Give Me an Experiment and I Will Raise a Laboratory

Bibliographic Data

ID5337449
AuthorsM Gro (0000-0002-3716-7512, Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research, corresponding author), Matthias Gross
Year2016
Volume41
Issue4
Pages613-634
Publication date2016-07-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueScience Technology & Human Values (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0162-2439 • E-ISSN: 1552-8251
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/0162243915617005
OpenAlexW2336793971
LanguageEN
Citations received31
References cited60

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

Data science · Engineering ethics · Epistemology · Management science · Post hoc · Atmospheric and Environmental Gas Dynamics · Climate Change Communication and Perception · Computer Science · Engineering · Mathematics · Philosophy and History of Science

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