Structure
The Virtual Laboratory consists of two parts: The archive holds a large number of digitized texts and images as well as data sheets compiled from these resources, the laboratory holds historiographical work on the experimentalization of life as well as a working environment to enable new ways of writing history. The Virtual Laboratory is composed of 8 sections:
- Essays: this section holds the historiographical papers that are in turn linked to the source material of the archive.
- Experiments: contains data sheets on classical experiments from 19th century life sciences, e.g. on blood circulation, muscle contraction, verve conduction and reaction time.
- Technology: deals with the technological aspects of experimentalization, hence the instruments.
- Objects: this section is still under construction. It will contain the actual objects of the experiments, hence organisms.
- Sites: contains data sheets on institutions at which experimental work was conducted.
- People: this sections holds short biographies of the protagonists of experimentalization.
- Concepts: is dedicated to central concepts like reflex, function and consciousness and their respective histories.
- Library: this is the core section of the Virtual Laboratory. Besides digitized texts, journals and trade catalogues, it holds manuscripts, audio files and excerpts of movies. The printed texts are in the process of being ocr-ed and are already partly accessible via fulltext search.
All materials are available as pdf downloads.
Apart from these thematical sections, tools and myLab offer the possibility to use the Virtual Laboratory as a research environment. It is possible to create specific collections from the available materials, work on them and share them with other users.
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—Talcott Parsons (1902–1979)
“When a house is tottering to its fall,
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“A committee is organic rather than mechanical in its nature: it is not a structure but a plant. It takes root and grows, it flowers, wilts, and dies, scattering the seed from which other committees will bloom in their turn.”
—C. Northcote Parkinson (1909–1993)