The circulating reference in dentistry: : reflections on the relationship between words and things
Fundación Universitaria Autónoma de las Américas
Fundación Universitaria Autónoma de las Américas
Universidad El Bosque
This article analyses the epistemic problem of the relationship between words and things in dentistry. Specifically, the concept of circulating reference is used to give an account of how artifacts, practices, and materials are articulated to produce a diagnosis in dental consultation. The concept of circulating reference was proposed by Bruno Latour, who argues that words and things are not naturally linked in a correspondence relationship, instead, it is required constant work to connect multiple elements to produce reality. For explaining this, the scholar examined the controversy within a group of scientists that were studying the border between the jungle and the savanna in the Brazilian Amazon. Those scientists implemented different strategies to transform vegetal species and soil into numbers, labels, and research reports. This case works as a model to study the dental consultation, as long as a patient with an oral disease is transformed into a diagnosis through different procedures, such as filling out identification data, motive for consultation, and odontogram.
Copyright (c) 2023 Revista Nacional de Odontología
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Every single author of the articles has to declare that is an original unpublished work exclusively created by them, that it has not been submitted for simultaneous evaluation by another publication and that there is no impediment of any kind for concession of the rights provided for in the contract.
In this sense, the authors committed to await the result of the evaluation by the journal Revista Nacional de Odontologia before considering its submission to another medium; in case the response by that publication is positive, additionally, the authors committed to respond for any action involving claims, plagiarism or any other kind of claim that could be made by third parties.
At the same time, the authors have to declare that they are completely in agreement with the conditions presented in their work and that they cede all patrimonial rights. These rights involve reproduction, public communication, distribution, dissemination, transformation, making it available and all forms of exploitation of the work using any medium or procedure, during the term of the legal protection of the work and in every country in the world, to the Universidad Cooperativa de Colombia Press.
