Thank you. And thank you for listening to me in English. I'm a I'm very sorry that I cannot participate in this workshop
properly. Because of my lack of knowledge of German on any reasonable level, from the little I can understand. It would
be very, very interesting conference for me to take part in, as you will see in my presentation. I think some of the
topics that you have discussed.
And I mean, there was supposed to be two of us for the presentation. There is another colleague of mine right now, but
he didn't make it. I suspect he is sick, but I didn't find out till this morning. So I just to my part, and then I'll
try to improvise a little bit so. I mean the literary technologies of science, of course, it is a theme that
you can that you can study or discuss, but it is also a name of our project. So I will first speak about the
institutional background of this project that we are lucky to have faith with @unoise@ so. I Mean the, institution
where we come from is the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic. It is. It is a huge institution that has about
forty five different institutes in all branches of sciences.
And it is a decent tradition. It dates back to one thousand, seven hundred and eighty four. When the first learned
society check Royal Society was, was founded, and apparently it was the oldest one in the Austrian monarchy at a time.
And then there were, like, various institutions that in one thousand, nine and fifty three got united together And
there is one organization called the Czechoslovak acronym of Sciences, which, of course, after the separation of Czech
Republic, and Slovakia became the Czech Academy of Sciences. I mean, just to give you an idea, because like, our project
is of, you know, establishing international corporation as well. So this is to give you the institutional context that I
represent here and like to compare it a little bit I mean, I've been talking to colleagues here. It is maybe a
little bit like Max plank Institute, like it is a research institution. There is not really any teaching going on, even
though, of course, there are differences so. The more immediate context for us is the Institute of philosophies
may be on the level of a faculty, and it is the people you deal with in everyday context.
I think what is important to mention here. It is. It is the largest institute in what they call the third third area of
the sciences and all the social sciences and the humanities and it is actually not philosophy it is not
limited to philosophy at all. There are many other departments. There are common departments that we share with
universities, etc. So it is very interdisciplinary and in intensive. If you come from different departments than
philosophy. But you interested in some sort of establishing some sort of lengths, an institute of philosophy. It might
still be actually relevant. If you look in the structure of the Institute itself @unoise@ so. This is my actual actual
workplace is the Center for Science, Technology and Society studies.
It does sound a bit like Bruno , or this kind of idea, but in reality, it is actually not at all, but it has
also a recent tradition since the'60s, when it was on the eastern block. It was an unusual way of approaching,
approaching science. But as I say, I don't think there is anybody who would call himself for herself in our
department right now.
So I mean, you know, we been, sometimes we get lucky. So we work on various projects funded by the Eu. Or the Check
Science Foundation. And so far, the, you know, each researchers individual links all around the world. But the
more institutionalized the corporation we have had so far was mostly at Austria, Germany, like right now Great Britain
and Hungary. There are some contact details, but I'll give you a link for the presentation that you can download later
on.
And there is nine researchers currently and the topics that we cover there is four of us who take part in this
literary Technologies of Science project so we are sort of trying to converge our research interest in in that
direction.
But there are researchers who deal with ethics, bioethics, etc. And actually the way our corporation with
started was mostly through the topics of technology assessment and evaluation of science, which is still a huge topic,
and also studying innovations but not necessarily as some, you know, industrial practice. But thinking about
innovations as a culture, not just the simplified version that sometimes the technology governments would like to see
but see innovations in a cultural context of the entire society. So for me and my colleagues, the sort of the most
interesting theme, the historical epistemology, and sort of the related things so. It is an approach to the
history of science, or to the current development of sciences that doesn't think of epistemology as something that is
always out there, just in very simple, in the Fukodian tradition as historically changing conditions, like within which
the truth is sold and created. One thing we do at the center, which I would really like to mention here at this
conference is is the journal that we publish there. It takes a lot of work for us, but I think it is very rewarding.
It is called the theory of science.
It changed the subtitle recently to " Journal for Interdisciplinary Studies of Science.
It exists since one thousand, nine hundred and sixty nine. And it is very reviewed, and it used to publish articles in
in French and German also, but now we reduced it so that we have better control over it to check in English only.
But so the English is important to mention here And you know whatever you may think of in terms of theory of
science. It is not limited to natural sciences or just the humanity. So it is a broad range of topics, and and why I
think it is important to mention it. Here is our current Call for Papers is focused on the popularization of science. So
I don't speak German well enough to understand everything that is been said at his conference, but I'm sure there is
been, even like today, this morning. I so I think the articles would be really relevant. The science, communication, the
communications of science with the public, etc.
So those are very interesting things for us. So in just an advertisement, if anybody's got an abstract in English that
they can send us and have the article ready in the next couple of months. That would be actually really interesting for
us. So again, I wish the conference was in English so I could. I could hear everything that has been said. But I
think if somebody is interested, let us know. I think it is actually it is worth by publication due to upper index in
this is the Central European thing. But I guess everybody knows the episode. That is a base.
So I mean, your articles are searchable, but I think the Eric, the European Research Index for the Humanities is, is,
you know, what counts the ball. So if you have something in English on this topic. You would like to have it, review it
and hopefully publish it @unoise@ but. So that was sort of the institutional context where I'm coming from a bit of
advertising so the project like that, we are here sort of in color colors. Who had to do. It is called the
literary technologies of science it is something we got a funding for from the Czech Academy of Sciences. It is
like an internal grand scheme, and it is something to support the mobility the researchers mostly, mostly junior
or researchers and or to establish some sort of international links so.
We had this experience contact with kit.
We see some, some sort of convergence of the research interests, some of our researchers and the researchers here, like
York and Dominic. And so we like to come here and spend time working on these, on these particular substantive themes
that every member of the team has slightly different focus. So this is still my part of the presentation, because I
started it. So I would like to talk a little bit about what I'm interested in? what is my sort of focus within this
broader field of literary technologies, of science.
And for me, it is the broadly defined rhetoric of science @unoise@ I mean, again, I didn't understand, but maybe
it was something that was also brought up during the conference here the rhetoric approach to science is inspired
by the emergence of the new rhetoric, especially in the United States, with the work of Kennedy work and such, but it is
related to these various turn. The cultural terms, the linguistics, and some even speak of the rhetoric and all these
terms that predated some of the post modern era, which I think is now again disappearing which might be good for
some, but for others, but. I think the rhetoric of science is an interesting approach. There is, of course, the
The Week program and the stroke strong program might be family with the work of Alan Growth, who is the most strongest
proponent of of the strong program in the rhetoric of science but for him, like in the stroke program. The science
is, he claims, can be completely reconstructed as a rhetorical project. There is nothing. There is no theory, no facts,
that would exist outside of their rhetorical construction.
So for him, the science is never a scientific text or speech. It is never a description of something, but it is always a
creation @unoise@ I'll just quote from from his book to give you one of the possible definitions to rhetoricians.
Science is a coherent network of utterances that has also achieved Conensus among practitioners. The truth excuse
me, the truth of science than our achievements of argument. So this is this kind of study that focuses on even things
that you wouldn't necessarily think about classification of animals as Sarah, how this can be actually analyzed as sort
of argumentative structures of semantic structures etc, . Now another example I can give like to
explain what what is meant by rhetoric, of science is, I don't know if, you know, Greg Mayors and his and his sort
of influential article on the construction of knowledge into biology articles where he would study. He would get
permission of of two biologists, and he would study the development of the articles from the first draft that they have
written to the actual publication.
And so that is something that the rhetoricians of science are often interested in, like they are interested in the
byproducts, something like in between. So they would not just take the final Polish text that has been given the status
of knowledge by being published. But how did it get there from from research? how do you get to this Polish text. And so
they would focus on the remarks of the reviewers, on the remarks of the editors of the journals which declined to
publish the articles at first. They would then look on the second draft, the third draft, etc. And they would see
how the article changes and what, what is interesting there? the with the conclusion is," Uh."
he says," The rhetoric creates different knowledge claims so. When you actually see what kind of knowledge claim
was published. In the end, it was very limited compared to the first draft that was written by the scientists, which was
very broad, unchanging the nature of biology, almost I'm exaggerating, and it is been narrowed down to where, you know,
these kinds of snakes do this, et cetera. And what is interesting, I mean, it seems obvious, right? like what you say
that the kind of claim that you make @unoise@ % uh limits what kind of knowledge you create in.
But in science, it is not so obvious. And it is interesting, from a rhetorical perspective, that when you think about
the knowledge that was created in this article. Finally, about the the final knowledge claim. It has nothing to do with
the research. You know, the research was finished. It was done.
It is not the question of the reference. What is out there in the world. But this whole creation of knowledge took place
in this rhetorical discussion between the author's reviewers. Ah, an editor's magazines @unoise@ and. So my sort of
personal take on this rhetoric of science is I'm interested, sort of maybe taking it back a little bit from the stroke
program, but not completely. But to think about the boundaries that can be created rhetorically. There is
this concept in sociology, the it is called the boundary work, which is used his name gear and Thomas Gearin came up
with it which, is basically also a rhetorical thing, and it is used to the limit of science from non science. It
is been has been argued that scientists, when they are not doing signs. They actually spend lot of efforts in the fight
for resources, on the limit in what is science. So they would try to distinguish in the seminar article, he would say
how they distinguished themselves from engineers in Victorian England, how they would, for example, you, know
, as it called in English the study of of the scowl and the shapes.
The word is phreology exactly that used to be part of science. Ah, at the beginning of the nineteenth century. And
so through this boundary work like this. These people are actually described as non scientific and pushed away in the
fight for resources. And there is, of course, also during during the Cold War, for example, when they were discussing
about some limitations on scientific publishings, because the U Ss are could learn something about nuclear technology at
. So the scientists, again had to fought and claim day resources by sort of showing what his science, but it is
nonsense, etc. So I'm thinking that is my personal thing. That is what I try to read about research about, and
hopefully during the duration of the project publish about is how genre as a rhetorical concept can serve as this sort
of boundary work on a textual level.
You know, I think it might have even some epistemological consequences. If you think about it, like the rules that you
follow as you write can sort of help your knowledge claim to fall within the acceptable, the acceptable knowledge in a
specific discipline. I mean, every discipline is different.
And I'm actually interested. You know, there is a lot of rhetorical work done on natural sciences. I'm actually
interested in how it works in sociology, and how different sociological genres can try to distinguish themselves from
literature and approximate natural sciences. But there is also the contrary movement. When some sociologists say we
should actually embrace the literary right and express our feelings, etcetera and and stuff. So I'm interested in
these sort of tensions that exist, their own texture levels that distinguish different texts from each other. What am I
doing all the time @unoise@ some five minutes so. This was actually, I mean, by introducing the entire project,
institutional and myself, my colleague, was supposed to take over. But I, just from some notes that I quickly gathered.
I'll just treat it out. I'm sorry, but just to give you an idea about the different topics that we are trying to cover,
and the kind of things we are interested in having conversations about literary science, as well as philosophy and
history of science have undergone major transformations over the several past decades that have allowed for in the
methods and the objects of research interest in both the disciplines, the scope. I mean this. That is why we cooperate
even with the Literature Department in Council, the scope of literary science now encompasses a much wide range of text,
including plants that are analyzed by interdisciplinary approaches.
The interpretation of scientific thought and cultural and social contests. Context emphasizes also the relationships
between individual, academic discipline, as well as between scientific and non scientific knowledge. Hence the necessity
for increase in importance ascribed to argumentative structures semantic instruments or central metaphors of
scientific texts, as well as to their institutional background. That is not only journal publications and
monographs, but also grant or patent applications, recessional books, text books and popularizations of science. These
questions gain in Urgence. In view of the fundamental changes in intellectual traffic brought about by the new media.
Not only do they provide further means of scientific communication, for sharing and dissemination of scientific
knowledge, but they also affect the ways of conducting research @unoise@ and. So there is another colleague of mine.
So Marge in the presentation that you don't want. You will see these contexts in case you are interested, I get
him in touch with him. He was actually in this summer right now, he is interested in mostly what he calls the
philosophical toys like various stereoscopes how they have been used in philosophy to develop new ideas. So he is
mostly interested in this material culture of science and how instruments are used for conceptual developments. @unoise@
And another colleague of mine who hasn't been to Kuwait about the issue he should visit. I think in October.
Yeah, Marshall like he is mostly interested in sort of, you know, changing the way that we read sociological
classics. Like not to read it as it is common, like as to read the history of sociology as the history of ideas,
but but to think about the role of these texts in different ways, like as members of certain canon and the way they were
written, the background, et cetera.
And my colleague who, you know, was supposed to to join me here today. % Uh, got this topic changing stars of academic
writing and the human sciences and labor I mean, from what I've been talking to to him. And while we have been in
college through her. He is mostly interested in this interest, in effect, that you have that. The accomplished
researchers with good positions in social sciences are of those people who are who say that we shouldn't be so rigid
about writing. And you know, the American Journal. Sociology shouldn't publish only quantitative articles, et cetera
but. These like with these kind of discourse it is very difficult for the newcomers into the discipline to
know what actually constitutes with sociology, et cetera. So we are interested in how establishing certain standards of
writing % Uh could help to integrate the discipline while still allowing it to be dispersed in its approaches and
multiple paradigms so @unoise@ and yeah so I had to be very quick about this substantive part of the approaching
. Yeah, thank you for attention. And you can download a presentation here. If you can read it, it is D, B,
dot, T, t slash you one W u so all the contexts are there. And Andreas just left, which is a shame, because
I wanted to thank him publicly for for being a generous host for us here in Karoshua. And also, thanks thanks to York,
Andy and Dominic, who are our best context here if you want to publish with us, or if you thought that some of the
topics I mentioned is something that you also work on and would like to network that that would be awesome. Thank you.