Societal and ethical implications of nanotechnology have become a hot topic of public debates in many countries because both revolutionary changes and strong public concerns are expected from its development. Because nanotechnology is, at this point, mostly articulated in visionary and futuristic terms, it is difficult to apply standard methods of technology assessment and even more difficult to consider it in engineering ethics courses. In this article, the authors suggest using selected science fiction stories in the engineering ethics classroom to (...) provide students with ethical skills and cultural knowledge required for engaging in public debates and for responsible decision making. Against the background of general debates on teaching engineering ethics, they do so by discussing the advantages and possible drawbacks of this approach and by presenting two examples of nano-science fiction classics. (shrink)

There is a rapidly expanding field of research on social and ethical interactions with nano-scaled sciences and technologies. An important question is: What does social and ethical research actually mean when it is focussed on technological applications that are largely hypothetical, and a field of science spread out across multiple disciplines and lacking unification? This paper maps early literature in the field of research as a way of answering this question. Our aim is to describe how this field is developing (...) in response to its difficult task, and particularly, to comment on the topics of focus and where there is potential for future development. We present four topical categories, labelled Governance, Perception, Science and Philosophy, and use these as a tool to both map the field and to analyse its development. We find a majority of literature currently focused on issues of governance and perception, and offer suggestions for why this might be so. We then discuss cross-category themes of definition, novelty and interdisciplinarity, highlighting diverse positions and a problematic lack of direct debate. Our conclusion is that the field would benefit from more interaction, cross-referencing and creative research across traditional fields of inquiry. (shrink)

Philosophie ist konkret und abstrakt. Sie ist konkret im Gespür für Probleme, die jeden – oder jeden in einem bestimmten Bereich – betreffen. Sie ist abstrakt in der kritischen Formulierung und Lösung von Problemen, indem sie von besonderen Bedingungen und Voreingenommenheiten abstrahiert. Philosophie erfordert Kreativität, Phantasie und die Bereitschaft zu Unkonventionellem in der Wahl der Problemzugangsweisen. Wie alle Wissenschaften ist sie als Methode lehr- und entwickelbar, sofern ein gewisses Talent vorhanden ist. Philosophie beginnt dort, wo Wissenschaftler nicht mehr weiter fragen. (...) Was heute Philosophie ist, kann morgen Wissenschaft sein – Naturwissenschaft, Sozialwissenschaft oder Geisteswissenschaft –, Philosophie hat keine Vorlieben. (shrink)

There is a rapidly growing public interest in nanotechnology such that people increasingly buy various books to inform themselves about nanotechnology. This paper tries to measure the public interest focus on nanotechnology and its relation to the public interest in other fields of knowledge by applying a new method. I combine formal network analysis of co-purchase book data with traditional content analysis. The method is successful in identifying the books that the public reads to be informed about nanotechnology, in distinguishing (...) between different kinds and classes of books and thereby between different interest foci and readerships and their relations. The results suggest that nanotechnology is for many the first intense contact with science and technology and that they read a great variety of different kinds of books. Rather than on general introductions to current research written by scientists or science journalists, readers focus on forecasting and visionary literature including business guides, written by software entrepreneurs and business consultants. Unlike expert readers, who connect nanotechnology to other fields of science and engineering, the broader public connects it to visions about dissolving the human/machine distinction. Although the distinction between non-fiction and science fiction is still important for readers, border-crossing authors increasingly blur it. (shrink)

Historians of science, like all historians, know well that every account of the history of science is necessarily an interpretation of the history of science. It requires decisions on what is important and what not, it requires ordering, contextualizing, and interpreting the available material, and presenting the results in a final form that sounds plausible to readers. Because a majority of the readers of histories of science are scientists, the degree of plausibility and acceptability depends on what scientists expect from (...) the historiography of science. As a rule, scientists expect much, too much than historians of science can fulfill without giving up their scholarly standards. Indeed, many scientist wish to read entertaining stories that make science, or their discipline, look particular attractive and interesting to a broader public. They may have their personal heroes, schools, or nations that they expect to be duly honored and celebrated. They want historians to focus on what they consider essential in order to carve socio-historical identities of disciplines or subdisciplines. They like to see progress in the historical development with one or the other revolution. They are yearning for meaning of the historical whole, such that individual scientific activities, including their own, make sense in the whole, and that one can draw extrapolations from the past to provide directions and goals for the future. In order to meet all these expectations, a meta-narrative is required that professional historians are reluctant to adopt. And so scientists are inclined to write their own histories of science for personal satisfaction. In chemistry, the most powerful meta-narrative that satisfies all the mentioned and other historiographic needs of chemists is a story about “chemistry versus nature”. It was invented and is still cultivated by chemists alone, without support and without objections thus far, from historians of chemistry. While the story has provided strong metaphysical orientation to chemists, it has caused rather alienation and hostility outside of chemistry. In this paper I will provide a brief history of the meta-narrative “chemistry versus nature”.. (shrink)