FromTopostoOikos
The Standardization of Glass Containers as Epistemic Boundaries in Modern Laboratory Research (1850-1900)
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 4516613 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Kijan Espahangizi (ETH Zurich, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2015 |
| Volume | 28 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 397-425 |
| Publication date | 2015-09-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Science in Context (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0269-8897 • E-ISSN: 1474-0664 |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1017/s0269889715000137 |
| PMID | 26256505 |
| OpenAlex | W1916980157 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 4 |
| References cited | 53 |
ArgumentGlass vessels such as flasks and test tubes play an ambiguous role in the historiography of modern laboratory research. In spite of the strong focus on the role of materiality in the last decades, the scientific glass vessel - while being symbolically omnipresent - has remained curiously neglected in regard to its materiality. The popular image ortoposof the transparent, neutral, and quasi-immaterial glass container obstructs the view of the physico-chemical functionality of this constitutive inner boundary in modern laboratory environments and its material historicity. In order to understand how glass vessels were able to provide a stable epistemic containment of spatially enclosed experimental phenomena in the new laboratory ecologies emerging in the nineteenth and early twentieth century, I will focus on the history of thematerialstandardization of laboratory glassware. I will follow the rise of a new awareness for measurement errors due to the chemical agency of experimental glass vessels, then I will sketch the emergence of a whole techno-scientific infrastructure for the improvement of glass container quality in late nineteenth-century Germany. In the last part of my argument, I will return to the laboratory by looking at the implementation of this glass reform that created a newoikosfor the inner experimental milieus of modern laboratory research
Aesthetics · Archaeology · Art · Epistemology · Historiography · Political science · Warrant · Chemistry · German Social Sciences and History · Historical and Scientific Studies · History · History of Science and Natural History · Law · Philosophy
The Laboratory Revolution in Medicine
The Public Image of Chemistry
Landscapes and Labscapes
Biographies of scientific objects
The Values of Precision
An Institute for an Empire
Surfaces of action
Institutional Ecology, `Translations' and Boundary Objects
Kulturen des Experiments
Through thousands of errors we reach the truth’—but how? On the epistemic roles of error in scientific practice
The fate of place
Boundary-Work and the Demarcation of Science from Non-Science
Re-Examining the Research School
The Mangle of Practice
| Unique citing works | 4 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,44 |
| Citation span | 2017 - 2023 (7) |
| Citation velocity | historical |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 4 |