ABSTRACT
To experiment is to produce phenomena in the laboratory for scientific scrutiny. Scientists ground their belief in the phenomena they produce by establishing three-way coherences among the material procedures, the instrumental models and the phenomenal models of their experimental systems. In the previous chapter we have seen that these three-way coherences ‘accommodate’ the ‘resistances’ of the material world and thereby convey knowledge about the aspects of the material world under scrutiny. In this chapter I argue that the ‘social world’ also creates resistances that need to be accommodated. This means that the collective way through which knowledge is produced also conveys epistemic value to the experimental coherences and the experimental results they support.
