Silent Performances: Are Repertoires Really Post-Kuhnian?

Ankeny and Leonelli (2016) propose “repertoires” as a new way to understand the stability of certain research programs as well as scientific change in general. By bringing a more complete range of social, material, and epistemic elements into one framework, they position their work as a correction for the Kuhnian impulse in philosophy of science and other areas of science studies. I argue that this “post-Kuhnian” move is not complete, and that repertoires maintain an internalist perspective, caused partly by an asymmetrical emphasis on the scientists’ side of practice. If we compare “repertoires” to alternative frameworks, like “sociotechnical imaginaries” of Jasanoff and Kim (2015), it is evident that repertoires are missing two specific things. First, I argue that the framework needs to include the role of audience, without whom the repertoires of science are unintelligible. Second, I suggest that the framework also lacks an explicit place for ethical and political imagination, which provide meaning for otherwise mechanical promotion of particular research programs. With these modifications, Ankeny and Leonelli’s framework might fulfill its post-Kuhnian potential

Imagining Responsibility, Imagining Responsibly: Reflecting on Our Shared Understandings of Science

If we cannot define science using only analysis or description, then we must rely on imagination to provide us with suitable objects of philosophical inquiry. This process links our findings to the particular ways in which we philosophers idealize scientific practice and carve out an experimental space between real world practice and thought experiments. As an example, I examine Heather Douglas’ recent work on the responsibilities of scientists and contrast her account of science with that of “technoscience,” as mobilized in nanotechnology, synthetic biology, and similar control-oriented fields. The difference between the two idealizations of science reveals that one’s preferred imaginary of science, even when inspired by real practices, has real implications for the distribution of responsibility. Douglas’ account attributes moral obligations to scientists, while a framework of “technoscience” spreads responsibility across the network of practice. I use this case to call for an ethics of imagination, in which philosophers of science hold themselves accountable for their imaginaries. We ought reflect on the idiosyncrasy of the philosophical imagination and consider how our idealizations, if widely held, would affect our fellow citizens

Silent Performances: Are Repertoires Really Post-Kuhnian?

Ankeny and Leonelli (2016) propose “repertoires” as a new way to understand the stability of certain research programs as well as scientific change in general. By bringing a more complete range of social, material, and epistemic elements into one framework, they position their work as a correction for the Kuhnian impulse in philosophy of science and other areas of science studies. I argue that this “post-Kuhnian” move is not complete, and that repertoires maintain an internalist perspective, caused partly by an asymmetrical emphasis on the scientists’ side of practice. If we compare “repertoires” to alternative frameworks, like “sociotechnical imaginaries” of Jasanoff and Kim (2015), it is evident that repertoires are missing two specific things. First, I argue that the framework needs to include the role of audience, without whom the repertoires of science are unintelligible. Second, I suggest that the framework also lacks an explicit place for ethical and political imagination, which provide meaning for otherwise mechanical promotion of particular research programs. With these modifications, Ankeny and Leonelli’s framework might fulfill its post-Kuhnian potential

Imagining Responsibility, Imagining Responsibly: Reflecting on Our Shared Understandings of Science

If we cannot define science using only analysis or description, then we must rely on imagination to provide us with suitable objects of philosophical inquiry. This process links our findings to the particular ways in which we philosophers idealize scientific practice and carve out an experimental space between real world practice and thought experiments. As an example, I examine Heather Douglas’ recent work on the responsibilities of scientists and contrast her account of science with that of “technoscience,” as mobilized in nanotechnology, synthetic biology, and similar control-oriented fields. The difference between the two idealizations of science reveals that one’s preferred imaginary of science, even when inspired by real practices, has real implications for the distribution of responsibility. Douglas’ account attributes moral obligations to scientists, while a framework of “technoscience” spreads responsibility across the network of practice. I use this case to call for an ethics of imagination, in which philosophers of science hold themselves accountable for their imaginaries. We ought reflect on the idiosyncrasy of the philosophical imagination and consider how our idealizations, if widely held, would affect our fellow citizens

Science, Responsibility, and the Philosophical Imagination

If we cannot define science using only analysis or description, then we must rely on imagination to provide us with suitable objects of philosophical inquiry. This process ties our intellectual findings to the particular ways in which we philosophers think about scientific practice and carve out a cognitive space between real world practice and conceptual abstraction. As an example, I consider Heather Douglas’s work on the responsibilities of scientists and document her implicit ideal of science, defined primarily as an epistemic practice. I then contrast her idealization of science with an alternative: “technoscience,” a heuristic concept used to describe nanotechnology, synthetic biology, and similar “Mode 2” forms of research. This comparison reveals that one’s preferred imaginary of science, even when inspired by real practices, has significant implications for the distribution of responsibility. Douglas’s account attributes moral obligations to scientists, while the imaginaries associated with “technoscience” and “Mode 2 science” spread responsibility across the network of practice. This dynamic between mind and social order, I argue, demands an ethics of imagination in which philosophers of science hold themselves accountable for their imaginaries. Extending analogous challenges from feminist philosophy and Mills’s. “Ideal Theory’ as Ideology,” I conclude that we ought to reflect on the idiosyncrasy of the philosophical imagination and consider how our idealizations of science, if widely held, would affect our communities and broader society

Silent Performances: Are Repertoires Really Post-Kuhnian?

Ankeny and Leonelli (2016) propose “repertoires” as a new way to understand the stability of certain research programs as well as scientific change in general. By bringing a more complete range of social, material, and epistemic elements into one framework, they position their work as a correction for the Kuhnian impulse in philosophy of science and other areas of science studies. I argue that this “post-Kuhnian” move is not complete, and that repertoires maintain an internalist perspective, caused partly by an asymmetrical emphasis on the scientists’ side of practice. If we compare “repertoires” to alternative frameworks, like “sociotechnical imaginaries” of Jasanoff and Kim (2015), it is evident that repertoires are missing two specific things. First, I argue that the framework needs to include the role of audience, without whom the repertoires of science are unintelligible. Second, I suggest that the framework also lacks an explicit place for ethical and political imagination, which provide meaning for otherwise mechanical promotion of particular research programs. With these modifications, Ankeny and Leonelli’s framework might fulfill its post-Kuhnian potential

Three Challenges for the Cosmopolitan Governance of Technoscience

Promising new solutions or risking unprecedented harms, science and its technological affordances are increasingly portrayed as matters of global concern, requiring in-kind responses. In a wide range of recent discourses and global initiatives, from the International Summits on Human Gene Editing to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, experts and policymakers routinely invoke cosmopolitan aims. The common rhetoric of a shared human future or of one humanity, however, does not always correspond to practice. Global inequality and a lack of accountability within most institutional contexts of international governance render these cosmopolitan proclamations of ‘one human community’ incoherent and even harmful. More generally, there exists no shared normative standard for the cosmopolitan governance of science, with which such global initiatives could be evaluated. Taking a broadly philosophical perspective, the present paper aims to better understand this problem situation, identifying three high-level challenges global governance of technoscience: problematic ideals of technology and science, the unjust formation of “global” concerns, and the limitations of cosmopolitan theory. By holistically engaging these jointly empirical and normative sites of inquiry, scholars can better support humanity’s re-imagination of technoscientific practices within and beyond the nation-state

Critical Contextual Empiricism and the Politics of Knowledge

What are philosophers doing when they prescribe a particular epistemology for science? According to science and technology studies, the answer to this question implicates both knowledge and politics, even when the latter is hidden. Exploring this dynamic via a specific case, I argue that Longino’s “critical contextual empiricism” ultimately relies on a form of political liberalism. Her choice to nevertheless foreground epistemological concerns can be clarified by considering historical relationships between science and society, as well as the culture of academic philosophy. This example, I conclude, creates a methodological challenge: philosophers of science should consider the political ideals and accountability entailed by their prescribed knowledge practices

Stanford’s Unconceived Alternatives from the Perspective of Epistemic Obligations

Kyle Stanford's reformulation of the problem of underdetermination has the potential to highlight the epistemic obligations of scientists. Stanford, however, presents the phenomenon of unconceived alternatives as a problem for realists, despite critics' insistence that we have contextual explanations for scientists' failure to conceive of their successors' theories. I propose that responsibilist epistemology and the concept of “role oughts,” as discussed by Lorraine Code and Richard Feldman, can pacify Stanford's critics and reveal broader relevance of the “new induction.” The possibility of unconceived alternatives pushes us to question our contemporary expectation for scientists to reason outside of their historical moment

Hairygami: Analysis of DNA Nanostructures' Conformational Change Driven by Functionalizable Overhangs

DNA origami is a widely used method to construct nanostructures by self-assembling designed DNA strands. These structures are often used as "breadboards" for templated assembly of proteins, gold nanoparticles, aptamers, and other molecules, with applications ranging from therapeutics and diagnostics to plasmonics and photonics. Imaging these structures using AFM or TEM is not capable to capture their full conformation ensemble as they only show their structure flattened on a surface. However, certain conformations of the nanostructure can position guest molecules into distances unaccounted for in their intended design, thus leading to spurious interactions between guest molecules that are designed to be separated. Here, we use molecular dynamics simulations to capture conformational ensemble of 2D DNA origami tiles and show that introducing single-stranded overhangs, which are typically used for functionalization of the origami with guest molecules, induces a curvature of the tile structure in the bulk. We show that the shape deformation is of entropic origin, with implications for design of robust DNA origami breadboards as well as potential approach to modulate structure shape by introducing overhangs. We then verify experimentally that the overhangs introduce curvature into the DNA origami tiles