Scientific boundaries

My analysis shows not only how scientists engage in boundary-work to distinguish science from nonscience, but also how a variety of other groups construct boundaries (and consequently themselves as groups) not only with respect to more orthodox scientists and skeptics but with respect to each other. In short, scientific boundaries are recursive, nested, and multiple there are layers of scientificity that become clearer as one unfolds levels of skepticism and pseudo-scientificity both within and across discursive boundaries. Boundary-work therefore is going on in all directions, not just in the direction of orthodox science toward religion and pseudoscience. ... 

The fine chemical industry is often characterized by small-scale plants producing a variety of chemicals using frequently hazardous starting materials and extreme conditions. Products are commonly manufactured in a batchwise, multi-product plant provided with a substantial amount of multi-purpose equipment. Typically, the production volume is not large, say less than 10 kt p. a., although this is not a scientific boundary. 

Nichols, B. D., Hirt, C. W. and Hitchkiss, R. S., 1980. SOLA-VOF a solution algorithm for transient fluid flow with multiple free surface boundaries. Los Alamos Scientific Laboratories Report No. La-8355, Los Alamos, NM. 

A new parepisteme was under way its early stages were mapped in a classic text by McLean (1957), who worked in Rosenhain s old laboratory. Today, the atomic structure of interfaces, grain boundaries in particular, has become a virtual scientific industry a recent multiauthor book of 715 pages (Wolf and Yip 1992) surveys the present state, while an even more recent equally substantial book by two well-known authors provides a thorough account of all kinds of interfaces (Sutton and Balluffi 1995). In a paper published at about the same time, Balluffi... 

These apparent restrictions in size and length of simulation time of the fully quantum-mechanical methods or molecular-dynamics methods with continuous degrees of freedom in real space are the basic reason why the direct simulation of lattice models of the Ising type or of solid-on-solid type is still the most popular technique to simulate crystal growth processes. Consequently, a substantial part of this article will deal with scientific problems on those time and length scales which are simultaneously accessible by the experimental STM methods on one hand and by Monte Carlo lattice simulations on the other hand. Even these methods, however, are too microscopic to incorporate the boundary conditions from the laboratory set-up into the models in a reahstic way. Therefore one uses phenomenological models of the phase-field or sharp-interface type, and finally even finite-element methods, to treat the diffusion transport and hydrodynamic convections which control a reahstic crystal growth process from the melt on an industrial scale. 

To master one scientific topic after another, Haber skipped dinners and studied until 2 a.m. With overflowing enthusiasm, he ignored the conventional boundaries between abstract and practical science between chemistry, physics, and engineering and between mechanics, technicians, and scientists. He solved industrial problems posed by the iron plates used to print banknotes and by Karlsruhe s corroded water and gas mains, and then made fundamental discoveries in electrochemistry. Conversely, he used the abstract theory of gas reactions in flames to explain to manufacturers why some reactions continue spontaneously while others stop. Soon he had contributed basic scientific insights to almost every area of physical chemistry. 

The method is different in nature from the techniques discussed elsewhere in this book because, despite the fact that the cells that comprise a CA model evolve, they do not learn. The lack of a learning mechanism places the method at the boundaries of Artificial Intelligence, but the algorithm still has features in common with AI methods and offers an intriguing way to solve scientific problems. 

Of course, Crowley is positioning himself and his journal as the repository of the ancient knowledge. (The idea that Crowley was trustworthy must have rankled Golden Dawn members to no end.) But beyond the narcissism so characteristic of Crowley s writing, the efforts by which scientific illuminism attempted to blur the boundaries of science depended on the assertion that ancient occult knowledge could be used with modem scientific mles of experiment, verification, and accurate measurement because it in fact was an extension of the physical sciences. 

Phillips believed he had found such an instance in Occult Chemistry—and that it even provided evidence that quarks were not fundamental particles. Yet in this boundary skirmish between physics and parapsychology over the subatomic world, Phillips, Smith, and Besant and Leadbeater ultimately will not persuade the scientific world. The boundaries between occultism and... 

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