Hi All,
Just thought I would post the principals and methods from Bruno
Latour's book Science in Action.This book is amazing.
Principles

First principal The fate and machines is in later user's hands;their
qualities are thus a consequence,not a cause,of a collective action
(ch 1)

second Scientists and engineers speak in the name of new allies that
they have shaped and enrolled;representatives among other
representatives, they add these unexpected resources to tip the
balance of force in their favour ( ch 2)

Third We are never confronted with science,technology and society,but
with a gamut of weaker and stronger associations; thus understanding
what facts and machines are is the same task as understanding who the
people are (ch3)

Fourth The more science and technology have an esoteric content the
further they extend outside;thus,"science and technology" is only a
subset of technoscience

Fifth Irrationality is always an accusation made by someone building
a network over someone else who stands in the way;thus,there is no
great divide between minds,but only shorter and longer
networks;harder facts are not the rule but the expection,since they
are needed only in a very few cases to displace others on a large
scale out of their usual ways (ch5)

Sixth History of technoscience is in a large part the history of the
resources scattered along networks to accelerate the
mobility,faithfulness,combination and cohesion of traces that make
action at a distance possible (Ch 6)

p 258 and 259
Rules of method

we study science in action not ready made science or technology;to do
so,we either arrive before the facts and machines are blackboxed or
we follow the controversies that reopen them.(Introduction)

To determine the objectivity or subjectivity of a claim,the
efficiency or perfection of a mechanism,we do not look for their
intrinsic qualities but at all the transformations they undergo later
in the hands of others (ch 1)

Since the settlement of a controversy is the cause of Natures
representation,not it's consequence,we can never use this
consequence,Nature, to explain how and why a controversy has been
settled.(ch 2)

Since the settlement of a controversy is the cause of Society's
stability,we cannot use society to explain how and why a controversy
has been settled.We should consider symetrically the efforts to enrol
human and non human resources.(ch 3)

We have to be undecided as the various actors we follow as to what
technoscience is made of :every time an inside/outside divide is
built,we should study the two sides simultaneously and make the
list,no matter how long and hetrogeneous,of those who do the work.
(ch4)

Confronted with the accusation of irrationality,we look neither at
what rule of logic has been broken,nor at what structure of society
could explain the distortion,but to the angle and direction of the
observers displacement,and to the length of the network thus being
built.(ch5)

Before attributing any special quality to the mind or to the method
of people,let us examine first the many ways through which
inscriptions are gathered,combined,tied together and sent back.Only
if there is something unexplained once the networks have been studied
shall we start to speak of cognitive factors.