Making sense of life : explaining biological development with models, metaphors, and machines

Bibliographic Information

Making sense of life : explaining biological development with models, metaphors, and machines

Evelyn Fox Keller

Harvard University Press, 2003, c2002

1st Harvard University Press pbk. ed

  • : pbk

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Note

Includes bibliographical references (p. [351]-381) and index

Description and Table of Contents

Description

What do biologists want? If, unlike their counterparts in physics, biologists are generally wary of a grand, overarching theory, at what kinds of explanation do biologists aim? How will we know when we have "made sense" of life? Such questions, Evelyn Fox Keller suggests, offer no simple answers. Explanations in the biological sciences are typically provisional and partial, judged by criteria as heterogeneous as their subject matter. It is Keller's aim in this bold and challenging book to account for this epistemological diversity--particularly in the discipline of developmental biology. In particular, Keller asks, what counts as an "explanation" of biological development in individual organisms? Her inquiry ranges from physical and mathematical models to more familiar explanatory metaphors to the dramatic contributions of recent technological developments, especially in imaging, recombinant DNA, and computer modeling and simulations. A history of the diverse and changing nature of biological explanation in a particularly charged field, Making Sense of Life draws our attention to the temporal, disciplinary, and cultural components of what biologists mean, and what they understand, when they propose to explain life.

Table of Contents

Preface Introduction PART ONE Models: Explaining Development without the Help of Genes 1. Synthetic Biology and the Origin of Living Form 2. Morphology as a Science of Mechanical Forces 3. Untimely Births of a Mathematical Biology PART TWO Metaphors: Genes and Developmental Narratives 4. Genes, Gene Action, and Genetic Programs 5. Taming the Cybernetic Metaphor 6. Positioning Positional Information PART THREE Machines: Understanding Development with Computers, Recombinant DNA, and Molecular Imaging 7. The Visual Culture of Molecular Embryology 8. New Roles for Mathematical and Computational Modeling 9. Synthetic Biology Redux-Computer Simulation and Artificial Life Conclusion: Understanding Development Notes References Index

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Details
  • NCID
    BA71875892
  • ISBN
    • 067401250X
  • LCCN
    2001051559
  • Country Code
    us
  • Title Language Code
    eng
  • Text Language Code
    eng
  • Place of Publication
    Cambridge, Mass.
  • Pages/Volumes
    xii, 388 p.
  • Size
    21 cm
  • Classification
  • Subject Headings
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