Velvet Revolution at the Synchrotron : Biology, Physics, and Change in Science

Bijker, Wiebe E., Doing, Park, Pinch, Trevor, Carlson, W. Bernard.

ISBN 10: 026204255X / ISBN 13: 9780262042550

Published by MIT Press, 2009

About this Item

Former library book; may include library markings. Used book that is in clean, average condition without any missing pages.

Seller Inventory # 14815553-6

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Velvet Revolution at the Synchrotron : Biology, Physics, and Change in Science
• Publisher: MIT Press
• Publication Date: 2009
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 026204255X
• ISBN 13: 9780262042550
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: First Edition.
• Condition: Good
• Weight: 0.67 pounds

About this title

Synopsis

Change in scientific practice and its implications for the status of scientific claims, examined through an analysis of three episodes at a synchrotron laboratory.

After World War II, particle physics became a dominant research discipline in American academia. At many universities, alumni of the Manhattan Project and of Los Alamos were granted resources to start (or strengthen) programs of high-energy physics built around the promise of a new and more powerful particle accelerator, the synchrotron. The synchrotron was also a source of very intense X-rays, useful for research in solid states physics and in biology. As synchrotron X-ray science grew, the experimental practice of protein crystallography (used to determine the atomic structures of proteins and viruses), garnered funding, prestige, and acclaim. In Velvet Revolution at the Synchrotron, Park Doing examines the change in scientific practice at a synchrotron laboratory as biology rose to dominance over physics. He draws on his own observations and experiences at the Cornell University synchrotron, and considers the implications of that change for the status of scientific claims. Velvet Revolution at the Synchrotron is one of the few recent works in the sociology of science that engages specific scientific and technical claims through participant observation—recorded evocatively and engagingly—to address issues in the philosophy of science. Doing argues that bureaucratic change in science is neither “top-down” nor “bottom-up” but rather performed in and realized through recursively related forums of technical assertion and resistance. He considers the relationship of this change to the content of science, and the implications of this relationship for the project of laboratory studies begun in the late 1970s.

About the Author

Park Doing is a Lecturer in the Bovay Program in History and Ethics of Engineering at Cornell University. Portions of this book in manuscript form received the Nicholas Mullin Prize from the Society for the Social Studies of Science and the Hacker-Mullins Prize from the Science, Knowledge, and Technology Division of the American Sociological Association.