Making Sense of Life : Explaining Biological Development with Models, Metaphors, and Machines / Evelyn Fox Keller.
Keller, Evelyn Fox, author.
2009
QH491 ǂb K387 2002eb
Available Online

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Title Making Sense of Life : Explaining Biological Development with Models, Metaphors, and Machines / Evelyn Fox Keller.
Author Keller, Evelyn Fox, author.
ISBN 9780674039445
DOI https://doi.org/10.4159/9780674039445
Published Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press, [2009]
Copyright ©2002
Language English
Language Note In English.
Description 1 online resource (400 p.)
Other Standard Identifiers 10.4159/9780674039445 doi
Call Number QH491 ǂb K387 2002eb
Alternate Call Number WB 4000
Dewey Decimal Classification 570.1
Summary 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.
Access Note Access limited to authorized users.
System Details Note Mode of access: Internet via World Wide Web.
Digital File Characteristics text file PDF
Source of Description Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 01. Dez 2022)
In Harvard University Press eBook Package Backlist 2000-2013
Linked Resources Online Access
Record Appears in Online Resources > Ebooks
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Frontmatter
Contents
Preface
Introduction
PART ONE Models: Explaining Development without the Help of Genes
Introduction
CHAPTER ONE Synthetic Biology and the Origin of Living Form
CHAPTER TWO Morphology as a Science of Mechanical Forces
CHAPTER THREE Untimely Births of a Mathematical Biology
PART TWO Metaphors: Genes and Developmental Narratives
Introduction
CHAPTER FOUR Genes, Gene Action, and Genetic Programs
CHAPTER FIVE Taming the Cybernetic Metaphor
CHAPTER SIX Positioning Positional Information
PART THREE Machines: Understanding Development with Computers, Recombinant DNA, and Molecular Imaging
Intorduction
CHAPTER SEVEN The Visual Culture of Molecular Embryology
CHAPTER EIGHT New Roles for Mathematical and Computational Modeling
CHAPTER NINE Synthetic Biology Redux-Computer Simulation and Artificial Life
Conclusion: Understanding Development
Notes
References
Index

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