2019-01-13T12:46:50+01:00

Jan 13, 2019 · 1 min read
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Happy to learn more about Belgian philosopher of science Isabelle Stengers. Learn more about her here in an introduction by Bruno Latour.

Isabelle Stengers has chosen to look for a touchstone distinguishing good science from bad not in epistemology but in ontology, not in the word but in the world.

If scientists are surprised by the ways she demarcates good from bad science, the many people who, from the ranks of feminism, ecology, leftism, think she is their allies should brace themselves for some hard lessons, more exactly, from the lessons she keeps drawing from hard sciences. Going from science to politics is not, for her, going from stringent constraints to more relaxed ones, but keeping exactly the same objectives with a total indifference to what is science and what is society. Domination in politics has many of the same ingredients it has in the laboratory, that is, the unability to let the people one deals with any chance to redefine the situation in their own terms. If this principle subverts so many disciplines from the inside, it subverts even more political stands from the outside, and especially so many of the “standpoint politics” where the outcome of the analysis is entirely determined from the start by the position of the speaker.

Philosophy Science
Wouter Van Rossem
Authors
Wouter Van Rossem
Wouter Van Rossem is a researcher on the intersection between social science and computer science. He previously worked on the European Research Council (ERC) funded project, Processing Citizenship, where he investigated how data infrastructures for population processing co-produce citizens, Europe, and territory. He completed his PhD at the University of Twente in the Netherlands and is still working on publications stemming from these impactful projects. In addition to his academic pursuits as a PhD at the University of Twente in the Netherlands, he brings a diverse background as a software engineer, having worked in various companies and at the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre in Italy. His diverse background, spanning both theoretical and hands-on knowledge, reflects his keen interest in exploring the intricate interconnections between technology and society.