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The processes through which boundaries are made and unmade-conceptually, socially, and materially-have been of enduring interest to a wide range of social scientific disciplines including sociology, anthropology, geography, science studies, etc. The subject matter of this paper-the Yucca Mountain high-level nuclear waste repository in Nye county, Nevada, which is meant to keep such waste safe for 10000 years-constitutes, we contend, a case study of such processes taken to extremes. This, in turn, makes Yucca Mountain an interesting vantage point from which to (re)view the traditional ontological and epistemological preoccupations characteristic of social science, not so much in terms of abstract theory but rather in terms of concrete practical problems of spatial and temporal organisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discusses the theory of human thought-and-action by attempting to answer questions in this context and by presenting a model. Double helix in the social sciences; Assumptions; Thought-and-action as a play of ontological transformations; Ambiguous order of thought-and-action; Three dimensional coordinate system as a model; Inwardness and outwardness; Carl von Linne's Flora Suecica.