From Nano Backlash to Public Indifference: Some Reflections on French Public Dialogues on Nanotechnology.

The hype surrounding the emergence of nanotechnology proved extremely effective to raise public attention and controversies in the early 2000s. A proactive attitude prevailed resulting in the integration of social scientists upstream at the research level, research programs on Ethical, Legal and Societal Impacts (ELSI), and various public engagement initiatives such as nanojury and citizen conferences. Twenty years later, what happened to the promises of SHS integration and public engagement in nanotechnology? Was it part of the hype, one of the many promises made by the champions of nanotechnology initiatives that never materialized? As a contribution to this broad question, this paper focuses on public engagement initiatives in France and ventures some general reflections on their fate. I will first report, from an insider's perspective, the public debates conducted by a civil society organization VivAgora, in the national context of fierce controversies (2005-2009). Then I will describe the permanent forum NanoRESP opened in 2013 when nano controversies waned out. On the basis of this case study, I will argue that the STS ideal of co-production of science and society gradually gave way to a more modest co-learning process between stakeholders in the 2010s.

From ecological records to big data: the invention of global biodiversity.

This paper is a critical assessment of the epistemological impact of the systematic quantification of nature with the accumulation of big datasets on the practice and orientation of ecological science. We examine the contents of big databases and argue that it is not just accumulated information; records are translated into digital data in a process that changes their meanings. In order to better understand what is at stake in the 'datafication' process, we explore the context for the emergence and quantification of biodiversity in the 1980s, along with the concept of the global environment. In tracing the origin and development of the global biodiversity information facility (GBIF) we describe big data biodiversity projects as a techno-political construction dedicated to monitoring a new object: the global diversity. We argue that, biodiversity big data became a powerful driver behind the invention of the concept of the global environment, and a way to embed ecological science in the political agenda.

Machines as "Mental Tools."

In an earnest effort to clarify his historiographical choices, Frans van Lunteren characterizes his scheme as "analytic rather than historicist" and as providing "a pattern rather than a plot." Clearly he is keener on panoramic painting than on storytelling. Both the panoramic and the narrative genres are suitable for popular audiences: the former provides a static picture, whereas the latter stresses dynamic changes. Despite the limitations of its methodology­which, remarkably, the author points out in his concluding remarks­the essay opens up a broad anthropological perspective that could be further elaborated. Thanks to its focus on ontology, this quick survey of interactions between technology, science, and society clearly assumes the cultural and historical relativity of our concepts of nature and machine.

The politics of buzzwords at the interface of technoscience, market and society: the case of 'public engagement in science'.

Emerging technologies such as genomics, nanotechnology, and converging technologies are surrounded by a constellation of fashionable stereotyped phrases such as 'public engagement in science', 'responsible innovation', 'green technology', or 'personalised medicine'. Buzzwords are ubiquitous and used ad libitum by science policy makers, industrial companies in their advertisements, scientists in their research proposals, and journalists. Despite their proliferation in the language of scientific and technological innovation, these buzzwords have attracted little attention among science studies scholars. The purpose of this paper is to try to understand if, and how buzzwords shape the technoscientific landscape. What do they perform? What do they reveal? What do they conceal? Based on a case study of the phrase 'public engagement in science', this paper describes buzzwords as linguistic technologies, capable of three major performances: buzzwords generate matters of concern and play an important role in trying to build consensus; they set attractive goals and agendas; they create unstable collectives through noise.

Concluding Remarks: A View of the Past through the Lens of the Present.

Reflecting on the upsurge of interest among historians of chemistry in the material, artisanal, and commercial aspects of early modern chemistry, this essay argues that they are attracting attention because of a number of similarities between the style of chemistry cultivated in this period and the new cultures of chemistry being developed today. The close interactions between knowing and making, academic knowledge and practical applications, the social value and prestige attached to chemistry, the public engagement in chemical culture, the concern with recycling, and even a specific relational ontology instantiated in the term "rapport" are characteristic features of the current technoscientific culture. However, these analogies between early modern chemistry and the technoscientific paradigm may turn into obstacles if they end up in hasty rapprochements and whiggish interpretations of the past. In keeping with the attempts displayed in many articles in this volume to identify and understand the meaning of the actors' categories, this essay emphasizes the contrast between the visions of the past and the future developed by eighteenth-century chemists and the concept of time that prevails nowadays. The concept of "regime of historicity" provides a useful conceptual tool to take a view of chemistry as embedded in a culture and integral part of the horizon of expectation of an epoch. On the basis of this contrast between the regimes of historicity, the essay recommends the pluralism of concepts of time (polychronism) as an antidote to anachronisms.

Discipline-building in synthetic biology.

Despite the multidisciplinary dimension of the kinds of research conducted under the umbrella of synthetic biology, the US-based founders of this new research area adopted a disciplinary profile to shape its institutional identity. In so doing they took inspiration from two already established fields with very different disciplinary patterns. The analogy with synthetic chemistry suggested by the term 'synthetic biology' is not the only model. Information technology is clearly another source of inspiration. The purpose of the paper, with its focus on the US context, is to emphasize the diversity of views and agendas coexisting under the disciplinary label synthetic biology, as the two models analysed are only presented as two extreme postures in the community. The paper discusses the question: in which directions the two models shape this emerging field? Do they chart two divergent futures for synthetic biology?

The chemists' style of thinking.

This paper discusses the relevance of the notion of "styles of scientific thinking" introduced by Alistair Crombie and revisited by Ian Hacking, for understanding how chemistry shaped its identity. Although neither Crombie nor Hacking applied this notion to individual disciplines, it seems appropriate to use it in the case of chemistry because it helps to address a puzzling issue: how did chemists manage to shape an identity of their own, despite shifting territories and theoretical transformations? Following a presentation of the notion of style, I will argue that the stable identity of chemistry is rooted in laboratory practices, which determined the specific questions that chemists put to nature as well as the answers to their questions. The "chemical style of thinking" is characterized by (i) a specific way of knowing through making, (ii) the concern with individual materials rather than matter in general and (iii) a specific commitment to nature.

College Chemistry: how a textbook can reveal the values embedded in chemistry.

This paper explores the norms, values and ethical attitudes that Linus Pauling wanted to convey to his students in his famous textbook College Chemistry. In this classic textbook, Pauling aimed to introduce beginners into the world of chemistry by presenting chemistry as a systematic science based on a collection of empirical data and a recent theoretical framework. In doing so, he expressed his epistemic and didactic choices clearly. College Chemistry therefore offers an ideal opportunity to examine some of the norms at the core of chemistry's 'moral economy'.

Looking for an order of things: textbooks and chemical classifications in nineteenth century France.

The purpose of this paper is to reconsider the issue of the creativity of textbook writing by exploring the links between nineteenth-century French textbooks and the quest for a classification of elements. The first section presents the elegant combination of didactic and chemical constraints invented by eighteenth-century chemists: the order of learning - from the known to the unknown - and the order of things - from the simple to the complex - were one and the same. In section two we argue that the alleged coincidence did not help the authors of elementary textbooks required for the new schools set up by the French revolution. Hence the variety of classifications adopted in the early nineteenth century. A debate between natural and artificial classifications raised a tension in the 1830s without really dividing the chemical community. Rather it ended up with the adoption of a hybrid classification, combining the rival natural and artificial systems.