The manufacture of knowledge : an essay on the constructivist and contextual nature of science

The manufacture of knowledge : an essay on the constructivist and contextual nature of science / Karin D. Knorr-Cetina ; preface by Rom Harré.

The anthropological approach is the central focus of this study. Laboratories are looked upon with the innocent eye of the traveller in exotic lands, and the societies found in these places are observed with the objective yet compassionate eye of the visitor from a quite other cultural milieu. There...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Knorr-Cetina, K. (Karin) (Author)
Other Authors: Harré, Rom (Author of introduction, etc.)
Format: eBook
Language:English
Published: Oxford, England ; Elmsford, New York : Pergamon Press, 1981.
Edition:First edition.
Series:Pergamon international library of science, technology, engineering, and social studies.
Subjects:
Science > Methodology.
Knowledge, Theory of.
epistemology.
Knowledge, Theory of
Science > Methodology
Online Access:Click for online access
Table of Contents:
  • Front Cover; The Manufacture of Knowledge: An Essay on the Constructivist and Contextual Nature of Science; Copyright Page; Preface; Acknowledgements; Table of Contents; Chapter 1. The Scientist as a Practical Reasoner: Introduction to a Constructivist and Contextual Theory of Knowledge; 1.1 Facts and Fabrications; 1.2 The Constructivist Interpretation I: Nature and the Laboratory; 1.3 The Constructivist Interpretation II: The ""Decision Ladenness"" of Fact-Fabrication; 1.4 The Laboratory: Context of Discovery or Context of Validation?; 1.5 The Contextuality of Laboratory Construction.
  • 1.6 Contextual Contingency as a Principle of Change1.7 The Constructivist Interpretation III: Innovation and Selection; 1.8 Sources of Reconstruction: The Internal and the External; 1.9 Sensitive and Frigid Methodologies; 1.10 From the Question Why to the Question How; 1.11 The Scientist as a Practical Reasoner; 1.12 The Cognitive and the Practical Reasoner; 1.13 Data and Presentation; Notes; Chapter 2. The Scientist as an Indexical Reasoner: The Contextuality and the Opportunism of Research; 2.1 Bringing Space and Time Back In: The Indexical Logic and the Opportunism of Research.
  • 2.2 Local Idiosyncrasies2.3 Occasioned Selections and the Oscillation of Decision Criteria; 2.4 The Neglected Research Site: Organisation vs. Laboratory Situation; 2.5 Variable Rules, and Power; 2.6 Conclusion; Notes; Chapter 3. The Scientist as an Analogical Reasoner: A Principle of Orientation and a Critique of the Metaphor Theory of Innovation; 3.1 The Metaphor Theory of Innovation; 3.2 The Scientists' Accounts of Innovation; 3.3 Analogy Relations and the Opportunistic Logic of Research; 3.4 The Opportunism and the Conservatism of Analogical Reasoning.
  • 3.5 Ethnotheories of Innovation, or the Assumptions Behind Accounts of Innovation3.6 A Metaphor- or Analogy-Theory of Failure and Mistake; 3.7 Conclusion; Notes; Chapter 4. The Scientist as a Socially Situated Reasoner: From Scientific Communities to Transscientific Fields; 4.1 The Scientific Community as a Unit of Contextual Organisation; 4.2 Quasi-Economic Models: From Community Gift-Giving to Community Capitalism; 4.3 The Scientist as an Economic Reasoner or 'Who are the Entrepreneurs?
  • 4.4 The Labour Interpretation; 4.5 Variable Transscientific Fields; 4.6 Resource-Relationships.
  • 4.7 Resource-Relationships: Ultrafragile and Grounded in Conflict4.8 The Transscientific Connection of Research; 4.9 Indeterminacy and the Transscientific Connection of Research; Notes; Chapter 5. The Scientist as a Literary Reasoner, Or the Transformation of Laboratory Reason; 5.1 The ""Products"" of Research; 5.2 The Grounding of a Research Effort in the Laboratory; 5.3 The Grounding of a Research Effort in the Scientific Paper; 5.4 First and Final Versions: The Dissimulation of Literary Intention; 5.5 The Construction of a Web of Reason; 5.6 The Management of Relevance.

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