Woolgar time and documents

172
investigate how scientists accomplish connections between specific research documents and their underlying realities.

"good enough"

 Methodological issues

methodological horrors!!

craft-based skills of laboratory work (not trying to deceive anyone)

173
amorphous metal alloys, metallic glasses

issues of chrystallization

spin melting

174
monitor electrical resistance:
isothermal annealing and heating at a constant rate

setting up the experiment

175

pen chart recorder - pen traces changes int he resistance of the alloy ribbon

other talk going on

talk about graph as it develops

178
indexical relations

so, what emerges is shaped by what has come and will shape what will come.
differential significance to past events

time... "stockpile scence"
refer to past procedures to figure out what is going on with abberations (tagging up) 

 179
abandon certain traces (poor electical contacts)


 captions - tell relevant features of the past - but is constructed

issues of foreign matter - establishment of a family of traces - so what is foreign ?

180
constructs of histories of the moment

persons interacting, but not being accounted for final results.

181

lots of utterances and other semiotics that interact with each other to make knowledge
most are unaccounted for in reports

chart recorder is just one part of the conversations

"character of a document is an occasioned accomplishment"

182
many artifacts "speaking"

183
reading temperature - chains of "unquestioned connections"

"assumptions of adequecy permits short cuts"


185
bump on the graph
reflective - report what is seen
- idea widely differing perceptions of the same phenomenon are commonplace to argue that the reflective view is untenable

meditative  - alternative social, historical, psychological & other factors intercede between phenomenon and its description.  (depends on implicit realism)


 constitutive: no phenomena independent of its description

the way in which such versions gain, sustain and lose their corrigibility is the focus of inquiry

186
states of "upness" and "flatness"

meditative  - up has been constructed (social expectations) - interpretive flexibility of connections

so - researcher has to concoct the presence and nature of social circumstances

constitutive - upness is result of "interaction betwen participants, and the document on the chart recorder"..."up" quality intrinsic to the curve... up is matter which could be determined in the face of various intervening social and historical circumstances" (186-187)

consider 1st and 2nd analytical positions

187

 Better test - different participants independently produce same characteristics


flat and shape

188

189
judicious juxtaposition of documents

tee gee - modify or elaborate "up" - reflexive relationship

tee gee/ up - independence? accomplish independent objectivity


190
up  moves to next new development

tee gee = functions - interactional closure on the described state of the trace

documents  frame the trace's current shape...

191

referential - what has become fact?

putting together present and past slopes


192
what has become an artifact of something else?

193

195
document as a part of already established affairs

other/ collectivity
197