Lynch2000b

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Lynch2000b
BibType ARTICLE
Key Lynch2000b
Author(s) Michael Lynch, Kathleen Jordan
Title Patents, Promotions, and Protocols: Mapping and Claiming Scientific Territory
Editor(s)
Tag(s) EMCA, scientific representation, polymerase chain reaction
Publisher
Year 2006
Language
City
Month
Journal Mind, Culture & Activity
Volume 7
Number 1-2
Pages 124–146
URL Link
DOI 10.1080/10749039.2000.9677651
ISBN
Organization
Institution
School
Type
Edition
Series
Howpublished
Book title
Chapter

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Abstract

Scientific representations include a diverse and confusing array of maps, descriptions, diagrams, and protocols. This study examines and compares the practical and communicative uses of such artifacts. The main source of material is the authors' ethnographic research on the polymerase chain reaction (PCR), a laboratory routine that has numerous scientific, medical, and forensic applications. Contextually relative versions of PCR are examined: schematic diagrams for popular audiences, advertisements in biotech publications, patent descriptions, praxiological descriptions (recipe-like formulations), and material standards and references. These renderings do not exemplify a single type of cognition or information processing. Schematic diagrams, advertisements, patents, protocols, and material standards are differently formed, and the information they convey substantially differs from one form to another. This study contributes to a noncognitivist understanding of representation that emphasizes a plurality of material formats and communicative practices rather than an underlying mental process.

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