title: Who is the Scientist-Subject? A Critique of the Neo-Kantian Scientist-Subject in Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison'sObjectivity.
abstract: The main focus of this essay is to closely engage with the role of scientist-subjectivity in the making of objectivity in Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison's bookObjectivity,and Daston's later and earlier worksOn Scientific ObservationandThe Moral Economy of Science.I have posited four challenges to the neo-Kantian and Foucauldian constructions of the co-implication of psychology and epistemology presented in these texts. Firstly, following Jacques Lacan's work, I have argued that the subject of science constituted by the mode of modern science suffers from paranoia. It is not the fear of subjectivity interfering with objectivity but the impossibility of knowing the truth of therealthat causes paranoia. Here, I have argued that it is not the ethos of objectivity that drives epistemology as Daston and Galison suggest, but the pathos of paranoia. The second challenge builds upon Kant's own denial that the perfect correspondence between the human will and the moral law is possible. Kant himself thought that an ethical human act is impossible without the component of "pathology." This questions Daston and Galison's argument that there is always ethical imperative at the core of epistemic virtue. The third challenge contests the way Daston and Galison takeappearance for beingin their application of the Foucauldian concept oftechnologies of the selfin modeling the master scientist-self. The fourth challenge questions the notion of the psychological and unconscious in the making of epistemology in Daston's later and earlier work. Against this background, I aim to make a claim that understanding and disclosing "entities" in the scientific domain presupposes an understanding of "being" in general. My goal is to open up the discussion for an alternative conception of the scientist-subject and thereby an affective and existential formulation of science.
authors.affiliation: Water Resources Management Group, Department of Environmental Sciences, Wageningen University, Drovendaalsesteeg 3a, 6708 PB Wageningen, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: Esha
authors.identifier: 0000-0002-2895-5234
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Shah
keywords: Co-implication of psychology and epistemology; History of subjectivity; Lorraine Daston; Neo-Kantian scientist-self; Role of affect in science; Subjectivity in science