Article ID: CBB000950510

Placing or Replacing the Laboratory in the History of Science? (2008)

unapi

Gooday, Graeme J. N. (Author)


Isis: International Review Devoted to the History of Science and Its Cultural Influences
Volume: 99
Pages: 783--795


Publication Date: 2008
Edition Details: Focus Section: Laboratory History
Language: English

This essay presents an alternative to interpretations of laboratories as institutions for controlled investigation of nature that are either placeless or set apart. It historicizes the claim by showing how the meaning of laboratory has both changed and diversified over the last two centuries. Originally a laboratory could be a site of organic growth or material manufacture, but it can now be a specialized domain for technological development, educational training, or quality testing. The essay then introduces some contingencies of geography and gender by showing how boundaries between laboratories and other spaces---especially domestic kitchens---could be permeable or nonexistent; importantly, some spaces served as experimental laboratories without ever being designated as such. A key corollary, however, is that there were limits to this permeability: not all social spaces could be turned consensually into laboratories, and laboratory users could be intolerant of certain imported technical cultures.

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Article Kohler, Robert E. (2008) Lab History: Reflections. Isis: International Review Devoted to the History of Science and Its Cultural Influences (p. 761). unapi

Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB000950510/

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Authors & Contributors
Kohler, Robert E.
Watson, Matt
Drago, Elisabeth Berry
Chiles, Prue
Holmes, Helen
Fanny Kieffer
Concepts
Laboratories
Historiography
Chemistry
Research institutes; research stations
Laboratory techniques and procedures
Government sponsored science
Time Periods
20th century, late
20th century, early
20th century
Early modern
Renaissance
21st century
Places
United States
Florence (Italy)
Netherlands
Sweden
Germany
France
Institutions
Galleria degli Uffizi (Florence)
Diamond Ordnance Fuze Laboratories (U.S.)
Laboratoire de Psychologie Physiologique de la Sorbonne
United States. National Bureau of Standards
Bell Telephone Laboratories
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