Hub Zwart
Biographic Data
| ID | 298648 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Hub Zwart |
| GIVEN NAMES | Hub |
| FAMILY NAME | Zwart |
| SIGNATURE | ZWART H |
| AFFILIATIONS | Erasmus University Rotterdam |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-8846-5213 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 38 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 48 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 38 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1997 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
An absurdist ethics of AI: Applying Camus’ concepts of rebellion and dignity to the challenges posed by disruptive technoscience
This article proposes a new, Camusian approach to analyzing and navigating ethical dilemmas in relation to Artificial Intelligence (AI) and, by extension, to other disruptive technoscience. The article takes as its point of departure the Unified Framework of Five Principles for AI in Society, as advanced by Floridi and Cowls (2021), which offers a comprehensive and cohesive framework of the many abstract values and principles brought up in AI eth…
Fostering Trust in Science and Technoscientific Innovation
Epistemic inclusion: A key challenge for global RRI
Ten years after introducing the RRI concept, a reflection on its key ambitions seems called for, now that RRI enters the global arena.This paper focues on the key challenge that RRI is currently facing: epistemic inclusion.From the beginning, there has been the awareness that RRI must be open to multiple voices and perspectives, coming from academia, and also from society at large.Besides representing impressive bodies of knowledge, academic disc…
Consortium Authorship: Ethical Tensions in Emerging Authorship Practices in Interdisciplinary Collaborative Research
Traditional conceptions of academic authorship, e.g., the seemingly self-evident assumption that an author is someone who actually writes a text, is challenged by the complexity, scale, and collaborative nature of scientific research. Authors are expected to make a substantial contribution and to assume accountability for all aspects of the work, but in practice, many individuals listed as authors fail to meet all these criteria, notably in biome…
An Ethical Exploration of Increased Average Number of Authors Per Publication
Continental Philosophy of Technoscience
This open access authored book focuses on methodological issues of how to practice continental philosophy of technoscience today
N = many me’s: Self-surveillance for Precision Public Health
Revolutionary poetry and liquid crystal chemistry: Herman Gorter, Ada Prins and the interface between literature and science
In the Netherlands, the poet Herman Gorter (1864–1927) is mostly known as the author of the neo-romantic poem May and the “sensitivistic” Poems , but internationally he became famous as a propagandist of radical Marxism: the author of influential brochures and of an “open letter” to comrade W.I. Lenin in 1920. During the 1890s, Gorter became increasingly dissatisfied with his poetry, considering it as ego-centric, disinterested and “bourgeois”, u…
The funhouse mirror: The I in personalised healthcare
Precision Medicine is driven by the idea that the rapidly increasing range of relatively cheap and efficient self-tracking devices make it feasible to collect multiple kinds of phenotypic data. Advocates of N = 1 research emphasize the countless opportunities personal data provide for optimizing individual health. At the same time, using biomarker data for lifestyle interventions has shown to entail complex challenges. In this paper, we argue tha…
Continental Philosophy of Technoscience
Emerging viral threats and the simultaneity of the non-simultaneous: Zooming out in times of Corona
This paper addresses global bioethical challenges entailed in emerging viral diseases, focussing on their socio-cultural dimension and seeing them as symptomatic of the current era of globalisation. Emerging viral threats exemplify the extent to which humans evolved into a global species, with a pervasive and irreversible impact on the planetary ecosystem. To effectively address these disruptive threats, an attitude of preparedness seems called f…
Calculable bodies: Analysing the enactment of bodies in bioinformatics
Science and Suspicion: Maxim Gorky’s Children of the Sun as a Critical Mirror in Times of Covid-19
From a contemporary perspective, the current COVID-19 pandemic is undoubtedly an extraordinary event, but historically speaking pandemics are periodically recurring phenomena and intimately connected with socio-economic processes of globalisation. Therefore, history may serve as a backdrop for coming to terms with the present, by comparing current challenges with previous events that are both sufficiently similar and sufficiently different. In th…
Coming to Terms with Technoscience: The Heideggerian Way
Heidegger’s oeuvre (> 100 volumes) contains a plethora of comments on contemporary science, or rather technoscience because, according to Heidegger, science is inherently technical. What insights can be derived from such comments for philosophers questioning technoscience as it is practiced today? Can Heidegger’s thoughts become a source of inspiration for contemporary scholars who are confronted with automated sequencing machines, magnetic reson…
Iconoclasm and Imagination: Gaston Bachelard’s Philosophy of Technoscience
Gaston Bachelard (1884–1962) occupies a unique position in the history of European thinking. As a philosopher of science, he developed a profound interest in genres of the imagination, notably poetry and novels. While emphatically acknowledging the strength, precision and reliability of scientific knowledge compared to every-day experience, he saw literary phantasies as important supplementary sources of insight. Although he significantly influen…
Friedrich Engels and the Technoscientific Reproducibility of Life: Synthetic Cells as Case Material for Practicing Dialectics of Science Today
Friedrich Engels’ dialectical assessment of modern science resulted from his fascination with the natural sciences (cell physiology, thermodynamics, theory of evolution) in combination with his resurging interest in the work of “old Hegel.” Engels became especially interested in what he saw as the molecular essence of life, namely proteins or, more specifically, albumin ( Eiweiß ), seeing life as the mode of existence of these enigmatic substance…
Neanderthals as familiar strangers and the human spark: How the ‘golden years’ of Neanderthal research reopen the question of human uniqueness
During the past decades, our image of Homo neanderthalensis has changed dramatically. Initially, Neanderthals were seen as primitive brutes. Increasingly, however, Neanderthals are regarded as basically human. New discoveries and technologies have led to an avalanche of data, and as a result of that it becomes increasingly difficult to pinpoint what the difference between modern humans and Neanderthals really is. And yet, the persistent quest for…
Global challenges, Dutch solutions? The shape of responsibility in Dutch science and technology policies
The Netherlands has a well-established tradition of gearing science and technology to economic interests as well as societal and ethical concerns. This article outlines how national dynamics in the Netherlands have not only contributed to the adoption of Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) frameworks but also to a distinctly Dutch meaning and institutionalization of responsibility. It identifies three core features of the Dutch context that…
Addressing research integrity challenges: From penalising individual perpetrators to fostering research ecosystem quality care
Scientific iconoclasm and active imagination: Synthetic cells as techno-scientific mandalas
Metaphors allow us to come to terms with abstract and complex information, by comparing it to something which is structured, familiar and concrete. Although modern science is "iconoclastic", as Gaston Bachelard phrases it (i.e. bent on replacing living entities by symbolic data: e.g. biochemical and mathematical symbols and codes), scientists are at the same time prolific producers of metaphoric images themselves. Synthetic biology is an outstand…
Reflection as a Deliberative and Distributed Practice: Assessing Neuro-Enhancement Technologies via Mutual Learning Exercises (MLEs)
In 1968, Jürgen Habermas claimed that, in an advanced technological society, the emancipatory force of knowledge can only be regained by actively recovering the 'forgotten experience of reflection'. In this article, we argue that, in the contemporary situation, critical reflection requires a deliberative ambiance, a process of mutual learning, a consciously organised process of deliberative and distributed reflection. And this especially applies,…
The oblique perspective: Philosophical diagnostics of contemporary life sciences research
This paper indicates how continental philosophy may contribute to a diagnostics of contemporary life sciences research, as part of a "diagnostics of the present" (envisioned by continental thinkers, from Hegel up to Foucault). First, I describe (as a "practicing" philosopher) various options for an oblique (or symptomatic) reading of emerging scientific discourse, bent on uncovering the basic "philosophemes" of science (i.e. the guiding ideas, th…
Transplantation medicine, organ-theft cinema and bodily integrity
The obliteration of life: Depersonalization and disembodiment in the terabyte era
Post-genomics allegedly allow us to become the "managers" of our own health. And yet, human individuality seems to dissolve into massive data streams. What is the fate of the human subject in the terabyte age? The Human Genome Project already resulted in personalizing and depersonalizing trends, exemplified by two types of genomes: the anonymized Human Reference Genome versus the personal genomes of genomics celebrities. This ambiguity is radical…
Continental philosophical perspectives on life sciences and emerging technologies
Life sciences and emerging technologies raise a plethora of issues. Besides practical, bioethical and policy issues, they have broader, cultural implications as well, affecting and reflecting our zeitgeist and world-view, challenging our understanding of life, nature and ourselves as human beings, and reframing the human condition on a planetary scale. In accordance with the aims and scope of the journal, LSSP aims to foster engaged scholarship i…
Adapt or perish? Assessing the recent shift in the European research funding arena from ‘Elsa’ to ‘RRI’
Two decades ago, in 1994, in the context of the 4(th) EU Framework Programme, ELSA was introduced as a label for developing and funding research into the ethical, legal and social aspects of emerging sciences and technologies. Currently, particularly in the context of EU funding initiatives such as Horizon2020, a new label has been forged, namely Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI). What is implied in this metonymy, this semantic shift? Wha…
Neanderthals as familiar strangers and the human spark: How the ‘golden years’ of Neanderthal research reopen the question of human uniqueness
During the past decades, our image of Homo neanderthalensis has changed dramatically. Initially, Neanderthals were seen as primitive brutes. Increasingly, however, Neanderthals are regarded as basically human. New discoveries and technologies have led to an avalanche of data, and as a result of that it becomes increasingly difficult to pinpoint what the difference between modern humans and Neanderthals really is. And yet, the persistent quest for…
A Short History of Food Ethics
Biotechnology and naturalness in the genomics era: Plotting a timetable for the biotechnology debate
Debates on the role of biotechnology in food production are beset with notorious ambiguities. This already applies to the term “biotechnology” itself. Does it refer to the use and modification of living organisms in general, or rather to a specific set of technologies developed quite recently in the form of bioengineering and genetic modification? No less ambiguous are discussions concerning the question to what extent biotechnology must be regar…
The funhouse mirror: The I in personalised healthcare
Precision Medicine is driven by the idea that the rapidly increasing range of relatively cheap and efficient self-tracking devices make it feasible to collect multiple kinds of phenotypic data. Advocates of N = 1 research emphasize the countless opportunities personal data provide for optimizing individual health. At the same time, using biomarker data for lifestyle interventions has shown to entail complex challenges. In this paper, we argue tha…
The oblique perspective: Philosophical diagnostics of contemporary life sciences research
This paper indicates how continental philosophy may contribute to a diagnostics of contemporary life sciences research, as part of a "diagnostics of the present" (envisioned by continental thinkers, from Hegel up to Foucault). First, I describe (as a "practicing" philosopher) various options for an oblique (or symptomatic) reading of emerging scientific discourse, bent on uncovering the basic "philosophemes" of science (i.e. the guiding ideas, th…
From Elsa to responsible research and Promisomics
Correspondence: h.zwart@science. ru.nl Department of Philosophy and Science Studies, Radboud University Nijmegen, Faculty of Science, Institute for Science, Innovation and Society (ISIS), P.O. Box 9010, 6500, GL, Nijmegen, The Netherlands Centre for Society and the Life Sciences (CSG), P.O. Box 9010, 6500, GL, Nijmegen, The Netherlands Full list of author information is available at the end of the article
Consortium Authorship: Ethical Tensions in Emerging Authorship Practices in Interdisciplinary Collaborative Research
Traditional conceptions of academic authorship, e.g., the seemingly self-evident assumption that an author is someone who actually writes a text, is challenged by the complexity, scale, and collaborative nature of scientific research. Authors are expected to make a substantial contribution and to assume accountability for all aspects of the work, but in practice, many individuals listed as authors fail to meet all these criteria, notably in biome…
Iconoclasm and Imagination: Gaston Bachelard’s Philosophy of Technoscience
Gaston Bachelard (1884–1962) occupies a unique position in the history of European thinking. As a philosopher of science, he developed a profound interest in genres of the imagination, notably poetry and novels. While emphatically acknowledging the strength, precision and reliability of scientific knowledge compared to every-day experience, he saw literary phantasies as important supplementary sources of insight. Although he significantly influen…
Continental philosophical perspectives on life sciences and emerging technologies
Life sciences and emerging technologies raise a plethora of issues. Besides practical, bioethical and policy issues, they have broader, cultural implications as well, affecting and reflecting our zeitgeist and world-view, challenging our understanding of life, nature and ourselves as human beings, and reframing the human condition on a planetary scale. In accordance with the aims and scope of the journal, LSSP aims to foster engaged scholarship i…
The Third Man: Comparative analysis of a science autobiography and a cinema classic as windows into post-war life sciences research
In 2003, biophysicist and Nobel Laureate Maurice Wilkins published his autobiography entitled The Third Man. In the preface, he diffidently points out that the title (which presents him as the 'third' man credited with the co-discovery of the structure of DNA, besides Watson and Crick) was chosen by his publisher, as a reference to the famous 1949 movie no doubt, featuring Orson Welles in his classical role as penicillin racketeer Harry Lime. In …
Laboratory Alice: A Lacanian Rereading of Lewis Carroll’s Alice-Stories as Anticipatory Reflections on Experimental Psychology and Neuroscience
Contains fulltext : 161405.pdf (Publisher’s version ) (Closed access)
Is Dandelion Rubber More Natural? Naturalness, Biotechnology and the Transition Towards a Bio-Based Society
In the unfolding debate on the prospects, challenges and viability of the imminent transition towards a ‘Bio-Based Society’ (BBS) or ‘Bio-based Economy’—i.e. the replacement of fossil fuels by biomass as a basic resource for the production of energy, materials and food, ‘big’ concepts tend to play an important role, such as, for instance, ‘sustainability’, ‘global justice’ and (last but not least) ‘naturalness’. The latter concept is, perhaps, th…
What is an Animal? A Philosophical Reflection on the Possibility of a Moral Relationship with Animals
Contemporary ethical discourse on animals is influenced partly by a scientific and partly by an anthropomorphic understanding of them. Apparently, we have deprived ourselves of the possibility of a more profound acquaintance with them. In this contribution it is claimed that all ethical theories or statements regarding the moral significance of animals are grounded in an ontological assessment of the animal's way of being. In the course of histor…
A Short History of Food Ethics
Genomics and self-knowledge: Implications for societal research and debate
When the Human Genome Project (HGP) was launched, our genome was presented as our ‘blueprint’, a metaphor reflecting a genetic deterministic epistemology. Eventually, however, the HGP undermined rather than strengthened the understanding of genomes as blueprints and of genes as ultimate causal units. A symbolical turning point was the discovery that the human genome only contains∼22,500 genes. Initially, this was seen as a narcissistic offence. G…
Understanding the Human Genome Project: A biographical approach
Contains fulltext : 71570.pdf (Publisher’s version ) (Closed access)
Biotechnology and naturalness in the genomics era: Plotting a timetable for the biotechnology debate
Debates on the role of biotechnology in food production are beset with notorious ambiguities. This already applies to the term “biotechnology” itself. Does it refer to the use and modification of living organisms in general, or rather to a specific set of technologies developed quite recently in the form of bioengineering and genetic modification? No less ambiguous are discussions concerning the question to what extent biotechnology must be regar…
From Elsa to responsible research and Promisomics
Correspondence: h.zwart@science. ru.nl Department of Philosophy and Science Studies, Radboud University Nijmegen, Faculty of Science, Institute for Science, Innovation and Society (ISIS), P.O. Box 9010, 6500, GL, Nijmegen, The Netherlands Centre for Society and the Life Sciences (CSG), P.O. Box 9010, 6500, GL, Nijmegen, The Netherlands Full list of author information is available at the end of the article
Genomes, gender and the psychodynamics of a scientific crisis: A psychoanalytic reading of Michael Crichton's genomics novels
Michael Crichton (1942–2008) was a prolific writer of “science novels”, portraying the psychodynamics and sociodynamics of genomics and other NBIC (Nanotechnology, Biotechnology, Information technology and Cognitive science) fields, fostering critical reflection on their societal dimensions. Science novels may serve as “literary experiments”, as windows into the (future) impacts of current research. Although on the surface level Crichton's books …
Adapt or perish? Assessing the recent shift in the European research funding arena from ‘Elsa’ to ‘RRI’
Two decades ago, in 1994, in the context of the 4(th) EU Framework Programme, ELSA was introduced as a label for developing and funding research into the ethical, legal and social aspects of emerging sciences and technologies. Currently, particularly in the context of EU funding initiatives such as Horizon2020, a new label has been forged, namely Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI). What is implied in this metonymy, this semantic shift? Wha…
Human Genome Project: History and Assessment
Is Dandelion Rubber More Natural? Naturalness, Biotechnology and the Transition Towards a Bio-Based Society
In the unfolding debate on the prospects, challenges and viability of the imminent transition towards a ‘Bio-Based Society’ (BBS) or ‘Bio-based Economy’—i.e. the replacement of fossil fuels by biomass as a basic resource for the production of energy, materials and food, ‘big’ concepts tend to play an important role, such as, for instance, ‘sustainability’, ‘global justice’ and (last but not least) ‘naturalness’. The latter concept is, perhaps, th…
Tainted Food and the Icarus Complex: Psychoanalysing Consumer Discontent from Oyster Middens to Oryx and Crake
In hyper-modern society, food has become a source of endemic discontent. Many food products are seen as ‘tainted’; literally, figuratively or both. A psychoanalytic approach, I will argue, may help us to come to terms with our alimentary predicaments. What I envision is a ‘depth ethics’ (the moral equivalent of a ‘depth psychology’) focusing on some of the latent tensions, conflicts and ambiguities at work in the current food debate. First, I wil…
The Third Man: Comparative analysis of a science autobiography and a cinema classic as windows into post-war life sciences research
In 2003, biophysicist and Nobel Laureate Maurice Wilkins published his autobiography entitled The Third Man. In the preface, he diffidently points out that the title (which presents him as the 'third' man credited with the co-discovery of the structure of DNA, besides Watson and Crick) was chosen by his publisher, as a reference to the famous 1949 movie no doubt, featuring Orson Welles in his classical role as penicillin racketeer Harry Lime. In …
Transplantation medicine, organ-theft cinema and bodily integrity
The obliteration of life: Depersonalization and disembodiment in the terabyte era
Post-genomics allegedly allow us to become the "managers" of our own health. And yet, human individuality seems to dissolve into massive data streams. What is the fate of the human subject in the terabyte age? The Human Genome Project already resulted in personalizing and depersonalizing trends, exemplified by two types of genomes: the anonymized Human Reference Genome versus the personal genomes of genomics celebrities. This ambiguity is radical…
Continental philosophical perspectives on life sciences and emerging technologies
Life sciences and emerging technologies raise a plethora of issues. Besides practical, bioethical and policy issues, they have broader, cultural implications as well, affecting and reflecting our zeitgeist and world-view, challenging our understanding of life, nature and ourselves as human beings, and reframing the human condition on a planetary scale. In accordance with the aims and scope of the journal, LSSP aims to foster engaged scholarship i…
Laboratory Alice: A Lacanian Rereading of Lewis Carroll’s Alice-Stories as Anticipatory Reflections on Experimental Psychology and Neuroscience
Contains fulltext : 161405.pdf (Publisher’s version ) (Closed access)
Reflection as a Deliberative and Distributed Practice: Assessing Neuro-Enhancement Technologies via Mutual Learning Exercises (MLEs)
In 1968, Jürgen Habermas claimed that, in an advanced technological society, the emancipatory force of knowledge can only be regained by actively recovering the 'forgotten experience of reflection'. In this article, we argue that, in the contemporary situation, critical reflection requires a deliberative ambiance, a process of mutual learning, a consciously organised process of deliberative and distributed reflection. And this especially applies,…
The oblique perspective: Philosophical diagnostics of contemporary life sciences research
This paper indicates how continental philosophy may contribute to a diagnostics of contemporary life sciences research, as part of a "diagnostics of the present" (envisioned by continental thinkers, from Hegel up to Foucault). First, I describe (as a "practicing" philosopher) various options for an oblique (or symptomatic) reading of emerging scientific discourse, bent on uncovering the basic "philosophemes" of science (i.e. the guiding ideas, th…
Scientific iconoclasm and active imagination: Synthetic cells as techno-scientific mandalas
Metaphors allow us to come to terms with abstract and complex information, by comparing it to something which is structured, familiar and concrete. Although modern science is "iconoclastic", as Gaston Bachelard phrases it (i.e. bent on replacing living entities by symbolic data: e.g. biochemical and mathematical symbols and codes), scientists are at the same time prolific producers of metaphoric images themselves. Synthetic biology is an outstand…
Global challenges, Dutch solutions? The shape of responsibility in Dutch science and technology policies
The Netherlands has a well-established tradition of gearing science and technology to economic interests as well as societal and ethical concerns. This article outlines how national dynamics in the Netherlands have not only contributed to the adoption of Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) frameworks but also to a distinctly Dutch meaning and institutionalization of responsibility. It identifies three core features of the Dutch context that…
Addressing research integrity challenges: From penalising individual perpetrators to fostering research ecosystem quality care
Emerging viral threats and the simultaneity of the non-simultaneous: Zooming out in times of Corona
This paper addresses global bioethical challenges entailed in emerging viral diseases, focussing on their socio-cultural dimension and seeing them as symptomatic of the current era of globalisation. Emerging viral threats exemplify the extent to which humans evolved into a global species, with a pervasive and irreversible impact on the planetary ecosystem. To effectively address these disruptive threats, an attitude of preparedness seems called f…
Calculable bodies: Analysing the enactment of bodies in bioinformatics
Science and Suspicion: Maxim Gorky’s Children of the Sun as a Critical Mirror in Times of Covid-19
From a contemporary perspective, the current COVID-19 pandemic is undoubtedly an extraordinary event, but historically speaking pandemics are periodically recurring phenomena and intimately connected with socio-economic processes of globalisation. Therefore, history may serve as a backdrop for coming to terms with the present, by comparing current challenges with previous events that are both sufficiently similar and sufficiently different. In th…
Coming to Terms with Technoscience: The Heideggerian Way
Heidegger’s oeuvre (> 100 volumes) contains a plethora of comments on contemporary science, or rather technoscience because, according to Heidegger, science is inherently technical. What insights can be derived from such comments for philosophers questioning technoscience as it is practiced today? Can Heidegger’s thoughts become a source of inspiration for contemporary scholars who are confronted with automated sequencing machines, magnetic reson…
Sociology (24 works) · Philosophy (19 works) · Epistemology (18 works) · Political science (15 works) · Computer Science (13 works) · Philosophy (12 works) · Psychology (11 works) · Art (10 works) · Law (10 works) · Biology (9 works)