Visit of the CERN yesterday, had a look at the Atlas experiment:

... this huge particle detectors that help the observation of the collisions of particule in the Large Hadron Collider (surely one of biggest research tool ever made)... which made me think of this quote:

"Research is best seen as a collective experimentation about what humans and nonhumans together are able to swallow or to withstand. (...) Research is this zone into which humans and nonhumans are thrown, in which has been practiced, over the ages, the most extraordinary collective experiment to distinguish, in real time, between "cosmos" and "unruly shambles" with no one, neither the scientists nor the "science students," knowing in advance what the provisional answer will be. "

Bruno Latour (in Pandora's hope).