Coming to Terms with Technoscience: The Heideggerian Way
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Coming to Terms with Technoscience: The Heideggerian Way Hub Zwart1
© The Author(s) 2020
Abstract Heidegger’s oeuvre (> 100 volumes) contains a plethora of comments on contemporary science, or rather technoscience because, according to Heidegger, science is inherently technical. What insights can be derived from such comments for philosophers questioning technoscience as it is practiced today? Can Heidegger’s thoughts become a source of inspiration for contemporary scholars who are confronted with automated sequencing machines, magnetic resonance imaging machines and other technoscientific contrivances? This is closely related to the question of method, I will argue. Although Heidegger himself was notoriously ambivalent when it came to method, especially in his later writings, his oeuvre nonetheless contains important hints for how a philosophical questioning of technoscience could be practiced, such as: paying attention to language (to the words that we use) or taking a step backwards (towards the moment of commencement of the type of rationality at work). For Heidegger, method means: being underway, and a philosophical method must be developed along the way. After discussing Heidegger’s views on method, both in his earlier and in his later writings, three dimensions of contemporary technoscience will be addressed, namely: technoscientific objects (research artefacts), technoscientific sites (laboratories as unworldly environments) and technoscience as a global enterprise. In the final section, the question will be addressed whether and how a critical encounter between philosophy and technoscience is possible. Keywords Heidegger · Technoscience · Philosophical method · Life sciences
* Hub Zwart [email protected] https://www.eur.nl/esphil/people/hub-zwart 1
Dean Erasmus School of Philosophy, Erasmus University Rotterdam, Bayle Building, Room J5‑65, Burgemeester Oudlaan 50, 3062 PA Rotterdam, The Netherlands
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Introduction Imagine a group of philosophy students, about to complete a Master’s program in continental philosophy, who are invited to visit a life sciences research laboratory, somewhere on a university campus. Having studied some of Heidegger’s quintessential works, such as Being and Time and The Question of Technology, they suddenly find themselves exposed to racks of test-tubes and automated sequencing machines. Suppose that, thrown into such an “unworldly” lab environment, they ask themselves how to interpret their experiences in a Heideggerian manner. On closer inspection, this scene is far from fictitious. Being a continental philosopher myself, having worked in a science faculty for almost two decades, I often conversed with philosophy students, versant in the oeuvres of Heidegger and other continental thinkers, who were suddenly challenged to develop a philosophical commentary on emerging trends in contemporary technoscience, be it quantum computing, neuro-imaging or CRISPR-cas9. How to bridge, in a meaningful manner, the distance that segregates the world
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