Latour & Woolgar 1986 – The Creation of Order out of Disorder¶

In brief

The final chapter of Laboratory Life summarises the book's argument about how scientific facts are constructed in a laboratory (pp. 235–236) [U]. The authors link six concepts – construction, agonistic, materialisation, credibility, circumstances and noise – and then retell laboratory life as the creation of order out of disorder (pp. 236–247) [U]. Reality is the consequence of settling a dispute, not its cause (p. 236), and statements too costly to modify are what counts as reality (p. 243) [U]. Finally they argue that their own account is constructed in the same way, and is in this sense "no more than fiction" (pp. 252–258) [U].

Research question and main claim¶

The chapter asks how the different concepts of the book are related, and what the status of their own constructed account is, given that scientific activity consists of constructing accounts that are sometimes transformed into stabilised objects (p. 235) [U].
Main claim: scientific activity is ‘not about nature’, but ‘a fierce fight to construct reality’ (p. 243) [U].
The result of constructing a fact is that it appears unconstructed by anyone (p. 240) [U].
There is no essential difference between their account and the scientists' accounts; the only difference is that the scientists have a laboratory and the authors have a text (pp. 254, 257) [U].

Theoretical perspective¶

Each concept is borrowed from a different author: construction (Knorr), agonistic (Lyotard), materialisation/reification (Sartre, Bachelard's phenomenotechnique), credibility (Bourdieu), circumstances (Serres) and noise (Brillouin's information theory) (pp. 236–240) [U].
The order-from-disorder idea draws on Brillouin, Maxwell's demon, Monod's chance and necessity, Jacob and above all Michel Serres (pp. 244, 249–251) [U].
They relate their position to history of science, studies of informal communication, citation analysis and studies of negotiation between scientists (pp. 251–252) [U].
They do not claim to advance an original ‘paradigm’ (p. 260, n. 22) [U].

Empirical material and context¶

The chapter itself summarises findings from earlier chapters: participant observation in a neuroendocrinology laboratory, where the observer also worked as a technician (pp. 245, 255) [U].
The central case is the construction of the structure of TRF (TRH), which took eight years and a million dollars' worth of equipment (pp. 236, 246) [U].
Place and period are not stated in this chapter: Not found in the text.

Method¶

Anthropological participant observation of a laboratory, by an observer who was a ‘stranger, a foreigner, and a layman’ (p. 256) [U].
The observer built his own ‘inscription devices’: time charts of who did what, citation counts from the SCI, notebooks (pp. 254–255) [U].
Careful attention to their own vocabulary, avoiding distinctions such as social/technical and fact/artefact as starting points (pp. 253–254) [U].

Key concepts¶

Concept	How the source defines or uses it	Page	U/T
construction	The slow, practical craftwork by which inscriptions are superimposed and accounts backed up or dismissed	236	U
agonistic field	The sum of operations on statements; similar to any other political field of contention	237	U
materialisation / reification	Once a statement stabilises it becomes part of tacit skills or equipment in another laboratory	238	U
credibility	Links economic and epistemological notions; credit, accreditation, accounts	238–239	U
circumstances	Science is entirely fabricated out of circumstance, yet appears to escape it	239	U
noise / signal	Information measured against a background of equally probable events	239–241	U
inscription / inscription devices	Writing as a material operation of creating order, not just transferring information	245	U
black box	Earlier arguments incorporated so that raising alternatives becomes prohibitively costly	242, 259	U
reality	The set of statements considered too costly to modify; ‘that which cannot be changed at will’	243, 260	U
fiction	Used in a non-committed sense, with connotations of literature and writing accounts	257, 261	U

How privacy and private data are understood¶

Topic not addressed. The chapter is about the construction of scientific facts [T].

Arguments and findings¶

The difference between fact and artefact should not be the starting point; it is through practical operations that a statement becomes a fact or an artefact (p. 236) [U].
Distinguishing between the ‘politics’ of science and its ‘truth’ gains little; the same qualities are needed to make a point and to out-manoeuvre a competitor (p. 237) [U].
The most common technique is to raise the cost for others of proposing equally probable alternatives (p. 241) [U].
Laboratories are obsessed with inscriptions: ‘a wall of archives, labels, protocol books, figures, and papers’ stands between scientists and chaos (p. 245) [U].
The laboratory also produces disorder through accumulated data, and must select statements from it (p. 246) [U].
From a contingent beginning, as in the game of go, certain moves become necessary, not because of a pre-existing order but because the cost of not making them is prohibitive (pp. 248–249) [U].
The methods of ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ science are hard to tell apart in principle (p. 256) [U].

Limitations the source itself mentions¶

Their usage of the noise concept is ‘very metaphorical’; they have not calculated a signal-to-noise ratio (pp. 239–240) [U].
A full treatment of order from disorder would go beyond the scope of the monograph (p. 247) [U].
Their account is weak compared with the scientists' constructions, because of a large imbalance in resources (pp. 255–256) [U].
Their own account will now become part of a field of contention (p. 258) [U].

What the source does not cover¶

Government documents, policy or the state [T].
Privacy or data in the sense of the thesis [T].
The rest of the book (chapters 1–5) is not included, so details referred to there cannot be checked [T].

Possible relevance for the thesis¶

Background for the vocabulary of inscriptions and construction that Asdal draws on when reading documents [T].
The point that a fact comes to look unconstructed (p. 240) may be a question to ask of how government documents present knowledge about data and privacy [T].
The authors' reflection on the status of their own account (pp. 252–258) may be useful for a methods chapter on the researcher's own text [T].
The laboratory context is far from government documents, so the relevance is mainly theoretical and methodological [T].

Connections to other sources¶

Asdal 2015 – Asdal cites Laboratory Life (1986) on inscription devices and treats expert reports as inscription devices (Asdal pp. 75, 88) [T – from the Asdal card]. This chapter explains inscription as a material operation of creating order (p. 245) [U].
Marres 2007 – thematic: STS [T].
Foucault 2008 – thematic: Foucault (1978) is mentioned in the notes in connection with a political economy of truth (p. 258, n. 8) and événementialisation (p. 251) [U]; this is not the panopticism text [T].

Key quotes¶

“By observing artefact construction, we showed that reality was the consequence of the settlement of a dispute rather that its cause.” (p. 236)

“Scientific activity is not "about nature," it is a fierce fight to construct reality.” (p. 243)

“Between scientists and chaos, there is nothing but a wall of archives, labels, protocol books, figures, and papers.” (p. 245)

“The result of the construction of a fact is that it appears unconstructed by anyone” (p. 240)

“The only difference is that they have a laboratory. We, on the other hand, have a text, this present text.” (p. 257)

Open questions for Rebekka¶

Is this chapter the one you use, or do you also use chapter 2 (where inscription devices are introduced)?
Is the text mainly theoretical background for Asdal, or do you want to use Latour & Woolgar directly?
Do government documents make knowledge about data use appear ‘unconstructed’? Where could you look for that?
Is the authors' reflection on their own text relevant for how you describe your own role in the methods chapter?