In this paper, I argue that in order to understand the process behind the knowledge production in the historical sciences, we should change our theoretical focus slightly to consider the historical sciences as technoscientific disciplines. If we investigate the intertwinement of technology and theory, we can provide new insights into historical scientific knowledge production, preconditions, and aims. I will provide evidence for my claim by showing the central features of paleontological and paleobiological data practices of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In order to work with something that is imperfect and incomplete (the fossil record), paleontologists used different technological devices. These devices process, extract, correct, simulate, and eventually present paleontological explananda. Therefore, the appearance of anatomical features of non-manipulable fossilized organisms, phenomena such as mass-extinctions, or the life-like display of extinct specimens in a museum's hall, depend both on the correct use of technological devices and on the interplay between these devices and theories. Consequently, in order to capture its underlying epistemology, historical sciences should be analyzed and investigated against other technoscientific disciplines such as chemistry, synthetic biology, and nanotechnology, and not necessarily only against classical experimental sciences. This approach will help us understand how historical scientists can obtain their epistemic access to deep time.
...More
Book
Sepkoski, David;
(2012)
Rereading the Fossil Record: The Growth of Paleobiology as an Evolutionary Discipline
(/isis/citation/CBB001210043/)
Book
Sarah Ehlers;
Stefan Esselborn;
(2022)
Evidence in Action between Science and Society: Constructing, Validating, and Contesting Knowledge
(/isis/citation/CBB104485678/)
Article
Amanda Menking;
Jon Rosenberg;
(May 2021)
WP:NOT, WP:NPOV, and Other Stories Wikipedia Tells Us: A Feminist Critique of Wikipedia’s Epistemology
(/isis/citation/CBB986509779/)
Article
Baron, Christian;
(2011)
A Web of Controversies: Complexity in the Burgess Shale Debate
(/isis/citation/CBB001220960/)
Chapter
Howell, Alan C.;
(2005)
James Lomax (1857--1934): Palaeobotanical Catalyst or Hindrance?
(/isis/citation/CBB000774538/)
Article
Goodrum, Matthew R.;
Olson, Cora;
(2009)
The Quest for an Absolute Chronology in Human Prehistory: Anthropologists, Chemists and the Fluorine Dating Method in Palaeoanthropology
(/isis/citation/CBB000931911/)
Article
Kyla Schuller;
(2016)
The Fossil and the Photograph: Red Cloud, Prehistoric Media, and Dispossession in Perpetuity
(/isis/citation/CBB663391807/)
Article
Viktoria Tkaczyk;
Christine von Oertzen;
(2023)
Introduction: Reconsidering the Resources of Epistemic Tools
(/isis/citation/CBB421843702/)
Article
Sky Edith Gross;
Shai Lavi;
Hagai Boas;
(2019)
Medicine, Technology, and Religion Reconsidered: The Case of Brain Death Definition in Israel
(/isis/citation/CBB228629534/)
Book
Richard D. G. Irvine;
(2020)
An Anthropology of Deep Time: Geological Temporality and Social Life
(/isis/citation/CBB205554969/)
Book
Christophe Bouton;
Philippe Huneman;
(2017)
Time of Nature and the Nature of Time: Philosophical Perspectives of Time in Natural Sciences
(/isis/citation/CBB626111608/)
Article
Prete, Ivano Dal;
(2014)
Brokering Instruments in Napoleon's Europe: The Italian Journeys of Franz Xaver von Zach (1807--1814)
(/isis/citation/CBB001320985/)
Article
Douglas H. Erwin;
(2017)
Eric Davidson and Deep Time
(/isis/citation/CBB566900914/)
Book
Parsons, Keith M.;
(2004)
The Great Dinosaur Controversy: A Guide to the Debates
(/isis/citation/CBB000410994/)
Book
Roy Plotnick;
(2022)
Explorers of Deep Time: Paleontologists and the History of Life
(/isis/citation/CBB989071366/)
Article
Martin J. S. Rudwick;
(2018)
Functional Morphology in Paleobiology: Origins of the Method of ‘Paradigms’
(/isis/citation/CBB376924894/)
Book
Cohen, Claudine;
(2002)
The Fate of the Mammoth: Fossils, Myth, and History
(/isis/citation/CBB000201330/)
Article
Arnold, Lois B.;
(2009)
The Education and Career of Carlotta J. Maury: Part 1
(/isis/citation/CBB000932612/)
Article
Sepkoski, David;
(2005)
Stephen Jay Gould, Jack Sepkoski, and the “Quantitative Revolution” in American Paleobiology
(/isis/citation/CBB000550952/)
Book
Sepkoski, David;
Ruse, Michael;
(2009)
The Paleobiological Revolution: Essays on the Growth of Modern Paleobiology
(/isis/citation/CBB000951946/)
Be the first to comment!