Making Sense of Life: Explaining Biological Development with Models, Metaphors, and MachinesWhat 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. |
Contents
Introduction | 1 |
Models Explaining Development without the Help of Genes | 11 |
Synthetic Biology and the Origin of Living Form | 15 |
Morphology as a Science of Mechanical Forces | 48 |
Untimely Births of a Mathematical Biology | 77 |
Metaphors Genes and Developmental Narratives | 111 |
Genes Gene Action and Genetic Programs | 121 |
Taming the Cybernetic Metaphor | 146 |
Machines Understanding Development with Computers Recombinant DMA and Molecular Imaging | 197 |
The Visual Culture of Molecular Embryology | 203 |
New Roles for Mathematical and Computational Modeling | 232 |
Synthetic Biology ReduxComputer Simulation and Artificial Life | 263 |
Understanding Development | 293 |
Notes | 303 |
References | 349 |
380 | |