The Care of the Self and Blind Variation: An Ethnography of the Empirical in Two Sciences

Abstract

In this paper, I want to present two stories about kinds of empiricism; about the ways a science, experimental high energy physics, understands and enacts empirical research, and about how this understanding differs from that of another science, molecular biology. An ethnography of the empirical in different sciences has never been written. One reason for this surely lies in the fact that the meaning of empirical procedure is thought to be common to all experimental sciences, describable in terms of a few injunctions, and spelled out in any textbook introduction to the respective field. By studying scientific laboratories, the new sociology of science overcame the textbook image of science11, but it did not break away from the assumption that all sciences conform to similar procedures, exemplify similar attitudes to the empirical world, and form part of one culture. It also focussed on the role played by contingencies, interpretation and negotiation in the creation of scientific knowledge. What got left out of the picture was the construction of the empirical machineries involved in this creation.