Details zur Publikation

Kategorie Textpublikation
Referenztyp Zeitschriften
DOI 10.1177/0162243915617005
Titel (primär) Give me an experiment and I will raise a laboratory
Autor Gross, M.
Quelle Science, Technology & Human Values
Erscheinungsjahr 2016
Department SUSOZ
Band/Volume 41
Heft 4
Seite von 613
Seite bis 634
Sprache englisch
Keywords energy transition; geothermal engineering; laboratory; participation; ignorance; nonknowledge; real-world experiments; risk
UFZ Querschnittsthemen RU6;
Abstract Bruno Latour once argued that science laboratories actively modify the wider society by displacing crucial actors outside the laboratory into the “field.” This article turns this idea on its head by using the case of geothermal energy utilization to demonstrate that in many cases it is the experimental setup outside the laboratory that is there first, with the activities normally associated with a laboratory setting only being decided upon and implemented post hoc. As soon as the actors involved perceive unknowns and uncertainties, these are relocated to various kinds of closed laboratories to be dealt with in a more controlled environment. This is done, for instance, by inviting stakeholders to laboratory-like settings or by analyzing the geochemical composition of fluids in laboratories. Thus, the risk-laden production of new knowledge by means of real-world experimentation amounts to a practice of relocating the context of discovery in society to laboratories of justification sometimes defined as such post hoc. Experimental processes in society can then be conceptualized as “real” experiments and laboratory activities as merely temporarily subordinated components of the larger experiment.
dauerhafte UFZ-Verlinkung https://www.ufz.de/index.php?en=20939&ufzPublicationIdentifier=16867
Gross, M. (2016):
Give me an experiment and I will raise a laboratory
Sci. Technol. Hum. Values 41 (4), 613 - 634