LANGUAGE IN INDIA

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Volume 25:1 January 2025
ISSN 1930-2940

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         B. Mallikarjun, Ph.D.
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         Pammi Pavan Kumar, Ph.D.
         Soibam Rebika Devi, M.Sc., Ph.D.

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Deconstructing the Deconstruction of Science in Laboratory Life: The Construction of Scientific Facts

B.V. Ramaprasad, Ph.D.


Laboratory Life: The Construction of Scientific Facts
Courtesy: www.amazon.com

The book Laboratory Life: The Construction of Scientific Facts (first published in 1979) as the title suggests is an effort to prove that the content of Science is also socially constructed. It can be seen as an addition to the postmodern ‘generalized skepticism with regard to scientific truth’ (Norris 457). The book deconstructs the idea that Scientists are talking about a ‘truth’ out there and that scientific truths are also a result of negotiations among scientists. I am trying in this paper to show the ‘aporias’, ‘slips’, ‘contradictions’, etc. in this book. I am just trying to show the inconsistencies in this book. I am trying to show how the book is confusing in its methods and how it often uses the very scientific ‘methods’ and vocabulary that suits a ‘scientific’ investigation while trying to prove that ‘science’ is just another narrative.

The idea that science enjoys a special status with regard to ‘truth’ out there has been questioned repeatedly. As Newton says, antagonism to science springs not just from people of ‘spiritual beliefs’, but also from the ‘practitioners of the more recent and less developed social scientists’, who argue that the results of science have nothing to do with ‘Nature and the external world under investigation but are simply narratives, like myths and fairy tales, or the outcome of social agreements’ (2-3). There have been many responses from scientists and philosophers of science to this relativist and constructivist ideas of science (see Newton, Chalmers, Gribbins). I would not be looking at all these debates between the ‘constructivist’ and ‘realist’ approaches to scince in this short paper, but only at the inconsistencies in one book, which infact claims that even the content of scinece is not about reality. I think it is important that when we speak repeatedly of either the need for ‘scientific temper’ or the need to escape from the ‘hegemony’ of the science to seriously understand these debates about science, though this particular book was published long ago.

Let us begin with a brief introduction to the book in question. The book is based on the field research carried out by Latour for twenty-one months between October 1975 and August 1977 in the Roger Guillemin’s scientific laboratory at the Salk institute for Biological Studies, San Diego, California. The researcher closely observed the processes at the laboratory and the interactions between the scientists, collected a lot of data and then analyzed it. The results came out in the form of the book written in collaboration with Steeve Woolgar. The book as the authors accept adds to the strong program of sociology as envisioned by Bloor (Latour Bruno 107).

This is only the beginning part of the article. PLEASE CLICK HERE TO READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE IN PRINTER-FRIENDLY VERSION.

B.V. Ramaprasad, Ph.D.
Professor
Post Graduate Department of Studies in English
Kuvempu University
Shankaraghatta 577451
Karnataka, India
ram.prasad.u@gmail.com
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