De l’intersubjectivité à l’interinstrumentalité. L’exemple de la physique des surfaces

Abstract

Résumé : Notre visée, dans cet article, consiste à souligner que la prise en compte d'une stratégie couramment employée par les chercheurs au sein des sciences expérimentales, l'interinstrumentalité, permet de réduire l'impact des facteurs micro-et macrosociaux, privilégiés par les tenants du programme relativiste empirique de Harry Collins, lorsqu'il s'agit d'expliquer la clôture des débats sur la valeur à conférer aux données collectées. Deux études de cas, l'une portant sur l'histoire de l'invention du microscope à effet tunnel, l'autre sur une recherche déterminée au sein d'un laboratoire de physique des surfaces, nous permettent de préciser en quoi l'interinstrumentalité contribue à l'objectivité des résultats obtenus par les scientifiques, et en constitue une composante au même titre que l'intersubjectivité.Abstract: Our aim in this article is to show how a strategy used in the experimental sciences, strategy that we named "inter-instrumentation", can minimize the role of micro and macro-sociological factors when one tries to understand how the debates about the interpretation of the data come to an end. To defend our point of view, we will present two examples: an historical example -the invention, of the Scanning Tunneling Microscope -and an example collected during an ethnographic study in a surface science laboratory. We would like to emphasize that inter-instrumentation contributes to the objectivity of the experimental results and constitutes a part of it as well as intersubjectivity.

The Meaning of a Scientific Image: Case Study in Nanoscience a Semiotic Approach

“…Therefore, it is necessary each time to produce another sample which will always be quite different from the previous one. 2 Groupe μ is composed of Belgian XX th century semioticians. In the 1970s and 1980s they worked on developing a theoretical approach towards visual rhetoric and visual semiotics that involved classifying images according to their differences from plastic and iconic norms.…”

“…This is one of the main strategies used in this kind of laboratory to make the meaning of an image more robust. See[2] and[3].…”

“…2 After having presented the host laboratory, the microscope and the semiotic perspective, I shall try to understand, using Groupe μ's theory, how researchers succeed in creating a shared semantic universe during a shop-talk around a microscope. This study will also enable me to highlight the importance of indexical tracers and the role played by some factors which remain implicit.…”

Technologies of Scientific Visualization

“…All images, even photographs, emphasize features or relationships that are particularly important, at the expense of others that are less important [5]. The difference between modern scientific images and older scientific illustrations is that it is impossible to say of the modern ones that, yes, this is an accurate representation of X, unless you have been involved in the complex production process [6]. X might, for example, be too small to see with the naked eye because it is smaller than the wavelength of visible light.…”