STS – Week 5 Class Notes

What is experiment and what is a laboratory?

What is ‘measure’ in Latour’s article?

“Lab as an agent” - actor, ANT – Actor Network Theory

The ability to act (freewill)

Insiders vs Outsiders
- the stranger is in a position to know that there are alternatives to those beliefs and practices.

Learn a lot about the field of are you are researching – Social scientists

Thomas Kuhn disagrees with the ‘scientific method’.

Biomedicine vs. Chinese medicine

What is an “error”?

Who says “5%” margin error is acceptable?

Shapin & Schaffer – apply a symmetric method, why Hobbes’ understanding were dismissed?

Translation – creating networks where no networks existed before. Thinking about what could have
been with Pasteur and the farmer’s (relationship).
Latour’s Arguments – he’s telling us there’s no binary

- There is no inside/outside
- Science is a political process. Science is not a political process.

Rethinking ‘political’, not necessarily always involved in politics.

Social Scientists study the production of knowledge (production). How did those things come to be seen
as “accurate” results….

Human actants – Macro-scale vs. micro-scale an imagined dichotomy (latour sees it as a problem).

Understanding science not just as specific content, but a constructive sociological force.

Three Keys to Displacement

Translation – creating links or connections where none previously existed that to some extent modify
two agents

How did Pasteur got that ‘power’ – he went to the ‘experts’ (the key people), because of the
symmetrical process (refer to Pasteur’s three movements)

The non-politics of science – without ever being clearly seen as a stated political power.