Reflection on Epistemic Cultures: How the Sciences Make Knowledge

Cestina presented a very interesting argument in Epistemic Cultures: How the Sciences Make Knowledge. She starts off by discussing how technological innovation has changed not only how we study science but also the social order in relation to medicine. Astronomy for example started as an observational science where astronomers were once only able to look through telescopes in the field to conduct their studies. Now, however, astronomy has become a laboratory science where they recreate their objects of study within the laboratory with imaging technology, isolated from its natural environment.

Technology has also changed the social order surrounding the doctor patient relationship. In the early days of medicine the most common doctor was the bedside doctor who visited each patient individually within their home. The main source of information for each doctor to determine their diagnoses came from the patient’s narrative of their illness which also gave the patient more authority as their description of their illness was what determined their diagnosis. However as medicine became more standardized and more technologically advanced authority slowly transferred from the patient to the doctor. No longer did doctors make special visits to each patient’s home, now the patient is expected to go to the hospital where they will be treated by a team of medical professionals rather than a single doctor who they are personally acquainted with. The doctor also no longer solely relies on the patient’s experience of their illness to determine their diagnosis and instead uses technology and medical jargon to assess and discuss the potential diagnosis with other medical professionals on the patient’s case. Technology has removed the familiarity of the old bedside doctor and turned medicine into a standardized system.

Cestina also discusses the manner with which laboratories take the objects that they study out of their natural environment and analyze them. She suggests that the act of removing the objects or staging symbols for them to study in an isolated environment is what allows laboratories to rearrange social and natural orders. By using the differences between the laboratory environment and natural environment they are able to study things in new unexpected contexts such as with the underwater telescope.