But, in their interventions and interactions with “things,” scientists concurrently search for a solid ground, i.e. for those “things” that do not change or that work in a reproducible way, which is the traditional object of episteme.

Thus, New Experimentalists’ focus on scientific practice gives a new perspective on the role of instruments, technological devices, and experiments ...