" Façonner le monde atome par atome " : tel est l'objectif incroyablement ambitieux affiché par les promoteurs américains de la " National Nanoinitiative ", lancée en 1999. Un projet global de " convergence des sciences ", visant à " initier une nouvelle Renaissance, incorporant une conception holiste de la technologie fondée sur [..] une analyse causale du monde physique, unifiée depuis l'échelle nano jusqu'à l'échelle planétaire. " Ce projet démiurgique est aujourd'hui au coeur de ce qu'on appelle la " (...) technoscience ", étendard pour certains, repoussoir pour d'autres. En précisant dans ce livre la signification de ce concept, pour sortir enfin du sempiternel conflit entre technophiles et technophobes, son auteur propose d'abord une sorte d'archéologie du terme " technoscience ". Loin d'être un simple renversement de hiérarchie entre science et technique, il s'agit d'un changement de régime de la connaissance scientifique, ayant désormais intégré la logique entrepreneuriale du monde des affaires et mobilisant des moyens considérables. Surtout, Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent montre que le brouillage de la frontière entre science et technique n'est que la manifestation d'un tremblement plus général, marqué par l'effacement progressif des distinctions traditionnelles : nature/artifice, inerte/vivant, matière/esprit, homme/machine, etc. Alors que nos sociétés sont silencieusement reconfigurées par les nanotechnologies, Internet, le génie génétique ou les OGM, ce livre montre l'importance de faire enfin pleinement entrer les questions de choix technologiques et scientifiques dans la sphère du politique et dans l'arène publique. Car la technoscience est un processus historique qui engage la nature en la refaçonnant et qui implique la société dans son ensemble. (shrink)

At least since the late nineteenth century, toy chemistry sets have featured in standard scripts of the achievement of eminence in science, and they remain important in constructions of scientific identity. Using a selection of these toys manufactured in Britain and the United States, and with particular reference to the two dominant American brands, Gilbert and Chemcraft, this paper suggests that early twentieth-century chemistry sets were rooted in overlapping Victorian traditions of entertainment magic and scientific recreations. As chemistry set marketing (...) copy gradually reoriented towards emphasising scientific modernity, citizenship, discipline and educational value, pre-twentieth-century traditions were subsumed within domestic—and specifically masculine—tropes. These developments in branding strategies point to transformations in both users’ engagement with their chemistry sets and the role of scientific toys in domestic play. The chemistry set serves here as a useful tool for measuring cultural change and lay engagement with chemistry.Keywords: Chemistry sets; Advertising; Gender; Magic; Toys. (shrink)

Any serious study of the uses of molecular models in chemistry has to mention play as an essential component. A research chemist will use them not unlike a young child playing with a toy: exploring their features, trying out their resilience, probing their innards, tinkering, day-dreaming, and thus finding out new avenues of adventures of the mind and in the laboratory. Reasons for such an assimilation of a molecular model to a toy are given and assessed critically.

It is often assumed that 'nano' is merely a communication and marketing token. Our inquiry in a number of French laboratories in the field of artificial molecular machines resulted in a quite different picture: a number of researchers are concerned with the definition of nanotechnology. This paper starts from the attempts made by one of the leading figure in the field of molecular machines, Christian Joachim, to draw a clear demarcation between what is 'really nano' and what is not. Probing (...) the epistemological basis of his strategy, we also underline its limits. As this definition is only focused on the prefix 'nano', it would benefit from being completed and enlarged by a definition of 'technology'. We argue that molecular machines belong to the realm of technology in Gilbert Simondon's meaning of this term: a genesis of individualized objects coordinating natural processes and human projects. Finally, this emphasis on the technological dimension of nanotechnology leads to ethical reflections based on the practices of nanotechnology rather than on their potential applications. (shrink)

According to ‘standard histories’ of nanotechnology, the colorful pictures of atoms produced by scanning probe microscopists since the 1980s essentially inspired visions of molecular nanotechnology. In this paper, I provide an entirely different account that, nonetheless, refers to aesthetic inspiration, First, I argue that the basic idea of molecular nanotechnology, i.e., producing molecular devices, has been the goal of supramolecular chemistry that emerged earlier, without being called nanotechnology. Secondly, I argue that in supramolecular chemistry the production of molecular devices was (...) inspired by an aesthetic phenomenon of gestalt switch, by certain images that referred to both molecules and ordinary objects, and thus symbolically bridged the two worlds. This opened up a new way of perceiving and drawing molecular images and new approaches to chemical synthesis. Employing Umberto Eco’s semiotic theory of aesthetics, I analyze the gestalt switch and the inspiration to build molecular devices and to develop a new sign language for supramolecular chemistry. More generally, I argue that aesthetic phenomena can play an important role in directing scientific research and that aesthetic theories can help understand such dynamics, such that they need to be considered in philosophy of science. (shrink)