What Daston and Galison do not say about scientific objectivity

Résumé 0

The complex nature of the concept of scientific objectivity is probably due to the fact that its meaning has been constructed in the course of history as normative positions and new practices emerged, especially in the field of natural sciences. New defining characteristics can always to be added to the previous ones. In their book Objectivity (2007), Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison consider that "the history of scientific objectivity is surprisingly short. It first emerges in the midnineteenth century and in a matter of decades became established not only as a scientific norm, but also as a set of practices, including the making of images for scientific atlases "(2007, 27). For Daston and Galison, scientific objectivity arises at the time when the word, the concept and the types of realities that it subsumes, merge. However, according to them, it is necessary to distinguish what they call "mechanical objectivity" from two other epistemic virtues, “truth-tonature” and “trained judgment”. After having listed some objections addressed to the book since its publication, , we will emphasize the fact that Daston and Galison do not mention in their definition of the concept of "mechanical objectivity" some essential modalities of what we will call “objectifying detachment”, because of their epistemological and ontological options that deserve at least to be discussed