EPNANO The Ethics and Politics of Nanotechnology

"Problems" represents the phase of research devoted to identifying the philosophical and social theoretical hooks that might make an inquiry into nanotechnology interesting to a wider audience that those scientists and engineers directly involved.  Refine historical and theoretical claims that can be used to guide Inquiries. Revise in light of Analyses.

1. Responsibility
2. Liminality
3. The identification of critical, alternative, and mainstream nanotech.  How to identify "immanent critique" amongst scientists.
•     Methodological issue of finding a way to dialogue and make explicit the critical moment. 
4. Nanotechnology as "weakly contextualized" science. cf.  Nowotny, Scott and  Gibbons Re-Thinking Science.
• The emergence of "strategic science"--from strategic problems that science can solve (e.g.water filtration) to strategic domains that science can constitute (e.g. membrane science)
5. Differentiating social, ethical and political issues from saftey, health and hazards.
6. Why is Nano interesting to study?
•     the creation of a funding imperative, compared to military funding, the Apollo program, the Human Genome Project, or the Dot-come boom.  How are scientists and engineers drawn into nanotech.  How does it become re-defined by funded activities.  who is doing the defining and for what purposes.
  
7. Does Nanotechnology constitute a "worldview"--what are its outlines?  What role does nature play for nanoscientists and engineers that it has or has not in the past?
8. New Objects.  What kinds of things are nanoshells, nanotubes, nanorods, nanocars, membranes, or nanotube fibers.  When such objects can only be imaged through complex technologies and devices, how does one orient one's epistemological questions.  Remember what Ian Hacking says: "If you can spray them, they're real."