Introduction: Travellers’ Tales

We are, perhaps, so familiar with narratives about knowledge construction that we may have forgotten to observe what actually happens to facts after their construction. The traditional study of the making of facts has mainly paid attention to activities that take place behind closed doors at their construction sites, often laboratories. But how do such facts then travel across the scientific world? And when they ‘arrive’ somewhere – how do they accommodate themselves into different environments? Do they change their identities – slightly or considerably – or do they stay stubbornly as they are? By increasing our understanding of these matters, we can learn more about the nature and progress of model-produced knowledge, and about facts’ ‘wider life.’

This chapter addresses the core question: How do the characteristics and functions of travelling facts equip them to contribute to building new models? Can seeing how they are utilised in novel surroundings allow us a fresh perspective on their conventionally understood nature – as ‘hard’ facts validating scientific findings? Might they be plastic to a degree – like precious metals –valuable, but malleable enough to be ‘worked’? And if so, what does that say about facts themselves?