Latour & Circulating Reference (& Paradigm & Science Tools)

As much as Latour may or may not have left a lot of us questioning whether the nature of this class or even the entire CSCL department (nationwide, globally, conceptually, etc.) has not been adding to - or even taking away from - fact, reality, 'science,' etc. - he did give us a lot of great ideas in Pandora's Hope. Circulating reference (which I have recently found out that if you Google "circulating reference" our class' blog page shows up TWICE on the FIRST PAGE), at least in the context of Latour, is the cycle of references, definitions/redefinitions, images, concepts in which we apply, intentionally or unintentionally, to understand or decode something - this can completely change the original understanding (or any understanding) of the object. We saw this working out with our class' definition of circulating reference even - which took on different, often incorrect (though reality may be constituted by consensus, and word definitions are not excluded from this) definitions throughout the semester. In Pandora's Hope circulating reference was working side-by-side with other concepts - such as the science tools or the way science goes about translating objects in order to produce data or "science" and paradigm, which is the worldview underneath our model or methodology of science.

These concept(s) are highly valuable because they show a type of critical analysis (science studies) approach to science - which I think is often applied to pre-Enlightenment or non-scientific thinking alone. I don't think this constitutes the ugly criticism that Latour describes in our last reading - something that could, perhaps more appropriately, be applied to Deconstructionist thinking, etc. Understanding science on a conceptual level - translating objects and applying a worldview (which is NOT equated to bias) - is highly important for both scientists and the "critics" who ideally purify science.

This class has inspired me to perhaps look in to science more. When I arrived on campus a couple years ago I was planning on majoring in Plant Biology - now I am an English and Journalism major working as a journalist, and am finishing my second Robin and Ben course. Science can be a conceptually and idealistically interesting subject. Also, I can endlessly harass my brother who is studying Biology that reality doesn't exist - though I obviously don't believe that. Despite what Latour brought us in the past week or so in class, I still have some faith (or reason) that taking a critical look at the way we produce scientific knowledge (or any knowledge, for that matter) is worth our time. I'm happy that I could take a class that supports socially produced knowledge and so much work socially (these days group work seems frowned upon for some reason).

Thank you Tri-force and the rest of the class for a really interesting time.

Eric Best