Ontologies of Artefacts State University – Higher School of Economics

Philosophy of the Artificial

The Lifeworld and Basic Ontological Premises: A Problem of Genesis

Olga Stoliarova Department of Ontology, Logic, and Theory of Knowledge State University-Higher School of Economics Moscow Ontologies of Artefacts State University – Higher School of Economics Philosophy in Soviet Union: Beyond the Official Marxism Boris Hessen (1893 -1936) • The Social and Economic Roots of Newton’s “Principia” , Second International Congress on the History of Science, London, 1931 Evald Ilyenkov (1924-1979) • Dialectics of the Abstract and the Concrete in Marx's 'Capital'. Moscow, 1960 • Dialectical Logic. Moscow, 1984 • Lenin's Dialectics and Metaphysics of Positivism. Moscow, 1980 Alexei Losev (1893-1988) • The Dialectics of Myth. Moscow, 1930 • Ancient Cosmos and the Contemporary Science. Moscow, 1927 Vladimir Bibler (1918-2000) • A Notion as a Process // Philosophical Questions. № 9. Moscow, 1965 • From Wissenschaftslehre to the Logic of Culture: Two Philosophical Introductions to the 21st century. Moscow, 1991 Ontologies of Artefacts State University – Higher School of Economics A Turn to Ontology? Said Business School , Oxford, 25 June, 2008

A turn to ontology in STS - Steve Woolgar Social ontology, philosophically - Steve Woolgar and Ted Schatzki. Discussants' Remarks: Steve Brown (Leicester), Ross Gill (Open University) Ontography: investigating the production of things, deflating ontologies - Javier Lezaun and Mike Lynch. Discussants' Remarks: Mariam Fraser (Goldsmiths), Paul Roth (UC Santa Cruz) “The object turn changes register? On green living experiments, commitments to ontology, and how to handle entanglement in public” - Dan Neyland (Oxford) and Noortje Marres (Goldsmiths). Discussants' Remarks: Andy Stirling (SPRU, Sussex), Brian Balmer (UCL) Technology as prospective ontology - Paolo Quattrone and Arie Rip. Discussants' Remarks: Geoff Cooper (Surrey), Alain Pottage (LSE) Closing Panel Chair: Steve Woolgar. Commentators: Brian Rappert (Exeter), Sally Wyatt (VKS, Amsterdam) STS approaches targeted on epistemology leave untouched certain base assumptions about the existence of phenomena like, for example, technical objects Ontologies of Artefacts State University – Higher School of Economics

Let Things Speak

The argument is that if we overestimate the human will and intellect then we underestimate the reverse influence of things (and technical objects in particular) on human behavior and theories. Ontologies of Artefacts State University – Higher School of Economics

A. Boris Hessen – Gideon Freudenthal

Boris Hessen (1893 -1936)The Social and Economic Roots of Newton’s “Principia” , Second International Congress on the History of Science, London, 1931 Gideon Freudenthal The Hessen-Grossman Thesis: An Attempt at Rehabilitation Perspectives on Science - Volume 13, Number 2, Summer 2005, pp. 166-193

Freudenthal’s Two Alternatives:

The first one is to understand technology as a goal of science The second one is to understand technology as a sense-giving context of science Ontologies of Artefacts State University – Higher School of Economics Boris Hessen: A Correlation between Economic Needs/Technological Decisions and Ideas (Scientific Theories in Particular)

1. The problem of simple machines, inclined planes and general problems of static 2. The free fall of bodies and the trajectory of projectile 3. The laws of hydro- and aerostatics, and atmospheric pressure 4. Problems of celestial mechanics, the theory of tides.

The first alternative:

Technology was developed in order to facilitate economic development and science studied the particular problems that it studied in order to improve technology

Economic (social needs) → scientific problems → improvement of technology Ontologies of Artefacts State University – Higher School of Economics The second alternative:

Scientists’ interests as well as their purposes emerged in the context of the means in hand and so, scientific theories developed within the horizon of technologies

A. Koyré: technology cannot be a goal for science because key areas of technology were already in place before and independent of science

G. Freudenthal: technologies were already in place that’s why they could serve as a horizon of science, its generative context Ontologies of Artefacts State University – Higher School of Economics

Henryk Grossman: an abstract concept of motion or work emerged when what Marx puts as “working machines” (automatic instruments) had emancipated the labor process from its artisan form. Working machines separated a motive force from an artisan and, thus, made it accessible for a conceptualization G. Freundenthal: The converting of circular motion into rectilinear or vice versa that was presented in the lifeworld practice in the 16th century (by newly invented treadle mechanisms) served as both the initial point and the point of reference for the new concept of motion. This consept of motion eliminated a difference between continuous rotary motion and discontinuous motion on a finite segment

It is not a question of utilitarianism and externalism in the sense of history of science as history of people and their motivations (which internalists blamed Marxists of) but a question of history of ideas as referred to natural- cultural reality Ontologies of Artefacts State University – Higher School of Economics Lorraine Daston & Peter Galison. Objectivity. Zone Books, 2007 in the mid of 19th century nature seen through camera lenses turned out to be much less regular and more idiosyncratic than it had been viewed in a pre-photography era

Kant: understanding of an object is possible only as an activity that generates this object Daston & Galison: such an activity is practical and limited by the available means

A linear development becomes circular or, rather, it takes a spiral-like shape Ontologies of Artefacts State University – Higher School of Economics Evald Ilyenkov (1924-1979) • Dialectics of the Abstract and the Concrete in Marx's 'Capital'. Moscow, 1960 • Lenin's Dialectics and Metaphysics of Positivism. Moscow, 1980 • Dialectical Logic. Moscow, 1984

“…Nature “in itself” is given to us if and only if it is transformed into material, a means of production, a practical condition of human life. Even the starry heavens, which human labor does not directly alter at all, becomes an object of human attention (and contemplation) when and only when it is transformed into natural “clock”, “calendar” and “compass” that is into a means or an “instrument” of our orientation in space and time” (Ilyenkov E., The Dialectics of the Abstract and the Concrete in Marx’s Capital, 1964) Ontologies of Artefacts State University – Higher School of Economics

The spiral-like form of genesis shows that any object is in fact a product of dialectical development, owing to which the reality studied by science always appears as a system of mutually conditioning aspects, as a historically emerging and developing concreteness THANK YOU