Scientific cognition as a cultural practice

The article reflects one of the main tendencies in contemporary epistemology - the so-called “practical turn”. Borrowing his material from the contemporary history of physics, the author aims to demonstrate that scientific instruments and experimental cultures are bound together. Such concepts as “scientific data” or “evidence” have meaning only within particular experimental cultures and instrumental traditions. Drawing on the examples of the contemporary history of science, the author aims to demonstrate the indissoluble unity of human and non-human, social and natural elements in experimental systems as the basic units of scientific practice.