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Article ID: CBB408179447

The Shadow Biosphere Hypothesis: Non-knowledge in Emerging Disciplines (2020)

Valentina Marcheselli (Author)

Science, Technology, and Human Values
Volume: 45
Issue: 4
Pages: 636-658
Publication date: 2020
Language: English

DOI: 10.1177/0162243919881207

URI: https://doi.org/10.1177/0162243919881207

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Interdisciplinary approach to knowledge Science and technology studies (STS) Lakes Biosphere Astrobiology 21st century California (U.S.)

All life on Earth shares the same ancestor, the most primitive form of life that arose, in still unknown circumstances, more than 3.5 billion years ago. At least this is what is commonly assumed. Astrobiologists have revisited this assumption and advanced the hypothesis of the existence of a “shadow biosphere” on Earth: a parallel tree of life whose instances, being different at the molecular level to the kind of life we are used to, would remain hidden from view. In this paper, I take the emergence of the so-called shadow biosphere hypothesis and the controversial discovery of GFAJ-1, a microbe thriving in the arsenic-rich waters of Mono Lake, as an entry point to look into the strategic role of non-knowledge claims. I juxtapose the Latourian black-box, that is, those undiscussed technoscientific artifacts that are taken for granted in scientific practice, with the shadowy nature of non-knowledge claims in order to pay closer attention to the contingent, active, performative, and always social nature of the making of what is unknown. I conclude this paper by claiming that in the negotiation of what is unknown, emerging disciplines position themselves within the larger scientific community.

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Article Matthew Shindell (2020) Outlining the Black Box: An Introduction to Four Papers. Science, Technology, and Human Values (pp. 567-574). unapi

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