Fabricated Truths and the Pathos of Proximity: What Would be a Nietzschean Philosophy of Contemporary Technoscience?

Abstract

In recent years, Nietzsche's views on (natural) science attracted a considerable amount of scholarly attention. Overall, his attitude towards science tends to be one of suspicion, or ambivalence at least. My article addresses the "Nietzsche and science" theme from a slightly different perspective, raising a somewhat different type of question, more pragmatic if you like, namely: how to be a Nietzschean philosopher of science today? What would the methodological contours of a Nietzschean approach to present-day research areas (such as neuroscience, astrophysics, synthetic biology or climate studies) amount to? In other words, my paper reflects a shift of focus from author studies to extrapolation. The design of my article is as follows. I will start with the question (already widely discussed in the expert literature) to what extent Friedrich Nietzsche (a classical philologist by training) managed to familiarise himself with the natural sciences of his epoch. Subsequently, I will outline some basic methodological and conceptual ingredients of Nietzsche's philosophy of science, focussing on core issues such as "genealogy", "interpretation", "enhancement" and "truth". Next, I will elucidate Nietzsche's genealogical methodology with the help of three case studies (three representative samples if you will) taken from Nietzsche's writings and dealing with physiology, astronomy and neuro-psychology respectively. Finally, I will present the methodological contours of a Nietzschean understanding of contemporary technoscience.

Dialectical Materialism

“…etymologically imply materiality and physicality (p. 38), while the calculus allowed scientists to study processes of continuous change experimentally. It is no coincidence of course that "laboratory" literally means workshop, a locality designed for fabricating knowledge (Zwart, 2019b).…”

“…technological power of epochal impact, critically affecting the metabolism between human society and the natural environment. Already in early publications, Engels acutely described how in booming cities such as Manchester (1845Manchester ( /1962, techno-industrial disruption resulted in miasmic air, hideous smells (p. 259) and polluted puddles (p. 274), such as the river Irk, which had become a narrow, coal-black, foul-smelling stream, filled with refuse and excrements (p. 282, 295), creating optimal conditions for the spread of infectious diseases such as cholera (Zwart, 2019b). While Engels saw cities themselves as complex processes, rather than as entities (Royle, 2014, p. 100), ecological disruption was a decidedly global process, and in Dialectics of Nature Engels describes, for instance, how Spanish planters in Cuba, by burning down forests in order to plant their profitable coffee trees, caused tropical rainfall to wash away the now unprotected upper stratum of the soil (1925/1962a, p. 455).…”

Iconoclasm and Imagination: Gaston Bachelard’s Philosophy of Technoscience

“…They are products of technoscience, of laboratory research; they are (literally speaking) fabrications, artefacts: outcomes of sophisticated research practices, fabricated with the help of special research contrivances. Nietzsche's alliteration reminds us that scientific facts are "fingered" by the scientific method (Zwart 2019b). 1 When a scientist discerns a research object for the very first time (e.g., when Van Leeuwenhoek for the first time spotted spermatozoa through his microscope), such observations are not yet scientific, Bachelard argues (1957: 147).…”