Knorr Cetina's challenge to the limitations of the first approach though revisited throughout the paper is provided an alternative by her illustrating the aspects of the 'rational action as practiced' approach in the analysis of lab experiments in particle physics and molecular biology. However this analysis if first primed by her elaborating on the features of the said approach, in this key move made by Knorr Cetina is replacing the notion of the outcome has holding epistemic or rational value, with the that of having a sense of having a truth-finding objective. Now rationality is deployed to achieve an objective and thus can be traced in its method of deployment. With the move from value to objective, Knorr Cetina renders the lab space into a social argument, with actors and mechanisms working towards institutionalized function. However, she does not lose sight of the intricate complexity lab space nor the weight of the claim made by its outcomes. She manages this by bolstering the notion of the 'epistemic' thus placing knowledge creation and function front and center of all analysis. The subtler move made here is epistemology is less analogies to notions of rationality as mere idea's of knowledge was, a coupling solidified within the reason as resource approach. This separation followed by a connecting of rationality to context, a significate limitation of the former approach as elaborated by the author. The context was always seen to have an external influence on rational choices but was never insignificant in the internal situation of choosing. This is rectified through promoting the hollowed out notion of context to the operations of culture. The idea of culture encompasses action, though, and tradition, all bound by situation and intent. Thus the actions taken in the lab, with their goal of truth finding, are read through the lens of culture, binding reason to the contextual dissection and arrangements being made. The agenda here is to achieve a more compressive understanding of reasoning bound by its connection to situation and knowledge and not as an ideal operation.
