Más allá del Laboratorio. La Antropología del Conocimiento Científico como apuesta metodológica.

Abstract

In the field of Sociology of Scientific Knowledge, which began in the aproximately 70's, one of the ways of investigation which became important was the so-called «Laboratory Studies», that tried to observe in situ how scientific knowledge was produced, day by day, by its «creators». In this essay, I will try to show the obstacles that the «translator» of Science can find when he pretends to understand how scientific knowledge is produced as a practice. Most of those troubles are caused by the consideration of scientific knowledge as an ion and laboratory practice as a mere reflection of the nature of scientific knowledge but not its precisely own nature. In second term, as a practice, scientific knowledge is actualized in scientific discourse; which means that the practice is hidden by its textual productions, by its results, and this makes neccesary a previous knowledge of scientific language in order to understand laboratory practice. Garfinkel's Ethnomethodology is basic to understand the logic of the construction process of this practice/discourse which is Science. I propose here, following its indications, a possible way of investigation which is previous and alternative to the one that has been developed by laboratory studies, an Anthropology of Scientific Knowledge (ASK) which considers that laboratory is the last place to be visited.