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Science, Technology and Experiments; the Natural Versus the Artificial

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2022

Peter Kroes
Peter Kroes*
Affiliation:
University of Technology, Eindhoven
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Extract

Against the traditional ‘discovery-view’ of experiments, Hacking has maintained that in experimental practice natural phenomena are created, not discovered. By intervening in the world with the help of technology, we create and at the same time come to know phenomena. This claim, together with the one that scientific entities are tools for intervening in the world, undermines the classic distinction between the natural and the artificial, more particularly, between science and technology: phenomena become artifacts just as technological products and scientific entities become tools for doing. Hacking's view raises the question whether it can still be said that science studies natural phenomena, and if so, in what sense. Are we not forced to give up the distinction between the natural and the artificial, between science and technology, altogether? Recently, for instance (Lelas 1993) has argued that science is a form of technology.

Type
Part XIV. The Technological Infrastructure of Science
Information
PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association , Volume 1994 , Issue 2: Volume Two: Symposia and Invited Papers 1994 , 1994 , pp. 430 - 440
Copyright
Copyright © 1995 by the Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

1

I thank Guy Debrock, Andries Sarlemijn, Marc de Vries and Menno Hulswit for their valuable comments on an earlier version of this paper.

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