Growing Explanations: Historical Perspectives on Recent Science

Book

Growing Explanations

Historical Perspectives on Recent Science

Edited by: M. Norton Wise , Barbara Herrnstein Smith and E. Roy Weintraub
With contributions by: Peter Galison and Amy Dahan Dalmedico

Language: English

Published/Copyright: 2004

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This book is in the series

Science and Cultural Theory

About this book

This collection addresses a post-WWII shift in the hierarchy of scientific explanations, where the highest goal moves from reductionism towards some understanding of how elementary objects get built up, or "grown up", into complex, objects whose

Author / Editor information

M. Norton Wise is Professor of History at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is a coauthor of Energy and Empire: A Biographical Study of Lord Kelvin and the editor of The Values of Precision.

Reviews

“Growing Explanations registers the profound shift in many domains of science—from chaos theory to functional genomics—giving epistemological priority to complex and emergent phenomena. Anyone interested in the nature of contemporary science, especially the central role of the computer, will find this a fascinating read.”—Angela N. H. Creager, Princeton University

“M. Norton Wise has orchestrated a volume of cutting-edge work exploring the sea change in contemporary models of explanation fueled by advances in computation, simulation, and the new sciences of complexity. The authors illustrate how, across a wide spectrum of disciplines, new strategies based on ‘growing explanations’ to understand the emergent behaviors of systems constructed from the bottom up are replacing the traditional ‘reductionist’ credo of explaining complex phenomena in terms of simple entities. An important and timely volume for anyone interested in science studies.”—Timothy Lenoir, author of Instituting Science: The Cultural Production of Scientific Disciplines

Topics

History Topics in History History of Science

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Frontmatter
i

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Contents
v

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Introduction: dynamics all the way up
1
Norton Wise

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part i Mathematics, physics, and engineering Elementary particles?
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1 Mirror symmetry: persons, values, and objects
23
Peter Galison

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Nonlinear dynamics and chaos
65

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2 Chaos, disorder, and mixing: a new fin-de-siècle image of science?
67
Amy Dalmedico

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Forms of explanation in the catastrophe theory of René Thom: topology, morphogenesis, and structuralism
95
David Aubin

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Coping with complexity in technology
131

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4 From Boeing to Berkeley: civil engineers, the cold war, and the origins of finite element analysis
133
Ann Johnson

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5 Fuzzyfying the world: social practices of showing the properties of fuzzy logic
159
Claude Rosental

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part ii The organism, the self, and (artificial) life Self-Organization
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6 Marrying the premodern to the postmodern: computers and organisms after World War II
181
Evelyn Keller

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Immunology
199

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7 Immunology and the enigma of selfhood
201
Alfred Tauber

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8 Immunology and aids: growing explanations and developing instruments
222
Ilana Löwy

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Artificial Life
249

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9 Artificial life support: some nodes in the Alife ribotype
251
Richard Doyle

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The word for world is computer: simulating second natures in artificial life
275
Stefan Helmreich

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11 Constructing and explaining emergence in artificial life: on paradigms, ontodefinitions, and general knowledge in biology
301
Claus Emmeche

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Afterword
327

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Contributors
333

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Index
337

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Publishing information

Pages and Images/Illustrations in book

eBook published on:

November 24, 2004

eBook ISBN:

9780822390084

Pages and Images/Illustrations in book

Main content:

360

Other:

11 figures

https://doi.org/10.1515/9780822390084

eBook ISBN: 9780822390084

Growing Explanations

Overview

About this book

Author / Editor information

Reviews

Topics

Table of contents

Frontmatter

Contents

Introduction: dynamics all the way up

1 Mirror symmetry: persons, values, and objects

Nonlinear dynamics and chaos

2 Chaos, disorder, and mixing: a new fin-de-siècle image of science?

Forms of explanation in the catastrophe theory of René Thom: topology, morphogenesis, and structuralism

Coping with complexity in technology

4 From Boeing to Berkeley: civil engineers, the cold war, and the origins of finite element analysis

5 Fuzzyfying the world: social practices of showing the properties of fuzzy logic

6 Marrying the premodern to the postmodern: computers and organisms after World War II

Immunology

7 Immunology and the enigma of selfhood

8 Immunology and aids: growing explanations and developing instruments

Artificial Life

9 Artificial life support: some nodes in the Alife ribotype

The word for world is computer: simulating second natures in artificial life

11 Constructing and explaining emergence in artificial life: on paradigms, ontodefinitions, and general knowledge in biology

Afterword

Contributors

Index

Bibliographic data