This paper develops a dialectical methodology for assessing technoscience during the Anthropocene. How to practice Hegelian dialectics of technoscience today? First of all, dialectics is developed here in close interaction with contemporary technoscientific research endeavours, which are addressed from a position of proximity and from an ‘oblique’ perspective. Contrary to empirical research, the focus is on how basic concepts of life, nature and technology are acted out in practice. Notably, this paper zooms in on a synthetic cell project called BaSyC (...) as a concrete instantiation of converging views of life, nature and technology currently at work in technoscience. While dialectics is used to explore the significance of this project, the synthetic cell as a case study also allows us to demonstrate the remarkable relevance of dialectics for understanding contemporary research, notably because it incites us to see the synthetic cell project as a concrete exemplification of life under Anthropocenic conditions. Should we assess the synthetic cell as the ultimate realisation of the technoscientific will to control and optimise life, or rather as an effort to bridge the disruptive collision between technoscience and nature, or both? (shrink)

This paper develops a dialectical methodology for assessing technoscience during the Anthropocene. How to practice Hegelian dialectics of technoscience today? First of all, dialectics is developed here in close interaction with contemporary technoscientific research endeavours, which are addressed from a position of proximity and from an ‘oblique’ perspective. Contrary to empirical research, the focus is on how basic concepts of life, nature and technology are acted out in practice. Notably, this paper zooms in on a synthetic cell project called BaSyC (...) as a concrete instantiation of converging views of life, nature and technology currently at work in technoscience. While dialectics is used to explore the significance of this project, the synthetic cell as a case study also allows us to demonstrate the remarkable relevance of dialectics for understanding contemporary research, notably because it incites us to see the synthetic cell project as a concrete exemplification of life under Anthropocenic conditions. Should we assess the synthetic cell as the ultimate realisation of the technoscientific will to control and optimise life, or rather as an effort to bridge the disruptive collision between technoscience and nature, or both? (shrink)

There are two sides to Adorno’s idea of natural history: showing that what appears to be natural is in fact subject to social change, while exposing social change as recurrence of the ever same. Focusing on the second side, this article explains how such a naturalisation can contribute to social critique. What distinguishes Adorno’s use of biological vocabulary from social Darwinism is the critical intention. Rather than scorning nature, naturalisation starts with the conventional notion of nature in order to unmask (...) it as a projection. ‘Nature’ in this sense is what we refuse to acknowledge about our own history. In so far as it does not establish any ontological claims about nature but aims at social transformation, Adorno’s strategy can be understood as a critical naturalism. In the process of demonstrating how human practices are part of nature, the underlying concept of nature is being transformed. (shrink)

The ArgumentThe idea of evolution doubtlessly marks a revolution in our way of thinking. It is the most recent achievement of philosophy and forms the basis of the modern world picture. Current discussions concerning the status of science now convey the impression that any scientific discipline that wants to satisfy modern requirements must also become a theory of evolution. These discussions ignore the reasons which once induced Kant to desist from reformulating classical mechanics as a theory of evolution and instead (...) to found his critical philosophy, according to which the epistemological starting points of natural science and philosophy are different in principle. In other words, there is no examination of whether the reasons given by Kant are of a principle nature so that they are still valid today, but rather, ignoring Kant's arguments, it is taken for granted that a different physical theory than classical mechanics could achieve this.Because nonlinear thermodynamics in particular is often presented as a candidate that justifies hopes of an evolutionary physics, the position of this branch within the structure of physics will be investigated here. It will be seen that a historical component is introduced into physics via initial, boundary, and other supplementary conditions, but that this does not mean that historicity has been grasped in laws, which is of course the point of a scientific theory of development.It is demonstrated that the conclusion drawn for physics by some authors from nonlinear thermodynamics, according to which physics today becomes an evolutionary physics incorporating the cognitive subject, is wrong. The progress made by modern thermodynamics is, without doubt, significant. The widespread philosophical interpretation of thermodynamics rests, however, on an antiquated ontologization of physical concepts and thus on the usual procedure of mechanicism.If one tries to introduce the conception of evolution into natural science by leveling the difference between philosophy and natural science in a mechanistic manner, then the dialectical evolutionary conception which represents a new epoch of human thinking degenerates to an evolutionism, where lawfulness is replaced by accidentalness. (shrink)

This paper considers the method of idealization and factualization as the main method of all advanced empirical science. The procedure is as follows. Some idealizing conditions are assumed: the vanishing of factors $(p_{i}=0)$ which never vanish in the real world. An idealization law is formulated -- a law which is exactly (non-vacuously) fulfilled only in an ideal model, not in any real system. Then the idealizing assumptions are abrogated one by one-it is a process of gradual factualization, of the transition (...) to the factual laws which are fulfilled in real systems. These laws may be directly applied and tested by experience. (shrink)

This paper analyses the early history of David Bohm’s mechanics from the perspective of Ludwik Fleck’s thought-collectives and shows how the thought-style of the scientific community limits the possible modes of thinking and what new possibilities for the construction of a new theory arise if these limits are removed.

In this article an epistemological framework is proposed in order to integrate the emergentist thought with systemic studies on biological autonomy, which are focused on the role of organization. Particular attention will be paid to the role of the observer’s activity, especially: (a) the different operations he performs in order to identify the pertinent elements at each descriptive level, and (b) the relationships between the different models he builds from them. According to the approach sustained here, organization will be considered (...) as the result of a specific operation of identification of the relational properties of the functional components of a system, which do not necessarily coincide with the intrinsic properties of its structural constituents. Also, an epistemological notion of emergence—that of “complex emergence”—will be introduced, which can be defined as the insufficiency, even in principle, of a single descriptive modality to provide a complete description of certain classes of systems. This integrative framework will allow us to deal with two issues in biological and emergentist studies: (1) distinguishing the autonomy proper of living systems from some physical processes like those of structural stability and pattern generation, and (2) reconsidering the notion of downward causation not as a direct or indirect influence of the whole on its parts, but instead as an epistemological problem of interaction between descriptive domains in which the concept of organization proposed and the observational operations related to it play a crucial role. (shrink)

Several years ago Guglielmo Carchedi (2008; 2012) published in S&S two interesting pieces on Marx’s dialectics and mathematics. His basic aim was to discover whether Marx’s Mathematical Manuscripts provide a new insight into Marx’s dialectics. The reading he suggested was addressed to Marx alone, i.e., without Hegel and Engels. This, he argued, is the only way to grasp Marx’s dialectics if one wants to understand Marx in his own terms. Since Marx never explicated his notion of dialectics, we ought to (...) derive it from Marx’s own work. To this end, Carchedi first defined “dialectics as a method of social research” (Carchedi, 2008, 416), and then listed three principles of dialectics: 1) “all phenomena are always both realized and potential”; 2) “they are always both determinant and determined”; 3) they are “always subject to movement and change” (ibid.). Later he added a fourth principle: 4) “social phenomena’s movement (change) is tendential” (Carchedi, 2012, 547). He emphasized that these principles are limited to society and not to be confused with nature, because society, unlike nature, necessarily involves “human volition and consciousness” (ibid.). For this reason, “Engels’ dialectics of nature cannot be applied to society” (ibid.), a claim he also asserted in his book Behind the Crisis (2011, 37–8). (shrink)

El prefijo “auto” en autoorganización y autopoiesis se refiere a la existencia de una identidad o agencialidad implicada en el orden, organización o producción de un sistema que se corresponde con el sistema mismo, en contraste con el diseño o la influencia de carácter externo. La autoorganización (AO) estudia la manera en la que los procesos de un sistema alcanzan de forma espontánea un orden u organización complejo, bien como una estructura o patrón emergente, bien como algún tipo de finalidad (...) o identidad autoconstruida. En este trabajo nos ocupamos del concepto de AO en el contexto de la problemática sobre la naturaleza la vida y de los organismos vivientes. Este concepto se elabora en diferentes tradiciones científicas y filosóficas, a partir de su origen en la filosofía kantiana. La cibernética trata de emular la organización de los seres vivos y su teleología mediante la construcción de máquinas; desarrolla una perspectiva centrada en la regulación y en la causalidad mutua entre componentes del sistema. Estos trabajos, a veces complementados con la teoría de sistemas y la teoría de la información, son fundamentales para el desarrollo de la ciencia del siglo XX, especialmente las ciencias computacionales y la biología. Una segunda corriente surge desde la termodinámica de los procesos irreversibles alejados del equilibrio a partir, entre otros, de los trabajos de la escuela de Bruselas, en la que la AO se explora como la formación espontánea de estructuras de orden disipativo. Una tercera tradición, tal vez la más profundamente kantiana, se desarrolla en el contexto de la biología del desarrollo e integra a las dos mencionadas previamente, pues combina aspectos de las dos previas en el desarrollo ontogenético. Podemos decir que cada una de estas concepciones de la AO se relaciona con modelos paradigmáticos diferentes. La noción de autopoiesis (AP), por su parte, fue propuesta en los años 70 por los biólogos chilenos Humberto Maturana y Francisco Varela para explicar la organización individual de los seres vivos como un proceso dinámico que genera una identidad desde las operaciones del sistema (Maturana y Varela 1973). Puede decirse que hereda y reorganiza ideas de la tradición de la AO, especialmente la kantiana y la cibernética, para proponer una teoría biológica alternativa. El enfoque autopoiético concibe el fenómeno de la vida y a los seres vivos de forma muy diferente a la teoría de la evolución o la biología molecular que constituían las líneas de investigación predominantes en la biología de su tiempo. La teoría subraya como propiedad básica de un sistema viviente su autoconstitución dinámica como unidad dotada de identidad a partir de interacciones entre sus componentes. Sin embargo, aquellas propiedades de la vida consideradas primordiales en el enfoque darwiniano, como la reproducción o la evolución, se ven como secundarias, pues requieren de la existencia previa de sistemas autopoiéticos. El objetivo de esta voz es examinar diferentes aspectos que configuran las tradiciones autoorganizativa y autopoiética, en especial las tensiones conceptuales internas que permiten comprender los desafíos a los que se enfrentan ambas en el marco de la filosofía y la teoría de la biología, así como la forma en que sus posiciones e intuiciones contrastan con otras perspectivas en biología. (shrink)

Reading different or controversial intentions into Marx and Engels’ works has been somewhat a common but rather unquestioned practice in the history of Marxist scholarship. Engels’ Dialectics of Nature, a torso for some and a great book for others, is a case in point. A bold line seems to shape the entire Engels debate and separate two opposite views in this regard: Engels the contaminator of Marx’s materialism vs. Engels the self-started genius of dialectical materialism. What Engels, unlike Marx, has (...) not enjoyed so far is a critical reflection upon the relationship between different layers of this text: authorial, textual, editorial and interpretational. Informed by a historical hermeneutic, inquiry into the elements that structure the debate on “Dialectics of Nature,” and into the different political and philosophical functions attached to it, makes it possible to relocate the meaning of “dialectics” in a more precise context. Engels’ dialectics is less complete than we usually think it is, but he achieved more than most scholars would like to admit. (shrink)