Historical and Philosophical Perspectives on Experimental Practice in Medicine and the Life Sciences

FRANK W. STAHNISCH

HISTORICAL AND PHILOSOPHICAL PERSPECTIVES

ON EXPERIMENTAL PRACTICE IN MEDICINE

AND THE LIFE SCIENCES

ABSTRACT. The aim of this paper is to discuss a key question in the history and

philosophy of medicine, namely how scholars should treat the practices and exper-imental hypotheses of modern life science laboratories. The paper seeks to introducesome prominent historiographical methods and theoretical approaches associated

with biomedical research. Although medical scientists need no convincing thatexperimentation has a significant function in their laboratory work, historians,philosophers, and sociologists long neglected its importance when examining chan-ges in medical theories or progress in scientific knowledge. The reason appears to

have been the academic influence of the then dominant tradition in the history ofideas, but was also due to a misconception of what could usefully be termed the viewon ‘‘historical ontology.’’ During the last two decades, there have been many books

and research articles that have turned towards the subject, so that the study ofexperimental practice has become a major trend in the contemporary history andphilosophy of medicine. A closer look at the issue of laboratory research shows that

concepts in medicine and the life sciences cannot be understood as historicallyconstant, free-standing ideas, but have to be regarded as dependent on local researchsettings. They often carry particular ‘‘social memories’’ with them and thus acquire

important ethical implications.

KEY WORDS: experimental hypotheses, historical ontology, history of medicine,

medical epistemology, social constructivism

INTRODUCTION

The use of experiments has been viewed as a hallmark of modernbiomedical research both by experimental scientists and by scholarsof the history of science, technology, and medicine.1 It is only sincethe late 1980s that medical historiography and epistemology haveturned to this subject, following new directions in sociologicalthinking on scientific knowledge. As Michael Lynch remarked morethan ten years ago:

The sociology of knowledge’s empirical approach to the traditional topics ofepistemology has been emboldened and radicalized in recent decades. At least two

Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics (2005) 26: 397–425 � Springer 2005DOI: 10.1007/s11017-005-1425-5

distinct programs in ‘‘epistemic sociology’’ are currently established.... The morefamiliar of these, the sociology of scientific knowledge, is an outgrowth of Bloor’s

proposal to investigate and explain the ‘‘very content and nature of scientificknowledge.’’ A second approach, ethnomethodological studies... is an extension ofGarfinkel’s studies of ordinary practical actions and practical reasoning.2

Lynch emphasised the necessity to investigate and to display the‘‘internal relation’’ between scientific theories, concepts, and prac-tices. There have been many detailed laboratory studies since thelate 1970s, using sociological, philosophical, and even ethnologicaltechniques to elucidate the production of scientific facts and bio-medical knowledge.3 Although there exists such a fine-grainedanalysis of experimental research in medicine and the life sciencesas well as a theoretically detailed differentiation of scientific andsocial contextuality, the situation still calls for a more specificsurvey. The interrelation of laboratory activity with differing viewsregarding experimental concepts and practical attitudes must bescrutinized, from both philosophical and historical perspectives.This approach could be termed ‘‘historical ontology’’ (see alsop. 413), as an investigation of the productivity of experimentation,the emergence of new practical concepts and the persistence ofsocial beliefs in scientific theories. On the one hand, existing modesof experimental analyses and case studies of experimental practicevary so greatly that they ought to be classified into differentresearch agendas. On the other hand, fruitful conceptual approachesto the underlying problems must be rendered more transparent.

The argument of the current paper is three-fold: Initially, anumber of key topics in research on experimental practice in medicineand the life sciences shall be presented as a state of the art view ofcurrent historical and philosophical debates. Secondly, the paper willaccentuate some of the prominent historiographical methods andtheoretical approaches associated with experimental work in the lifesciences. Then, in a more analytical approach, I will identify anumber of specific implications for the medical laboratory. Myintellectual object is epistemological and it is aimed at demonstratingthe reflexivity and the mutual applicability of my argument in boththe realm of science, technology, and medicine and the lab itself. Inthe final, constructive part, I suggest that the concept of ‘‘historicalontology’’ can be developed into a complementary argument andreformulated as a synthetic approach to laboratory research inmodern biomedicine.

FRANK W. STAHNISCH398

LABORATORY PRACTICE

Since the 1980s, scholars in the history and philosophy of modernbiomedicine have both engaged in stimulating discussions of thesociology of scientific knowledge and have strived for more systematicviews on the constraints and the future implications of the experi-mental enterprise.4 But when Allen Franklin in 1986 made his well-known diagnosis of a ‘‘neglect of experiment’’ in the history andphilosophy of science, this also reflected the situation in medicalepistemology and historiography.5 The latter was traditionallyengaged with the pre-eminent views of great medical scientists, withthe genesis of revolutionary ideas in the life sciences, or with thequestion how scientific hypotheses were experimentally falsified orverified in the medical laboratory.6 Nevertheless, when experimen-tation was considered in earlier times, this was mostly due to thecontroversy as to whether clinical medicine should be seen as basicscience or as a healing art.7 History and philosophy of medicine,moreover, were quite reluctant to examine rhetorical, practical, andtechnological aspects of biomedical research. Even the close alliancebetween governmental and non-governmental funding institutionsand biomedical research laboratories was understood as ‘‘external’’to the growth of medical knowledge. But, due to the above-mentionedimpact of the social studies of science, academic interest has beenredirected to experimentation.8 Many contemporary historians andphilosophers of medicine have laid emphasis on questions concerningthe genesis and the representation of new scientific objects, the role ofthe laboratory as a circumscribed location where scientific disputesare settled, or ‘‘experimental systems’’ as the settings in which newparadigms emerge.9

Contemporary medical historiography has been increasingly pre-occupied with the transformation of clinical and basic knowledgestructures, rather than the former whiggish type of historical writing,10

which perceived the current state of medical knowledge as anunquestionable basis for the evaluation of the achievements ofancient times. Borrowing questions from the social studies of science,an important group of medical historians has looked at the socialinterests of medical scientists, the entrenchment of biomedical theo-ries in cultural contexts, and the historical background of scientifichypotheses and facts.11 Another group has gone beyond thisreconstructive approach and has regarded biomedical knowledgeas intrinsically dependent upon laboratory action and research

PERSPECTIVES ON EXPERIMENTAL PRACTICE 399

practice,12 with the ulterior motive being to question the objectivity ofscientific statements under different social and cultural preconditions.Historians have pointed to a distance that separates published reportsof experimental investigation from actual practices at the laboratorywork-bench and thus creates a gap between the representation and thepractices of science.13 They critique the theory-biased view of classicalapproaches to the natural sciences that were primarily informed byparticular accounts of the philosophy of science, neglecting thedevelopment of biomedical knowledge production.14

Experimentation and Situated Knowledge

New studies on laboratory practice in biomedicine began tore-examine the epistemic roles played by experimentation. Thisincludes the role of experimental investigators in medical decision-making, in theory confirmation, and in the generation of newhypotheses.15 This newly developed view implies that phenomena inthe natural sciences cannot be understood independently of theobserver’s standpoint. However, contrary to this, experimental factshave to be regarded as the result of complex manufacturing processesin the course of laboratory practice.16 For example, Karin Knorr-Cetina points out that translating scientific descriptions into practiceand making laboratory objects recur outside laboratory walls requireshard work and sociocultural interventions.17 With a view to themanufacture of double stranded DNA hybrids, Knorr-Cetina arguesthat the characteristic of this experimental technology is that it usesnatural objects as processing materials or transitory experimentalstates. These DNA particles correspond to nothing more than theartificial conditions from which they were taken or in which they weremanipulated. Donna Haraway goes even further when she holds thatthere is no real world ‘‘nature’’ that researchers could explore separatefrom their ‘‘technical-natural’’ tools. Instead, the manufacturingprocesses in biomedical laboratories reinvent nature in terms of a‘‘situated’’ sociocultural understanding. Examining scientific visionfrom a social constructivist and feminist perspective, Haraway focuseson the fact that the power of the human eye can be endlessly enhancedby sonographic systems or scanning electron microscopes in such away that there remains no possible objective stance. These ‘‘visualisingtechnologies’’ incorporate theoretical, technological, and even socialprejudices as ideologies of the scientific observer or as a form ofsituated knowledge. Without the technical assistance of electron


microscopes and the financial aid of wealthy science funds, forexample, clinical recognition of HIV being the cause of AIDS wouldnot have been possible. Haraway presents us with the position thatcollective subjective convictions have their own brands of rationalityand make up a type of communal ‘‘objectivity’’ without transcendence:

We seek [knowledges] ruled by partial sight and limited voice... Situated knowledges

are about communities, not about isolated individuals. The only way to find a largervision is to be somewhere in particular. The science question in feminism is aboutobjectivity as positioned rationality.18

According to Haraway, history, sociology, and philosophy ofmedicine and the life sciences are left with an unsolvable dilemma: toharmonize a thoroughgoing sense of historical contingency ofknowledge with a scientific commitment to methodological rigor atthe same time. Haraway and Evelyn Fox Keller both argue against‘‘the forgetfulness about the taken-for-granted modalities of experi-ence’’ that are the necessary preconditions of scientific inquiry.19 FoxKeller sees scientists as essentially dependent on cooperation, sharingof resources, and common research interests. Biomedical scientists,however, whose experimental work frequently dissolves into multipleresearch tasks, often tend to forget the cultural entrenchments oftheir representations of health and disease.

Similar questions have led sociologists of science to adopt a con-structivist view of medical knowledge.20 They hold that scientific factsare literally ‘‘made’’ in the laboratory and cannot be the object ofsimple observation. In fact, biomedical scientists rarely work withobjects as they occur in nature. To a certain extent, they meddle attheir work-benches with images and other forms of representation.This necessitates understanding of the manifold transformations inbiomedical concepts by the order instituted in the laboratory. How-ever, this is not to say that most constructivists would deny theexistence of scientific facts, but rather that they accentuate that factsare constructed by human rationalization. Andrew Pickering, forexample, holds that laboratory scientists follow a ‘‘pragmatic real-ism.’’21 He opts to view ‘‘science as practice’’ in order to understandthe specific paths of knowledge production. In this respect, theanalysis of experimental practice could have far-reaching implica-tions. For traditional theory-orientated approaches, the scientificimage typically had a distinct disciplinary orientation. By contrasthistorians and philosophers of medicine, when studying practice,often arrive at concepts that undermine such reductions.


Questioning the Evidential Basis of Experimentation

Experimental investigators in the life sciences make decisions onmany levels during concrete research processes and negotiate theirresults with scientific peers. Research papers in scientific journals, forexample, largely exclude discussion of material constraints. Instru-ments and experimental practices appear rather as modifiableresources. They may be adjusted until the experimentally produceddata fit the working hypotheses and can be used to persuade scientificaudiences.22 As a matter of fact, historians of medicine can usuallynot interrogate historical figures in a direct fashion, but may useother sources to reconstruct the relevant course of research.

Consequently, for the reconstruction of laboratory practices in thelife sciences, an important role has been ascribed to archival material.Laboratory manuals and scientific instruments are consulted toclarify the paths of experimental knowledge production.23 Influencedby the contemporary view that the history of medicine has paid littleattention to experimental practice, Frederic L. Holmes emphasisedthat the pertinent works of Bernard Cohen on Benjamin Franklin(1706–1790) and Henry Guerlac on Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier(1743–1794) had already achieved a balance between the importanceof scientific ideas and experimentation during the ‘‘founding decades’’after WWII.24 Their methodologies may act as historiographicalexamples, insofar as these historians considered the subject equallyimportant for the understanding of knowledge acquisition in the lifesciences. In order to bring laboratory action and experimental prac-tices into fuller view, it is necessary to ask what evidence is availablefor this enterprise. Although research papers seldom report literallythe history of the investigations, they should not be regarded asmisleading sources of information, because they were, after all,intended for presentation to the scientific community. According toHolmes, written documents, like any other type of evidence, must beinvestigated cautiously. With respect to the progress of scientificinquiry in the history of science, technology, and medicine, he stressesthat the questions asked about the subject of laboratory practice havechanged. New publications claim to reveal the importance of exper-imentation in a way that the earlier literature did not,25 such as themanifestation of political interests in social contexts and ethical problemsassociated with modern research orientations.

Holmes’ own investigations of the French chemist Lavoisier andthe work of Mirko Drasen Grmek on the medical scientist Claude


Bernard (1813–1878) can be seen as major steps forward in thisregard.26 When analyzing the cognitive content of particular speci-alities of natural science, Holmes illuminated many fundamentalelements of laboratory work. For example, he revealed how essentialit was for the founding fathers of experimental physiology to receiveappropriate working conditions and made it clear that the investi-gative enterprise of the Paris physiologists was not a self-vindicatingresearch program. Instead, the physiological approach had to beforcefully proposed as a new basis for modern medicine, when tra-ditional places of medical inquiry, the hospital ward and the dissec-tion room, proved to be inadequate to serve its needs. Holmesdemonstrated that the cognitive development of basic medical sciencecould not be understood prior to experimental activities in thephysiological laboratory or independent of provision for the trainingof medical students. Analyzing the laboratory notes of Lavoisier andBernard, Holmes, Grmek and Coleman have shown that the Frenchexperimenters followed many projects at the same time and designedthem in such a way that the continuity of at least a few projects waspossible even when others were interrupted. These historical investi-gations thus present laboratory experimentation as a systematicmachinery for scientific invention and progress and not just as asimple means of testing preconceived hypotheses.

Further, there are other perspectives on experimental practice inmedicine and the life sciences to be gained from regarding laboratorymanuals. As Steven Shapin and Simon Schaffer have argued inLeviathan and the Air-Pump, experimental scientists do not (and aposteriori cannot) tell the whole story of their investigative work inpublished material.27 Laboratory books, manuals, and researchpublications must be seen as narrative accounts of the events thatocurred in scientific working places. Shapin and Schaffer see RobertBoyle’s essay New experiments physico-mechanical touching the spring of theair (1661), for example, rather as a ‘‘literary technology’’ throughwhich he tried to validate his ‘‘experimental performance’’ in public.

The course of constituting experimental biomedicine is reflected inthe individual contributions to Coleman and Holmes’ volume TheInvestigative Enterprise: Experimental Physiology in 19th-CenturyMedicine.28 As the editors untiringly emphasize, the century beforethe last witnessed the development of a new generation of naturalscientists. Coleman and Holmes’ notion of ‘‘experimental investiga-tors’’ is based upon the assumption that modern, natural, and lifesciences are essentially activities that proved advantageous in the


systematic exploration of methodologically delineated parts of nat-ure. Laboratories, which have become the institutionalized sites ofknowledge production under varying local conditions in the Westernworld, are themselves a new result of scientific changes during the late18th and the early 19th centuries. It is with a view to the contingentfactors in the establishment of laboratories in medicine and the lifesciences that the editors highlight their praxeological dimension, thatis, access to technical skills and practical know-how, without whichno experimentation could have taken place.

Following the continuing investigations of Thomas F. Gieryn, itmust be seen as a major misunderstanding to speak of the ‘‘epistemicauthority’’ of experimental science as if it were an ever-present phe-nomenon.29 As the historical and philosophical studies of experi-mental protocols and laboratory instruments have shown, theepistemic authority of experimental research is not ubiquitous, butalways reinvented in terms of institutions and life worlds. Or to useGieryn’s words, there is no ‘‘safeguard room for real science.’’30

Taking into account the state of current discourse, the problem arisesas to whether it is possible to demarcate different lines of laboratorypractice in historical or philosophical analysis. In the next section Ishall outline some key perspectives on this question.

THE LABORATORY IN MEDICINE AND THE LIFESCIENCES

Having described the central problems of experimental practiceassociated with ‘‘situated knowledge’’ and the ‘‘evidential basis ofexperimentation,’’ I turn towards a more analytical approach indiscussing several positions on experimentation in the history andphilosophy of medicine. Although experimental laboratories rankamong the privileged places of modern natural science, the systematicintroduction of experimentation into medicine is a recent affair, whencompared with the historical development of medicine in the Westernworld.31

Historical and Epistemic Phases of Experimental Practice

Although experimental investigation in physiology was occurringduring the 17th and 18th centuries, it was only in the first decadesof the 19th century that it came to prominence as the symbol of


biomedicine. Marie-Francois-Xavier Bichat (1771–1802) in Pariswas among the first who influenced medicine and physiology in amajor way with his observations of phenomena in pathophysio-logical experiments.32 His empirical approach was well received bymid-19th century experimental physiologists such as Julien J. C.Legallois (1770–1840), Marie-Jean Pierre Flourens (1794–1867) andFrancois Magendie (1783–1855), who all assumed a causal-analyticalapproach to experimentation in medicine.33 Their experimentalprocedures were mainly of a manipulative kind, such as producingorganic lesions in living animals by means of ligatures, sections, andablations. Further, the French physiologists made limited use ofendoprosthetic operations with biological organ parts from otherresearch animals or artificial devices.34 Measurement was limited tothe determination of the volume and weight of body liquids, of foodintake, or the temperature of human bodies. The key feature of thisfirst period of systematic experimentation in physiology was thatexperimental practices were mainly used to extend ‘‘natural vision’’into the ‘‘black box’’ of the living body by means of vivisection.They aimed at manipulating physiological functions in a factoranalysis-fashion, e.g. when destroying functions or ligating bloodvessels.

Current ideas of a ‘‘normalization’’ of therapeutic procedures onthe basis of scientific knowledge could not have been realized beforethe second half of the 19th century. They are intricately associatedwith the name of Claude Bernard and the French physiologists. In theIntroduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine (1865), Bernardnot only presented an overview of the empirical basis of the lifesciences, but also an exposition of many epistemological problems.He defended experimental physiology as a way of nurturing diag-nostic certainty. For him, the concept of ‘‘health’’ had to be definedin terms of the physiological functions of the body – what once hadbeen ‘‘the silence of the organs in the living being’’ for Bichat. Andexperimental physiology claimed the role as guiding discipline forclinical action:35

I consider hospitals only the entrance to scientific medicine; they are the first field of

observation that a physician enters; but the true sanctuary of medical science is alaboratory; only there can he seek explanations of life in the normal and pathologicalstates by means of experimental analysis.36

Bernard’s rhetorical statements corresponded well with hisexperimental findings regarding glycogenesis in the liver or the


function of the pancreas in digestion. Taken at face value, his labo-ratory practices did not differ from those of his academic teacher,Magendie, but widened the experimental scope of measuring devicesin his studies. Bernard thus had a deep impact on the French inves-tigator Etienne Jules Marey (1830–1904), who later developed thefirst automatic devices for the measurement and recording of bodyfunctions. Describing this second phase of experimental research oflife, one may state that:

During the latter half of the 19th century, physiology made use ofexperimental practices insofar as it intensified the tendency tomanipulate the functions of the living body. The problem of complexphysiological processes had been addressed by finding new means tomeasure relevant meta-functions. The introduction of specific mea-surement devices into the medical laboratories paved the way fordefining the ‘‘normal’’ and the ‘‘pathological’’ in medicine.37

Although it has become apparent that descriptive phases inmedical history do not entirely correspond to epistemologicalapproaches to laboratory action, the perception of predominantpractices and techniques permits a heuristic division. Hence, even athird phase of experimental practice may be discerned, when, duringthe latter half of the 19th century, the unease of French and Italianphysiologists with the industrial advances of the German-speakingcountries became evident.38 In a climate of cultural rivalry, Bernardjoined with others in lamenting that German physiological labora-tories had only achieved their advances in the 1860s and 1870s,because they were greatly encouraged by the generous financialfunding by medical institutions.

One of the prominent figures in German science, whose inventionswere profoundly fostered by new market forces, was the Jena phys-icist Ernst Abbe (1840–1905). As Ian Hacking has shown in his workRepresenting and Intervening, in the biomedical fields of histology,pathology, and haematology, ‘‘truth in microscopy’’ depended lar-gely on the development of diffraction lenses and laboratory prac-tices.39 During the latter half of the 19th century, experimentation inthe life sciences ceased to be an individualistic affair, but turned intoa large-scale undertaking. Abbe’s work can certainly be seen as aproduct of the industrial market sphere; on the other hand, his ownexperimental practices were an expression of his economic interests inthe development of new lenses as marketable commodities. Abbe’sbiography sees him not just as a disenchanted scientist, but also as anentrepreneur who was heavily engaged in the very important


activities of Carl Zeiss (1816–1888) and who later shared in the fac-tory’s interest.40

By the end of the 19th century experimental practices tended to beintertwined with other cultural spheres. This development had itsimpact on the self-perception of the life scientists and the reflection byothers, when experimental investigators could claim to work for thebenefit of the whole society as medical experts. Around 1900, indi-vidual laboratory scientists took an essential part in the economiza-tion of science and society.

Experimental Systems as Guarantors for the Future

The basis for modern experimentation in medicine was prepared,around the fin de siecle, insofar as different forms of empirical access(observation, investigation, or manipulation); of intersection (withtechnology, industry, and economy); and of context (scientific, cul-tural, and social) had been established. But to successfully integratesuch disparate sociocultural elements into one system appears to bedifficult. At this point Hans-Joerg Rheinberger’s synthetic approachto ‘‘experimental systems’’ as working units of laboratory investiga-tion proves to be analytically useful.41 His image of biomedicalpractice exemplifies the views of many contemporary historians andepistemologists, such as those of Joan H. Fujimura, Richard M.Burian, and Peter Galison.42 Their views converge regardingexperimental science as a collective action that depends on theuncertain and predominantly creative work of the laboratory. Theseconcepts may more adequately explain modern endeavours in medi-cine, when referring to interdisciplinary working groups, transfer ofmethods, and highly focused research aims, as can be found in theorientation of particular fields of cancer research or the neuro-sciences.43 In Rheinberger’s view, experimental systems are hybridarrangements, which, in the form of an interlocking grid, establish‘‘a transition from man to nature,’’ when including scientific objects,laboratory apparatus, as well as the scientists and the institutions inwhich they work.44 As Rheinberger states, if one accepts that researchin the life sciences is essentially driven by experimental systems, thehistorical and epistemological focus must be on the dynamics of suchsystems.

With a view to the reconstruction of pieces of scientific work, itbecomes clear that discovering the details of experimental activity isa complicated affair. The dynamics and the processes of certain


laboratory practices are subject to widespread cultural changes even intheir local setup.45 Because it is the material entity which is the objectof experimental manipulation, epistemic objects can emerge during theresearch process without having been ever specifically sought. Therepresentation of these phenomena hence cannot be regarded aspre-given, but rather as manufactured during the experiment.46 Weshould follow Rheinberger’s views that the way in which scientistsregard their experimental outcomes is profoundly determined byresearch interests and individual scientific socialization. This explainsthe structure of intricate debates in the biomedical sciences, wheremany are centered on questions of how new scientific objects, such as‘‘genes,’’ ‘‘proteins,’’ or ‘‘prions’’ are to be considered.47

A similar view of experimentation is shared by the Nobel Prizelaureate for Physiology or Medicine (1965), Francois Jacob, when hepointed out that today’s scientific conceptions continue to evolve. Perprincipii, we cannot foretell what basic research in the life sciences willteach us tomorrow or what kind of influence this will have on clinicalapplications. As the working entities of basic medical research lab-oratory systems are designed in such a way that they give answers tovirtual questions, which the experimenters had often not conceivedbeforehand. To a certain extent, they display ‘‘a life of their own.’’48

The same holds for conceptions that are experimentally developed.Although molecular genetics has changed the entirety of biology, itstill remains impossible to calculate the number of combinatorialprocesses in the development of higher organisms. The buildingblocks of life are invariable and remain the source of endless sur-prises. Like many historians and philosophers of experimental prac-tice, Jacob does not regard the medical laboratory as a static placewhere preconceived hypotheses are put to test, but as a site where newscientific questions are generated.

Roles and Relations of Experimental Systems

In their philosophical studies on the methodology of laboratorywork, Allan Franklin and Ronald N. Giere have pointed out theimportant roles of experiment, but have made some restrictions:49

• First, laboratory experiments trigger scientific progress, but thereexists an important possibility that experimental results may beregarded as being idealized or even wrong.

• Second, theoretical deduction and comparison of theory andexperiment can be incorrect.


When Franklin tries to rebut social constructivist views regardingthe rationality of experiment, he nevertheless propounds the view thatscientists do have good reasons for believing in experimental out-comes. His analysis of the ways in which scientific hypotheses aregenerally stated, whereby they are often the result of the availabilityof new technologies, is based on accounts of the exploration of thehistorical origin and the fate of scientific concepts.

In making sense of the new historical and philosophicalapproaches to experimental practice, scholars who study science havereturned to the biographies of experimental investigators, innovators,and clinicians to gain an understanding of the local operations oflaboratory science.50 They are often preoccupied with formal recon-structions of experimental pathways, while ignoring more generalaspects. Bruno Latour has observed persistent problems in the sim-plification of socio-scientific relations:

The first dissatisfaction concerns the micro level where scientists are usually engagedin face-to-face interactions, field data collection, estimating the output of algorithms,

etc. However, soon there comes a time when the researcher realises that a connectionneeds to be made with the macro world... The second dissatisfaction is a compulsionof the opposite kind whereby after having explored the intricacies of the macrodomain using pattern recognition within ubiquitous concepts like society, values,

norms, structure, etc. an overwhelming need is normal to be felt to retrace and getback to micro analysis.51

Developing the actor-network theory as an alternative thatcould deal with some fundamental dissatisfactions, Latour hasattempted to take larger unities into account. He emphasizes thegreater social context of biomedicine and is of the opinion that astable scientific practice can only arise when the world of thelaboratory is rooted in larger social networks of communicationbetween experimenters and funding agencies. With regard to LouisPasteur’s (1822–1895) work in microbiology during the 19thcentury, Latour argues that the French medical scientist could haveonly succeeded in pursuing innovative research because he capturedthe interest of other social groups. Pasteur’s motto ‘‘Give me alaboratory and I will raise the world’’ therefore reflects the thirdform of experimental practice as a close intersection of differentcultural spheres (see page 408).52

In his book Politics of Nature. How to Bring the Sciences intoDemocracy, Latour follows an exemplary approach.53 There hestresses that the Nature-Society division is problematic, because,from a cultural perspective, nature is not a self-evident given but


rather constantly re-interpreted. Where Latour proposes a politicalsolution, it becomes apparent that natural facts and social values aretwo sides of the same coin. In particular, medicine and laboratorybased life sciences cannot be intelligibly interpreted without takingthe sociocultural sphere into account. In Making Science: BetweenNature and Society, Stephen Cole gives an account complementary toLatour’s when he describes how scientific disciplines diverge in theachievement of consensus over experimental facts.54 Scientific disci-plines can and do intersect on issues of public interest, with regard toretrospective judgements of medical experts in public hearings, trials,or court cases. This is equally important when the cognitive contentof experimental practice is examined. With respect to the concept of‘‘historical ontology,’’ this complementary view shall now be devel-oped into a synthetic approach.

HISTORICAL ONTOLOGY

Ian Hacking has rendered the useful service of opening the debate onhow scientists come to believe rationally in their experimental results.He criticized scepticist and nominalist positions in the sociology ofknowledge which have argued that the content of science was notprimarily determined by experimentation. Hacking has pointed outthe reliance of experimental evidence and conceptual convictions onscientific instruments when arguing that practice with laboratoryinstruments enables scientific investigators to achieve theory-inde-pendent observations:

Slices of red blood platelets are fixed upon a microscopic grid. This is literally a grid:when seen through the microscope one sees a grid each of whose squares is labelled

with a capital lette… Two physical processes – electron transmission and fluorescentre-emission – are used to detect the bodies. These processes have virtually nothing incommon between them… They are essentially unrelated chunks of physics. It wouldbe a preposterous coincidence if, time and again, two completely different physical

processes produced identical visual configurations which were, however, artefacts ofthe physical processes rather than real structures in the cell.55

Nevertheless, starting from local research traditions, biomedicalscientists might regard certain kinds of evidence as more convincingthan others: Episodes in the history of medicine, such as the cases ofthe Vienna gynecologist Ignaz Philipp Semmelweis (1818–1865), whoproved the contagiousness of puerperal fever, or Robert Koch’s(1843–1910) support for the tuberculin serum, suggest that experi-


mental results do often disagree with medical theories. In the middleof the 19th century, Semmelweis had conjectured that maternalinfections at the Allgemeines Krankenhaus in Vienna were due to thetransfer of infectious agents by doctors and medical students, but hisintroduction of hygienic counter measures, evoked intense protestfrom colleagues who could not accept his new concept of the puer-peral fever contagion.56

The experiments with tuberculin serum developed by Koch inBerlin, who believed it to be a specific remedy for pulmonuaryphthisis, were less fortunate. Emil von Behring’s (1854–1917) anti-diphtheria had been successfully employed in ill children, and Kochhad hoped that he might achieve the same result for ‘‘his disease’’tuberculosis. Unfortunately, the tuberculin serum could only be usedfor diagnostic purposes. However, Koch persisted in this kind ofserologic research, which appeared to be contrary to prevailing sci-entific opinion.57

Epistemological Issues

Taking similar research examples into account, medical historiogra-phy has for a long time sought to describe how particular traditionsarose. The investigation of experimental practice, however, tran-scends such research aims and leads to analytical and normativematters of the philosophy of biomedicine: This intersection of historyand philosophy of science seeks to explain the coincidences of sci-entific concepts, specific modes of research heuristics, and the dis-covery of epistemic objects. The basic question is how objectivitycomes into being and how certain standards are maintained in the lifesciences.58 Social constructivist views on the creation of phenomenaand the medical history of experimental practice thus begin to con-verge in an interdisciplinary field.

Hacking, recently has named this field historical ontology, definedas the investigation of ‘‘what there is’’ and how ‘‘the comings, incomings into being, are historical.’’59 He focuses on specific examplesof organizing concepts in the natural sciences and the humanities andperceives methodological problems as constitutional in the history ofscience. Regarding its implications, the approach of historicalontology is committed to the unveiling of the conditions of certainscientific objects, the epistemic practices of heuristics and the vindi-cation of epistemic things. Hacking’s own examples from the bio-medical sciences exhibit many dynamic patterns that have given rise


to scientific debates, as is demonstrated by case reports on post-traumatic stress disorder or child abuse.60 These examples lendconsiderable support to the thesis that scientific ‘‘concepts havememories’’ with enduring social effects.61

In transferring those basic ideas of historical ontology onto thediscussion of experimental practice, I will finish with short casestudies that compare the research programme of bacteriology in the19th century with molecular medicine in the 20th century.62 WhenKoch developed his pathogenetic postulates of inflammatory diseasesin the 1880s, it was not clear what his findings in experimentalmicrobiology meant for clinical purposes. Following the isolation ofBacillus anthracis and Mycobacterium tuberculosis, Koch deducedthat for every disease there must be a causative agent, which could beisolated, cultivated and experimentally transferred. For him, labo-ratory practice had become an analogical model to view ‘‘disease.’’63

As becomes clear from the problems Koch experienced in developingtuberculin serum into a specific remedy for tuberculosis, the adher-ents of the bacteriology research programme pragmatically pursuedbacteriology without knowing the exact implications and materialconstraints of what the concept ‘‘really meant.’’

The founder of scientific hygiene in Germany, Max von Petten-kofer (1818–1901),64 and the Paris doyen of bacteriology, Pasteur,appear as principal witnesses in this regard. Where Pettenkofer crit-icized Koch for his assumption that bacteria acted as necessary causesfor infections in the famous self-experiment where he ingested cholerapathogens without himself getting ill, Pasteur contested the primaryorientation of Koch’s morphologic approach.65 If one examines thediscourse in medicine during the first half of the 20th century, onerealizes that the bacteriological paradigm gradually disposed of eachof its postulates in their strict deterministic sense. But as we havealready seen, in the experimental practice of Pasteur, bacteriologywas at the core of intersections with other cultural fields. With its ill-defined boundary concept of ‘‘bacteria’’ the new paradigm graduallygained control of various branches of hygiene, food control, tropicaland clinical medicine, etc.66

Similar to bacteriology, molecular medicine as a genuinelyexperimental approach has shaped our understanding of health anddisease during the 20th century.67 But the development of a molecularperspective of medicine has been formed in the paradigm of experi-mental biology. Here biophysical approaches have attempted toreduce functions of the living organism to physico-chemical


reactions. This reductionist approach also had its effect on whatLenoir has characterized as ‘‘a profound transformation of biology,’’associated with the works of James D. Watson, Francis Crick,Francois Jacob and Jacques Monod.68 Following the reductionism ofclassical genetics and biophysics, ‘‘gene action’’ for a long time meantthat one gene codes for one protein. Extrapolated to the clinical viewof disease, this position suggested that one gene codes for one illnessand likewise that each illness presupposes a single gene. Gradually ithas become clear that this simplicistic picture does not correspondwith modern experimental inquiry.69 Nevertheless, even the produc-tion of new epistemic objects in current life sciences is not free fromconstraints of laboratory practice. On the contrary, whereas obser-vation previously was a classical goal in the medical clinic, experi-mental research in biomedicine was transformed into a data-boundscience that depended on the ability of its laboratory practitioners toview large amounts of information.70 This development has alsochanged the instruments and apparatus themselves; they have becomequite independent of the human actor’s direct interference with thebiological specimen of interest.71

Indeed, in the near future, there may be no more experimentalhypotheses, but only explanations for computerized data samplings.72

As such, the close comparison of experimental practice in bacteriol-ogy and molecular medicine does not attempt to destroy legends suchas Koch’s postulates or the traditional view of gene action. My briefreconstructions rather suggest that a closer look at how productiveexperimental systems originate should be undertaken, especially withregard to how their historical development is accompanied byrecurrent loops and jumps between entities, experimental manipula-tions, and theories. My starting point was that the experimentalconcepts of ‘‘genes’’ are not verified as ‘‘tuberculin’’ was not either.Rather the historical ontologies of ‘‘genotypes,’’ ‘‘phenotypes,’’ and‘‘genetic information,’’ and similar concepts have developed with thegrowth of individual experimental systems.73

Historical Ontology and Experimental Practice

Henk van den Belt has recently made some critical remarks thatmight be interpreted as an implicit attack on historical ontology.74

Nevertheless, from the perspective of epistemological approaches tothe history of medicine, the position is not highly controversial. Iwould agree that some of the social constructivist views on experi-


mentation in medicine and the life sciences are far too extreme,including Bloor’s attempt to explain the essential content of scientificknowledge in social and literary terms, Haraway’s often one-sidedfeminist analysis of science, or Knorr-Cetina’s and Latour’s boldconjecture that nature lacks an independent ontology. Whendeveloping new accounts of experimental practice in the future, wecertainly need to explore the material foundation of biomedicine.Latour’s position on the nature vs. technology dichotomy, however,is quite intuitive, from an ontological perspective, when for example,he traces the world-producing capacities of modern ‘‘techno-science’’to experimental systems which are ceaselessly proliferating via newentities, ‘‘quasi-objects,’’ and ‘‘hybrids.’’75

When integrating the issues of laboratory practice and historicalontology, these assumptions raise several concerns. First, if scientificontologies have histories, laboratory investigators might frequentlyrevise their working concepts, so that they should be historicallyanalyzed in terms of previous applications. In Hacking’s account ofhistorical ontology, nature and society are complementary represen-tations of experimental inquiry, so that current ideas produce theircultural ‘‘memories.’’ These concerns deeply influence the organiza-tion of future progress, and if historical ontology is correspondinglyunderstood, it really appears as a synthetic approach to experimen-tation in biomedicine.76

CONCLUSION

Experimental practice in medicine and the life sciences has manymore facets than could be addressed in this article. If we want tounravel what features of human culture and cognitive developmentsustain the functioning of the life sciences, the close collaboration ofhistorians, sociologists, and philosophers with cognitive scientists willbe necessary.77 The communication of scholars in the study of sci-ence, technology, and medicine with practicing scientists should beintensified. In particular the relation between laboratory practice andexperimental systems has as yet rarely been examined by the historyand philosophy of medicine. This is in some ways reminiscent of theold notion that medical theory is embedded in the apparatus, but thenovelty here consists in not distinguishing between instruments of thelaboratory and sociocultural factors that influence experimentalsystems. The author believes that this conjecture can be further


extended, thereby generating novel, philosophically interesting fieldsthat relate closely to the actual practice of modern biomedicalinvestigations, for example, on topics of ‘‘knowledge-transfer’’ ininternational and intercultural perspective, the recurrence of ‘‘for-gotten diseases,’’ or neglected social populations in clinical and basicresearch.

Another essential concern of contemporary medical historiogra-phy and epistemology is the influence of the biotechnologicalindustry, or what can be termed the drive of innovation. Thisperspective reflects the connection with current trends in sociologyand the history of biomedical science. In fact, most debatesregarding the meaning of experimental outcomes and originalconcepts in the life sciences may be seen as controversies overquestions of industrial interests and public policy. From a broaderperspective, current scholarly concern about experimental practiceis motivated by the suspicion that controversies concerningexperimental practice are symptomatic of deeper philosophical andsociological problems.

To conclude: Research in medicine has progressed from a mark-edly descriptive and observational science in the late 18th century78

towards an intervention of processes at the subcellular levels in the20th century. Recently, Soraya de Chadarevian has characterized theresulting stage of this profound transformation in the biomedicalsciences as follows:

The Laboratory of Molecular Biology serves as a vantage point to study the makingof molecular biology. The history of the laboratory is instructive… because it offers

the opportunity to examine in detail the complex web of activities and culturalresources used to build molecular biology [and medicine].79

Laboratory experimentation has begun to dominate notions of‘‘health’’ and disease’’ in biomedicine and has gained considerableinfluence in the understanding of the conditio humana in modernsocieties. Despite this, we are still far from having an all-encom-passing theory of the practice of biomedical research. Such a theorywould have an important normative reach, allowing experimentallife sciences the role of defining and sustaining concepts of ‘‘health’’and ‘‘disease.’’ If the human body is to become the subject of agrowing biomedical interpretation and manipulation as well as asubject of social and cultural demands on the other, the sociologi-cal, historical and philosophical issues of experimental researchacquire important ethical implications: By analyzing the historical


evolution of experimental systems, theoretical medicine can lay thegroundwork for an improvement of ethical judgement.80 Experi-mentation is a fundamental epistemological category of the modernlife sciences and medical knowledge therefore strongly depends onprevious laboratory practices and hypotheses. The conceptualefforts of theoretical medicine will be evaluated on the grounds ofits clinical relevance. Here, historical ontology is proposed like as avaluable tool that could promote this aim, if established as a coursesubject for students of the life sciences, and as a research theme forboth scholars of science, technology, and medicine and biomedicalscientists as a point of reference in interdisciplinary policy makingprocesses.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I wish to thank Norbert W. Paul (Mainz) and Antje Kampf (Auck-land/Mainz) for our mutual discussions and for their friendly andcritical thoughts on the subject of experimental practice as well as twoanonymous referees who commented on an earlier version of thispaper. I also want to sincerely include Paul Foley (Sydney) for hismeticulous adjustment of my English.

NOTES

1 As introduction see, for example, the works of Andrew Pickering, ed., Science as

Practice and Culture (Chicago, London: The University of Chicago Press, 1992);Robert Ackermann, ‘‘Review article. The new experimentalism,’’ The British Journalfor the Philosophy of Science 40 (1989): 185–190; David Gooding, Trevor Pinch,Simon Schaffer, eds., The Uses of Experiment – Strategies in the Natural Sciences

(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989).2 Michael Lynch, ‘‘Extending Wittgenstein: The Pivotal Move from Epistemology tothe Sociology of Science,’’ in Pickering, cited in n. 1, above: 215f.3 See, for example, Hans-Joerg Rheinberger, ‘‘History of Science and the Practices ofExperiment’’ History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 23 (2001): 51–63; StevenShapin and Simon Schaffer, Leviathan and the Air-Pump: Hobbes, Boyle, and the

Experimental Life (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985); Karin Knorr-Cetina, The Manufacture of Knowledge: An Essay on the Constructivist and theContextual Nature of Science (Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1981).4 A concise introduction to the applications of the sociology of knowledge is

provided by Mario Biagioli, ed., The Science Studies Reader (New York, London:Routledge, 1999).


5 Allan Franklin, The Neglect of Experiment (Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress, 1986).6 See, for example, Archibald V. Hill, First and Last Experiments in MuscleMechanics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970); Gordon J. Goodfield,The Growth of Scientific Physiology (London: Routledge, 1960); Roger Millet,

Claude Bernard ou l’aventure scientifique (Paris: Gallimard, 1944).7 E.g. Edwin Clarke and Joseph G. Bearn, ‘‘Practical History. The Role of Experi-mentation in Medical History’’ inModern Methods in the History of Medicine, EdwinClarke, ed. (London: The Athlone Press of the University of London, 1971), pp.

358–375; Alfons Labisch, ‘‘Medizin als Wissenschaft – Medizin als Kunst,‘‘ Medizin,Gesellschaft, Geschichte 19 (2000): 9–32.8 Peter Wright and Andrew Treacher, eds., The Problem of Medical Knowledge:

Examining the Social Construction of Medicine (Edinburgh: Edinburgh UniversityPress, 1982); John Harley Warner, ‘‘The History of Science and the Sciences ofMedicine’’ Osiris 10 (1995): 164–193.9 Cf. Christina Brandt, Metapher und Experiment. Von der Virusforschung zumGenetischen Code (Goettingen: Wallstein, 2004); Thomas Schlich, ‘‘Linking Causeand Disease in the Laboratory: Robert Koch’s Method of Superimposing Visual and

‘Functional’ Representation of Bacteria’’ History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences22 (2000): 43–58; Hans-Joerg Rheinberger, ‘‘Comparing Experimental Systems:Protein synthesis in microbes and in animal tissue at Cambridge (Ernst F. Gale) andat the Massachusetts General Hospital (Paul C. Zamecnik), 1945–1960’’ Journal of

the History of Biology 29 (1996): 387–416.10 Ernst Mayr, ‘‘When is historiography whiggish?’’ Journal of the History of Ideas 51(1990): 301–309.11 See, for example, Ilana Loewy, ‘‘Ludwik Fleck on the Social Construction ofMedical Knowledge’’ Sociology of Health and Illness 19 (1988): 133–155; Charles E.Rosenberg and John Golden, eds., Framing Disease. Studies in Cultural History (New

Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1992); Thomas Schlich, ‘‘Wissenschaft:Die Herstellung wissenschaftlicher Fakten als Thema der Geschichtsforschung’’ inMedizingeschichte: Aufgaben, Probleme, Perspektiven, Norbert W. Paul and Thomas

Schlich eds. (Frankfurt/M., New York: Campus, 1998), pp. 107–129.12 Cf. Bruno Latour and Steven Woolgar, eds., Laboratory Life. The Social Con-struction of Scientific Facts (Beverly Hills, London: SAGE Publications, 1979);Volker Hess, Der wohltemperierte Mensch. Wissenschaft und Alltag des Fiebermessens

(1850–1900) (Frankfurt/M., New York: Campus, 2000).13 Already present in Michael Polanyi, The Tacit Dimension (London: Routledge,Kegan Paul, 1967).14 See, on this issue, Elliott Sober, Philosophy of Biology (Oxford: Oxford UniversityPress, 1993); David Turnbull and Terry Stokes, ‘‘Manipulable Systems and Labo-ratory Strategies in a Biomedical Institute’’ in Experimental Inquiries – Historical,

Philosophical and Social Studies of Experimentation in Science, Homer E. Le Granded. (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1980), pp. 167–189.15 Cf. William Coleman and Frederic L. Holmes, eds., The Investigative Enterprise.Experimental Physiology in Nineteenth-Century Medicine (Berkeley, Los Angeles,

London: University of California Press, 1988).16 Knorr-Cetina, cited in n. 3, above.


17 Karin Knorr-Cetina, ‘‘The Couch, the Cathedral, and the Laboratory: On theRelationship between Experiment and Laboratory in Science’’ in Pickering, cited in

n. 1, above: 113–138, esp.: 126; see also Karin Knorr-Cetina, Epistemic Cultures.How the Sciences Make Knowledge (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,1999), pp. 1–25.18 Donna Haraway, ‘‘Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism andthe Privilege of Partial Perspective’’, Feminist Studies 14 (1988): 575–599, esp.: 584.19 Haraway, cited in n. 18, above; Evelyn Fox Keller, ‘‘The Gender/Science System:or, Is Sex to Gender as Nature is to Science?’’ in Biagioli, cited in n. 4, above:

234–242.20 Cf. Ludmilla Jordanova, ‘‘The Social Construction of Medical Knowledge’’,Social History of Medicine 8 (1995): 361–380.21 Andrew Pickering, ‘‘From Science as Knowledge to Science as Practice,’’ inPickering, cited in n. 1, above: 11–13.22 See, for example, the case study in Schlich, cited in n. 9, above.23 It was Mirko Drasen Grmk who emphasized that the experimental process ofdiscovery was a central problem of an epistemologically oriented history of medicine.He was among the first scholars who started with intensive studies of unpublished

material. Cf. Claude Bernard, Cahier de notes 1850–1860, Mirko Drasen Grmek ed.(Paris: Gallimard, 1965).24 Frederic L. Holmes, ‘‘Do We Understand Historically How ExperimentalKnowledge is Acquired?’’ History of Science 30 (1992): 119–136.25 Holmes, cited in n. 24, above: 127.26 See also William Coleman, ‘‘The Cognitive Basis of the Discipline: ClaudeBernard on Physiology’’ Isis 76 (1985): 49–70.27 Shapin and Schaffer, cited in n. 3, above.28 Coleman and Holmes, cited in n. 15, above.29 Thomas F. Gieryn, Cultural Boundaries of Science (Chicago, London: The

University of Chicago Press, 1999), p. 15.30 Gieryn, cited in n. 29, above.31 Karl E. Rothschuh, History of Physiology (Huntington, New York: Krieger,

1973), pp. 150-194.32 Elizabeth Haigh, Xavier Bichat and the Medical Theory of the Eighteenth Century(London: Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine, 1984).33 Mary Brazier, A History of Neurophysiology in the Nineteenth Century (New York:

Schuhmann’s, 1988).34 See, for example, the description of Magendie’s insertion of pig bladders as‘‘stomach prostheses’’ in his physiological studies on vomiting in Frank W. Stah-

nisch, Ideas in Action – Der Funktionsbegriff und seine methodologische Rolle imForschungsprogramm des Experimentalphysiologen Francois Magendie (1783–1855)(Muenster, Hamburg, London: LIT-Verlag, 2003), pp. 172–197.35 Claude Bernard, An Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine, Frenched. 1865, trans. Henry Copley Greene (New York: Dover, 1957), p. 209.36 Bernard, cited in n. 35, above: 146; for a further exposition of this issue seeCay-Ruediger Pruell, ed., Traditions of Pathology in Western Europe. Theories,

Institutions and their Cultural Setting (Pfaffenweiler: Centaurus, 2003); John V.Pickstone, ‘‘Bureaucracy, Liberalism and the Body in Post-revolutionary France’’History of Science 19 (1981): 115–142.


37 Cf. Georges Canguilhem, Le normal et le pathologique (Paris: Presses Universi-taires de France, 1966).38 See e.g. Karin Olesko, ed., Science in Germany. The Intersection of Institutional andIntellectual Issues (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989); Coleman, cited inn. 26, above.39 Where conventional historiography and epistemology had primarily turned on‘‘theories’’ and ‘‘ideas,’’ Hacking argues for a scholarship of ‘‘things,’’ ‘‘practices,’’and ‘‘marks’’ in routine research procedures. See Ian Hacking, Representing andintervening. Introductory topics in the philosophy of natural science (Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 1983), pp. 149–232.40 Norbert Guenther, Ernst Abbe. Schoepfer der Zeiss-Stiftung (Stuttgart: Wissens-chaftliche Verlagsgesellschaft, 1951), pp. 38–40 and 105–116; for the general political

conditions that influenced 19thcentury science in Germany see Timothy Lenoir,Politik im Tempel der Wissenschaft. Forschung und Machtausuebung im deutschenKaiserreich, Germ. trans. Horst Bruehmann (Frankfurt/M., New York: Campus,

1992); Timothy Lenoir, ‘‘A Magic Bullett: Research for Profit and the Growth ofKnowledge in Germany Around 1900’’ Minerva 26 (1988): 66–88.41 Hans-Joerg Rheinberger, ‘‘From Experimental Systems to Cultures of Experi-

mentation’’ in Concepts, Theories, and Rationality in the Biological Sciences, GereonWolters, James G. Lennox and Peter McLaughlin eds. (Konstanz, Pittsburgh:UKV-Universitaetsverlag Konstanz and University of Pittsburgh Press, 1995),pp. 107–122.42 Joan H. Fujimura, Crafting Science. A Sociohistory of the Quest for the Genetics ofCancer (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1996); Richard M. Burian, ‘‘Taskdefinition, and the transition from genetics to molecular genetics: Aspects of the

work on protein synthesis in the laboratories of J. Monod and P. Zamecnik’’ Journalof the History of Biology 26 (1993): 387–407; Peter Galison, How Experiments End(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987).43 Cf. Hans-Joerg Rheinberger, Toward a History of Epistemic Things. SynthesizingProteins in the Test Tube (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997), pp. 24–37 and133–142; Valerie G. Hardcastle and Charles M. Stewart, ‘‘Theory Structure in the

Neurosciences?’’ in Theory and Method in the Neurosciences, Peter K. Machamer,Rick Grush, and Peter McLaughlin eds. (Pittsburgh: Pittsburgh University Press,2001), pp. 30–44.44 Rheinberger, cited in 43, above.45 Cf. Sven Dierig and Henning Schmidgen, eds., Physiologische und psychologischePraktiken im 19. Jahrhundert: Ihre Beziehungen zu Literatur, Kunst und Technik(Berlin: Max-Planck-Institute for the History of Science, 1999) (Preprint 120).46 A similar view on experiment as stable working unit and subject of intentionalchoice had already been held by Berlin pathologist Rudolf Virchow (1821–1902),‘‘Standpoints in Scientific Medicine,’’ Germ. ed. 1847, in Disease, Life and Man:

Selected Essays by Rudolf Virchow, ed. and trans. Lelland J. Rather (Stanford:Stanford University Press, 1958), p. 37.47 Cf. Evelyn Fox Keller and Elisabeth A. Loyd, eds., Keywords in EvolutionaryBiology (Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press, 1992) passim.48 Francois Jacob, The Statue Within: An Autobiography (New York: Basic Books,1988), p. 9.


49 Allan Franklin, Experiment – Right or Wrong (Cambridge, New York, PortChester: Cambridge University Press, 1990), pp. 142-161; Ronald N. Giere and

Richard S. Wetsfall, eds., Foundations of Scientific Method: The Nineteenth Century(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1973).50 See, for example, Timothy Lenoir, ‘‘Science for the Clinic: Science Policy and the

Formation of Carl Ludwig’s Institute in Leipzig,’’ in Coleman, and Holmes, eds.cited in n. 15, above: 139–178.51 Bruno Latour, Science in Action. How to Follow Scientists and Engineers ThroughSociety (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987), p. 247.52 Bruno Latour, ‘‘Give Me a Laboratory and I Will Raise the World,’’ in Biagioli,cited in n. 4, above: 258–275.53 Bruno Latour, Politics of Nature. How to Bring the Sciences into Democracy

(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999).54 Stephen Cole, Making Science. Between Nature and Society (Harvard: HarvardUniversity Press, 1992), p. 14.55 Hacking, cited, in n. 39, above: 201.56 Erna Lesky, Ignaz Philipp Semmelweis und die Wiener medizinische Schule (Vienna:H. Boehlaus Nachfolger, 1964).57 Christoph Gradmann, ‘‘Money and Microbes. Robert Koch, Tuberculin and theFoundation of the Institute for Infectious Diseases in Berlin in 1891’’ History andPhilosophy of the Life Sciences 22 (2000): 59–79.58 Frank W. Stahnisch, ‘‘Review Article. Ian Hacking, Historical Ontology’’ Journal

of the History of the Neurosciences 14 (2005): 64–68.59 Ian Hacking, Historical Ontology (Cambridge, MA, London: Harvard UniversityPress, 2002), p. 4f.60 Hacking, cited in n. 59, above: 4, 18 and 69f.61 Hacking, cited in n. 59, above: 37.62 See also Alfons Labisch, ‘‘Die bakteriologische und die molekulare Transition der

Medizin – Historizitaet und Kontingenz als Erkenntnismittel?’’ in Historizitaet.Erfahrung und Handeln – Geschichte und Medizin, Alfons Labisch and Norbert W.Paul eds. (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2004), pp. 213–226.63 Gradmann, cited in n. 57, above.64 Charles E. Winslow, ‘‘Pettenkofer – The Last Stand’’ in The Conquest of EpidemicDisease, Charles E. Winslow ed. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1944), pp.311-336.65 Latour, cited in n. 52, above.66 For the notion of a ‘‘boundary concept’’ see Ilana Loewy, ‘‘The Strength of LooseConcepts,’’ History of Science 30 (1992): 371–396.67 Norbert W. Paul, ‘‘Genes – Information – Volatile Bodies’’ in Health and Qualityof Life. Philosophical, Medical, and Cultural Aspects, Antje Gimmler, Christian Lenkand Gerhard Aumueller eds. (Muenster: LIT Verlag, 2003), pp. 187–198.68 Timothy Lenoir, ‘‘Shaping Biomedicine as an Information Science’’ in Proceedingsof the 1998 Conference on the History and Heritage of Science Information Systems,Mary E. Bowden, Trudi B. Hahn and Robert V. Williams eds. (Medford, NJ:Information Today, 1998), pp. 27–45; on the same issue see also Norbert W. Paul,

‘‘Genes, Information, Morphing Bodies: On the Mutually Dependent Reinvention ofBiomedicine and Humans’’ Perspectives in Biology and Medicine (in Press).69 Labisch, cited in n. 62, above: 218f.


70 Paul, cited in n. 67, above: 189.71 Lenoir, cited in n. 68, above: 32.72 See e. g. Jacques Monod, Of Flies, Mice, and Men (Cambridge, MA: HarvardUniversity Press, 1998); Norbert W. Paul and Detlef Ganten, ‘‘Die Zukunft derMolekularen Medizin’’ in Das genetische Wissen und die Zukunft des Menschen,

Ludger Honnefelder et al. eds. (Berlin: Springer, 2003), pp. 103–114.73 This is also argued for in Paul Rabinow, Making PCR: A Story of Biotechnology(Chicaco: Chicago University Press, 1996).74 Henk Van Den Belt, ‘‘How to Engage With Experimental Practices? Moderate

Versus Radical Constructivism’’ Journal for General Philosophy of Science 34 (2003):esp.: 213–216.75 Latour, cited in n. 51, above.76 Schaffner has also stressed the case that many of the tools of the empiricallyminded philosophers of medicine could be adjusted to insights drawn from historicalapproaches. See Kenneth Schaffner, Discovery and Explanation in Biology and

Medicine (Chicago, London: The University of Chicago Press, 1993), pp. 517–524.77 See, for example, Peter Carruthers, Steven P. Stich, and Michael Siegal, eds., TheCognitive Basis of Science (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002).78 Volker Hess, ‘‘Medical Semiotics in the 18th Century: A Theory of Practice’’Theoretical Medicine 19 (1998): 203–219.79 Cf. Soraya de Chadarevian, Designs for Life. Molecular Biology after World WarII (Cambridge, New York, Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 2002), p. 363.80 See also Norbert W. Paul, ‘‘Incurable Suffering from the ’Hiatus Theoreticus’?Some Epistemological Problems in Modern Medicine and the Clinical Relevance ofPhilosophy of Medicine’’ Theoretical Medicine 19 (1998): esp.: 234–237.

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Institute for History, Philosophy and Ethics of MedicineJohannes Gutenberg-University of MainzAm Pulverturm 13D-55131 MainzGermany

E-mail: [email protected]


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Historical and Philosophical Perspectives on Experimental Practice in Medicine and the Life Sciences