Introduction

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Notes

1 Such an argument is made, for instance, by Rheinberger (2010), who explicitly aligns his own position with that of Ludwik Fleck, Gaston Bachelard, and Georges Canguilhem.

2 An example is the position taken by Latour (1993), whose flattening of social analysis seeks to erase all qualitative distinctions between tradition and modernity, grounding whatever difference there is in the quantitative difference of the size of their respective networks.

3 For example, the Chinese herb mahuang (Ephedra), traditionally used in China to treat respiratory congestion and now a prescription medication for treating asthma, has been marketed as a dietary aid in the United States and used as a legal way to get intoxicated. This new way of using mahuang has resulted in a list of adverse effects and reports that its “over dosage led to at least a dozen deaths, heart attacks and strokes” (World Health Organization 2003).