Studies on Culture, Technology and Education – serie

This book is presented by two authors who worked in close cooperation. The first part is written by Ewa Bińczyk and discusses various postulates that have been formulated in response to the problem of the unwanted side-effects of the practical success of technoscience which derive from two theoretical perspectives: the study of risk and science and technology studies (STS), inspired by actor-network theory (ANT). In the second part of the book Tomasz Stępień analyses and characterizes the nano-domain as an example of the development of techno-sciences. Generally, in the case of nanotechnology this book calibrates reciprocally to each other the indeed familiar but also slightly different theoretical approaches established in the philosophy of science and technology.

Confronted with the accelerated development of science and technology the presented analyses are focusing on three predominant theoretical approaches in the philosophy of science and technology: technoscience (STS), technology assessment (TA) and converging technologies (NBIC). On this base are extrapolated the coordinates of the heuristics of technosciences which are recognized as the platform of understanding but also dealing with technoscientific innovations. This concerns especially nanotechnology and the emerging theoretical, methodological, ethical, socio-political controversies and dilemmas. In this manner the book epitomizes the elaborated to date approaches and designs the heuristic turn as the strategy of comprehensive understanding of technosciences.

The book focuses on European Integration in the Field of Higher Education and Research, as well as the Implementation of the Bologna Process in Slovenia. The common policy of higher education and research belongs to the most important fields in the process of European integration and to the constitutive elements of the European Union. The authors analyse the process constituting the framework of higher education and research policy in Poland and Slovenia. The book analyses the political process of transformation within these two member states of the EU and exemplifies their plurality and specificity which are integrated in the genuine European idea of education, science and the research community.

The tradition of Polish Science Studies dates back to the works of L. Fleck and F. Znaniecki. In the 1990s, the field found itself in crisis due to the many institutional transformations in the former Eastern Bloc. The subsequent resurgence started with the new millennium thanks to scholars particularly interested in the Actor-Network Theory, which offered conceptual tools to combine philosophical questions with sociological interests, and seemed also a good way out of the pitfalls of postmodern discussions. This collection presents a sample of renewed Science and Technology Studies in Poland ranging from theoretical explorations through discourse analysis-oriented chapters on anorexia and climate change disinformation, to studies of socio-scientific controversies over air pollution.

This book concerns the border area between philosophy and social sciences. To explain the status of social sciences, not only cognitive involvement of theory is necessary, but also ontic. Hence epistemology and ontology need to be combined in meta-reflection on knowledge about society. Hence my proposition is social onto-epistemology.

This book explores the epistemic status and potential of humanities laboratories. It investigates the history of such laboratories, while contributing to debates on designing contemporary forms of labs. The book traces the trend for laboratories in the humanities since the mid-nineteenth century, outlining a multitude of projects across diverse times and spaces.We are interested in what makes humanities laboratories different from their scientific relatives. Can a humanities lab and those investigating natural sciences even be considered as related? Or should the relationship between them be seen transversally, outside of the opposition between the humanities and the natural and formal sciences?We argue that the humanities laboratory should not be based on the idea of mimesis and imitate a scientific lab, but rather operate according to the principle of mimicry. Only in this way can the humanities fulfil their self-critical function.