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{{Short description|Study of how technology and science interact}} {{More footnotes|date=April 2009}} In common usage, '''technoscience''' refers to the entire long-standing and global [[human activity]] of [[technology]], combined with the relatively recent [[scientific method]] that occurred primarily in [[Europe#Early modern period|Europe during the 17th and 18th centuries]]. Technoscience is the study of how humans interact with technology using the scientific method.<ref>Encyclopedia.com (2019), [https://www.encyclopedia.com/science/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/technoscience Technoscience], accessed 3 January 2024</ref> Technoscience thus comprises the history of human application of technology and modern scientific methods, ranging from the early development of basic technologies for [[hunting]], [[agriculture]], or [[husbandry]] (e.g. the well, the bow, the plow, the harness) and all the way through atomic applications, [[biotechnology]], [[robotics]], and [[computer science]]s. This more common and comprehensive usage of the term ''technoscience'' can be found in general textbooks and lectures concerning the history of science. The relationship with the history of science is important in this subject and also underestimated, for example, by more modern sociologists of science. Instead, it is worth emphasising the links that exist between books on the history of science and technology and the study of the relationship between science and technology within a framework of social developments. We {{who|date=January 2024}} must always consider the generational leap between historical periods and scientific discoveries, the construction of machines, the creation of tools in relation to the technological changes that occurs in very specific situations.<ref>Cf. Guglielmo Rinzivillo, ''Raccontare la tecnoscienza. Storia di macchine, strumenti, idee per fare funzionare il mondo'', Roma, Edizioni Nuova Cultura, 2020, p.7, {{ISBN|978-88-3365-349-5}}; ISSN 2284-0567)</ref> An alternate, more narrow usage occurs in some [[philosophical]] [[science and technology studies]]. In this usage, ''technoscience'' refers specifically to the technological and [[Sociology of science|social context of science]]. Technoscience recognises that scientific knowledge is not only [[Sociology of scientific knowledge|socially coded]] and [[History of science|historically situated]] but sustained and made durable by material (non-human) [[wikt:network|networks]]. Technoscience states that the fields of science and technology are linked and grow together, and scientific knowledge requires an infrastructure of technology in order to remain stationary or move forward. The latter, philosophic use of the term technoscience was popularized by French philosopher [[Gaston Bachelard]] in 1953.<ref>Gaston Bachelard, ''La materialisme rationel'', Paris: PUF, 1953.</ref><ref>Don Ihde, ''Expanding Hermeneutics: Visualism in Science'', Northwestern University Press, 1999, p. 8.</ref><ref>James M. M. Good, Irving Velody, ''The Politics of Postmodernity'', Cambridge University Press, 1998, p. 178.</ref> It was popularized in the French-speaking world by Belgian philosopher [[Gilbert Hottois]] in the late 1970s and early 1980s, and entered English academic usage in 1987 with [[Bruno Latour]]'s book ''Science in Action''.<ref name="Latour 1987">[[Bruno Latour]] (1987). ''Science in Action: How to Follow Scientists and Engineers Through Society''. Harvard University Press. {{ISBN|0-674-79291-2}}</ref> In translating the concept to English, Latour also combined several arguments about technoscience that had circulated separately within [[science and technology studies]] (STS) before into a comprehensive framework: # the intertwinement of scientific and technological development as e.g. shown by the lab studies; # the power of laboratories (and engineering workshops) to change the world as we know and experience it; # the seamless webs that connect scientists, engineers and societal actors in actual practice (cf. [[John Law (sociologist)|John Law]]'s concept of ''heterogeneous engineering''); # the propensity of technoscientific world to create new nature–culture hybrids, and hence to complicate the borders between nature and culture.<ref name="Latour 1987"/>
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