How Well Do Facts Travel?: The Dissemination of Reliable Knowledge

by Edited by Peter Howlett , Mary S. Morgan

• ISBN13: 9780521196543
• ISBN10: 052119654X
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2010-11-15
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

Why write about facts? Facts are everywhere. They litter the utterances of public life as much as the private conversations of individuals. They frequent the humanities and the sciences in equal measure. But their very ubiquity tells us not only why it is difficult to form general but sensible answers in response to seemingly simple questions about facts, but also why it is important to do so. This book discusses how facts travel, and when and why they sometimes travel well enough to acquire a life of their own. Whether or not facts travel in this manner depends not only on their character and ability to play useful roles elsewhere, but also on the labels, packaging, vehicles, and company that take them across difficult terrains and over disciplinary boundaries. These diverse stories of traveling facts, ranging from architecture to nanotechnology and from romance fiction to climate science, change the way we see the nature of facts. Facts are far from the bland and rather boring but useful objects that scientists and humanists produce and fit together to make narratives, arguments, and evidence. Rather, their extraordinary abilities to travel well - and to fly flags of many different colors in the process - shows when, how, and why facts can be used to build further knowledge beyond and away from their sites of original production and intended use.

Table of Contents

Travelling facts

Matters of Fact

Facts and building artefacts: what travels in material objects?

A journey through times and cultures? Ancient Greek forms in American 19th century architecture: an archaeological view

Manning's N: putting roughness to work

My facts are better than your facts: spreading good news about global warming

Real problems with fictional cases

Integrity and Fruitfulness

Ethology's travelling facts

Travelling facts about crowded rats: rodent experimentation and the human sciences

Using cases to establish novel diagnoses: creating generic facts by making particular facts travel together

Technology transfer and travelling facts: a perspective from Indian agriculture

Archaeological facts in transit: the eminent mounds of central North America

Companionship and Character

Packaging small facts for re-use: databases in model organism biology

Designed for travel: communicating facts through images

Using models to keep us healthy: the productive journeys of facts across public health research networks

The facts of life and death: a case of exceptional longevity

Love life of a fact

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