The rise of techno-science

More and more often we hear about technological innovations that go beyond anything we could have imagined. Today, the epitome of such innovations is artificial intelligence (AI), which has transformed from a theoretical idea explored in movies and books to a tool whose capabilities and dangers we are now trying to control. But, from smart (and not so smart) machines that clean our houses, to robots that tell us how to take care of our health and life-saving drugs, there is little if anything in our life that is not somehow influenced by technology and its products.

Traditionally, philosophy of science (especially of the Anglo-American tradition) was not interested in how scientists develop technological tools or use them to produce theories. It focused on scientific theories: how they are confirmed, what they say about the world and what sort of explanations they offer. In this context and as far as it mattered, scientists were regarded as ideal rational agents and technology as a means to produce knowledge. How scientists work was thought to be the business of sociology, anthropology or perhaps psychology.