Intermediate Reflections: Reflexivity in Scientific Inquiry and Empirical Ontologies of Hybrid Objects

Abstract

At issue in this Zwischenbetrachtung is the approach to “empirical ontology” in science and technology studies (STS). As compared with approaches that focus on local orders of practices by means of a careful examination of the emerging order from the perspectives of all participants, “empirical ontology” displays several advantages. Nonetheless, in what follows it is accused of totally ignoring the (reflexive) facticity of the orders-in-a-state-of-creation. It is an illusion and a delusion of the champions of this approach that the multilayer portrayal of the factuality of local orders suffices to determine the plural being of entities that circulate in scientific, technological, and life-world practices. (I am referring to entities with a contextually changeable nature [hybrid entities]. Several case studies guided by the approach in question are devoted to the task of providing the empirical-ontological description of these entities.) In returning to Melvin Pollner’s conception of reflexivity, these “intermediate reflections” offer a criticism of “empirical ontology” from the viewpoint of hermeneutic realism. There is an interesting analogy between this approach and Quine’s naturalism. In a celebrated dictum of the latter, the philosophy of science is philosophy enough. The adherents to the approach I am going to critically analyze admit that the empirical ontology of practical orders’ factuality is ontology enough. To both Quine’s naturalism and “empirical ontology”, the hermeneutic realist raises the objection that the abstinence from hermeneutics prevents one from crossing the threshold of factuality, and from seeing the empirical in its facticity.