Browsing by Author "Pitt, Joseph C."

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    Appropriating Wittgenstein: Patterns of Influence and Citation in Realist and Social Constructivist Accounts of Science
    Russell, Mark C. (Virginia Tech, 1997-11-21)
    In this thesis, I draw attention to patterns at the intersection of (a) interpretations of science in two journals (Philosophy of Science, and Social Studies of Science) and (b) references to Wittgenstein's writings. Interpretations of science can be classed according to the degree to which they support a realist or social constructivist understanding of the entities described by current scientific theories. By tracing the intellectual traditions from which these interpretations emerged, I develop an abstracted classification of these positions. Since this classification does not meaningfully map onto the positions articulated by the writers sampled here (which is telling about intellectual histories generally), I develop a new, more promising scheme of classification. I find that Wittgenstein is appropriated more often in support of social constructivist views of science, but that reasons for this support are generally weak. Using a novel measure of content which I call "appeal-to-authority," I show that there is a significant difference between these journals in their use of Wittgenstein's writings. But there is a subtle methodological argument at work here as well. I show that methods of analysis which rely exclusively on intellectual histories, bibliometrics, and globablizing statements about the products of science suffer serious limitations. In short, this thesis reflexively shows that the methods upon which it is based allow room for considerable bias and manipulation, and thereby implicates many bodies of work built upon these methods.
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    Artists for Humanity's Sake: An Ameliorative Project Concerning Artists and the Existentialist Struggle Against the Dominant Narrative
    Shepard, Kathryn Ann (Virginia Tech, 2021-06-25)
    Existentialist ethics tell us that we as individuals cannot be truly liberated until all are. This means that we must pursue a more just world for all. Interestingly enough, as we look at the evidences of the ways in which cultural violence have been used historically and today as a means to withhold power from the people, we find that participating in the arts grants a great deal of power to the people. Thus, accessibility to participating in artistic acts or the creative process become fundamental to activism for social justice. This work lays out five fundamental aspects of the creative process that help us move towards liberation—confrontation of ideas, vulnerability, choice making, truth or world building, and authentic identity formation. In order to realize the full potential of positive impact the creative process can have in the realm of social justice, however, we must reframe our understanding of artists and the creative process in our society. This is a call to action both to artists and audience to recognize and wield the power of the arts to liberate all within our society.
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    At the Margins of Modern Science: Leviathan and the Air-Pump as a Case Study for Meta-analysis of Contemporary Science and Technology Studies
    Gold, Anna Keller (Virginia Tech, 1999-05-03)
    In this thesis I will offer an extended discussion and critique of an important social constructivist book, Steven Shapin and Simon Schaffer's Leviathan and the Air-Pump (1985), focusing on its reception and its standing in science and technology studies in the fifteen years since its publication. This work claims to be an "origins" story for the modern form of life that we now call the scientific community, and this claim has not itself been contested strongly by other scholars. Central to Shapin and Schaffer's argument for the socially constructed nature of scientific knowledge, is the contrast they find between the community orientation of Robert Boyle and the anti-community stance of Thomas Hobbes. In the course of this thesis, I question the validity not only of this contrast, but of the origins story itself. I suggest that while experimental, communally-practiced science and modernity did emerge together around the end of the seventeenth-century, the qualities of science that Shapin and Schaffer suggest are distinctive of modern science might more accurately be represented as distinctive of modern science. In other words, I suggest that the story of Leviathan and the Air-Pump is not so much an origins story for science as it is emblematic of the early influence of widespread European modernist culture on scientific practices. Leviathan and the Air-Pump is an important case to study in order to unravel the strands of science and modernity because it occupies simultaneously both the early and late margins of the modern period: first, by taking the contested but emergent modernism represented by Robert Boyle as its subject and, second, as a work of scholarship that sits on the far margins of the modern period. My method is to treat Shapin and Schaffer's work as a central primary source for understanding how contemporary science and technology studies scholarship deals with early modern science. A side product of this analysis is to suggest strongly that Shapin and Schaffer's account of the social construction of scientific knowledge is itself socially constructed: that is, it is highly selective in its presentation and interpretation of historical evidence. I also consider what the implications may be for separating modernity from science, and for thinking about how science might be practiced in the age that will follow -- perhaps is already following -- the modern period.
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    Atheism and Analogy: Aquinas Against the Atheists
    Linford, Daniel J. (Virginia Tech, 2014-06-04)
    In the 13th century, Thomas Aquinas developed two models for how humans may speak of God - either by the analogy of proportion or by the analogy of proportionality. Aquinas's doctrines initiated a theological debate concerning analogy that spanned several centuries. In the 18th century, there appeared two closely related arguments for atheism which both utilized analogy for their own purposes. In this thesis, I show that one argument, articulated by the French materialist Paul-Henri Thiry Baron d'Holbach, is successful in showing that God-talk, as conceived of using the analogy of proportion, is unintelligible non-sense. In addition, I show that another argument, articulated by Anthony Collins (Vindication of Divine Attributes), George Berkeley (chapter IV of Alciphron), and David Hume (chapter XII of Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion) can be restructured into an argument for the position that the analogy of proportionality makes the distinction between atheism and theism merely verbal. Since both of these are undesirable consequences for the theist, I conclude that Aquinas's doctrine of analogy does not withstand the assault of 18th century atheists.
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    Beaver Dams, Spider Webs, and the Sticky Wicket: An Investigation On What Counts as Technology and What Counts as Knowledge
    Shew, Ashley (Virginia Tech, 2007-05-09)
    Philosophers of technology have often considered only the tools and processes used and conducted by humans, but natural structures and man-made structures are not always easily discernable from one another. The complexity of a spider web is not matched by many human-made technologies. Beaver dams, beehives, and ant hills are great creations made by non-human animals. Davis Baird has argued that our scientific instruments bear knowledge in important ways, and the idea of technological knowledge bears interestingly on discussions of natural artifacts. Baird thinks his argument for instruments bearing knowledge can be extended, but how far can it be taken? Do "natural" technologies, like spider webs, bear technological knowledge of some sort? This move to consider whether natural artifacts might bear knowledge rubs interestingly against current definitions of technology which include human agency or progression as important. If we find that some natural artifacts seem to bear knowledge in the way Baird describes, technological knowledge would not be the exclusive domain of humans. Our current definitions of technology seem incongruent with our view of knowledge and our knowledge of natural artifacts. The purpose of this paper is to sort out the inconsistencies between current philosophical literature on knowledge and on technology. In sorting out the inconsistencies we find, I recommend a spectrum approach with regard to technology based on the epistemological status of the artifact. Using observations from anthropology and biology, I suggest a scale with regard to technological behavior, tool use, and technology.
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    A comparative analysis of wood-supply systems from a cross- cultural perspective
    Laestadius, Lars (Virginia Tech, 1990-07-06)
    An analytical tool must combine sufficient scope with cultural neutrality to be adequate for analyzing problems across technological style boundaries. The concept of a wood-supply system is proposed, defined as a mechanism generating a consistent flow of wood to a set of wood-consuming mills, beginning its work with the severing of trees and ending it by feeding a pulping digester or head saw. The contrast in wood flow between the wood-supply systems of the Southern United States and Sweden is explored. The systems accommodate surges in wood-consumption rates and changes in wood-supply difficulty differently .. The South maintains a small wood inventory by keeping considerable production capacity idle; Sweden keeps little capacity idle by maintaining a large cushion of wood inventories. The implications of differences in relative cost between wood in inventory and forcibly idle production capacity are discussed. As a result of the historically motivated emphasis on accounting for capacity in Sweden and for wood in the South, costs associated with wood inventories and idle capacity appear to have been overlooked in a mirror-image pattern. The transfer of equipment between harvesting styles whose evolution has been governed by different relative costs has a high risk of failure. Southern equipment is cheap, uncomplicated. robust, and dependable in order to survive forced idleness and to produce without buffer inventories. Swedish equipment is expensive, complex, sensitive, and less dependable, due to the freedom to produce at capacity and the occurrence of large buffer inventories. Equipment manufacturers need to estimate the relative cost of idle wood and idle capacity when analyzing equipment exports across style boundaries. Suggestions for further work include an exploration of the relative cost in each region, and the development of unbiased methods of accounting for idle resources. It is also suggested that the different interpretations of the concept of forestry in Europe and North America be explored.
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    Computers in organizations: a survey of PC Week articles between 1984 and 1988
    Burrows, Andrea (Virginia Tech, 1988-08-01)
    The concern of this thesis is the role technology plays in organizational change. The specific issue addressed is the introduction of personal computers (PCs) into work organizations. A review of the literature suggested that both sociological and technological factors must be taken into account when discussing technological change. PC Week magazine contains strategies which various companies used in introducing personal computers. A thematic content analysis of PC Week was carried out to test certain hypotheses. The articles were also treated as contemporary historical documents. Questions addressed included whether PCs contribute to centralization or decentralization in organizations, whether PCs differ in their organizational effects to mainframes, whether PCs are more successful in some types of organizations than in others, and whether an "opinion leader" plays a significant role in the introduction of PCs. From the content analysis and the texts, it was concluded that technology did not determine organizational change. While technology determined the limits of certain tools (PCs), organizational goals determined how PCs were implemented. Limited support was drawn for the suggestion that an opinion leader played a role in PC introduction. Little support was gained for the remaining hypotheses.
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    Conceptualizing technological change: technology transfer in the green revolution
    Parayil, Govindan (Virginia Tech, 1990)
    Technological change, and technology transfer as an aspect of this process, is examined by providing a comparative assessment of models of this phenomenon from economics, history, sociology, and neo-Schumpeterian-evolutionary studies. The Green Revolution, which is used as the empirical basis for testing these models, is generally referred to as the change in agricultural technology observed in some Third World countries in the 1960s and 70s as a result of the transfer of high-yielding varieties (HYVs) of seeds and a new culture of agricultural practice resulting in high productivity of the land. It is found that most of the examined models of technological change do not completely account for this process. It is argued that technological change should be conceptualized as a process of knowledge change. Artifactual change, which the examined models accentuate, should be viewed as the manifestation of the knowledge change at a secondary level. With the Green Revolution as the empirical basis, arguments are presented for a comprehensive model of technological change within the framework of "technology as knowledge."
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    Concretizing Sustainable Worlds: Environmentalism as a Politics of Technological Transformation
    Veak, Tyler J. (Virginia Tech, 2003-08-20)
    Andrew Feenberg, a philosopher of technology, argues for a democratic rationalization of technology, whereby subjugated actors intervene in the design process to achieve their interests. He claims that environmentalism represents one of the greatest opportunities for this kind of intervention. His suggestion seems viable; most if not all of the current environmental problems stem from maladaptive technologies. Transforming these technologies is therefore imperative if we are to move toward more sustainable societies. Feenberg, however, does not address the details of his proposal or offer more than a few brief examples of what he is advocating. I use Feenberg's Critical Theory of technology to analyze and assess various environmentalisms. Along the way I expose the deficiencies of his theory and attempt build on his work. One problem, however, is that environmentalism is by no means a homogonous entity; rather, it is composed of numerous strands with their own unique histories, aims, and strategies. I argue that of the various environmentalisms grassroots environmental justice resonates most with Feenberg's theory. To illustrate, I present a case study of the toxics movement that emerged out of the Love Canal incident. I conclude by showing how grassroots environmental justice could enhance their effectiveness by employing the suggested Critical Theory of technology.
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    Converging Elements in the Development of Late Seventeenth-Century Disciplinary Astronomy: Instrumentation, Education, and the Hevelius-Hooke Controversy
    Saridakis, Voula (Virginia Tech, 2001-09-24)
    In this dissertation, I examine astronomical practice in the second half of the seventeenth century by analyzing the nature of observation and instrumentation within an institutional and social context. I argue that astronomical practice was transformed by the convergence of several overlapping factors including the deployment of new instruments, the mathematical and astronomical education of practitioners, the gradual assimilation of new ideas, and the rise of scientific societies and networks. More specifically, I argue that the 1670's controversy between Johannes Hevelius and Robert Hooke and the ensuing debate that involved a larger circle of practitioners, helped establish a new foundation for the discipline of astronomy. In forcing practitioners to take sides, the controversy prompted them to define the precise nature of astronomical practice as well as the necessary qualifications for its practitioners. In Chapter 1, I discuss sixteenth and seventeenth-century astronomical instruments, and I provide a history of instrumentation from the use of positional measuring instruments in the late sixteenth century to the more widespread use of micrometers and telescopically-mounted positional measuring instruments in the late seventeenth century. Proceeding from the instruments to the people involved, in Chapters 2 and 3 I discuss the mathematical and astronomical community of the late sixteenth to late seventeenth centuries. The "community" included those individuals working both within and outside the universities. In Chapter 4, I discuss the Hevelius-Hooke controversy over the relative merits of naked-eye versus telescopic sights as the watershed in positional astronomy that defined the role of astronomers, shaped their methods of observation, and directed future research. In the final chapter of this study, Chapter 5, I discuss the work of Cassini at the Paris Observatory and Flamsteed at the Greenwich Observatory, and how their efforts were shaped by the Hevelius-Hooke controversy.
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    Creating Green Chemistry: Discursive Strategies of a Scientific Movement
    Roberts, Jody Alan (Virginia Tech, 2005-12-13)
    In this dissertation, I examine the evolution of the green chemistry movement from its inception in the early 1990s to the present day. I focus my study on the discursive strategies employed by leaders of the movement to establish green chemistry and to develop and institute changes in the practice of the chemical sciences. The study looks specifically at three different strategies. The first is the construction of a historical narrative. This history comes from the intersection of the chemical sciences with environmentalism in the United States retold to place chemistry in a central position for understanding global environmental health issues and green chemistry as the natural response to these problems. The second involves the attempts made to develop a concrete definition for green chemistry as well as a set of guiding principles for the practice of this alternative form of chemistry. The establishment of the definition and the principles, I argue, constitutes an important move in constituting the field as a very specific interdisciplinary group with a forged identity and the beginnings of a system for determining what properly "counts" as green chemistry. The third comes from the intersection of this history within the defining principles of the movement intersect to create a specific set of green chemistry practices, and how these practices manifest themselves in conference and pedagogical settings. Finally, I offer an overview of where the movement currently stands, offering a critical perspective on the future potential of the field. I argue that recent episodes indicate that the movement has not succeeded in accomplishing what it set out to do, and will continue to encounter problems unless a refashioning of the movement takes place. To offer perspective on green chemistry as a movement, I examine it through the lens of other (e.g., Frickel and Gross 2005) attempts to explore scientific movements as a special class of social movements.
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    Deliberative Democracy and Expertise: New Directions for 21st Century Technology Assessment
    Caron, Brandiff Robert (Virginia Tech, 2012-06-08)
    This dissertation presents the case for a normative vision of the relationship between technical experts and other non-expert members of a democratic citizenry. This vision is grounded in two key insights that have emerged from the field of science and technology studies. First, is the "third wave" science studies movement that identifies problems of expertise as the "pressing intellectual problem of the age." Characterized by the problems of legitimacy and extension, Collins and Evans build the case for the extension of the category of expertise to include those who have the relevant experience but lack relevant accreditation. Alongside this extension of the category of expertise is the extension of those who participate in the framing of techno-scientific issues. This dissertation builds a case for the inclusion of all democratic citizens in the problem framing process. What we are left with from the current "third wave" literature is a multi-tiered prescription for the role of non-experts in public decision-making about science and technology. On the ground floor, when the issue is being framed there is a need to include non-expert stakeholders (in theory, any concerned democratic citizen). Once a framing of the problem has been constructed, there is a need to recognize a larger category of people who count as "expert." Together, these constitute the two most powerful prescriptive elements of expertise developed in the recent science studies literature. The dissertation then explores claims that it is specifically "deliberative" theories of democracy that are best suited to make sense out of this democratization of expertise. After presenting a typology of deliberative theories of democracy that clears up a serious problem of equivocation found in appeals to deliberative democracy in current STS literature, this dissertation argues that only a specific set of deliberative theories of democracy, "discursive" deliberative theories of democracy, are capable of fulfilling the role theories of deliberative democracy are assigned in current STS literature. The dissertation then goes on to suggest how these new insights into the democratization of expertise might affect future instantiations of technology assessment mechanisms (such as the office of Technology Assessment) in the U.S.
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    The Dilemma of Case Studies: Toward a Heraclitian Philosophy of Science
    Pitt, Joseph C. (MIT Press, 2001-12)
    What do appeals to case studies accomplish? Consider the dilemma: On the one hand, if the case is selected because it exemplifies the philosophical point, then it is not clear that the historical data hasn't been manipulated to fit the point. On the other hand, if one starts with a case study, it is not clear where to go from there?for it is unreasonable to generalize from one case or even two or three.
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    Empirical Meaning and Incomplete Personhood
    Maas, Steven M. (Virginia Tech, 1998-06-08)
    Both intensional and extensional explanations of linguistic meaning involve notions -- linguistic roles and referential relations, respectively -- which are not perspicuous and seem to evade satisfactory explanations themselves. Following Sellars, I make a move away from semantic explanation of the designation relation and of linguistic roles toward an explanation which relates to the use of linguistic and perceptual signs (i.e., pragmatics). In doing so, concerns are raised that seem to be more closely associated with epistemology and phenomenology than with the philosophy of language or logic. In particular, experience is taken to be intentional, i.e., to have a propositional content which is irreducible to the causal order. Along with intentionality, certain essentially autobiographical conditions of experience are neglected in typical conceptions of the problem of meaning. They are reintroduced here. Further, I take as a presupposition the pragmatist notion that each of our conceptual schemes emerges from a community of persons, rather than from individuals. What follows from the preceding starting points is a picture of incomplete personhood in which persons are seen as being inclined both toward experiential wholes which have conceptual content and toward establishing and unifying beliefs which resolve doubts. Because of the conditions of experience constitutive of, and peculiar to, personhood and the necessity of the community for individual inquiry, the notion of incomplete personhood has a central position in my pragmatist conception of the problem of meaning. By emphasizing the pragmatistic conditions of experience and the active role of persons in finding objects and in continually reaching toward a final complete picture, the problems related to objectivity are found to be peripheral to a conception of meaning which captures the practice(s) of persons' living object-directed lives. The result is a new way of conceiving of the problem of meaning.
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    Engendered: An Artistic Treatise Against Gender
    Shepard, Kathryn Ann (Virginia Tech, 2016-07-06)
    As humans, we are enslaved by language. The kind of knowledge we hold is both created and limited by language. Gender is a category socially constructed in language that helps to determine our expression. Today, however, we are living in a world where the meaning of the words 'man' and 'woman' in our language are far more blurred than they used to be. Gender and sex are no longer considered binary structures by many and this presents interesting philosophical discussions. In fact one might even say there are 1,000's of tiny sexes (or genders) . So with the topic of gender (and sex) becoming a gray area what would a world completely devoid of gender terms look like? Are we constraining individuals by placing them within such a category as gender or are we taking something significant from them if we were to remove this label? Would we provide empowerment to oppressed genders by removing such labels or simply put them at further risk of domination by the oppressors? In this thesis I would like to argue that the removal of gender terms would create more accurate self-identity by allowing for a broader spectrum of diversity and, as a result, further equity. Due to the strong bond between language and culture, my theory is that by slowly tweaking our language over time, while intermediately allowing for the resulting cultural changes, until gender terms are removed from our everyday lives we could develop a culture that has no ability to discriminate between what we currently consider different genders.
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    Epistemic Overload as Epistemic Injustice
    Bernal, Amiel (Virginia Tech, 2018-07-11)
    Epistemic injustices are the distinctly epistemic harms and wrongs which undermine or depreciate our capacities knowers. This dissertation develops a theory of epistemic injustice and justice which accounts for excesses in epistemic goods as a source of epistemic injustice. This is a theory of epistemic overload as epistemic injustice. The dissertation can be divided into three parts: 1) motivational, 2) theoretical, 3) applications and implications. First, Chapters 1 and 2 motivate the study of epistemic injustice and epistemic overload. Chapter 1 identifies a gap in the literature on epistemic injustice concerning excesses in epistemic goods as sources of epistemic injustice while canvassing the major themes and debates of the field. Chapter 2 levels an objection to ‘proper’ epistemology, thereby providing an indirect defense of the study of epistemic injustice. Second, theoretical development occurs in are Chapters 3, 4, 5, 6. Chapter 3 initiates the argument for epistemic overload, while Chapter 4 extends the case for epistemic overload, identifying several epistemic injustices arising from excesses of understanding, credibility, and truth. Chapter 5 explains the oversights of prior theorists by developing a more descriptively adequate account of social epistemics that explains the many sites of epistemic injustice. Chapter 6 develops a two-stage contractualist theory of epistemic in/justice to explain the bad-making features of epistemic injustices and generates the duty of epistemic charity. The third part of the dissertation applies the findings of earlier chapters to contemporary practical and theoretical problems. Chapter 7 employs the contractualist reasoning of Chapter 6 to address and ameliorate problems from excesses in the uptake and circulation of hermeneutical resources and true-beliefs. Chapter 8 considers the mutual dependence relations between political phenomena and epistemic in/justice, showing that accounts of political justice depend upon or presuppose epistemic justice. Finally, Chapter 9 applies epistemic overload to the use of big data technologies in the context of predive policing algorithms. An abductive argument concludes that the introduction of the “Strategic Subjects List” as part of a Chicago policing initiative in 2013 introduced understandings which likely contributed to gun-violence in Chicago and which constitutes an epistemic overload. In sum, the dissertation shows the theoretical and practical significance of epistemic overload as epistemic injustice.
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    "An essay concerning subjectivity and scientific realism: Some fancies on Sellarsian themes and onto-politics"
    Garnar, Andrew Wells (Virginia Tech, 2007-09-09)
    I develop a framework for making visible the impacts that science has on human subjectivity, along with demonstrating how these transformations support the existing social order. In order to develop this framework, I critique the work of Wilfrid Sellars. Sellars is one of the few analytic philosophers of science who directly addresses the connections between science and subjectivity. What makes Sellars particularly interesting is the way he sought to preserve a strong conception of normativity alongside a quasi-eliminativist scientific realism. I set the stage for my critique of Sellars by contrasting two different accounts of subjectivity, one Cartesian, the other pragmatic. I argue in favor of the pragmatic because it completely grounds the subject in the world (a point with which Sellars basically agrees). I begin my critique of Sellars by explaining his scientific realism. This is then connected to his vision of the interconnections between science and subjectivity. I then argue that Sellars' scientific realism is fundamentally incoherent, which leads his system into nihilism. From this I trace out the role that science can play with respect to subjectivity in a nihilistic world. To partially counter this nihilism, I articulate an alternative to scientific realism that is based, in part, on my pragmatic account of subjectivity. I conclude by re-appropriating elements of Sellars' philosophy, routed through my alternative scientific realism, in order to complete the framework discussed above.
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    Examining "The Adam Smith Problem": Individuals, Society, and Value
    Crowder, Rachel E. (Virginia Tech, 2012-04-26)
    In this paper I offer an analysis of the Adam Smith Problem. This Problem arises from perceived inconsistencies between Smith's economic work, The Wealth of Nations, and his moral theory, the Theory of Moral Sentiments. I argue that far from being inconsistent with Smith's economic theory, his moral theory serves as a necessary foundation. I suggest that, because he takes humans to be moral by nature, Smith defends social capitalism which requires moral economic agents rather than homo economicus. I then sketch some specific implications for the moral limits of Smithian social systems.
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    Examining One's Own: Reflexivity and Critique in STS
    Bausch, Francis A. (Virginia Tech, 2002-02-07)
    The principle of reflexivity, as laid out by David Bloor (in Knowledge and Social Imagery) poses serious challenges to STS - while STS analysts attempt to show the partiality of scientific claims, they simultaneously offer those analyses via authoritative pronouncements in scientific language, while claiming a scientific foundation. This thesis questions the understanding of science as a form of inquiry distinct from other forms of inquiry, especially focusing on the elusive distinction between science and technology. The thesis analyzes Andrew Pickering's problematic attempt (in The Mangle of Practice) to dissolve the science/technology distinction through his 'Theory of Everything'/Mangle concept. Building an approach from commentaries on Pickering's work combined with resources from the STS tradition, especially from Latour and Haraway, the author proposes a new observational stance; this stance insists on the perspectival nature of all observation, and thereby claims to be reflexively robust; furthermore it maintains an agnostic attitude with regard to the science/technology distinction.
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    Experiment as rhetoric in the cold fusion controversy
    Curfs, Garrit Thomas (Virginia Tech, 1990-04-05)
    An examination of the role of experiment in the cold fusion controversy is offered. It is argued that experimental results served as rhetorical tools in the service of actors in the controversy. Discourse analysis informed by actor network theory is employed to analyze the verbal and textual discourse of scientists involved in the construction of experimentally-based scientific knowledge. The practices actors employed to structure their discourse for rhetorical effectiveness are investigated. I conclude that if experiments are to retain their traditional role as arbiters of knowledge claims, the unit of analysis pertaining to "experiment" must be broadened to include not only experimental practices within the laboratory, but also the multitude of practices scientists perform outside the laboratory walls in order to increase the likelihood that their knowledge claims will be adopted by their disciplinary matrix.