Transformation, degradation, disappearance of scientific objects
Type: Call for Publications
Date: March 28, 2016
Location: Czech Republic
Subject Fields: Social Sciences, Philosophy, History of Science, Medicine, and Technology
Theory of Science,
a journal for interdisciplinary studies of science, seeks research
articles, review articles and book reviews focusing on "Transformation,
degradation, disappearance of scientific objects".
In philosophy
and history of science, the readings investigating the complexity of the
abandonment of ‘scientific objects' are rather rare in comparison with
those focusing on ‘inventions', ‘constructions' or ‘genealogies'. In
this thematic issue of Theory of Science, the attention will be drawn to the ‘disappearance' of ‘scientific objects'.
We
suggest that the notion of ‘scientific objects' can be understood in a
two-fold way. It includes not only what a knowing subject aims at, i.e.
the object of scientific thought in the strict sense, but it also
comprises various elements of science's architecture, building upon
knowledge that they produce: the experimental devices, the method, the
forms of expression, the criteria of verification, etc. (it seems
appropriate to call these elements of science ‘epistemic objects' in
order to distinguish them from the ‘objects' examined by scientific
thought).
We therefore invite contributors to this special issue
to explore the details of the dynamics of science, while insisting on
the assertion that the disappearance of scientific objects is not
reducible to their pure and simple absence. We offer a hypothesis that
trajectories of ‘scientific objects', extremely varied as they are, find
themselves fashioned by their own transformations, the oscillations of
their status, their progressive deformations, etc. These alterations
establish various modalities of the process of disappearance, which is,
in fact, only rarely achieved abruptly.
We raise questions such as
the following: How does knowledge abandon its objects? What
transformations do the latter undergo? What degradations are they prone
to? Is there some logic of disappearance affiliated either with the
structure of the reality or with the nature of the discipline that deals
with it? These questions take on particular importance for disciplines
in which profound ruptures and scientific revolutions are blurred, as in
the case of the social sciences. Nevertheless, addressing these issues
in the natural sciences as well seems appropriate in the hope for a
renewal of their philosophies.
Theory of Science is a peer-reviewed academic journal founded in 1969. For more information, visit http://teorievedy.flu.cas.cz/.
Contact Info:
Theory of science
Journal for interdisciplinary studies of science
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Czech Republic, Europe
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