
Bernadette Bensaude-VincentParis 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne University | UNiVPARIS1 · Département de Philosophie (UFR10)
Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent
Professor Doctor of Philosophy
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276
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Introduction
Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent, Professor at Université Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne, specialized in the history and philosophy of science. She has authored many volumes and articles about the history and philosophy of chemistry, materials sciences, nanotechnology, synthetic biology, and the philosophy of technoscience.
She is interested in the ways materials shape our societal and cultural frameworks as instantiated in her recent volume about carbon and on the nuclear world. .
Publications
Publications (276)
This paper interrogates the general assumption of the symmetry between analysis and synthesis. It argues that the emphasis on symmetry between analytic and synthetic operations proceeds from a reconceptualization of the empirical tradition of chemical analysis under the aegis of mathematical and philosophical notions. Given that the experimental an...
Les sciences et les technologies façonnent profondément les sociétés contemporaines. Au cours des deux derniers siècles, elles sont devenues un puissant moteur de transformation, comptant parmi les formes les plus significatives de l’activité humaine, inséparables de la vie sociale, politique et économique. Analyser leurs modes de production, les d...
En analysant les mécanismes de production de la preuve scientifique et de l’expertise dans les contextes d’incertitude qui irriguent les crises contemporaines, cet article invite à détendre l’opposition fréquente entre experts et citoyens, entre rationnel et irrationnel, entre vérité et fake news . Il propose à l’inverse une mise en culture exigean...
A Cultural History of Chemistry in the Eighteenth Century covers the period from 1700 to 1815. Setting the progress of science and technology in its cultural context, the volume re-examines the changes that many have considered to constitute a “chemical revolution”. Already boasting a laboratory culture open to both manufacturing and commerce, the...
Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent, professora emérita da Universidade de Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, é historiadora e filósofa das ciências. Além de mais de uma centena de artigos publicados em periódicos científicos e como capítulos de livros coletivos, suas principais obras são: Histoire de la chimie[1], em colaboração com Isabelle Stengers (La Découver...
Comment l’imagination, la ‘folle du logis’ selon Malebranche, peut-elle devenir outil de connaissance de la nature et de la société? Telle est l’aventure philosophique que raconte cet ouvrage. En rapprochant une série de textes célèbres d’auteurs comme Locke, Fontenelle, Condillac, Buffon, Rousseau, Diderot et Jean-Bernard Mérian, Julien Técher tis...
The hype surrounding the emergence of nanotechnology proved extremely effective to raise public attention and controversies in the early 2000s. A proactive attitude prevailed resulting in the integration of social scientists upstream at the research level, research programs on Ethical, Legal and Societal Impacts (ELSI), and various public engagemen...
Los estudios CTS han intentado que la ciencia observe todo lo que ocurre en un campo de estudio y que no se limite a la teoría, como se evidencia en lo que se llama el «giro empírico» en la filosofía de la tecnología. Este estudio muestra el posible vínculo entre la filosofía de la tecnología y la perspectiva CTS, y propone que el concepto de tiemp...
Since the coinage of the term Anthropocene, scholarly debates have been dominated by critics of the reference to anthropos, the abstract undifferentiated global subject of the new geological epoch. Many humanities scholars objected that this aggregated whole obfuscates inequalities and responsibilities. While the prefix ‘Anthropos’ has been the tar...
Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent Temps-Paysage. Pour une écologie des crises Editions Le Pommier, 2021 Prélude Crise sanitaire, crise financière, crise économique, crise politique, crise écologique, crise du climat, crise de la culture, crise personnelle… Les crises se multiplient si bien que l'on en vient à se demander ce qui n'est pas en crise ! La cr...
Sans prétendre tenir un discours de la méthode, cet article expose quelques réflexions fondées sur ma propre pratique de l’histoire des sciences. Après un bref rappel historique sur les hésitations entre les approches disciplinaire et transdisciplinaire dans le processus d’institutionnalisation de l’histoire des sciences, je propose le concept de m...
The introduction of the modern concept of chemical element has often been credited to Lavoisier. I will argue that despite the significant impact of the definition of elements as non-decompound bodies in Lavoisier’s “Elements of Chemistry,” this claim is misleading for at least three reasons. First, elements were already defined as residues of anal...
Mendeleev was one of a dozen or more chemists who aimed to create a classification of elements in the mid‐19th century. Mendeleev distinguished himself among the discoverers of the periodic system in their priority disputes because he was the only one who bothered to provide a clear definition of the entities to be ordered. This paper will first ou...
In Sur mesure. Les 7 unités du monde/Made to Measure. The World's 7 Units Paris, Musée des arts et métiers, 2018, p. 4255. Measurement is an integral part of almost every gesture of daily life: upon waking on the clock telling the time, on transport tickets indicating the price paid, on shopkeeper's scales weighing fruit and vegetables, on the ther...
The volume (published in 1998) develops historical and philosophical reflections on composite materials.
introduction à un livre collectif sur la philosophie de Dagognet
introduction à une anthologie de textes sur la philosophie de la chimie
In merging engineering and biology and electing design as the main focus of research,
synthetic biology is likely to bring deep changes in the set of norms and values that used to
rule scientific research. Is it generating a new profile of biologist?
Based on Lorraine Daston’s concept of the moral economy of science, this paper explores the
affects...
INTRODUCTION GENERALE
Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent & Richard-Emmanuel Eastes
Pourquoi une anthologie de philosophie de la chimie ?
Couplée avec la physique dans l’enseignement secondaire français, la chimie est souvent
perçue comme une science un peu terne et de moindre envergure. Malgré un timide regain
d’intérêt au cours des dernières décennies, e...
Synthetic biology, materials chemistry and soft robotics are fast becoming leading disciplines within the field of practices which look to nature for inspiration and opportunities. In this article I discuss how these molecular-scale practices fit within the existing trends of bio-informed design defined at the macro level, that is, bionics, biomime...
Actively engaged in research at the very heart of the nanosciences, Christophe Vieu emphasises the wide range of sectors touched by the nano approach. He deploys the image of an invasive species as a counterpoint to that of the convergence of scientific fields. The invasive nature of the domain means that researchers have a responsibility with resp...
What kind of stuff is the world made of? What is the nature or substance of things? These are ontological questions, and they are usually answered with respect to the objects of science. The objects of technoscience tell a different story that concerns the power, promise and potential of things – not what they are but what they can be. Seventeen sc...
Le savoir scientifique est en principe toujours partagé et public ; à la différence des inventions techniques il est non-appropriable. Telle est la base du droit des brevets qui repose sur la distinction entre invention et découverte et demande que l’objet du brevet soit utile à quelque chose, alors que l’entreprise scientifique est – toujours en p...
While chemists today work in a variety of professional domains—ranging from medicine and pharmaceutical companies to nuclear technology, biotechnology, and nanotechnology— students are taught chemistry as if it were a unified discipline with a specific territory and a common language shared by all chemists. The chemists’ imaginary is shaped around...
The existence of a French philosophy of technology is a matter of debate. Technology has long remained invisible in French philosophy, due to cultural circumstances and linguistic specificities. Even though a number of French philosophers have developed views and concepts about technology during the twentieth century, “philosophy of technology” has...
The term “technoscience” gained philosophical significance in the 1970s but it aroused ambivalent views. On the one hand, several scholars have used it to shed light on specific features of recent scientific research, especially with regard to emerging technologies that blur boundaries (such as natural/artificial, machine/living being, knowing/maki...
To fully accomplish the “thing turn” in the philosophy of technology this paper invites shifting the attention from humans towards the world. The concept of world here refers to the complex made of the Earth with all things and living beings, including humans; it ignores the great divide between nature and society or culture. In this worldly perspe...
“Designing” and “redesigning life” are common phrases used to define the agenda of synthetic biology in scientific journals. This chapter explores the implications of such phrases. Two frequent metaphors currently used by synthetic biologists are life as a Lego and life as a program. The chapter examines to what extent those metaphors express the a...
Offering an overall insight into the French tradition of philosophy of technology, this volume is meant to make French-speaking contributions more accessible to the international philosophical community. The first section, “Negotiating a Cultural Heritage,” presents a number of leading 20th century philosophical figures (from Bergson and Canguilhem...
This paper is a critical assessment of the epistemological impact of the systematic quantification of nature with the accumulation of big datasets on the practice and orientation of ecological science. We examine the contents of big databases and argue that it is not just accumulated information; records are translated into digital data in a proces...
In an earnest effort to clarify his historiographical choices, Frans van Lunteren characterizes his scheme as “analytic rather than historicist” and as providing “a pattern rather than a plot.” Clearly he is keener on panoramic painting than on storytelling. Both the panoramic and the narrative genres are suitable for popular audiences: the former...