History of Human Science Laboratories

1. In the present article, human sciences are understood as those which embrace social disciplines along with humanities. They may presuppose quantitative methodology of research, as well as qualitative methodology. And they oppose natural sciences as ‘soft’ knowledge opposes cognition in ‘hard’ or exact sciences.

2. If the subject itself is not completely eliminated on the ground of sociological skepticism toward the truth and cumulative growth of knowledge (Hollis and Lukes Citation1982).

3. The convergence between scientometrics, sociology of science, sociology of scientific knowledge, and STS in sociological explanations of social and technological development is described, for example, in the article Intellectual and Practical Contributions of Scientometrics to STS published in (Felt et al. Citation2017, 87–112). As well, Michael Lynch provides another one, a broad and careful overview of sociological studies of science in (Pickering Citation1992, 215–265). For more details, the reader can also see (Jasanoff et al. Citation1995).

4. See David Bloor’s argument in his polemics with Bruno Latour (Bloor Citation2017, 99).

5. OOO is referring to object-oriented ontology incorporated into a bunch of approaches attributed to relational ontologies and ‘turn toward the material’ in STS. Find more details, for example, in (Vakhstein Citation2005, Citation2006; Lucarelli and Giovanardi Citation2009; Law Citation2019; Stolyarova 2019; Harman Citation2021). In (Lucarelli and Giovanardi Citation2009), ‘the turn toward the material’ is described via the ‘new mobilities paradigm,’ nonrepresentational theories, practice theories, assemblage theories, as well as applications of these theoretical perspectives to economic phenomena. The Russian scholar from the Institute of Philosophy (RAS) Olga Stolyarova in her recent book calls it ‘the return of metaphysics’ and attributes to it a range of theories and attitudes. Among them reside speculative realism, ‘new metaphysics’, ‘new materialism,’ object oriented ontology, actor-network theory, constructive realism, ontological constructivism, constructive postmodernism, historical ontology, metaphysical scientific realism, and other similar approaches (Stolyarova 2019). John Law closely connects actor-network theory and object-oriented ontology with material semiotics in (Law Citation2019). And in (Vakhstein Citation2005, Citation2006), they are essentially attributed to sociology of things.

6. The brief history of experiment in human and natural sciences can be found in (Gross and Krohn Citation2005), where authors argue that for a long time the experiment was connected with exact sciences based on divisions and precautions originated from neo-Kantians philosophy. This is how human sciences distanced themselves from quantitative methodology and control over social phenomena. The reader is convinced that the growth of social experimentation emerged just several decades ago due to the Chicago School of Sociology (converting the city of Chicago into a playground for empirical investigations), Donald Campbell’s ‘experimenting society’ approach, along with a more recent viewpoint on Clifford Beck’s ‘experimenting knowledge society’ (Gross and Krohn Citation2005, 77).

7. To ‘societies of thought’, Encyclopedia Britannica ascribes ‘masonic lodges, agricultural societies, and reading rooms’ (https://www.britannica.com/event/French-Revolution).

8. Compare with Peter Galison’s thesis in his book Image and Logic: A Material Culture of Microphysics (Galison Citation1997).

9. John Law connects ANT with the investigations into material semiotics which is “a set of tools and sensibilities for exploring how practices in the social world are woven out of threads to form weaves that are simultaneously semiotic (because they are relational, and/or they carry meanings) and material (because they are about ‘the physical stuff caught up and shaped in those relations’) (Law Citation2019, 1). He also says in (Turner Citation2009, 147–148): ‘the social and the technical are embedded in each other. This means that it simply isn’t possible to explore the social without at the same time studying the hows of relational materiality.’ The reader can pay attention to the resources of the next website http://wp.lancs.ac.uk/sciencestudies/the-actor-network-resource-thematic-list/ and the following texts referring to material conditions of laboratory practices (Callon et al.Citation1986; Callon Citation1991; Latour Citation1983, Citation1987, Citation1988, Citation2014, Citation2017, Citation2000; Latour and Woolgar Citation1979; Law Citation1994; Knorr-Cetina Citation2001, Citation2013; Turner Citation2009; Harman Citation2009, Citation2017, Citation2021, and others).

10. See Graham Harman’s book Object-Oriented Ontology: A New ‘Theory of Everything,’ where he describes these and many other cases (Harman Citation2021).

11. Andrew Pickering sheds light on complicated aspects of those relations in his book The Mangle of Practice: Time, Agency, and Science (Pickering Citation1995).

12. Compare with Barry Barnes’ understanding of technologies in (Barnes Citation2005). Barnes says the entire book might be written only for introduction toward this question. In another sense, technologies mean the arts of humans, trained competences and skilled practices generating the culture. In a sense, culture and civilization are treated as the result of engineering efforts of collectives based on human skills, practical competences, scientific knowledge, arts and inventions in protocols of communication and forms of social activism. Barnes critically treats the reification of technologies but still understands technoscience in terms of ‘hybrid or combination’ of science and technical artefacts. As Latour does not decouple subprograms from material arrangements and strategies for actions (Latour Citation2000, 207–210); as Callon enacts the connections between actigrammes and writing devices engaged in construction of services and structure of behavior (Callon Citation2002); and as John Law considers sociotechnical ordering in terms of what constitutes the social matter and organizes the life of laboratory (Law Citation1994). Power strategies and managerial tools can be included in a range of cultural inventions. In a more abstract and extended definition, ‘science is technoscience in that it is both moved and structured by pragmatic expediency’ (Barnes Citation2005, 159). Some initial ideas on ‘material’ and ‘immaterial’ technologies in sociology of science and STS were published in the Russian language in (Argamakova Citation2017; Konstantinova Citation2015).