Reflection on Discussion about Laboratories

My main takeaway from class about the two laboratory articles was that laboratories reconfigure natural and social orders. The people that work at laboratories and the projects they work on are fundamentally affected by the presence of the laboratory itself. There was an interesting point brought up in class from the Latour reading about how Pasteur strove to make the “inside/outside dichotomy” so meaningless, that the entirety of France became his laboratory. We talked about how difficult it may be for a scientist like Pasteur to convince an entire society that small particles that are not visible to the human eye can have such a profound effect on things we can see (in this case, cows). Thus, this article raises an important question not only about the role of scientists, but also the strategy and methodology they must use in order to get the rest of the world to see and respect their findings. The questions used to be: Are scientists supposed to further our knowledge past what we know now? Should scientists only be working on projects that make the standard of living better? But now, I keep returning to the question of how important it is for scientists to be able to pitch their ideas in a way that people will take enough notice to allow him to use an entire society as his laboratory.