Unfinished Nature

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 <i>Quantum Field Theory as Simply as Possible</i> 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 <i>The Postwar Origins of the Global Environment: How the United Nations Built Spaceship Earth</i> 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 <i>Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim (1493-1541): Essential Theoretical Writings of Paracelsus</i> Recommended. * Choice *