
eBook - PDF
Aircraft Stories
Decentering the Object in Technoscience
- English
- PDF
- Available on iOS & Android
eBook - PDF
Aircraft Stories
Decentering the Object in Technoscience
About this book
In Aircraft Stories noted sociologist of technoscience John Law tells "stories" about a British attempt to build a military aircraft—the TSR2. The intertwining of these stories demonstrates the ways in which particular technological projects can be understood in a world of complex contexts.
Law works to upset the binary between the modernist concept of knowledge, subjects, and objects as having centered and concrete essences and the postmodernist notion that all is fragmented and centerless. The structure and content of Aircraft Stories reflect Law's contention that knowledge, subjects, and—particularly— objects are "fractionally coherent": that is, they are drawn together without necessarily being centered. In studying the process of this particular aircraft's design, construction, and eventual cancellation, Law develops a range of metaphors to describe both its fractional character and the ways its various aspects interact with each other. Offering numerous insights into the way we theorize the working of systems, he explores the overlaps between singularity and multiplicity and reveals rich new meaning in such concepts as oscillation, interference, fractionality, and rhizomatic networks.
The methodology and insights of Aircraft Stories will be invaluable to students in science and technology studies and will engage others who are interested in the ways that contemporary paradigms have limited our ability to see objects in their true complexity.
Law works to upset the binary between the modernist concept of knowledge, subjects, and objects as having centered and concrete essences and the postmodernist notion that all is fragmented and centerless. The structure and content of Aircraft Stories reflect Law's contention that knowledge, subjects, and—particularly— objects are "fractionally coherent": that is, they are drawn together without necessarily being centered. In studying the process of this particular aircraft's design, construction, and eventual cancellation, Law develops a range of metaphors to describe both its fractional character and the ways its various aspects interact with each other. Offering numerous insights into the way we theorize the working of systems, he explores the overlaps between singularity and multiplicity and reveals rich new meaning in such concepts as oscillation, interference, fractionality, and rhizomatic networks.
The methodology and insights of Aircraft Stories will be invaluable to students in science and technology studies and will engage others who are interested in the ways that contemporary paradigms have limited our ability to see objects in their true complexity.
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Yes, you can access Aircraft Stories by John Law, Barbara Herrnstein Smith, E. Roy Weintraub, Barbara Herrnstein Smith,E. Roy Weintraub in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Technology & Engineering & Sociology. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.
Information
Publisher
Duke University Press BooksYear
2002Print ISBN
9780822328247, 9780822328124eBook ISBN
9780822383543Table of contents
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Objects
- Subjects
- Cultures
- Heterogeneities
- Aesthetics
- Decisions
- Arborescences
- Pinboards
- Notes
- References
- Index