There are two working measures which, in the opinion of sociologists of science, cause the success of the natural sciences: on the one hand, along these lines more and more of nature made mobile is being brought into the laboratory, and on the other, accompanying this, there is a growing ability to increase the information value which nature provides under laboratory conditions by means of appropriate questions and processing methods. What is spatial' about this process is first the transport and the transfer of a portion of nature to the laboratory. Just as the explorers used to return with their captured specimens or at least with drawings and detailed descriptions of the wonderful things they had seen during their investigations, so today nature is brought into the laboratory with the aid of remote-controlled viewing and collecting instruments. The acceleration potential inherent in this process essentially results from the organization of work: transportation occurs more and more, and more and more quickly. But there is also a temporal dimension to this process. The capacity for acceleration of the process of generating knowledge also stems from the fact that the natural phenomena gathered in form a cultural relation with the researchers, and that they receive a share of their temporality, of the social time of the laboratory. Through the illustration and digitalization which accompany their transportation, the objects of investigation are brought into the procedural context of the laboratory, where they are kept continuously present:
Cronos's Fear of the New Age
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