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Kevin Liggieri

»Am Ende hängen wir doch ab, von Wissen, das wir machten.« Das Labor als Ort der epistemischen Produktion und Konstruktion | „In the end we all depend on the knowledge that we made ourselves“ - Laboratory as a place of episemic production and construction

 

If one believes what people in science, the media and politics say, the laboratory is the modern place of knowledge and scientific cognition, which (re)presents knowledge as something well founded. The basic idea is that in it, 'objective researchers' find the truths of nature through the rational application of theories and technology. Correspondingly, Heidegger claims that “research is the nature of what one calls science nowadays”. Moreover, the laboratory is the center of science and by that maybe even the spatial junction of Western society, which is ruled and (self-)defined by knowledge, in itself. It is, however, problematic that “objects of knowledge become real objects and not vice versa”. Knowledge is not purely theoretical, but is constantly being practiced – especially in the laboratory, through structures, processes and environments, which themselves are “specific epistemic cultures” in turn.

In my view, it is too short-sighted to define 'knowledge' as a purely intellectual and technological product and just not as a „process in special contexts of production”. In so arguing, I partly follow Knorr Cetina,who states that “instead of regarding the products of science as somehow mirroring reality, one could also understand them as being selectively fabricated 'from' this reality”. The dubiousness of the idea of “finding knowledge” now becomes clear. I will first endeavor to bring several ethnographic (chemistry students' laboratory journals), philosophical (epistemological analysis) as well as historical (the laboratory in Early Modern Times and in the 18th century, with reference to the 'workshop') approaches in connection to each other. Then I will put my process-oriented interpretation of these “problematization fields” up for discussion. Therefore, well-suited to the topic of our conference: Thinking about the spatial epistemology by exemplifying the laboratory. It is my attempt to dive into empirical, scientific laboratory studies as well as to open up the view on the genesis of these discourse formations and social collectives.

I just stated that 'my place' was suited to the topic of the conference, but I directly have to backpedal, as I could also claim polemically that the laboratory is exactly a place of non-thinking, because knowledge is produced practically there. If one follows Knorr Cetina, the laboratory is a space of action and not of thought. Concerning this topographical examination, I myself am interested in its epistemology and by that in the historical conditions under which and the means by which things are transformed into objects of knowledge. In particular, I'm interested in the epistemological point of departure and the continuation of the laboratory as a place of the production, inscription (writing) and cultivation of knowledge.

 

 

Kevin Liggieri machte sein Studium der Germanistik und Philosophie (Master of Arts/Master of Education) an der Ruhr-Universität Bochum. Er arbeitet als wissenschaftliche Hilfskraft für die Mercator Research Group im Bereich „Räume anthropologischen Wissens (Anthropologische Philosophie/Biophilosophie)“ bei Prof. Dr. Christina Brandt.

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