Natasha Myers
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- May 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780262525381
- eISBN:
- 9780262319157
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- The MIT Press
- DOI:
- 10.7551/mitpress/9780262525381.003.0008
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Technology and Society
Practitioners in the life sciences make extensive use of machine analogies to describe molecular structures. This chapter offers an ethnographic account of a particular family of machine analogies in ...
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Practitioners in the life sciences make extensive use of machine analogies to describe molecular structures. This chapter offers an ethnographic account of a particular family of machine analogies in molecular biology, drawing materials from the history of protein science and twenty-first century research and teaching contexts. The analysis focuses on protein modelers’ rendering practices. Rendering proteins as machines is described as a craft practice that demands creativity and dexterity with both words and model building materials. Practitioners must also cultivate machine knowledge as they learn to “put machines to work” in living organisms. Approaching machinic models in this way makes it possible to understand how practitioners use such models to intervene in molecular worlds in effective ways. In a more cautionary mode, the chapter also draws critical attention to moments when machine analogies collapse in upon their referents and literalize molecules as machines.Less
Practitioners in the life sciences make extensive use of machine analogies to describe molecular structures. This chapter offers an ethnographic account of a particular family of machine analogies in molecular biology, drawing materials from the history of protein science and twenty-first century research and teaching contexts. The analysis focuses on protein modelers’ rendering practices. Rendering proteins as machines is described as a craft practice that demands creativity and dexterity with both words and model building materials. Practitioners must also cultivate machine knowledge as they learn to “put machines to work” in living organisms. Approaching machinic models in this way makes it possible to understand how practitioners use such models to intervene in molecular worlds in effective ways. In a more cautionary mode, the chapter also draws critical attention to moments when machine analogies collapse in upon their referents and literalize molecules as machines.
Robert J. Fogelin
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- August 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780190673505
- eISBN:
- 9780190673536
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780190673505.003.0007
- Subject:
- Philosophy, History of Philosophy
Demea, Philo, and Hume himself find that a finite deity—the best that natural theology can produce—is unsatisfactory for veneration and worship. Alternative starting places for the teleological ...
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Demea, Philo, and Hume himself find that a finite deity—the best that natural theology can produce—is unsatisfactory for veneration and worship. Alternative starting places for the teleological argument are given: comparisons to an animal or a vegetable, rather than machine.Less
Demea, Philo, and Hume himself find that a finite deity—the best that natural theology can produce—is unsatisfactory for veneration and worship. Alternative starting places for the teleological argument are given: comparisons to an animal or a vegetable, rather than machine.
Robert J. Fogelin
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- August 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780190673505
- eISBN:
- 9780190673536
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780190673505.003.0006
- Subject:
- Philosophy, History of Philosophy
Philo continues to subject Cleanthes’ machine-analogy arguments to Pyrrhonist challenges, and anticipates Cleanthes’ (Part 12) summary view that the origin of the universe “may bear some remote ...
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Philo continues to subject Cleanthes’ machine-analogy arguments to Pyrrhonist challenges, and anticipates Cleanthes’ (Part 12) summary view that the origin of the universe “may bear some remote analogy to human intelligence.”Less
Philo continues to subject Cleanthes’ machine-analogy arguments to Pyrrhonist challenges, and anticipates Cleanthes’ (Part 12) summary view that the origin of the universe “may bear some remote analogy to human intelligence.”
Ulrich Krohs and Peter Kroes (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- August 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780262113212
- eISBN:
- 9780262255271
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- The MIT Press
- DOI:
- 10.7551/mitpress/9780262113212.001.0001
- Subject:
- Biology, Biomathematics / Statistics and Data Analysis / Complexity Studies
The notion of function is an integral part of thinking in both biology and technology; biological organisms and technical artifacts are both ascribed functionality. Yet the concept of function is ...
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The notion of function is an integral part of thinking in both biology and technology; biological organisms and technical artifacts are both ascribed functionality. Yet the concept of function is notoriously obscure (with problematic issues regarding the normative and the descriptive nature of functions, for example) and demands philosophical clarification. So too the relationship between biological organisms and technical artifacts: although entities of one kind are often described in terms of the other—as in the machine analogy for biological organism or the evolutionary account of technological development—the parallels between the two break down at certain points. This book takes on both issues and examines the relationship between organisms and artifacts from the perspective of functionality. Believing that the concept of function is the root of an accurate understanding of biological organisms, technical artifacts, and the relation between the two, the chapters take an integrative approach, offering philosophical analyses that embrace both biological and technical fields of function ascription. They aim at a better understanding not only of the concept of function but also of the similarities and differences between organisms and artifacts as they relate to functionality. Their ontological, epistemological, and phenomenological comparisons will clarify problems that are central to the philosophies of both biology and technology.Less
The notion of function is an integral part of thinking in both biology and technology; biological organisms and technical artifacts are both ascribed functionality. Yet the concept of function is notoriously obscure (with problematic issues regarding the normative and the descriptive nature of functions, for example) and demands philosophical clarification. So too the relationship between biological organisms and technical artifacts: although entities of one kind are often described in terms of the other—as in the machine analogy for biological organism or the evolutionary account of technological development—the parallels between the two break down at certain points. This book takes on both issues and examines the relationship between organisms and artifacts from the perspective of functionality. Believing that the concept of function is the root of an accurate understanding of biological organisms, technical artifacts, and the relation between the two, the chapters take an integrative approach, offering philosophical analyses that embrace both biological and technical fields of function ascription. They aim at a better understanding not only of the concept of function but also of the similarities and differences between organisms and artifacts as they relate to functionality. Their ontological, epistemological, and phenomenological comparisons will clarify problems that are central to the philosophies of both biology and technology.
