The Research And Comparison In Scientific Instruments Between STS And Philosophy Of Science

With the coming era of the great science,the significance of scientific instruments which neglected by philosophy of science and history of science is becoming more and more important in describing and interpreting science.In 1980s,scientific instruments had entered into the research field of philosophy of science and STS.This article mainly elaborate the representative figures in the scientific instruments research and their main points from the philosophy of science and STS respectively,the former including the New experimentalists Hacking and Chalmers and the philosophy of scientific instruments representative Baird and Ihde,the latter including Shapin,Schaefer and Latour as well as Garrison and Pickering who study in the turn of practice.At the same time,it contrasts the philosophy of science and STS in the research of scientific instruments.The common point of philosophy of science and STS in scientific instrument research is that they are all from the rebellion of theory-dominated philosophy of science.And they all focused on experiments and scientific laboratories at the very beginning.The differences between philosophy of science and STS in research of scientific instruments lie in the center of the research and approaches:the philosophy of science regards scientific instruments as the subject of research and STS studies scientific instruments as one of the material dimensions in scientific practice.The research of philosophy of science is increasingly focused on the research of metaphysical level of scientific instruments.STS is increasingly concerned about the role of scientific instruments in constructing the scientific knowledge.At the end of this article,the possibility of integrating scientific philosophy and STS in the research of scientific instruments is prospected from the perspective of introspection,autonomy and openness.