Modeling technoscience: From epistemic networks to discursive games

In this paper, the author proposes a set of methodological approaches to the study of technoscien-tific projects. Their application allows to overcome two main shortcomings of modern science and technology studies (STS): (1) orientation only on the description of existing practices; (2) reduction of objects to their interactions. Humanitarian expert examination is a variant of overcoming of the first STS deficiency, as it implies a ‘forward reaction' to the risks associated with the development of a specific technology. Simultaneously, the methodology of humanitarian expert examination includes the most dynamically developing approaches of the STS program: the study of social expectations and “sociotechnical imaginaries”, the development of new approaches to expert practices. At the same time, the necessity to predict the socio-humanitarian effects of a technoscientific project assumes the creation of models of such development. The structure of epistemic networks and network models of innovation diffusion are considered as methodological variants of modeling, not so widely known yet in the Russian tradition of STS. In the framework of the humanitarian expert examination of a significant technoscientific project, a comparison of the structures of epistemic networks and networks models of innovation diffusion allows us to specify the class of strategies within which the adequacy of knowledge about the possibilities of technology can be sacrificed for the effectiveness of its dissemination. The implementation of these network models can overcome the first of the above-mentioned shortcomings of the STS program, but it is not free from the second one. Reduction of the social object to its interactions, in particular, does not allow to solve the problem of time lag between the development of innovation and its application. This problem is central for a number of areas of technoscience, for example, for translational medicine. In the framework of overcoming the second of the indicated shortcomings, the structure of network models should be supplemented by a more local and detailed consideration of the ontology of social objects and the discursive games occurring within the framework of their interaction. Ontological problems can be dealt with both within the concept of formation of group intentions elaborated by John Searle and within Gilbert Harman's object-oriented ontology. The conceptual apparatus for investigating discursive games is most fully described in Robert Bran-dom's Making It Explicit.

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