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Making Sense of Life
Explaining Biological Development with Models, Metaphors, and Machines
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Evelyn Fox Keller
Language:
English
Published/Copyright:
2002
About this book
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.
Reviews
Making Sense of Life is about the importance of recognizing [the] tight connection between the use of language in the social domain and how it produces biological ‘understanding’… The central arguments of Making Sense of Life are made with grace and authority. Those who are unsettled by them, and who wish to take issue with Keller, could not ask for a more accomplished and eloquent adversary.
-- Lisa Jardine New Scientist
-- Lisa Jardine New Scientist
Evelyn Fox Keller, once a mathematical physicist but now primarily a historian of biology, has analyzed the varied attempts of 20th-century biologists to provide an explanation for the nature and origin of life… Keller’s achievement is to historicize 20th-century biological concepts, so that we can begin to see that they are not inevitable, springing directly from a realization of ‘how nature is’, but rather are culturally located, and shaped by complex social forces.
-- Steven Rose The Lancet
-- Steven Rose The Lancet
Keller writes beautifully, explains exquisitely, does a really good job of showing how today’s four-dimensional color gene-product-marked embryo pictures, available to all on the Web, have answered most of the old questions…and how they have generated a whole new set: about artificial life, about complex systems and emergence, about what we want to understand development for… I hope she finds a new generation of biology students, as well as historians, who’ll appreciate her subtle thinking; this book makes sense of embryology at last.
-- Jack Cohen Biologist
-- Jack Cohen Biologist
A terrific book full of thought-provoking and original ideas and observations. Keller’s discussion of ‘explanation’ in the life sciences is easily one of the very best and most interesting treatments of this topic that I have ever read.
-- Jim Woodward, J. O. and Juliette Koepfli Professor of the Humanities, California Institute of Technology
-- Jim Woodward, J. O. and Juliette Koepfli Professor of the Humanities, California Institute of Technology
Topics
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Frontmatter
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Contents
v -
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Preface
vii -
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Introduction
1 - PART ONE Models: Explaining Development without the Help of Genes
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Introduction
11 -
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CHAPTER ONE Synthetic Biology and the Origin of Living Form
15 -
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CHAPTER TWO Morphology as a Science of Mechanical Forces
50 -
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CHAPTER THREE Untimely Births of a Mathematical Biology
79 - PART TWO Metaphors: Genes and Developmental Narratives
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Introduction
113 -
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CHAPTER FOUR Genes, Gene Action, and Genetic Programs
123 -
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CHAPTER FIVE Taming the Cybernetic Metaphor
148 -
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CHAPTER SIX Positioning Positional Information
173 - PART THREE Machines: Understanding Development with Computers, Recombinant DNA, and Molecular Imaging
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Intorduction
199 -
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CHAPTER SEVEN The Visual Culture of Molecular Embryology
205 -
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CHAPTER EIGHT New Roles for Mathematical and Computational Modeling
234 -
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CHAPTER NINE Synthetic Biology Redux—Computer Simulation and Artificial Life
265 -
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Conclusion: Understanding Development
295 -
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Notes
305 -
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References
351 -
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Index
382
Publishing information
Pages and Images/Illustrations in book
eBook published on:
July 1, 2009
eBook ISBN:
9780674039445
Pages and Images/Illustrations in book
Main content:
400
eBook ISBN:
9780674039445
Audience(s) for this book
Professional and scholarly;
