Lab History

Reflections

Bibliographic Data

ID3278076
AuthorsRobert Ε Kohler (0000-0002-2590-0553, corresponding author), Robert E Kohler
Year2008
Volume99
Issue4
Pages761-768
Publication date2008-12-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueIsis (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0021-1753 • E-ISSN: 1545-6994
PublisherUniversity of Chicago Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1086/595769
OpenAlexW2069743096
LanguageEN
Citations received32
References cited25

After a productive start in the 1980s, laboratory history is now surprisingly neglected-not lab science, but the lab as social institution. To restart interest, I suggest that we see labs as period specific (early modern, modern, postmodern) and of a piece with each era's dominant social institutions and practices. In the modern era, for example, labs have become powerful and ubiquitous because their operating principles are those of the nation-state and its consumerist political economy. Their educational function is crucial: labs have authority because they are an effective vehicle for educating en masse for life in modern states; they provide general entry to careers in scores of disciplines and a thousand occupations; and they embody prevailing ideals of a meritocracy of competence, transparency (through publication), and a universalistic logic of objectivity. An older microhistory of laboratory practices may thus be reborn as a systematic, macrosocial history of the lab

Institutionalisation · Meritocracy · Objectivity (philosophy · Historical Medical Research and Treatments · History of Science and Natural History · Philosophy and History of Science

Tools

Open DOISci-Hub