Organism, providence, and technoscience in historical perspective

Abstract

This paper examines, from a historical perspective, the relationship between the ontology that accompanied the beginnings of scientific reflection and its subsequent technoscientific development. For Aristotle, science and philosophy coincided as epistēmē, understood as knowledge of first causes and principles. With the consolidation of the ontological assumptions of Enlightenment science—based on mechanical and corpuscular entities—techniques acquired the legitimacy needed to transform the natural environment in an intensive manner.

In parallel, in the Viceroyalty of Peru, Enlightenment thinkers and cosmographers emerged who developed a critical response to corpuscular mechanism. This so-called “patriotic epistemology” (Cañizares, 2007) drew both on providentialist theology—as seen in authors such as Cosme Bueno and Eusebio Llano Zapata—and on organicism, represented by Hipólito Unanue.

We argue that these intellectual developments can be interpreted as attempts to respond to the acceleration and temporal uncertainty introduced by the modern horizon. From contemporary concerns, marked by the global risks of technoscience and artificial intelligence, these responses allow us to reconsider the aims and limits of this early critical epistemology.