Repenser les sciences à partir des pratiques scientifiques – PratiScienS

Since the beginning of the 80ies, philosophers of science have increasingly stressed the necessity not to focus exclusively on well-established theories found in scientific publications, but to take into account the (experimental, theoretical, and technological) practices. This practical turn has introduced new methods of analysis, an interest for previously ignored or underplayed aspects, and the investigation of new objects. The result has been a multitude of rich, diversified, and finely contextualized case studies as well as the emergence of new issues and a change of focus in the reflection on science. The new researches have stressed the importance of local factors, the context-dependence of the methods, and the contingency of stabilized result, thus leading to relativistic positions. Yet the various investigations are largely disconnected from one another, and the resulting intellectual representations are unclear and highly unsatisfactory from a philosophical point of view. What is missing is a global epistemological framework based on a systematic comparative analysis. Moreover, an unresolved tension has arisen between the overall relativistic theses resulting from the practical turn and the persistent belief in the 'robustness' (i.e. solidity, reliability), or even the universality, of the hard sciences. Consequently, the ambitions - and the final goals - of this research project are: to draw all possible conclusions from the new tools, points of view and directions of research introduced by the practical turn, with the aim of finding out what the 'practical' approach teaches us about the sciences and their specificity with respect to other human activities; to develop a sufficiently general, and analytically fruitful characterization of the scientific practices and of their achievements, which can take up the results of the practical turn (results often perceived as 'disenchanting'), while doing justice to the persistent intuition that the sciences proceed rationally, establish solid results, and show an internal progress. To achieve these aims, it is necessary to draw general conclusions from the various and disconnected works produced by the advocates of the practical orientation, and to develop transversal conceptual tools for the study of scientific practices. More precisely, the central issues will be the following: prototypical strategies underlying the constitution of 'robust' scientific results; contingent/inevitable aspects of science; consequences of the presence of tacit aspects in scientific practices; ways of production and epistemological functions of scientific images; typology and evidential value of simulation procedures; specificity of mathematical practices; comparative analyses between theoretical/experimental/technological practices, and between experimental practices in physics and in the life-sciences. To accomplish these aims, a 'core group' of researchers with different qualifications has been created half and a year ago, which has already realized some preliminary work. Almost all its members have a double background in science and philosophy, and are experts of various disciplines (physics, mathematics, life sciences…) that they approach with different methodologies considered as complementary (history of science, field-studies of 'science in the process of being developed' in the laboratories, conceptual analysis). From a methodological point of view, an original aspect of the project is the choice to ground the philosophical reflection, not only, as it is traditionally done, on historical case studies, but also on studies about the science 'in the process of being developed' in the laboratories. Two studies of this kind are involved, one in a laboratory of pharmacology in Strasburg and the other in a laboratory of solid state physics of Nancy, in which one of the group member has being working for over twenty years. This will provide a rare opportunity for an interdisciplinary collaboration between physicists and philosophers of physics, and a rich and promising material for the analyses of the group. As far as the production of tools is concerned, the group aims to constitute, all along its investigations, a bibliographic database that will provide an ensemble of easy-to-handle methodological and conceptual resources and will be developed on an Internet support sufficiently interactive to make possible the identification of the international network of the researchers interested in the topic, and to favor the interactions of its members.