Publication Details

Category Text Publication
Reference Category Journals
DOI 10.1177/0162243915617005
Title (Primary) Give me an experiment and I will raise a laboratory
Author Gross, M.
Source Titel Science, Technology & Human Values
Year 2016
Department SUSOZ
Volume 41
Issue 4
Page From 613
Page To 634
Language englisch
Keywords energy transition; geothermal engineering; laboratory; participation; ignorance; nonknowledge; real-world experiments; risk
UFZ wide themes 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.
Persistent UFZ Identifier 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 10.1177/0162243915617005