Tradiciones de evidencia en la investigación a escala nanométrica: una aproximación a la “cultura epistémica” del mundo de lo pequeño

Ailin María Reising

doi:10.48160/18517072re29.242

Authors

Ailin María Reising CONICET / Fundación Bariloche

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.48160/18517072re29.242

Keywords:

epistemic culture, codification of knowledge, traditions of evidence, instruments

Abstract

In the 80s, the development of technologies like the scanning tunneling microscope made the manipulation of atomic and molecular structures a reality factually possible. This was because these technologies offer an ontological platform around which disciplines such as physics, chemistry, biology, computer science and engineering formed an “epistemic culture” (Knorr Cetina, 1999) that has made of the appreciation of the visual knowledge a key feature of the nanoscale research. The present work constitutes an initial approach to the characterization of this field of knowledge that explores, through the analysis of the representational resources usually used as evidence, points of contact and break with the traditional practice of science. For this purpose the work is structured in three sections. The first one explores the epistemological, ontological and methodological assumptions of mechanistic and adaptive visions of nanostructures in order to provide an initial characterization of the “epistemic culture” (Knorr Cetina, 1999) in the world of small things. The second explores the epistemological implications of such views in relation to the “traditions of evidence” that led to the very possibility of research at the nanoscale. Finally, the third section analyzes, through an empirical approach to nanotecnoscientific field in Argentina, the process of codification of knowledge that takes place around the instruments commonly used in this field of knowledge.

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