Sci&Tech History

In a notes so-called Blue Book, Wittgenstein point out that a dictionary is insufficient as a definition of meaning for a language because of its self-reference. For example, the word “regain” in Webster’s 1828 is defined as to recover, as what has escaped or been lost. At the same time the word “recover” is defined as to regain; to get or obtain that which was lost(Bolander, 2005). To make the iteration of reference stop, a postulate(to assume or asserted the truth) is needed. Sometimes postulate can also seen as a black box, something that we taken for granted. Latour  in Science in Action gives an interesting illustration of how science and technology constructed by reference and choices.

Scene 1: October 1985. John Whittaker entered his office in the molecular biology building of the Institut Pasteur in Paris and switched on his Eclipse MV/8000 computer. A few seconds later, a three-dimensional picture of the DNA double helix flashed onto the screen.

Scene 2: 1951 Cavendish laboratory at Cambridge. Jim Watson and Francis Crick had a hard time obtaineng them from Maurice Wilkins and Rosalind Franklin in London. It was immpossible yet to decide if the form of the acid was triple or double helix.

Scene 3: In 1980 in Data General, Westborough, Massachusetts. Tom West and his teams were still trying to debug a makeshift prototype of a new machine nicknamed Eagle that the company hadn’t planned build at first. Besides that, West had made of using the new PAL chips kept delaying the machine-renamed Eclipse MV/8000, since no one was sure at the time if the company manufacturing the chips could delivere them on demand.

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