Making Sense Of Life. Explaining Biological Development With Models, Metaphors, And Machines - Couverture rigide

Fox Keller, Evelyn

 
9780674007468: Making Sense Of Life. Explaining Biological Development With Models, Metaphors, And Machines
Couverture rigide
ISBN 10 : 0674007468 ISBN 13 : 9780674007468
Editeur : Harvard University Press, 2002

Synopsis

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.

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À propos de l?auteur

EVELYN FOX KELLER is Professor of History and Philosophy of Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship and numerous honorary degrees, she is the author or co-editor of ten previous books, including Keywords in Evolutionary Biology and the 2001 L. L. Winship / PEN New England Award finalist The Century of the Gene (both from Harvard).

Les informations fournies dans la section « A propos du livre » peuvent faire référence à une autre édition de ce titre.

Éditeur
Harvard University Press
Date d'édition
2002
Langue
anglais
ISBN 10 
0674007468
ISBN 13 
9780674007468
Reliure
Relié
Nombre de pages
352
Coordonnées du fabricant
non disponible
Personne responsable
non disponible

Autres éditions populaires du même titre

9780674012509: Making Sense of Life: Explaining Biological Development with Models, Metaphors, and Machines

Edition présentée

ISBN 10 :  067401250X ISBN 13 :  9780674012509
Editeur : Harvard University Press, 2003
Couverture souple