Abstract
The paper considers how researchers manage matter and energy and how they negotiate space, surface area, and place. They are doing so either by accommodating themselves to limits or by seeking to overcome such limits. To describe this adequately we develop a notion of a political economy of science that follows the distinction by French philosopher Georges Bataille between restricted and general economics. We identify the first with sciences that are constituted by conservation laws whereas the second can be identified with the technosciences that appear to adopt a principle of non-conservation which is exemplified by the ambition to expand resources like “space” or “matter.” The image and theoretical representation of our blue planet is particularly suitable to follow this transgression because it embodies the ambivalence of conserving a limited whole by exceeding and surpassing it. While Heinrich Hertz or Thomas R. Malthus never leave the framework of strict accountancy and lawful nature, the promoters of nano- and ecotechnologies share the creative desire to design machinery, create artwork, expore the globe, or change society. They develop strategies of control that open up a boundless space of technical possibility.
It would seem that the divine hand, both in its treatment of every human being and in its most grandiose workings, is bent on reminding us that the law of equilibrium is the fundamental law of the universe, for it rules everything that happens, all the plants that grow, every creature that breathes
(Marquis de Sade, 1800, 239).
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Notes
- 1.
This is how this term has been used before in Mirowski and Sent (2002), in Mirowski (2004), as well as in Rose and Rose (1976). These authors offered a critique of a pure science that is interested only in truth and trades only in recognition of contributions towards the achievement of truth. Another common approach is to investigate the role of science and technology in economic growth, the relations between science, technology, the state, and capital, and science and development (for instance in Woods, 2007; or also in Martin and Nightingale, 2000).
- 2.
Bataille uses references sparingly, but here (“*”), Bataille refers directly to the author who first conceptualized the term: “*See Vernadsky (1929), where some of the considerations that follow are outlined (from a different viewpoint).”
- 3.
Translation modified by A.S./A.N.
- 4.
In ongoing debates about the limits of global resources, scientists have identified a “new scarcity” in resource use. They focus especially on “the big three” that are land use change (from cropland to industrial/urban land), emission of greenhouse gases, and extraction of materials (Bringezu, 2009). These “big three” are presented as a technological challenge rather than as a requirement to adapt.
- 5.
Here we focus on the latter. Ecotechnologies are disciplines like industrial ecology or restoration ecology and other research fields dealing with the modeling and management of resources. As to nanotechnologies see Nordmann (2010).
- 6.
- 7.
The choice between adaption to and conquest of limits is politically salient especially in current debates about the proper response to global warming where adaptionist proposals are countered by the hope that new technologies (including geoengineering) can sustain further economic growth.
- 8.
We are not claiming that a scientist who works within the narrow confines of conservation laws is thereby committed to the conservation of natural resources. We are claiming instead – though we cannot substantiate it here – that the conduct and principles of the sciences and technosciences condition deliberations about the resources and capacities of planet Earth.
- 9.
The implicit reference to Kant is meant to underscore that conservation principles create conditions for the possibility of representation; we therefore refer to them also as norms of representation. This is not the place to provide a systematic account of how these principles are constitutive of science – where science is taken to aim for theoretical representations of features of the world. For present purposes it is enough if their central, often unquestioned status is acknowledged.
- 10.
These characterizations do not do justice to the current state of economics as a science and technoscience. Bataille’s caricature of restricted economics agrees with classical economics, especially in so far as it aims to become properly scientific by producing general testable models of economic exchange (indeed, the very notion of exchange – as opposed to that of the gift – is based on conservation rather than excess).
- 11.
Again, we slightly altered the wording of the translation.
- 12.
See Note 9 above.
- 13.
For a comprehensive history of “spaceship earth” as an icon of the environmental age, see e.g. Höhler (2008).
- 14.
When Latour points out that science is no zero-sum game, he does so to dissolve the conceit that science serves to represent a given world. According to Latour, all science turns out to be technoscience precisely in that humans and nature come together in the laboratory to create something new.
- 15.
For a strong claim regarding this inversion see Forman (2007).
- 16.
This paper is not the place for presenting the argument in detail. Georgescu-Roegen is one of the best known scholars who relied on the work of systems biologist Bertalanffy. Bertalanffy, in turn, began his career in the 1930s thinking about systems biology by adopting the two laws of thermodynamics to biology and transforming them into principles of Gestalt.
- 17.
The concept had already been invented by geographer Eduard Suess, but it was only Vernadsky who conceptualized the biosphere as it was taken up by Bataille and as we know it today.
- 18.
For a more detailed looking at Russian ecology through the biosphere theory, see Levit (2010, ch. III.4.6).
- 19.
The Macy Conferences (with participants such as Norbert Wiener, John von Neumann, Warren McCulloch, Margaret Mead, or Heinz von Foerster) contributed decisively towards the dissemination of cybernetic approaches beyond primarily technological applications into areas such as psychology, ecology, and in general the human and life sciences. For more detail see Pias (2003).
- 20.
The formation of the GST is described in Gray and Rizzo (1973).
- 21.
- 22.
George Evelyn Hutchinson participated in a number of Macy conferences and published in 1948 the paper “Circular causal systems in Ecology.”
- 23.
On the subject of “space biology” see, for example, Hanrahan and Bushnell (1960), as well as a host of magazine articles in, among others, Missiles and Rockets, Astronautics, American Biology Teacher or in the British Interplanetary Society Journal. On “cabin ecology” see especially Calloway (1965) and Calloway (1967).
- 24.
To do justice to this claim, one would need to take a close look at the role of conservation principles in the argument e.g., of Prigogine and Stengers (1984). To be sure, in order to scientifically represent and explain self-organizing systems, such principles will have to be evoked. And yet, these systems signify that nature can grow beyond itself and the emergence of order thus recalls nineteenth century arguments about a dynamics of nature that eludes the mechanics of representation.
- 25.
See, for instance, Clarke (1951). The program still has strong technological as well as imaginary potential. It plays a role in recent space experiments as well as trend-setting “eco-design” prototypes. A good example for the first case is the ongoing research project to develop “aquatic modules for biogenerative life support systems: Developmental aspects based on the space flight results of the C.E.B.A.S. mini-module” (Blüm, 2003). For an eco-design product see the air purifier “Bel-Air” (2007), developed by Matthieu Lehanneur and David Edwards (Harvard University and Le Laboratoire Paris). It is based on a technology that was originally developed by NASA to improve the air quality on board space shuttles (Barbera and Cozzo, 2009, 56).
- 26.
See also Höhler and Luks (2006).
- 27.
For more detail see http://www.worldresourcesforum.org/wrf_declaration (15 June, 2010). The WRF was founded in Davos, Switzerland, in September 2009.
- 28.
A vivid illustration of this was provided in a large exhibit curated by the German Max Planck Society for basic research. It presented as a point of departure a reminder of resource limits. From then on, however, it featured the power of the technosciences to go beyond these limits: “we must grow beyond ourselves” (Max Planck Gesellschaft, 2009, 181 and 187).
- 29.
Comment by Richard Florida (author of Rise of the Creative Class) on Nordhaus and Shellenberger (2006). For this and more such statements of praise see http://www.thebreakthrough.org/pressrev.shtml (15 June, 2010).
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Schwarz, A., Nordmann, A. (2011). The Political Economy of Technoscience. In: Carrier, M., Nordmann, A. (eds) Science in the Context of Application. Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, vol 274. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-9051-5_19
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