Awards
- Nominated for Phi Beta Kappa Award in Science 2003
- Nominated for PROSE Awards 2002
- Nominated for Rachel Carson Prize & Ludwik Fleck Prize 2003
- Nominated for Robert K. Merton Book Award 2004
Overview
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.
Full Product Details
Author: Evelyn Fox Keller
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Imprint: Harvard University Press
Dimensions:
Width: 14.00cm
, Height: 2.50cm
, Length: 21.00cm
Weight: 0.485kg
ISBN: 9780674012509
ISBN 10: 067401250
Pages: 400
Publication Date: 31 October 2003
Audience:
Professional and scholarly
,
College/higher education
,
Professional & Vocational
,
Tertiary & Higher Education
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active
Availability: Out of stock
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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 (05/10/2002)
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 (12/01/2002)
Author Information
Evelyn Fox Keller was Professor Emerita of History and Philosophy of Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She was the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship and numerous honorary degrees.
