Initial Thoughts on Circulating References

By contrasting the field and hotel restaurant settings, LaTour illustrates the difference between fieldwork and laboritory experimentation while hinting at their profound interconnectedness: in the field, scientists appear to confront Nature directly, without (at first) clear points of reference, while in the "lab" they have the luxury of reliance upon several black-box precedents of various disciplines like "trigonometry, cartography and geography" to locate the boundaries of their specific area of study (both a physical locale and a contained arena for exploration of evidence to support abstracted claims). Both settings are indispensable towards providing coherent connections between active Nature and scientific investigation, as the "lab" contains the black-boxes that aid in definition and settling of study parameters, while points of reference in the field of experienced Nature serve to provide the organizing framework or syntax by which observations will be articulated for interpretation within the context of reasonable claims. Reference points at all levels are necessary for ensuring certainty of containment, rather empirical "controls," as well as credible assurance of context.

He also uses the setting of the hotel restaurant as both a metaphoric and concret example of a field from the point of view of its owner by demonstrating the practice of mapping this terrain by discreetly identifying each table with its own referential number marking (or inscription), not unlike the tags tacked onto the nearby forest trees, in order to fascillitate reliable and consistent navigation within its boundaries of operation. Both of these fields further serve as meeting places for individuals with differing professional agendas, languages, and educational backgrounds, yet these are staging grounds for successful deployment of resources as well as accomplishment of individual tasks through faithful coordination and thoughtful communication.

Moreover, LaTour begins to draw our attention to the parallel, symbolic gesture of finger-pointing, in both theaters of activity, as perhaps the essential genesis of discourse through indication of this or that point of interest of which locale is more than geographic, but also intrinsically referential. The importance of LaTour's inquiry is to examine not only at what it is exactly that a scientist believes s/he is pointing but rather how these points of reference intersect and react with applied ontologies to stimulate dialogs between inscribed data, perceived observations, black-boxes, and claims which are literally and figuratively "brought to the table" of field expeditions.

Will LaTour go so far as to draw deeper parallels between field work and laboratory experiment beyond universality of reliance upon inscriptions, or will he portray these unique science activities as fundamentally differential? In lieu of multiply applicable black-boxes, field-work must certainly rely upon some pre-defined regularity of dispersion of points of reference, as surveys of every kind must be protected from latent bias that could insidiously distort data array inscriptions. Will black-boxes then be considered points of reference (even as they are in the lab) upon which decisions about such data collection must be derived?

Debut Hurray

Checked Banweb tonight and discovered an open seat to register for.
Should have course texts in my possession by tomorrow, er, today
in my following class, Hist. of Modern Science w/ Richard Beyler.