Representation in Scientific Practice

by Lynch, Michael E.; Woolgar, Steve

• ISBN13: 9780262620765
• ISBN10: 0262620766
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1990-10-02
• Publisher: The MIT Press

Summary

The essays in this book provide an excellent introduction to the means by which scientists convey their ideas. While diverse in their subject matter, the essays are unified in asserting that scientists compose and use particular representations in contextually organized and contextually sensitive ways, and that these representations - particularly visual displays such as graphs, diagrams, photographs, and drawings - depend for their meaning on the complex activities in which they are situated. The topics include sociological orientations to representational practice, representation and the realist-constructivist controversy, the fixation of evidence, time and documents in researcher interaction, selection and mathematization in the visual documentation of objects in the life sciences, the use of illustrations in texts (E.0. Wilson's Sociobiology, a field guide to the birds), representing practice in cognitive science, the iconography of scientific texts, and semiotic analysis of scientific, representation. The contributors are K. Amann, Ronald Amerine, Franccedil;oise Bastide, Jack Bilmes, K. Knorr, Bruno Latour, John Law, Michael Lynch, Greg Meyers, Lucy A. Suchman, Paul Tibbetts, Steve Woolgar, and Steven Yearley. Michael Lynch is Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at Boston University. Steve Woolgar is at the Centre for Research into Innovation Culture, and Technology at Brunel University, Uxbridge, England

Author Biography

Michael Lynch is Professor in the Department of Science and Technology Studies at Cornell University.

Steve Woolgar is Chair of Marketing and Head of Science and Technology Studies at the University of Oxford.

Table of Contents

Preface	vii
Introduction: Sociological orientations to representational practice in science	1	(18)
M. Lynch
S. Woolgar
Drawing things together	19	(50)
B. Latour
Representation and the realist-constructivist controversy	69	(16)
P. Tibbetts
The fixation of (visual) evidence	85	(38)
K. Amann
K. Knorr Cetina
Time and documents in researcher interaction: Some ways of making out what is happening in experimental science	123	(30)
S. Woolgar
The externalized retina: Selection and mathematization in the visual documentation of objects in the life sciences	153	(34)
M. Lynch
The iconography of scientific texts: principles of analysis	187	(44)
F. Bastide
Every picture tells a story: Illustrations in E. O. Wilson's Sociobiology	231	(36)
G. Myers
Lists, field guides, and the descriptive organization of seeing: Birdwatching as an exemplary observational activity	267	(34)
J. Law
M. Lynch
Representing practice in cognitive science	301	(22)
L.A. Suchman
Following instructions	323	(14)
R. Amerine
J. Bilmes
The dictates of method and policy: Interpretational structures in the representation of scientific work	337	(20)
S. Yearley
Index	357