International Year of Chemistry 2011: Laboratory—Its Meaning in Science and Culture

[摘要] The Oxford English Dictionary defines “laboratory” as “a building set upon for conducting practical investigations in natural science originally and especially in chemistry, and for the elaboration or manufacture of chemical, medicinal and like products.” The word was used as early as the 17th century. The laboratory was once written about as an “alchemist's work-house” (1). In 1814, Sir Humphry Davy (1778–1829) used the word metaphorically, writing that “the soil is the laboratory in which the food is prepared.” A chemist who works in a laboratory became a “laboratorian” around 1860 (1).Laboratories are also, in a sense, cultural entities that possess a certain magic, secrecy, and particular symbolism for outsiders. Latour and Woolgar, in their seminal anthropological study of a research laboratory at the Salk Institute, adopted the vantage point of complete outsiders (2). They described “laboratory life” much in the way a scientist would report on any biological observation. …

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