Gravity's Ghost and Big Dog: Scientific Discovery and Social Analysis in the Twenty-First Century - Softcover

"Harry Collins is a distinguished sociologist, and in Gravity's Shadow he demonstrates why it is important to go beyond superficial characterizations of science to study how groups of scientists actually work.... This is a book that everyone who cares about the future of science should read." (American Scientist) "Harry Collins has presented us with an enthralling investigation into the way in which big science advances.... A perfect case study in the sociology of science." (Times Higher Education)"

Gravity’s Ghost and Big Dog brings to life science’s efforts to detect cosmic gravitational waves. These ripples in space-time are predicted by general relativity, and their discovery will not only demonstrate the truth of Einstein’s theories but also transform astronomy. Although no gravitational wave has ever been directly detected, the previous five years have been an especially exciting period in the field. Here sociologist Harry Collins offers readers an unprecedented view of gravitational wave research and explains what it means for an analyst to do work of this kind.

Collins was embedded with the gravitational wave physicists as they confronted two possible discoveries—“Big Dog,” fully analyzed in this volume for the first time, and the “Equinox Event,” which was first chronicled by Collins in Gravity’s Ghost. Collins records the agonizing arguments that arose as the scientists worked out what they had seen and how to present it to the world, along the way demonstrating how even the most statistical of sciences rest on social and philosophical choices. Gravity’s Ghost and Big Dog draws on nearly fifty years of fieldwork observing scientists at the American Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory and elsewhere around the world to offer an inspired commentary on the place of science in society today.