Unfinished Nature - by Arpita Roy (Hardcover)

About the Book

Drawing on two and a half years of in-depth fieldwork spent among CERN's research community surrounding the discovery of the Higgs boson, Arpita Roy offers a rich analysis of science in the making.

Book Synopsis

The discovery of the Higgs boson in 2012, the culmination of a decades-long search, is one of the singular triumphs of particle physics. Advanced experiments at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN (the Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire) near Geneva detected the long-hypothesized particle, resulting in the 2013 Nobel Prize in Physics. Drawing on two and a half years of in-depth fieldwork spent among CERN's research community during this critical period, Arpita Roy offers a rich analysis of science in the making.

To what extent are scientific discoveries a matter of empirical findings? How do scientists at the farthest reach of abstraction understand their work? Unfinished Nature delves deep into this particle physics laboratory to distinguish the modes of reasoning that animate scientific discoveries and innovations. Demonstrating a deep knowledge of both contemporary physics and the methods of qualitative social science, Roy considers what scientists have to say about their commitments and concerns, the sources and vision guiding their experiments, and the questions they ask of themselves and others. In so doing, she argues that finding new facts in experimental physics turns on conceptual leaps, not necessarily empirical results. A sophisticated interdisciplinary ethnography of a scientific community, Unfinished Nature offers provocative insights into the nature and production of scientific knowledge.

Review Quotes

Empirical science is facing a crisis of confidence while cutting-edge technology inspires an almost blind acceptance. Anthropologist Arpita Roy takes an unusual step by studying on site the human involvement at the CERN Large Hadron Collider. By focusing on the nexus of the theoretical with the technical and experimental, Roy sheds light on an array of phenomena ranging from the theoretical quandaries of particle physics to the funding and publicity of the most advanced science.--Andrew Weeks, author of Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim (1493-1541): Essential Theoretical Writings of Paracelsus

In Unfinished Nature, Arpita Roy takes science and technology studies back to the high-energy physics laboratory to explore its unfinished business--excavating the foundations of reality. Her ethnography of CERN combines STS's attention to practice with a philosopher's concern with ideas to show how cultural presuppositions determine the material universe.--Perrin Selcer, author of The Postwar Origins of the Global Environment: How the United Nations Built Spaceship Earth

Arpita Roy, whose exceptional academic career straddles physics, anthropology, and sociology, spent two and a half years at CERN in Switzerland to bring us her unique insights into the working of particle physics. Even professional particle physicists will find much that is novel in this eye-opening book.--A. Zee, author of Quantum Field Theory as Simply as Possible

About the Author

Arpita Roy is a lecturer in anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley.