Abstract

This article shows technoscience as an extensively discussed concept in French and Belgian philosophy of technology, with major philosophers such as Bernadette Bensaude Vincent, Xavier Guchet and Gilbert Hottois.Instead of telling the new narrative of a specific technoscientific object, this article reflects on an ontology of their mode of existence. Technoscientific objects open emerging research fields to indefinite possibilities, while they reorganize epistemic activities and orchestrate the development of technical networks, platforms and structures.The main question here is to understand what is the ontological mode of existence of those objects and how they relate to the previously existing categories found in the work of Gilbert Simondon, that shaped the French philosophy of technology. To this end, we focus on a submicroscopic technoscientific object; namely the bio-object, and put forward an original analysis about the being of (bio)technoscientific objects in their own milieu.This paper demonstrates that, even if Simondonian notions are critical to study (bio)technoscientific objects, these cannot be considered as proper technical objects. We propose that the mode of existence of bio-objects is closer to that of artificial objects than to technical ones. This peculiarity may be the reason why French philosophers are consistent in studying technoscience as an emerging technical field, with and beyond Simondon’s lenses.