Food for Thought

Current debates

Is nano new or old?

One of the central questions being discussed today is that of nano's novelty as a discipline?  Is nano a new discipline?  or an old one, a revamped version of chemistry and physics?

Although there is no single answer to this question, in fact the most likely answer is that nano is both old *and* new, it does reveal a set of preocuppations on the part of the social sciences and humanities that have implications on how the nano is approached and studied.

If nano is a new discipline, then it must have an equally new praxis, values, methods, and so on.  If it is old then it has a story that can be uncovered through careful archaeological work.

Not surprisingly, historians often tend to defend the "old" position.  History is, after all, made of the study of incremental change, it relies on continuity.

Other disciplines beg to disagree.  For instance, ethicists often highlight nano's novelty as a justification for the need to create a new sub-discipline of "nano ethics" which also justifies the allotment of both intellectual and material resources for its study.

"Older" debates will be listed here