circulating reference

is a standardized measure that can be systematized, compared, and analyzed.

There is a sense in which technological tests, when used in this fashion, are not so much a matter of interrogating the world as of calibrating it. They are yardsticks, significant because of their uniformity rather than because they reflect any inherent or 'natural' properties. They are a means of reducing-ing ingestion tests to what Latour (1999) calls 'circulating references', standardized measures that can be systematized, compared, and analyzed (also see Weingart, 1991). (Downer 2007 : 21)

circulating reference, n.Definitions

circulating reference