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Abstract

In this paper, I seek to reexamine the notion of the boundary in the context of scientific practice. Utilizing the development of renormalization in radio labs, high energy physics, and condensed matter physics, I push for a move beyond understanding the interactions of scientific subcultures as mediated by a boundary object (Leigh-Star and Gresiemer, 1989), or isolated to a linguistically independent boundary zone (Galison, 1997), and towards a temporally stretched conception of the boundary, examining its afterlife and naturalization within the cultures it conjoins. Renormalization is a technique that tames divergences or infinities that pop up in quantum field theory calculations. It first arose as heuristic device, truncating the bounds of necessary integrals so that calculated values of properties of electrons would align with experimental results within a WW2 radio wave lab and elsewhere. Its subsequent development is a tale of further interaction between high energy physics and condensed matter physics, and it was formalized into an understanding of the isolation of different energy scales, or that the explanatory power of theory was only valid within a certain range of energies, understood with increasing mathematical formality. In this process, the present subcultures entangle, with their exchanged influences taking on new lives, building up an inextricable interrelatedness and inter-reliance. Theory becomes newly responsive to experiment, with energetic access tied to epistemological relevance. In this new examination of resonance and interconnectivity amongst theoretical and experimental subcultures, questions of knowledge production become increasingly associated with questions of energy expenditure, and the associated infrastructures that contribute to their linkage. I wish to complicate the conception of a boundary by examining it in a context beyond a mere weapon within an interplay of actors in an isolated game of power. Drawing some inspiration from Donna Haraway, “boundaries are very tricky,” and I wish to contribute to this boundary complicating discourse that contests the autonomy of atomized actors, towards a broader holism.

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