Material Culture, Practices and Horizons of Knowledge: A Reply to Fried’s ‘The Tragedy of the Thermometer Without Numbers

Abstract

although the case of the thermometer offered in our article (Parente and Mascaró 2024) was mainly intended to exemplify a modality of hermeneutic interface and its implications for other types of interface, the fact is that the example has an expressive force that exceeds this limited framework of argumentation. Samantha Fried’s reply (2024) proves this tendency. Perhaps Fried’s argument could be summarized this way: the efficacy of the readable object depends on its connection with worlds of knowledge and practices. In this sense, the lack of access to certain worlds is tragic since it entails an impossibility of access to knowledge, and eventually hinders the possibility of political decision making. Considering this interpretation, we will structure our comments on Freid’s intuitions following the topics of her argument: 1) efficacy and access to knowledge; 2) the problem of trust; and 3) the tragic character of the interface’s breakdown.