Including a philosopher, Alfred North Whitehead, whose work is instrumental in 'constructive post-modernism'^[1] in this particular wiki seems logical. Even though 'deconstructive post-modernism' as conceived by mostly French philosophers holds sway over our ideas about science, art, politics, etc., the notion that everything is a social construction in the absence of concrete, independent facts can lead to a kind of nihilism and meaninglessness. Whitehead's process philosophy offers an alternative.

One of Whitehead's primary concepts is that the world is generative. Everything that we know exists on this planet and beyond is engaged in a creative or generative process. He also notes that there is no absolute gap between the 'living' and the 'nonliving' (p. 88).^[2] It makes sense when you consider that the nature of a carbon atom is essentially the same whether you find it in a person or in a rock. It also makes it easier to understand why scientists can casually mention manipulating a protein from a bacterial (living matter) so it acts like spring and shock absorber and its possible use in "smart materials" (nonliving matter). ^[3] 

By training a mathematician who with Bertrand Russell produced the three-volume 'Principia Mathematica',^[4] Whitehead in his book, 'Process and Reality' (PR), articulates ideas about philosophy and science in an interesting fashion,

As [Whitehead] states in his preface, "... the unity of treatment is to be looked for in the gradual development of the scheme, in meaning and in relevance and not in the successive treatment of particular topics." This statement is a warning to the reader that he will not find a linear development in PR, a beginning, a middle, and an end. Rather, he will encounter a weblike development that presupposes the whole system at the very beginning and recurs again and again to individual topics with the aim that "in each recurrence, these topics throw some new light on the scheme, or receive some new elucidation." (p. 2)^[5]

This 'weblike development' reflects the scientific process of all kinds including nanotechnology. (For a recent example, under Jump joints, click on Memristors.) Whitehead's weblike notion has also highly influenced this wiki with its recurring themes in different topic areas shedding new light on the subject of nanotechnology.

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