Laboratory Epistemologies

A Hands-on Perspective

By: Jenny Boulboulle

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Hardcover | 15 November 2024

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Hardcover
372 Pages

Dimensions(cm)
23.7 x 15.8 x 2.8

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In Laboratory Epistemologies: A Hands-On Perspective, Jenny Boulboull© examines the significance of hands-on experiences in contemporary life sciences laboratories. Addressing the relationship between contemplation and manipulation in epistemology, Boulboull© combines participant observations in molecular genetics labs and microbiological cleanrooms with a longue dur©e study of the history and philosophy of science. She radically rereads Descartes's key epistemological text Meditations on First Philosophy, reframing the philosopher as a hands-on knowledge maker. With this reading, Boulboull© subverts the pervasive modern conception of the disembodied knower and puts the hands-on experimenter at the heart of life sciences research. In so doing, she contributes a theoretical model for understanding how life processes on cellular and molecular levels are manually produced in today's techno-scientific spaces. By reassessing the Cartesian legacy and arguing that epistemology should be grounded in the standpoint of a hands-on practitioner, Boulboull© offers the philosophical and historical foundation to understand and study contemporary life sciences research as multisensory embodied practices.

Industry Reviews

"Jenny Boulboulle brilliantly revises superficial cliches about Descartes as foundational to French rationality opposed to British practicality, dualism of subject versus object, cogito as purely in the mind, skepticism as his primary method. An experimentalist and vivisectionist, Descartes was prouder of his experiments than his philosophy, and with his correspondents helped devise the 'literary technology' that led to the scientific method of the Royal Society. Boulboulle argues that Laboratory Epistemologies begin in touch and the sensory followed by cogito-mathematical consolidations that often erase their empirical origins, and for Descartes required a theological overlay." -- Michael M. J. Fischer, author of * Probing Arts and Emergent Forms of Life *
"Jenny Boulboulle calls her study a 'multi-sited historio-ethnographical investigation,' thus condensing its spirit in one combined expression. The book brings together an impressively wide reading in contemporary historical and ethnographical science studies, a longue dureee philosophical perspective, and hands-on participatory experiences both in molecular biology and in the aesthetic practices of contemporary bio-artists. A highly original study of scientific practice that makes for fascinating reading." -- Hans-Joerg Rheinberger, author of * Split and Splice: A Phenomenology of Experimentation *

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