Technoscientia est Potentia?: Contemplative, interventionist, constructionist and creationist idea(l)s in (techno)science

Within the realm of nano-, bio-, info- and cogno- (or NBIC) technosciences, the ‘power to change the world’ is often invoked. One could dismiss such formulations as ‘purely rhetorical’, interpret them as rhetorical and self-fulfilling or view them as an adequate depiction of one of the fundamental characteristics of technoscience. In the latter case, a very specific nexus between science and technology, or, the epistemic and the constructionist realm is envisioned. The following paper focuses on this nexus drawing on theoretical conceptions as well as empirical material. It presents an overview of different technoscientific ways to ‘change the world’—via contemplation and representation, intervention and control, engineering, construction and creation. It further argues that the hybrid character of technoscience makes it difficult (if not impossible) to separate knowledge production from real world interventions and challenges current science and technology policy approaches in fundamental ways

Models and data in finance: les liaisons dangereuses

In my paper, I examine the role that models play, and the relation between models and data, in finance, in particular in stock markets. I discuss several dangerous liaisons between models and data both from a theoretical and a practical viewpoint and their effects on the behaviour of the financial systems and their actors. I argue that these relations and liaisons defy the way traditional philosophy of science accounts for models and the relation between models and data, as stock markets exhibit several dynamics and features that do not fit them. For instance, they challenge the ontological issue about models (the debate about the fictional character of models), or the way model and phenomena and connected, and consequently undermine classical taxonomies as ‘models of data’, ‘model of phenomena’, ‘models of theory’. I then argue that these features open the way to possible exploitations and manipulation of stock market’s dynamics by means of appropriate use of models and data, including ‘reverse finance’, which should be closely analysed in order to contribute to better functioning and serving of the financial systems