Discovering the AIDS virus: Scientific Progress through the Interaction of Human and Non-Human Actants

Authors

  • Stefan Paul Dehod

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.29173/invoke16470

Keywords:

AIDS, Latour, Actor-network theory, actant

Abstract

The notion that science progresses through the actions of scientists on a nature characterized as passive is hardly new to most. While scholars like Thomas Kuhn have challenged the concept of science as one of progression others such as Bruno Latour have challenged and continue to challenge the idea of nature as passive. Focusing on the discovery HIV in the Pasteur Institute this paper will further challenge the way in which science is viewed as progressing by illustrating the unacknowledged factor of chance in the discovery. Finally, through use of Latour’s theoretical contributions, the interaction of human and non-human actants in the process of discovery illuminate the inadequacies of viewing nature as an order revealed by scientists and the constructivist view that nature is ordered by scientists.

Author Biography

Stefan Paul Dehod

Bachelor of Arts

Sociology Major, Philosophy Minor

Expected Completion Spring 2012

References

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Kuhn, Thomas. 1970. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. 2nd ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Latour, Bruno. 1993. We Have Never Been Modern. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.

Latour, Bruno and Steve Woolgar. 1986. Laboratory life: the construction of scientific facts. 2nd ed. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press.

Oppenheimer, Gerald M. 1991. “Causes, cases and cohorts: the role of Epidemiology in the historical construction of AIDS.” Aids: the making of a chronic disease. Edited by Elizabeth Fee and Daniel M. Fox. Berkeley: University of California Press. 49-83.

Sismondo, Sergio. 2010. An introduction to science and technology studies. 2nd ed. Wiley-Blackwell.

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Published

2012-05-04

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Section

Articles