Science in Action
Encyclopedia
Science in Action: How to Follow Scientists and Engineers through Society (ISBN 0-674-79291-2) is an influential book by Bruno Latour
. The English edition was published in 1987 by Harvard University Press
. It is written in a text-book style, and contains a full featured approach to the empirical study of science and technology. Moreover, it also entertains ontological conceptions and theoretical discussions making it a research monograph and not a methodological handbook per se.
In the first chapter Latour develops the methodological dictum that science and technology must be studied "in action", or "in the making". Because scientific discoveries turn esoteric and difficult to understand, it has to be studied where discoveries are made in practice. For example Latour turns back time in the case of the discovery of the "double helix". Going back in time, deconstructing statements, machines and articles, it is possible to arrive at a point where scientific discovery could have chosen to take many other directions (contingency). Also the concept of "black box" is introduced. A black box is a metaphor borrowed from cybernetics denoting a piece of machinery that "runs by itself". That is, when a series of instructions are too complicated to be repeated all the time, a black box is drawn around it, allowing it to function only by giving it "input" and "output" data. For example a CPU inside a computer is a black box. Its inner complexity doesn't have to be known; one only needs to use it in his/her everyday activities.
Bruno Latour
Bruno Latour is a French sociologist of science and anthropologist and an influential theorist in the field of Science and Technology Studies...
. The English edition was published in 1987 by Harvard University Press
Harvard University Press
Harvard University Press is a publishing house established on January 13, 1913, as a division of Harvard University, and focused on academic publishing. In 2005, it published 220 new titles. It is a member of the Association of American University Presses. Its current director is William P...
. It is written in a text-book style, and contains a full featured approach to the empirical study of science and technology. Moreover, it also entertains ontological conceptions and theoretical discussions making it a research monograph and not a methodological handbook per se.
In the first chapter Latour develops the methodological dictum that science and technology must be studied "in action", or "in the making". Because scientific discoveries turn esoteric and difficult to understand, it has to be studied where discoveries are made in practice. For example Latour turns back time in the case of the discovery of the "double helix". Going back in time, deconstructing statements, machines and articles, it is possible to arrive at a point where scientific discovery could have chosen to take many other directions (contingency). Also the concept of "black box" is introduced. A black box is a metaphor borrowed from cybernetics denoting a piece of machinery that "runs by itself". That is, when a series of instructions are too complicated to be repeated all the time, a black box is drawn around it, allowing it to function only by giving it "input" and "output" data. For example a CPU inside a computer is a black box. Its inner complexity doesn't have to be known; one only needs to use it in his/her everyday activities.
Criticism
Latour's work, including Science in Action, has received heavy criticism from some scholars. Olga Amsterdamska's highly critical book review concluded with the following sentence: "Somehow, the ideal of a social science whose only goal is to tell inconsistent, false, and incoherent stories about nothing in particular does not strike me as very appealing or sufficiently ambitious."See also
- Laboratory lifeLaboratory LifeLaboratory Life: The Social Construction of Scientific Facts is a 1979 book by sociologists of science Bruno Latour and Steve Woolgar.This influential book in the field of science studies presents an anthropological study of Roger Guillemin's scientific laboratory at the Salk Institute...
(with Steve WoolgarSteve WoolgarStephen Woolgar is a British sociologist. He has worked closely with Bruno Latour, with whom he co-authored Laboratory Life: the Social Construction of Scientific Facts ....
) - Politics of naturePolitics of NaturePolitics of Nature: How to Bring the Sciences Into Democracy is an influential book by the French theorist and philosopher of science Bruno Latour. The book is an English translation by Catherine Porter of the French book, Politiques de la nature...
- We Have Never Been ModernWe Have Never Been ModernWe Have Never Been Modern is a 1991 book by Bruno Latour, originally published in French as Nous n'avons jamais été modernes : Essai d'anthropologie symétrique ....