Wednesday, April 1, 2015

Latour Chapter 1 and Intro

Intro: The Black Box
  • instead of looking simply at the finished product we should look at the process--"Science in the Making" (from the view of an anthropologist)
    • "Where can we start a study of science and technology?"
    • **good point for photographing the work places for our field map
    • go backwards from the "point of invention"
      • when did  people even start thinking about making the invention?
  • science is not FIXED--will these black boxes get reopened? How do we know which ones and when?
  • black boxing: scientific and technical work is made invisible by its own success. When a machine runs efficiently, when a matter of fact is settled, one need focus only on its inputs and outputs not on its internal complexity."
    • the more the output is positive/consistent, the less we care about "how" as long as it's still producing
  • How did truth become?
    • when things hold they start becoming true
    • when things are true they hold 
  • Science/Knowledge in the making is create --> fact in textbook
From Weaker to Stronger Rhetoric--Chapter 1 Literature
  • modalities: sentences that modify or qualify another one
    • positive modalities: sentences that lead a statement away from its conditions of production
    • negative modalities: sentences that lead a statement in the other direction towards its condition of product, why it is solid or weak instead of using it to render some other consequences more necessary
  • facts and fact making:
    • made more of a fact depending on how it is inserted into sentences
  • Rhetoric: name of the discipline that studies how people are made to believe and behave and how to persuade others
  • argument from authority: appeal to higher and more numerous allies
  • using peer review, former texts/studies --> more accuracy/persuasive
    • citations
    • perfunctory
    • context
    • paradigm
  • stratified: texts become more technical with the mobilization of new elements brought in from other people and papers

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