Research Objects in Their Technological Setting

Bernadette Bensaude Vincent is Professor of Philosophy at University Paris 1 Pantheon-Sorbonne and the director of CETCOPRA (Center for Study of Technology, Knowledge & Practices). Her research topics span from the history and philosophy of chemistry to materials science and nanotechnology with a continuous interest in science and the public issues. Among her recent publications: Chemistry. The Impure Science, (co-author J. Simon, 2008); Matiere a penser. (2008). Bionanoethique (2008), Les Vertiges de la technocience. (2009), Fabriquer la vie. Ou va la biologie de synthese (co-author D. Benoit-Browayes, 2011).

Alfred Nordmann is Professor of Philosophy at Darmstadt Technical University, after receiving his Ph.D. in Hamburg (1986) and several years on the faculty at the University of South Carolina (1988-2002). In the field of History and Philosophy of Science and of Technoscience he is interested primarily in the questions of knowledge and objectivity, explanation and understanding under representational and technological conditions of knowledge production, see Science Transformed (co-edited with Hans Radder and Gregor Schiemann, 2011) and Science in the Context Application (co-edited with Martin Carrier, 2011).

Astrid Schwarz currently teaches in the Department of Humanities, Social and Political Sciences at the ETH Zurich. Her questions in the philosophy of science concern the status and power of concepts, models and images in the process of generating, stabilizing and demarcating scientific knowledge. She is also interested in approaches common in the philosophy of technology and political philosophy, particularly concerning debates around "green cultures and technologies", and the Anthropocene era. She coedited the book Ecology Revisited (2011), recently she published Experiments in Practice (2014).

Sacha Loeve is research fellow in philosophy of technology and technological humanities at the COSTECH research team (Knowledge, Organization and Technical Systems) of the University of Technology of Compiegne (UTC), adjunct professor in epistemology and history of science at the UTC, and associate researcher at the CETCOPRA (Center for Study of Technology, Knowledge & Practices), University Paris 1 Pantheon-Sorbonne. Since his Ph.D. on molecular nanomachines (2009), he practices a ‘fieldwork philosophy’ centred on objects and primarily interested in rethinking technology as a narrative logos of technics. His publications include works on Gilbert Simondon, nano-objects, -images and -technology, pharmacotechnology, synthetic biology, Moore’s Law and electronic waste.