Epistemic Cultures: How the Sciences Make Knowledge

Karin Knorr Cetina

Published by Harvard University Press 1999

Epistemic Cultures

How the Sciences Make Knowledge

Karin Knorr Cetina

https://doi.org/10.4159/9780674039681

Overview
Contents

About this book

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.

Reviews

[Karin Cetina] has studied the behavior and practices of physicists in the process of trying to acquire knowledge of the basic components of the universe, and of biologists seeking empirical knowledge of natural objects. According to Cetina, the way the two groups go about their business is fundamentally different, and this difference has something to tell us about how we know what we know...A thorough and thoughtful examination of the epistemic underpinning of a knowledge society.
-- M. H. Chaplin Choice

There are many provocative and very interesting things in this book, above all the fairly dramatic and systematic contrast between the working cultures and organizational structures of experimental high energy physics laboratories and molecular biology ones. The opening framework for contrasting these two sciences by their empirical, technological, and social machineries is enormously suggestive. All this should help set a working agenda for anthropologists, sociologists, historians, and philosophers of science and technology of how to explore, elaborate, and expand upon the now often stated proposition that the sciences are diverse in their methods and approaches to the world.
-- Michael M. J. Fisher, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Acknowledgments Publicly Available Download PDF	ix
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	xiii
A Note on Transcription Publicly Available Download PDF	xvii
1 Introduction Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
2 What Is a Laboratory? Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	26
3 Particle Physics and Negative Knowledge Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	46
4 Molecular Biology and Blind Variation Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	79
5 From Machines to Organisms: Detectors as Behavioral and Social Beings Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	111
6 From Organisms to Machines: Laboratories as Factories of Transgenics Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	138
7 HEP Experiments as Post-Traditional Communitarian Structures Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	159
8 The Multiple Ordering Frameworks of HEP Collaborations Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	192
9 The Dual Organization of Molecular Biology Laboratories Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	216
10 Toward an Understanding of Knowledge Societies: A Dialogue Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	241
Notes Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	263
References Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	299
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	321

Language: English
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Audience: Professional and scholarly;
Pages
- Main content: 352

eBook

Published: July 1, 2009
ISBN: 9780674039681