Epistemic cultures: how the sciences make knowledge
Эпистемические культуры: как науки создают знание
1999-10-01
SCID: 54.1/hbtqx6mu
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disunity of the sciencesepistemic cultureslaboratory studiesmolecular biologyparticle physics
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Abstract (AI)
A Note on Transcription 1. Introduction 1.1. The Disunity of the Sciences 1.2. The Cultures of Knowledge Societies 1.3. Culture and Practice 1.4. The Structure of the Book 1.5. Physics Theory, and a First Look at the Field 1.6. Issues of Methodology, and More about the Field 2. What is a Laboratory? 2.1. Laboratories as Reconfigurations of Natural and Social Orders 2.2. From Laboratory to Experiment 2.3. Some Features of the Laboratory Reconsidered 3. Particle Physics and Negative Knowledge 3.1. The Analogy of the Closed Universe 3.2. A World of Signs and Secondary Appearances 3.3. TheMeaninglessness of Measurement 3.4. The Structure of the Care of the Self 3.5. Negative Knowledge and the Liminal Approach 3.6. Moving in a Closed Universe: Unfolding, Framing, and Convoluting 4. Molecular Biology and Blind Variation 4.1. An Object-Oriented Epistemics 4.2. The Small-Science Style of Molecular Biology and the Genome Project 4.3. The Laboratory as a Two-Tier Structure 4.4.Blind Variation and Natural Selection 4.5. The Experiential Register 4.6. Blind Variation Reconsidered 5. From Machines to Organisms: Detectors as Behavioral and Social Beings 5.1. Primitive Classifications 5.2. Detector Agency and Physiology 5.3. Detectors as Moral and Social Individuals 5.4. Live Organism or Machine? 5.5. Are There Enemies? 5.6. Physicists as Symbionts 5.7. Taxonomies of Trust 5.8. Primitive Classifications Reconsidered 6. From Organisms to Machines: Laboratories as Factories of Transgenics 6.1. A Science of Life without Nature? 6.2. Organisms as Production Sites 6.3. Cellular Machines 6.4. Industrial Production versus Natural (Re)production 6.5. Biological Machines Reconsidered 7. HEP Experiments as Post-Traditional Communitarian Structures 7.1.. Large Collaborations: A Brief History 7.2. The Erasure of the Individual as an Epistemic Subject 7.3. Management by Content 7.4. The Intersection of Management by Content and Communitarianism 7.5. Communitarian Time: Genealogical, Scheduled 8. The Multiple Ordering Frameworks of HEP Collaborations 8.1. The Birth Drama of an Experiment 8.2. Delaying the Choice, or Contests of Unfolding 8.3. Confidence Pathways and Gossip Circles 8.4. Other Ordering Frameworks 8.5. Reconfiguration Reconsidered 9. The Dual Organization of Molecular Biology Laboratories 9.1. Laboratories Structured as Individuated Units 9.2. Becoming a Laboratory Leader 9.3. The Two Levels of the Laboratory 9.4. TheImpossibility of Cooperation in Molecular Biology 10. Toward an Understanding of Knowledge Societies: A Dialogue Notes References Index
Key Findings
1
High-energy physics experiments are interpreted as post-traditional communitarian structures in which large collaborations reshape individual epistemic agency and scientific management.
2
Laboratories are analyzed as sites that reconfigure natural and social orders, transforming experimental objects and practices into sources of knowledge.
3
Molecular biology is presented as an object-oriented epistemic culture organized around blind variation, natural selection, and a two-tier laboratory structure.
4
Particle physics is characterized by negative knowledge, sign-mediated observation, and measurement practices in which meanings are not directly given.
5
The book argues that the sciences are epistemically disunified, producing knowledge through distinct cultures, practices, and organizational forms.
Research Object
Scientific laboratories and research collaborations in physics (high-energy/particle physics) and molecular biology
Research Subject
the epistemic cultures, laboratory practices, and collective organizational forms through which different sciences construct knowledge
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1999-10-01
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