Laboratory as “Outsideness” Entity
The purpose of the article is to study the laboratory in a wide context, as a complex, heterogeneous, polymorphic entity associated with various sciences and types of practices. The works devoted to the historical features of the emergence and development of laboratories in the period 16th-19th century are analyzed, as well as a number of aspects of laboratories in the 20th century and modernity (R. Kohler, M. Crosland, U. Klein, G. Gooday, T. Gieryn, B. Gee, A. Guerrini, P. Galison,C. Jones, C. Klonk, W. de Bruijn and others). The author discusses the role and importance of various locations which are the prototypes of modern scientific laboratories. The epistemic features of the laboratory are revealed, related to the correlation of the place of cognition and the object of cognition on the example of the opposition “laboratory-field” and the aspect of “mobility” of laboratories. The metaphorical connotations of using of the concept of laboratory are briefly discussed. The article introduces the the concept of the “laboratory” phenomenon. The concept of “placelessness” used byR. Kohler to describe the significance of a modern laboratory as a universal institution unrelated to local contexts is discussed. The concept of “outsideness” (the term of M. Bakhtin) of the laboratory is developed, which is an extension and an extensive interpretation of the concept of “placelessness” byR. Kohler. Various features of the laboratory’s “outsideness” are discussed: epistemic “outsideness” while expanding the local epistemic context of the activity of the scientific laboratory; epistemic “outsideness” in relation to the actual location of the laboratory in nature and the world and the ratio of the place and object of knowledge. The author indicates the role of “outsideness” is indicated in connection with the variety of locations that are the prototypes of a modern laboratory. The thesis of “outsideness” as an expression of how the “laboratory idea” is realized in the world is emphasized.