1. The Status of objects in generic Epistemology
Anne-Françoise Schmid
INSA de Lyon, MinesParisTech
GOTO, Manigod, January th

2. Background
My practice of epistemologist and philosopher among the scientists consisted in reporting sciences without exclusion and to develop a method for it. This attitude also directed my works on the modelling, trying to interpret the model otherwise than as intermediary between theory and experience.
All the question was to accept any ingredient of the sciences in a relative autonomy without reporting them in a way favored to such particular model of the science. It was a question of establishing an interdisciplinary epistemology which is not determined by a direct application of a privileged method.

3. Experience on the new objects of science and technique
Institutional experience:
I am a member of the governance of the center INRA of Jouy-en-Josas since 2009
(President: Muriel Mambrini-Doudet)
As well member of the Chair of Theory and Methods of Innovative Design, MinesParisTech
(Benoît Weil, Armand Hatchuel, Pascal Le Masson)

4. Organisation of the talk
1) Generic Epistemology
2) Integrative objects
3) The news flows of knowledge in integrative objects
4) O x K(O): the objects are multi-epistemic

5. What is generic Epistemology?
An epistemology relatively independent from disciplines and from a particular theory taken for paradigm (mechanical, physical, geometry)
An epistemology which does not depend on particular models of the science (Relationship between theory and fact in the classic epistemology, the themes of the modelling and the simulation more recently).

6. Non destructive Epistemology
It is nevertheless an epistemology which respects the disciplines and does not reject the concepts built in their occasion, but proposes another use of them.
Why a generic epistemology? One of the burning questions of the contemporary sciences with interdisciplinary tradition is not to exclude scientific methods and concepts in the name of a particular or historical model.

7. Generic epistemology….
Generic area = interdisciplinary science
Where disciplines are neutralized (all have the same weight)
Poincaré criteria as a process for hypercompatibility of disciplinary fragments
Any scientific proposal can be
interpreted as belonging to several
disciplines
Espace générique
Disciplines neutralisées
Critère de Poincaré comme processus de mise en hypercompatibilité des fragments de discipline
Toute proposition scientifique peut-être interprétée comme relevant de plusieurs disciplines

8. Conditions of such an epistemology (1)
The democracy of the disciplines: it commits a procedure of the relations between disciplines, where each has the same weight, built its knowledge and its non-knowledge of the constructed object step by step and by iteration. We have experienced this procedure in an ANR project on GMO Fish (dir.: Muriel Mambrini- Doudet, president of INRA Center of Jouy-en-Josas)

9. Conditions of such an epistemology (2)
The " discipline + 1 ": in the study of the contemporary objects, there is not only a multiplicity of disciplines and fragments of knowledge, but also a discipline + 1 which sub- determines their interdisciplinary organization, epistemology or esthetics for example.
In our ANR project, a PhD in epistemology was made by Léo Coutellec, De la démocratie dans les sciences, Paris, ed. Matériologiques, 2013.

10. Conditions of such an epistemology (3)
The “collective intimacy”:
the creation of “commons" supposes a mode of scientific exchange which is not any more of the order of the justification or of the check, but which "makes" a " collective intimacy ", a paradoxical and problematic concept which " puts in tension heterogeneousness in a manner non-authoritarian and non-disciplinary
“Natural interdisciplinary place”: interdisciplinary without injunction (M. Mambrini) for the management of a research center. Science is not universal nor local: invention of intermediaries (CF. Jean Gayon, Fernando Zalamea)

11. The translation of disciplines
The disciplines are no more in center
Discipline in isolation is an epistemological illusion (cf. the crisis in sciences)
The disciplines together warrant the compatibilities of the generic concepts and objects
Discipline have to be not criticized, but to be treated: no one has the primacy
For sample: the use by de Reffye of a  « theoritical floating proposition » for compatibilities
Construction of an space (cf. the “gap” of Mauro this morning)
The disciplines were the conditions of visibility of science – and now? The visibility of sciences is not the same….

12. The operators of generic Epistemology (1)
The genericity: mode of decomposition of the disciplinary knowledge
An historical model is Poincaré:
Science is generalization, but a generalization with “decomposition”.
1) The “decomposition” is first the distinction between sensible space and geometric space
But, a scientific proposition reflects too a diversity of discipline, for example geometry and mechanics, so it is possible to “decompose” it. (example of algebraic Mechanics, from Poincaré to Russia)
2) Hyper-compatibility between a fragment of science and the various disciplines (Extension of knowledge) by the use of models

13. The operators of generic Epistemology (2)
The fiction: mode of extension of the knowledge
The formula of fiction is:
C x K / K Or
O x K/K
It shows that dimensions must be added, philosophical oppositions are not sufficient, a “thirdness” is needed.
The philosophical oppositions are no more efficient
Two spaces as in a dynamic Matrix

14. The operators of generic Epistemology (3)
The future: mode of cut in the constitution of objects (Cf. Kolozova: “Cut of the real”)
Future is not only a time, but a mode
The future breaks the present, mix the unknown with the known language and finally neutralizes what is known
Cf. the concepts of “prosence” (B. Weil, A. Hatchuel) and of “futurality” (F. Laruelle)

15. Generic Epistemology and the objects
Generic Epistemology can take in consideration the new objects of science,
Where discovery and invention is approximatively the same (modelling vs design)
Where we can construct an epistemological pluralist frame for GMO Fish, products of BioSynthesis, but too the interdisciplinary topics of sciences, as the epidemics without infectious agent, obesity and depression (cf. Genomics of the human intestinal microbiote)

16. Epistemological decision
It is not an ontology, but an epistemological decision
The difference between complex and integrative objects is the non-convergence of the disciplinary perspective on the object
I cannot say: “This is an integrative object”,
But I can indirectly describe these objects with numerous dimensions, scientific, ethics, philosophical, etc…

17. The context of objects design
1) Topology: we choice an object into a series and we add a new propriety (regular Design)
2) Combinatorial analysis: we choice two heterogeneous proprieties and we create a space of possibilities
3) Extensions of Algebra, forcing: We treate un objet as X and « unknown ». We create two spaces (C-K for sample), and we “inverse” the perspectographe
Thesis: the new objects have to be treated in this third logic

18. Request
We do not have to decide if an object is a matter of the science, the technique or the “technoscience”
otherwise we handle these objects or these concepts as finished products
Cf. history of the concept of “technoscience”
(G. Hottois, opposition against Derrida and the “language inflation” – cf. The book: Le signe et la technique, 1982)
Every decision reveals other properties, they are not exclusive

19. The new flows of knowledge
The new objects are not designed from experimental disciplines with mathematical and computing devices.
There is
Biology,
Mathematical modelling,
Computer sciences, etc..
With an autonomy
So, the flows of knowledge are different in the emergent multidisciplinary science. This is a transformation of sciences

20. Specificities of interdisciplinary emergent sciences
So, for example, SynBio is too:
Bio-ingeneering (modularity, control, etc…)
But too fundamental science
In the same time
They concern data (no more classical facts)
These feature modify the relation between research and care,
We have to treat the “gap” between them.

21. The need of integrative objects
The science always comes twice
Once as discipline
Once as fragment
And the combination is very heterogeneous:
Integrative objects
Se for example the Exhibition of Pierre Huygues
Robin Mackay (the editor of Collapse) thinks that the integrative object allows to make the difference between the modern art and the contemporary art (John Gerrard and Simon Starling exhibitions, Oxford and Vienna)

22. Complex vs integrative objects
The biologist jean-Marie Legay said me that Poincaré’s Theorem on forms witch recover a surface was very important for him.
It was a understanding of interdisciplinary and complex objects
This covering is not any more insured in integrative objects It is not any more a passage between disciplinary borders, but a construction where is made at the same time the objet and the knowledge of the object
O x K(O)/K, with technical, scientific, ethical, technological, etc., aspects.

23. « Superpositions » of fragments of sciences
The superposition of the multiple knowledge is insured by the « discipline + 1 »
This is also too one of the source of metaphores, who is a generic condensation
Cf Kant : Essay to introduce in philosophy the concept of negative size (1763)
We extract concepts of a discipline to include its effects in an other one

24. Why « objects » ? There is a controversy on modelling:
Is it a “trading zone”, a language?
The object is a manner to modify this problematic
For example the debate between Badiou and Legay
Or between Varenne and Dahan-Dalmedico

25. Posture
The generic epistemology does not concern directly the sciences, otherwise it would lean on a particular example on which it would depend. We can thus characterize solely the sciences only by hypotheses. Neither the disciplines as centered on the theory, nor the disciplines as the set of social and political practices, can give us of that is "science“. It is necessary to develop a method which gives their autonomy to all the ingredients found in the scientific and epistemological materials.

26. …of a philosopher
I put myself in a posture of non-judgment of the sciences, their success stories, their utility, etc.
.I take place in partial modes of immerse which allow me to spread our knowledge of the contemporary sciences in a indirect way.
We have to propose hypotheses to characterize objects, it modifies the practices of the interdisciplinary, and allows a conception of the ethics as the generic science of the borders