Technical Systems in Research: Articulating Quintanilla's Philosophy of Technique with Chang's New Pragmatist Philosophy

This paper aims to extend the conceptual framework provided by Miguel & Aacute;ngel Quintanilla's systemic philosophy of technique to account for some typical situations of scientific practice. Therefore, it seeks to harness the power of Quintanilla's philosophical tool to achieve a form of pragmatist analysis of science, compatible with Hasok Chang's recent epistemological proposal. To this end, Quintanilla's framework is modified to accept epistemic artifacts and focus on epistemic activities and their difference from other kinds of actions. It is concluded that the framework holds promise for a form of epistemological analysis that transcends the emphasis on propositional knowledge (which is reduced here to the making of epistemic artifacts) so that it approaches a richer epistemology of active knowledge for thinking about scientific practice. This implies extending the analytical domain to other components of the technical systems of scientific practice, including the epistemic agent and its intentionalities and the epistemic activities it performs on the artifacts on which it operates.