scholarly journals Ontological Opportunism

2021 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 27-51
Author(s):  
Anne Dippel
Keyword(s):  
Scientific Knowledge ◽  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Science And Technology Studies ◽  
High Energy Physics ◽  
High Energy ◽  
New Materialism ◽  
Discursive Practice ◽  
Feminist Science ◽  
Scientific Knowledge Production ◽  
Energy Physics

Understanding inanimate ‘nature-as-such’ is traditionally considered the object of physics in Europe. The discipline acts as exemplary discursive practice of scientific knowledge production. However, as my ethnographic investigation of doing and communicating high energy physics demonstrates, animist conceptions seep into the ontological understanding of physics’ ‘objects’, resonating with contemporary concepts of new materialism, new animism and feminist science and technology studies, signifying an atmospheric shift in the understanding of ‘nature’. Drawing on my fieldwork at CERN, I argue that scientists take an opportunist stance to animate concepts of ‘nature’, depending on whom they’re talking to. I am showing how the inanimate in physics is reanimated especially in scientific outreach activities and how the universalist scientific cosmology overlaps with indigenous cosmologies, as for example the Lakota ones.

e-Sciences as research technologies: reconfiguring disciplines, globalizing knowledge

2008 ◽  
Vol 47 (2) ◽  
pp. 131-157 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ralph Schroeder
Keyword(s):  
Knowledge Production ◽  
High Energy Physics ◽  
Science Research ◽  
High Energy ◽  
Research Projects ◽  
Distributed Resources ◽  
Networked Computing ◽  
Hyperlink Analysis ◽  
Advanced Computing ◽  
Energy Physics

This article examines recent e-science initiatives through the lens of the concept of `research technologies'. It has been argued that e-science research, which makes use of advanced computing tools to share distributed resources via networks, changes the disciplinary nature of research towards greater interdisciplinarity and paves the way for the increasing globalization of research. However, these claims need to be instantiated in concrete research practices. The essay therefore presents three examples of research projects where these two features can be demonstrated. More generally these three projects — in social science hyperlink analysis, high-energy physics, and astronomy — are examples of `research technologies', which, it has been argued, are often a radical source of innovation. The article describes how the three projects illustrate these arguments about research technologies, but also how this concept is limited as e-science research is still ongoing. The conclusion assesses how the notion of research technologies is useful for understanding how networked computing technologies are changing the current landscape of knowledge production.

scholarly journals The optical unconscious of Big Data: Datafication of vision and care for unknown futures

2019 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 205395171982685 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniela Agostinho
Keyword(s):  
Big Data ◽  
Science And Technology Studies ◽  
New Materialism ◽  
Discursive Practice ◽  
Popular Discourse ◽  
Feminist Science ◽  
Knowing That ◽  
Speculative Ethics ◽  
And Control ◽  
Optical Unconscious

Ever since Big Data became a mot du jour across social fields, optical metaphors such as the microscope began to surface in popular discourse to describe and qualify its epistemological impact. While the persistence of optics seems to be at odds with the datafication of vision, this article suggests that the optical metaphor offers an opportunity to reflect about the material consequences of the modes of seeing and knowing that currently shape datafied worlds. Drawing on feminist new materialism, the article investigates the optical metaphor as a material-discursive practice that actively constitutes the world, as metaphors imply modes of thinking, knowing and doing that have material enactions. Expanding visual culture theories, the notion of ‘optical unconscious’ is taken up to discuss the tensions between displacement and persistence of optics within datafied worlds, that is, how optical vision is displaced but also mobilised and repurposed by data-driven knowledge. In dialogue with feminist science and technology studies and speculative ethics, I suggest that the datafication of vision offers a chance to reconceptualize the sense of sight towards a sensorial engagement with Big Data premised on responsibility, care, and an ethics of unknowability. Within this framework, vision may be conceived differently, perhaps not only as enhancement and control, but as generator of new possibilities. Ultimately, the article proposes that the visual theories after which Big Data is being imagined matter not only for our understanding of Big Data's epistemic potential, but also for the possibility of shaping emerging data worlds.

scholarly journals Symmetry, beauty and belief in high-energy physics

2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 22-36 ◽  
Author(s):  
Arianna Borrelli
Keyword(s):  
Scientific Knowledge ◽  
High Energy Physics ◽  
High Energy ◽  
Aesthetic Judgement ◽  
Knowl Edge ◽  
Production And Consumption ◽  
The Many ◽  
The One ◽  
Energy Physics

This paper engages with the aesthetics of knowl-edge, both in its sense as the connection between knowledge and ‘aesthetic’ judgements of beauty, or ugliness, and of the many ‘aesthetic’ – that is to say sensually perceivable – dimensions of knowledge, which are always to be seen to be constituting an epistemic factor in its production and consumption. On the one hand I analyse how in recent decades the connection between beauty and truth has been systematically employed to both inspire and guide research in high-energy physics; at the same time I also show how this use of aesthetic judgement only reveals its constitutive role in physics research when paying attention to the broad range of aesthetic strategies employed for expressing scientific knowledge.

scholarly journals Spaces between

2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 3
Author(s):  
Roger A Søraa
Keyword(s):  
Scientific Knowledge ◽  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Science And Technology Studies ◽  
Science And Technology ◽  
Field Experiences ◽  
Technological Innovations ◽  
Epistemic Practices ◽  
Interest In Science ◽  
Technology Studies ◽  
Scientific Knowledge Production

There is an increasing interest in Science and Technology Studies (STS), as the field experiences growth with respect to the scope of topics, methods and theories deployed to learn and uncover epistemic practices for scientific knowledge production, technological innovations, users and producers. 

High-energy physics and the nature of matter

1965 ◽  
Vol 86 (8) ◽  
pp. 589-590
Author(s):  
E.V. Shpol'skii
Keyword(s):  
High Energy Physics ◽  
High Energy ◽  
Energy Physics ◽  
Nature Of Matter

Development of Silicon Sensor Characterization System for Future High Energy Physics Experiments

2015 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 41-45
Author(s):  
Preeti Kumari ◽  
◽  
Kavita Lalwani ◽  
Ranjit Dalal ◽  
Ashutosh Bhardwaj ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
High Energy Physics ◽  
High Energy ◽  
Physics Experiments ◽  
Silicon Sensor ◽  
Energy Physics
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