Science and the Mangle of Practice

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Interest in science has long centered on scientific knowledge, especially "high" theory, but the past decade has seen the convergence of scholars in many disciplines upon scientific practice--the doing of science, the process of making theories, facts, instruments, institutions--as a key topic for research. Dr. Pickering is developing a general analysis of the nature of scientific practice. The empirical base for this work consists primarily in two extended case studies from his own work, the search for quarks in high energy physics and the development of quaternions in mathematics, and three shorter studies drawn from the secondary historical literature. He is also weaving in other ethnographic and historical studies of science as appropriate. He is relating his analysis to more familiar perspectives on scientific knowledge through discussion of contemporary debates on the role of nature, reason and the `social' in science and related debates on the objectivity, relativity or historicity of scientific knowledge. He is also discussing disciplinarity in science studies, and suggests that a shared interest in practice can provide the basis for a genuine synthesis in this field.