Paul Norbert W
Institut für Geschichte, Theorie und Ethik der Medizin, Universitätsmedizin der Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz.
Ber Wiss. 2009 Sep;32(3):230-45. doi: 10.1002/bewi.200901351.
Since decades, scientific change has been interpreted in the light of paradigm shifts and scientific revolutions. The Kuhnian interpretation of scientific change however is now more and more confronted with non-disciplinary thinking in both, science and studies on science. This paper explores how research in biomedicine and the life sciences can be characterized by different rationalities, sometimes converging, sometimes contradictory, all present at the same time with varying ways of influence, impact, and visibility. In general, the rationality of objects is generated by fitting new objects and findings into a new experimental context. The rationality of hypotheses is a move towards the construction of novel explanatory tools and models. This is often inseparable meshing with the third, the technological rationality, in which a technology-driven, self-supporting and sometimes self-referential refinement of methods and technologies comes along with an extension into other fields. During the second and the third phase, the new and emerging fields tend to expand their explanatory reach not only across disciplinary boundaries but also into the social sphere, creating what has been characterized as "exceptionalism" (e.g. genetic exceptionalism or neuro-exceptionalism). Finally, recent biomedicine and life-sciences reach a level in which experimental work becomes more and more data-driven because the technologically constructed experimental systems generate a plethora of findings (data) which at some point start to blur the original hypotheses. For the rationality of information the materiality of research practices becomes secondary and research objects are more and more getting out of sight. Finally, the credibility of science as a practice becomes more and more dependent on consensus about the applicability and relevance of its results. The rationality of interest (and accountability) has become more and more characteristic for a research process which is no longer primarily determined by the desire for knowledge but by the desire for relevance. This paper explores in which ways object-driven and hypotheses-driven experimental life-sciences transformed into domains of experimental research evolving in a technologically constructed, data-driven environment in which they are subjected to constant morphing due to the forces of different rationalities.
几十年来，科学变革一直是根据范式转变和科学革命来解读的。然而，库恩对科学变革的解释如今在科学及科学研究领域越来越多地面临非学科思维的挑战。本文探讨了生物医学和生命科学研究如何以不同的合理性为特征，这些合理性有时相互融合，有时相互矛盾，同时以不同的影响、作用和可见性方式呈现。一般来说，对象的合理性是通过将新的对象和发现融入新的实验背景中产生的。假设的合理性是朝着构建新颖的解释工具和模型迈进。这通常与第三种合理性——技术合理性——密不可分地交织在一起，在技术合理性中，技术驱动、自我支撑且有时自我参照的方法和技术改进伴随着向其他领域的扩展。在第二和第三阶段，新兴领域不仅倾向于跨越学科界限扩展其解释范围，还扩展到社会领域，创造出被称为“例外论”的现象（例如基因例外论或神经例外论）。最后，当代生物医学和生命科学达到了一个阶段，实验工作越来越由数据驱动，因为技术构建的实验系统产生了大量发现（数据），这些数据在某个时候开始模糊最初的假设。对于信息的合理性而言，研究实践的物质性变得次要，研究对象越来越难以被看到。最后，科学作为一种实践的可信度越来越依赖于对其结果的适用性和相关性的共识。利益（和问责制）的合理性已越来越成为研究过程的特征，这个过程不再主要由对知识的渴望决定，而是由对相关性的渴望决定。本文探讨了以对象为驱动和以假设为驱动的实验生命科学如何转变为在技术构建、数据驱动的环境中发展的实验研究领域，在这个环境中，由于不同合理性的力量，它们不断发生变化。
