Technoscientific approaches to deep time

Abstract

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.