Performing technology's stories: on social constructivism, performance, and perormativity

摘要

Ed Constant's recent article "Reliable Knowledge and Unreliable Stuff" is an attractive, graceful, and more than occasionally witty description of the growth of rational engineering belief. In particular, in offers an account for the fact that our confidence in relevant scientific and technological theory tends not to be eroded by the apparently disconfirming instances endlessly thrown up in everyday practice. His argues that rational belief in generaliz- able knowledge is a feature of engineering, technology, and science, and he offers a Bayesian account of how such knowledge spreads across engineering time and space.