Beschreibung
This book presents a psychoanalysis of
technoscience. Basic concepts and methods developed by
Freud, Jung, Bachelard and Lacan are applied to case
histories (palaeoanthropology, classical conditioning,
virology). Rather than by disinterested curiosity,
technoscience is driven by desire, resistance and the will
to control. Moreover, psychoanalysis focusses on primal
scenes (Dubois’ quest for the missing link, Pavlov’s
discovery of the conditioned reflex) and opts for
triangulation: comparing technoscience to “different
scenes” provided by novels, so that Dubois’s work is
compared to missing link novels by Verne and London and
Pavlov’s experiments with Skinner’s Walden Two,
while virology is studied through the lens of viral
fiction.
Hub Zwart (1960)is Dean of Erasmus School
of Philosophy (Rotterdam).
