Latour B., Woolgar S. Laboratory Life: The construction of scientific facts

Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986. — 296 p. — ISBN10: 069102832X; ISBN13: 978-0691028323. Introduction by Jonas Salk.This highly original work presents laboratory science in a deliberately skeptical way: as an anthropological approach to the culture of the scientist. Drawing on recent work in literary criticism, the authors study how the social world of the laboratory produces papers and other "texts,"' and how the scientific vision of reality becomes that set of statements considered, for the time being, too expensive to change. The book is based on field work done by Bruno Latour in Roger Guillemin's laboratory at the Salk Institute and provides an important link between the sociology of modern sciences and laboratory studies in the history of science.Introduction by Jonas SalkFrom order to disorderThe Observer and the Scientist
The Social and the Scientific: A Participant's Resource
The Social and the Scientific: The Observer's Dilemma
The "Anthropology" of Science
The Construction of Order
Materials and Methods
The Organisation of the ArgumentAn anthropologist visits the laboratoryLiterary Inscription
The Culture of the Laboratory
Articles about Neuroendocrinology
The "Phenomenotechnique"
Documents and Facts
The Publication List
Statement Types
The Transformation of Statement TypesThe construction of a fact: the case of TRF(H)TRF(H) in Its Different Contexts
The Delineation of a Subspecialty: The Isolation and
Characterisation of TRF(H)
A Choice of StrategiesLaboratory lifeThe Elimination of Concurrent Efforts by New Investments
The Construction of a New Object
The Peptidic Nature of TRF
Narrowing Down the Possibilities
TRF Moves into Other NetworksThe microprocessing of factsThe Construction and Dismantling of Facts in Conversation
The Sociological Analysis of "Thought Processes"
Facts and ArtefactsCycles of creditCredit: Reward and Credibility
What Motivates Scientists?
Limitations of the Notion of Credit as Reward
The Quest for Credibility
Conversion from One Form of Credibility to Another
The Demand for Credible Information
Strategies, Positions and Career Trajectories
Curriculum Vitae
Positions
Trajectories
Group Structure
Group DynamicsThe creation of order out of disorderCreating a Laboratory: The Main Elements of Our Argument
Order From Disorder
A New Fiction for Old?Postscript to Second Edition (1986)How Radical is Radical?
What Does It Mean to be Ethnographic?
The Place of Philosophy
The Demise of the "Social"
Reflexivity