Introduction: The Lebenswelt origins of the sciences

The phrase “in and as of” intends to retain the actual state of affairs of a social practice. Instead of conceiving of a metaphysical object, “science,” which “has” certain practices, a science consists of its practices. It does not exist apart from them; in fact, the task of any inquiry into the lebenswelt origins of sciences takes its departure from this recognition. A science is nothing more than, and nothing less than, the activities of its practitioners. The phrase promises to retain the important insight, which is consistent with Husserl’s own phenomenological discoveries, that a science does not merely exist in its practices, it exists as its practices. The perspective is vital to an anti-essentialist inquiry, and the phrase is employed frequently in ethnomethodology (cf. Garfinkel, 2002, p. 92, 99, 138, 207, 211, 246, 247; Garfinkel and Wieder, 1992, p. 175).

The term “haecceity” refers to the character of being here and now, the “just-thisness” of any activity. It is related to the hic of “hic et nunc”.

“Shop floor problems” is a reference to the aircraft manufacturer McDonnell Douglas’ capacity to make airplanes, a capacity that is dependent upon the local and mundane ways that workers on the shop floor get their work accomplished, ways that eluded McDonnell Douglas’ front office staff, whose theorizing about aircraft production blinded them to the real ways their firm was building airplanes. The gap in their knowledge became apparent only after a series of deficit induced layoffs during which so many workers were furloughed they could no longer retrieve the local routines in play for accomplishing the manufacturing.