Harold Garfinkel (1917-2011) was a professor of sociology who spent most of his career at the University of California, Los Angeles, USA. He acquired an international reputation as the founder of ethnomethodology, the study of practical actions and reasoning in everyday life and specialized fields of action.

Michael Lynch is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Science and Technology Studies at Cornell University, USA, and Research Professor in the School of Media and Information, University of Siegen, Germany. He has authored and edited numerous books and has written more than a hundred peer-reviewed articles on practices in science, law, and other fields of action. From 2002 to 2012, he was editor of Social Studies of Science, a leading journal in the field of Science and Technology Studies.

Editor's Introduction Part I: Respecifying the Natural Sciences as Discovering Sciences of Practical Action, I & II: Doing so Ethnographically by Administering a Schedule of Contingencies in Discussions with Laboratory Scientists and by Hanging Around their Laboratories Editor's Introduction to Part I Part I: Respecifying the Natural Sciences as Discovering Sciences of Practical Action, I & II: Doing so Ethnographically by Administering a Schedule of Contingencies in Discussions with Laboratory Scientists and by Hanging Around their Laboratories Appendix I: Postscript and Preface Appendix II: Some Notes on the Play of Basketball in its Circumstantial Detail Appendix III: Detail* Appendix IV: Collections of Studies I-VII Respecifying The Natural Sciences As Discovering Sciences Of Practical Action Acknowledgements, Notes and References to Part I Part II: Discovering Work of the Sciences: Five seminars on the work of the discovering sciences, Department of Sociology, UCLA. (May - July 1980) Editor's Introduction to Part II Seminar 1 (May 22, 1980), convened by Harold Garfinkel Seminar 2 (May 27, 1980), convened by Harold Garfinkel Seminar 3 (June 3, 1980), convened by Harold Garfinkel Seminar 4 (June 19, 1980), convened by Harold Garfinkel Seminar 5 (July 1, 1980), convened by Harold Garfinkel Notes and References to Part II