For the lay public, science is often associated with the laboratory and its equipment. This is why representation of scientific apparatus in texts targeting non-professionals is worth a close look. An analysis of a variety of popular science texts (books, articles, blogs) and several lab lit novels suggests that there is no one shared way that popular texts use to depict scientific equipment. In fact, theoretical approaches to apparatus representation and treatment suggest several possibilities from techniques that avoid linguistic descriptions to approaches that equate the instruments with the scientists who use them. Popular science and lab lit employ a combination of these methods and in some instances extend their boundaries. Thus lat lit novels capitalize on emotional attachments between researchers and their equipment, producing descriptions of apparatus that are complex and that function as a means of characterization for the scientists. Popular science, on the other hand, chooses more conventional treatments of apparatus, providing generalized mentions for most pieces of equipment and singling out only a few extraordinary instruments for detailed attention. While both genres rely heavily on language-dependent treatment of apparatus (as opposed to visual representation), they do it in markedly different ways. Popular science texts are driven by the need to introduce a discovery, thus focusing on a product of laboratory activity and apparatus use, while lab lit novels are centered on the activities that lead to a discovery, creating texts more concerned with the process of apparatus use. If lab lit highlights the daily work of ordinary equipment, popular science focuses on the grand discoveries achieved with the help of unusual instruments.
...More
Thesis
Jackson Pope;
(2016)
Listening at the Lab: Bird Watchers and the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology
(/isis/citation/CBB585978342/)
Article
Lundgren, Frans;
(2013)
The Politics of Participation: Francis Galton's Anthropometric Laboratory and the Making of Civic Selves
(/isis/citation/CBB001213507/)
Article
Anna Krzywoszynska;
Watson Matt;
Alastair Buckley;
Prue Chiles;
Nicky Gregson;
Helen Holmes;
Jose Mawyin;
(September 2018)
Opening Up the Participation Laboratory: The Cocreation of Publics and Futures in Upstream Participation
(/isis/citation/CBB795838743/)
Article
Strasser, Bruno J;
(2002)
Totems de laboratoires, microscopes électroniques et réseaux scientifiques: L'émergence de la biologie moléculaire à Genève (1945-1960)
(/isis/citation/CBB000200404/)
Article
Alistair Marcus Kwan;
(2017)
“Do Not Kill Guinea Pig before Setting up Apparatus”: The Kymograph's Lost Educational Context
(/isis/citation/CBB180648564/)
Article
Kijan Espahangizi;
(2022)
Science in Glass: Material Pathologies in Laboratory Research, Glassware Standardization, and the (Un)Natural History of a Modern Material, 1900s–1930s
(/isis/citation/CBB711343544/)
Article
Osseo-Asare, Abena Dove;
(2013)
Scientific Equity: Experiments in Laboratory Education in Ghana
(/isis/citation/CBB001321220/)
Chapter
Klein, Ursula;
(2004)
Chemical Technoscience in Eighteenth-Century Europe
(/isis/citation/CBB000411176/)
Article
Kijan Espahangizi;
(2015)
From Topos to Oikos: The Standardization of Glass Containers as Epistemic Boundaries in Modern Laboratory Research (1850–1900)
(/isis/citation/CBB192363093/)
Thesis
Case, Judd Ammon;
(2010)
Geometry of Empire: Radar as Logistical Medium
(/isis/citation/CBB001567172/)
Article
Rooij, Arjan Van;
(2011)
Knowledge, Money and Data: An Integrated Account of the Evolution of Eight Types of Laboratory
(/isis/citation/CBB001024709/)
Article
Büttner, Johannes;
(2002)
Naturwissenschaftliche Methoden im klinischen Laboratorium des 19. Jahrhunderts und ihr Einfluß auf das klinische Denken
(/isis/citation/CBB000201116/)
Article
Stefan Helmreich;
(2022)
Flipping the Field
(/isis/citation/CBB219887602/)
Chapter
Sibum, H. Otto;
(2004)
Experience-Experiment: The Changing Experiential Basis of Physics
(/isis/citation/CBB000411177/)
Article
Linn, Mott;
(2005)
Photographs from 1892: Clark University's New Laboratories for Biology and Psychology
(/isis/citation/CBB000650150/)
Article
Turner, Steven;
(2004)
The Reluctant Instrument Maker: A. P. Gage and the Introduction of the Student Laboratory
(/isis/citation/CBB000650148/)
Book
Doing, Park;
(2009)
Velvet Revolution at the Synchrotron: Biology, Physics, and Change in Science
(/isis/citation/CBB000952121/)
Article
Christine Lehman;
(2019)
Les lieux d’activité du chimiste Pierre-Joseph Macquer (1718-1784) : laboratoires et instruments
(/isis/citation/CBB371079034/)
Chapter
Martinón-Torres, Marcos;
(2007)
The Tools of the Chymist: Archaeological and Scientific Analyses of Early Modern Laboratories
(/isis/citation/CBB000773490/)
Chapter
Nicolaïdis, Efthymios;
(2000)
Scientific Instruments, Laboratories and the 19th-Century Greek State
(/isis/citation/CBB000401104/)
Be the first to comment!