How does science create knowledge? Epistemic cultures, shaped by affinity, necessity, and historical coincidence, determine how we know what we know. In this book, Karin Knorr Cetina compares two of the most important and intriguing epistemic cultures of our day, those in high energy physics and molecular biology. Her work highlights the diversity of these cultures of knowing and, in its depiction of their differences--in the meaning of the empirical, the enactment of object relations, and the fashioning of social (...) relations--challenges the accepted view of a unified science. By many accounts, contemporary Western societies are becoming "knowledge societies"--which run on expert processes and expert systems epitomized by science and structured into all areas of social life. By looking at epistemic cultures in two sample cases, this book addresses pressing questions about how such expert systems and processes work, what principles inform their cognitive and procedural orientations, and whether their organization, structures, and operations can be extended to other forms of social order. The first ethnographic study to systematically compare two different scientific laboratory cultures, this book sharpens our focus on epistemic cultures as the basis of the knowledge society. (shrink)

The anthropological approach is the central focus of this study. Laboratories are looked upon with the innocent eye of the traveller in exotic lands, and the societies found in these places are observed with the objective yet compassionate eye of the visitor from a quite other cultural milieu. There are many surprises that await us if we enter a laboratory in this frame of mind... This study is a realistic enterprise, an attempt to truly represent the social order of life (...) in laboratories and institutes of research, just as they are. By bringing the philosophical issues to the surface as matters not of prejudgement but as matters of concern, Karin Knorr-Cetina has developed the first really positive challenge to the philosophy of science since the days of paradigms and internal definitions of meanings. (shrink)

This book provides an exciting and diverse philosophical exploration of the role of practice and practices in human activity. It contains original essays and critiques of this philosophical and sociological attempt to move beyond current problematic ways of thinking in the humanities and social sciences. It will be useful across many disciplines, including philosophy, sociology, science, cultural theory, history and anthropology.

How does science create knowledge? Epistemic cultures, shaped by affinity, necessity, and historical coincidence, determine how we know what we know. In this book, Karin Knorr Cetina compares two of the most important and intriguing epistemic cultures of our day, those in high energy physics and molecular biology. The first ethnographic study to systematically compare two different scientific laboratory cultures, this book sharpens our focus on epistemic cultures as the basis of the knowledge society.

To justify certain steps of the computation developed in his Sand-Reckoner, Archimedes cites the following inequalities relative to the sides of right triangles: if of two right-angled triangles, the sides about the right angle are equal , while the other sides are unequal, the greater angle of those toward [sc. next to] the unequal sides has to the lesser a greater ratio than the greater line of those subtending the right angle to the lesser, but a lesser than the greater (...) line of those about the right angle to the lesser. That is, with reference to the two right triangles ABG, DEZ , where AG equals DZ and the angle at B is greater than that at E, ZE:GB < angle B:angle E < DE:AB. (shrink)

In 1953 Marshall Clagett presented a preliminary scheme of the medieval Latin versions of Euclid'sElements. Since then a considerable body of these texts has become available in critical editions, thanks to Clagett's labours on the Archimedean tradition and H. L. L. Busard's work on the Euclidean versions. Further, Busard, M. Folkerts, R. Lorch and C. Burnett have scrutinized the pivotal ‘second’ version of Adelard of Bath, and have thereby exposed a diversity of text forms that spells real complications for the (...) effort to establish its provenance and use. In his recent overview of the medieval Euclidean tradition, Folkerts displays not only how these studies have filled out and expanded upon Clagett's initial framework, but also how they have compelled rethinking of some basic issues, such as on the source relations and authorship of the various versions. (shrink)

When ancient mathematical treatises lack expositions of numerical techniques, what purposes could ancient mathematical theories be expected to serve? Ancient writers only rarely address questions of this sort directly. Possible answers are suggested by surveying geometry, mechanics, optics, and spherics to discover how the mathematical treatments imply positions on this issue. This survey shows the ways in which these ancient theoretical inquiries reflect practical activity in their fields. This account, in turn, suggests that the authors may have intended their theorems (...) not to predict, but to explain phenomena. We may then consider what kind of explanations they were seeking. (shrink)

This book constitutes the outcome of an international conference held at the Otto-Mobes-Volkswirtschaftsschule, Graz-Stifting( Austria), from June 16 to 22, 1974. The conference was initiated by a project group working on determinants and controls of social science development at the In stitute for Advanced Studies and Scientific Research in Vienna and or ganized by the editors of this volume. It was held under the auspices of the Austrian Ministry of Science and Research. The main topics of the conference were those (...) at the forefront of the 'state of argumentation' (to borrow from one of our contributors) in philosophy and sociology of science ever since the controversy between Thomas S. Kuhn and Sir Karl R. Popper has sharpened our awareness for the methodological and substantial presuppositions involved with questions of growth and development in science. Let us give two examples of those topics. The borderline between sociology of science and philo sophy of science has become more and more unclear; while the work of at least some philosophers of science comes to have an empirical flavour, sociologists of science are increasingly apt to include logical and methodo logical components of the research process as their objects of examina tion. Papers included in this volume testify to both tendencies. (shrink)

In two articles published in 1881 and 1884, the young academics, Martin Klamroth and Johan L. Heiberg, engaged in a brief debate on the textual choices that should govern the publication of a new critical edition of Euclid's Elements. This short debate seemed to settle the problem in Heiberg's favor as to what should be taken as the definitive text of Euclid's Elements. But the issue ought to be considered once again for there are good reasons for the claim that (...) Klamroth was right, and that Heiberg was wrong. If so, we have been consulting, and continue to consult, the wrong text in our efforts to interpret the Euclidean tradition. In order to substantiate this claim, the textual issue debated by Klamroth and Heiberg is rehearsed again, and the principal reasons brought forth by Heiberg against Klamroth's position are reconstructed. Specimens from three broad areas of evidence – structural, linguistic, and technical – will be considered. They reveal how the medieval tradition of the text advocated by Klamroth displays textual superiority to the Greek tradition promoted by Heiberg. Such a reorientation of the texts has the potential to change significantly our understanding of ancient mathematics. (shrink)

Anthropomorphism, the attribution of human-like qualities to non-human entities, can influence comprehension of the surrounding world. Going beyond previous research on the general assessment of anthropomorphism, the current study aimed to explore how anthropomorphising a specific animal species influences public acceptance of livestock keeping practices. Specifically, we focused on welfare-infringing practices that limit animals’ freedom, describe disruptive procedures, social isolation, or other stressful situations. Lacking experience in livestock keeping, it is likely that people project their own preferences to animals when (...) judging livestock keeping practices. Questionnaire data from a sample of the Swiss German public (N = 1232) were analysed regarding their acceptance of livestock keeping practices, as well as anthropomorphism for three animals: cattle, pigs, and poultry. We showed that judgement of livestock keeping was related to an anthropomorphic view of animals. This takes two opposite directions: (1) anthropomorphising was connected to a more critical view of livestock keeping practices and (2) the attribution of more cognitive capabilities to cattle and poultry was associated with a higher acceptance of welfare-infringing livestock keeping practices. The tendency to anthropomorphise was species-dependent, with the two mammals eliciting a higher tendency to anthropomorphise than poultry. The results suggest that the tendency to anthropomorphise plays a significant role in shaping the public’s opinion on livestock keeping. We argue that, when activating the tendency to anthropomorphise in the media, advertisements, or political publicity (e.g. by highlighting human-like features), a certain level of caution should be taken to avoid undesirable outcomes. (shrink)

This article focuses upon the construction of wants and the embodying of the market in the work routines of workers on the Swiss foreign exchange market. The authors are particularly concerned with the role of the computer screen within the establishment of postsocial relations around a sense of embodied lack. The screen does not provide access to the market but is the market as an exteriorized assemblage of practices brought together in one place. The screen is the (ontologically liquid) market (...) rather than its representation into which traders immerse themselves. Traders engage with this market in their daily work practices through a constructed sense of lack that requires them to act passionately within the market in order to satisfy the self understood as a structure of wanting. While Knorr Cetina and Bruegger draw on a Lacanian understanding of the self as lack, rather than focus on the formation of direct human social relations around this issue, they look instead at the materiality of lack and its position within the postsocial relations constituted through trading online in the foreign exchange market. Desire is constituted and realized here through the object of the computer screen rather than with other people directly. In this way relations between persons are mediated by real objects that constitute persons virtually. (shrink)