How Scientific Instruments Speak - Bas de Boer

How Scientific Instruments Speak

Postphenomenology and Technological Mediations in Neuroscientific Practice

(Autor)

Buch | Hardcover
232 Seiten
2021
Lexington Books (Verlag)
978-1-7936-2784-1 (ISBN)
105,95 inkl. MwSt
Science is highly dependent on the technologies needed to observe scientific objects. In How Scientific Instruments Speak, Bas de Boer develops a philosophical account of instruments in scientific practice, focusing on the cognitive neurosciences. He argues for an understanding of scientific instruments as mediating technology.
Science is highly dependent on technologies to observe scientific objects. For example, astronomers need telescopes to observe planetary movements, and cognitive neuroscience depends on brain imaging technologies to investigate human cognition. But how do such technologies shape scientific practice, and how do new scientific objects come into being when new technologies are used in science?

In How Scientific Instruments Speak, Bas de Boer develops a philosophical account of how technologies shape the reality that scientists study. We should understand scientific instruments as mediating technologies. Rather than mute tools serving pre-existing human goals, scientific instruments play an active role in shaping scientific work. De Boer uses this account to discuss how brain imaging and stimulation technologies mediate the way in which cognitive neuroscientists investigate human cognitive functions. The development of cognitive neuroscience runs parallel with the development of advanced brain imaging technologies, drawing a lot of public attention—sometimes called “neurohype”—because of its alleged capacity to demystify the human mind. By analyzing how the objects that cognitive neuroscientists study are mediated by brain imaging technologies, de Boer explicates the processes by which human cognition is investigated.

Bas de Boer is a philosopher of technoscience working as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Twente.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Technological Mediations and (Neuro-)Scientific Practice

Part 1: Towards a Theory of Technological Mediations in Scientific Practice

Chapter 1: Scientific Instruments as Mediating Technologies and the Collectivity of Scientific Practice

Chapter 2: “Technology” and “Human-Technology Relations”

Chapter 3: Science and the Theoretical Disclosure of Nature

Chapter 4: To the Scientific Objects Themselves: Gaston Bachelard’s Phenomenotechnique

Chapter 5: Bruno Latour and the Difference Between Technical and Technological Mediations

Part 2: A Postphenomenological Ethnomethodology of Neuroscientific Practice

Chapter 6: Postphenomenology as Ethnomethodology: Studying How Reality is Accomplished Through the Appropriation of Technological Mediations

Chapter 7: Constituting “Visual Attention” in the Cognitive Neurosciences

Chapter 8: “Braining” Neuropsychiatric Experiments

Conclusion: A Philosophy of Technological Mediation as a Philosophy of Scientific Practice

Erscheinungsdatum
Reihe/Serie Postphenomenology and the Philosophy of Technology
Verlagsort Lanham, MD
Sprache englisch
Maße 160 x 227 mm
Gewicht 522 g
Themenwelt Geisteswissenschaften Philosophie Philosophie der Neuzeit
Naturwissenschaften Physik / Astronomie Mechanik
ISBN-10 1-7936-2784-3 / 1793627843
ISBN-13 978-1-7936-2784-1 / 9781793627841
Zustand Neuware
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