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“Mass Migration” and Technologies of Gene Manipulation

Doogab Yi

in The Recombinant University: Genetic Engineering and the Emergence of Stanford Biotechnology

Chapter 2 examines these changing dynamics, and the scientific and political genealogy of recombinant DNA technology. I argue that recombinant DNA technology derived from particular experimental ... More

Chapter 2 examines these changing dynamics, and the scientific and political genealogy of recombinant DNA technology. I argue that recombinant DNA technology derived from particular experimental opportunities, and from commitments to the biology of higher organisms; this occurred in the late 1960s and early 1970s, when molecular biology was experiencing an intellectual and political “crisis.”Less

Epilogue: The Future of Biological Research Will Be Found in the Oceans

Alejandro Sánchez Alvarado

in Why Study Biology by the Sea?

The history of the Marine Biological Laboratory provides insight as to why scientists have worked by the sea, including how this has influenced research and provided unexpected opportunities. Now ... More

The history of the Marine Biological Laboratory provides insight as to why scientists have worked by the sea, including how this has influenced research and provided unexpected opportunities. Now looking towards the future of marine biological research, it’s arguably clear that the next phase of innovative, illuminating research will involve our oceans more than ever before.Less

Therapeutic Evolution or Revolution? Metaphors and Their Consequences

David S. Jones

in Therapeutic Revolutions: Pharmaceuticals and Social Change in the Twentieth Century

Evolution and revolution are both models of change over time. It is easy to see the appeal of a claim of revolution for scientists and for their historians: it pronounces a radical break from the ... More

Evolution and revolution are both models of change over time. It is easy to see the appeal of a claim of revolution for scientists and for their historians: it pronounces a radical break from the past, confident and triumphant. Progress is implied by the decisiveness of the rupture. Such rhetoric is good for marketing, especially when contrasted against the cautious gradualism of evolution. But evolution has its own appeals, especially its reassuring connotations of progressive improvement. It is not enough simply to debate what counts, or not, as revolution or evolution. Instead, much can be gained through serious engagement with the theory and language of revolution and evolution in pursuit of the best possible accounts of scientific change.Less

Life: Genesis of a Metaphysical Paradigm

Davide Tarizzo

in Life: A Modern Invention

Examines the emergence and the metaphysical meaning of “autonomous life” in the fields of philosophy (Kant, Fichte, Schelling) and of biology (from Darwin to Dawkins), then explaining where, why and ... More

Examines the emergence and the metaphysical meaning of “autonomous life” in the fields of philosophy (Kant, Fichte, Schelling) and of biology (from Darwin to Dawkins), then explaining where, why and how this metaphysical concept is still at work in contemporary thought (Freud, Canguilhem, Dennett).Less

Introduction: “Sweet Science”

Amanda Jo Goldstein

in Sweet Science: Romantic Materialism and the New Logics of Life

Departing from the surprising allusion to De rerum natura hidden in Blake’s phrase “sweet Science,” this chapter introduces readers to the biological, philosophical, literary, and disciplinary ... More

Departing from the surprising allusion to De rerum natura hidden in Blake’s phrase “sweet Science,” this chapter introduces readers to the biological, philosophical, literary, and disciplinary histories necessary to the book’s argument by constellating a series of loaded examples: the tense collaboration between the Poet and the Man of Science in Wordsworth’s 1800 “Preface” to Lyrical Ballads, Herder’s claim that “our whole life is,” physiologically speaking, “poetics,” and Karl Marx’s early praise of Lucretius for depicting sensation as “embodied time.” Carefully reading the parts of De Rerum Natura to which Blake, Herder, Wordsworth, Goethe, Shelley and Coleridge point us, in dialogue with later modern interpreters (Auerbach, Althusser, Foucault, Latour, Butler), the introduction explicates three dimensions of Lucretian poetic materialism: the strange case the text extends for figuration as the basic action and passion of matter, the logic of associative emergence through which Lucretius accounts for life without recourse to teleological organicism, and the atomist imaginary that allowed Romantics to connect ontogeny to new experiences of social history. Expressly and by example, the introduction advances a critical method that understands interdisciplinarity as an artifact of its own historical position, taking pains to reconstitute the differently-ordered epistemological landscape of Romanticism.Less

Introduction

Karl S. Matlin, Jane Maienschein, and Manfred D. Laubichler

in Visions of Cell Biology: Reflections Inspired by Cowdry's "General Cytology"

In the 1920s, a group of American biologists decided to initiate a new project: the creation of a comprehensive cytology textbook with individual chapters from many of the leaders in the field, most ... More

In the 1920s, a group of American biologists decided to initiate a new project: the creation of a comprehensive cytology textbook with individual chapters from many of the leaders in the field, most of whom already interacted on a regular basis during summers at the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. When it appeared as General Cytology in 1924, edited by Edmund V. Cowdry, the volume sought to treat cytology comprehensively, but also to go beyond what the authors saw as the usual morphological considerations. In October 2014 another group of leading scientists, as well as historians and philosophers of biology came together at the MBL to reflect on Cowdry's General Cytology from the perspective of the 21st century. Among the scientists were not only individuals who clearly identified as cell biologists, but also those more focused on gene expression and its regulation, topics many would consider more properly as molecular biology. The historians and philosophers were also an eclectic group. The outcome of this and a subsequent meeting is Visions of Cell Biology: Reflections Inspired by Cowdry’s General Cytology, a book that examines the past, present, and future of cell biology.Less

Us: On the Use and Abuse of Life for History

Davide Tarizzo

in Life: A Modern Invention

Considers the repercussions of such a metaphysical framework in political history, with special emphasis on Nazism and contemporary trends in political theory and practices

Modernity: The Threshold of Autonomy

Davide Tarizzo

in Life: A Modern Invention

Considers the emergence and the meaning of “autonomy” in modern philosophy, by paying special attention to the Kantian turn and its aftermath.

A Savage Ontology

Davide Tarizzo

in Life: A Modern Invention

The underlying idea is that “life” is a metaphysical notion, not a scientific one, and that this notion has permeated both the European and the Anglophone traditions of thought

What Does Sensing Depend On?: Transduction, Energy, and the Meeting of Worlds

Kriti Sharma

in Interdependence: Biology and Beyond

Two assumptions regarding standard views of sensing are examined: first, that some things can become the organism (i.e., can be assimilated into the organism) while others must always remain ... More

Two assumptions regarding standard views of sensing are examined: first, that some things can become the organism (i.e., can be assimilated into the organism) while others must always remain radically separate from the organism (i.e., can only be sensed by the organism); and, second, that energy exists intrinsically. An alternative contingentist view of signal transduction and sensing is then offered, one that does not rest upon the assumptions of the standard view. A brief intellectual history of signal transduction is given, tracing the relations of cell receptiveness, reactivity, and responsiveness from early cell physiology to present-day signal transduction theory. A contingentist account of what is called sensing is offered, one that describes phenomena not as intrinsically existent, or as interacting, or as reactive, or as changed or transformed over time. The alternative formulation that comes into view in the absence of the aforementioned concepts is that phenomena arise anew in each instant. This alternative view also offers novel and useful reconsiderations of the relation of lower-level and higher-level phenomena more generally; of agency and determinism; of stasis, change, and causal relations; and of the relation between physical and psychological phenomena.Less

The Organ of the Soul: Vitalist Metaphysics and the Literalization of the Organ

Leif Weatherby

in Transplanting the Metaphysical Organ

“Organ” was first literalized in German in the 1780s, but this literalization came just as the life sciences re-introduced seemingly atavistic metaphysical questions, especially on the topics of a ... More

“Organ” was first literalized in German in the 1780s, but this literalization came just as the life sciences re-introduced seemingly atavistic metaphysical questions, especially on the topics of a “life-force” and an “organ of the soul,” into a public discourse in which Kant’s philosophy had rejected them, especially in The Conflict of the Faculties. The chapter shows that “organ” came to have its modern biological meaning under pressure to define a science that would come to be known as biology, before philosophy and science were separated as disciplines. Scientists like Samuel Thomas Soemmerring, Johann Christian Reil, and Alexander von Humboldt integrated the term into studies of scientific method, the brain, animal physiology, and electricity, but these first literal uses were always combined with the methodological concerns of post-Kantian philosophy. This discourse was the immediate inheritance of the Early Romantics.Less