Science in Action: How to Follow Scientists and Engineers Through Society

Science in Action is one of the most influential books in STS, and for good reason. Actor Network Theory as laid out here is a powerful description of how scientists make claims about reality, using technical rhetoric to shift claims between ‘true’ facts and ‘falsified’ artefacts. Latour moves smoothly from the level of the scientific paper, to researchers, labs, disciplines, and the immense network of technoscience that girdles and organizes the world. Rarely is a theory so useful at every scale.

For high theory, this is a relatively accessible book (relative being a relative term). I’d recommend it to everybody, if I thought they had the stomach for it, and if I thought they wouldn’t use post-modern theory for evil.