Conferences and the Emergence of Nanoscience

There are certain activities that absorb scientists’ time, yet which historians, sociologists, and (especially) philosophers of science largely neglect: writing grant applications, managing subordinates, convening committees, traveling, and so on. Analysts of science, at least since Kuhn, have instead focused almost exclusively on the explicitly knowledge-oriented characteristics that ostensibly set scientific practice apart from other occupations: scientists’ “inscriptions” and journal articles, their public and private debates over knowledge, their metaphysical predispositions, their theoretical and experimental techniques for apprehending the world. In understanding scientists primarily as knowledge producers, analysts generally ignore mundane activities scientists have in common with other professionals.