Morphological Studies In The Laboratory

The laboratory is a fundamental place for the production of scientific knowledge.Today’s laboratories are diversifying in line with social development.New types of laboratories,such as distributed laboratories and living labs,have revolutionised the traditional way of producing knowledge.In practice,however,the laboratory is still seen as an isolated,traditional workstation.Even the individual,microscopic laboratory studies that emerged in the 1970 s still lacked a holistic,macroscopic vision and were unable to answer two fundamental questions about the diversity of laboratories arising from the new labs: firstly,why do laboratories have diverse forms;and secondly,what are the types of diverse lab forms.The aim of this paper is to adopt a diversity-focused morphological methodology to study laboratories locally,ephemerally and in small habitats,in an attempt to answer the two fundamental questions of laboratory diversity.Since its inception by Goethe,morphology has not only effectively answered the two fundamental questions of plant diversity through homology,but has also overcome the theoretical limitations of a quantitative and schematic view of reality,in a phenomenological spirit that combines problem-specific analysis,description and interpretation.As a ’general methodology’,the study of laboratory diversity through morphology is not only necessary,but also feasible.In a morphological perspective,the laboratory is a self-organising site that interacts with social contexts in a cognitive task-oriented way,with homogenesis at its core.Thus,the answer to the first fundamental question,i.e.why laboratories have diverse morphologies,is that after the homogenesis of the prototypical laboratory,the laboratory,driven by the contradiction between expert and public will,presents itself as a cognitive task that moves from counteracting religious myths in the confrontation phase,to satisfying interests in the identification phase,to creating social benefits in the intervention phase,to reaching ambitious goals in the persuasion phase,to This change has gradually driven and shaped the diversity of the laboratory from knowing the world to transforming it,and from centralised to distributed contexts.This paper also classifies the second basic issue,the diversity of laboratory forms,into five types based on the morphological transformation of laboratories in response to different cognitive tasks: the first is the archetypal laboratory born out of resistance to religious culture,represented by the Boyle laboratory and Galileo’s telescope bench in the 17 th century,which were dominated by individual scholars;the second is the knowledge-centred laboratory born out of the satisfaction of hobbies,represented by The third type is the industrial-centred laboratory born from the creation of social benefits,represented by the social community in the early 20 th century,Bell Labs and the State Key Laboratory for Clean Energy Utilisation,which the author examined on site;the fourth type is the production-distributed laboratory born from the achievement of ambitious goals,represented by the community of experts in the late 20 th century.The fifth type is the on-site distributed laboratory born from the realization of the utility of life,represented by the living laboratory that broke through the centralized laboratory space in the 21 st century,as represented by the European Living Laboratory Network.This paper further summarises the three contradictory laws driving the morphological transformation of laboratories: the structural contradiction between centralised and distributed,the cognitive contradiction between expert will and public will,and the situational contradiction between natural order and social order;and based on the three contradictory laws of laboratories,it proposes the construction of legalised laboratory units,the promotion of distributed laboratory alliances,the setting up of onsite The proposal of the laboratory system,etc.In summary,this paper’s study of laboratory morphology not only describes and explains the two basic problems of laboratory diversity,but also advocates an internally and externally compatible view of laboratory habitat,opening up a theoretical and practical space for the application of morphology in the field of philosophy of science..