Synopses & Reviews
Physicists regularly invoke universal laws, such as those of motion and electromagnetism, to explain events. Biological and medical scientists have no such laws. How then do they acquire a reliable body of knowledge about biological organisms and human disease? One way is by repeatedly returning to, manipulating, observing, interpreting, and reinterpreting certain subjectsandmdash;such as flies, mice, worms, or microbesandmdash;or, as they are known in biology, andldquo;model systems.andrdquo; Across the natural and social sciences, other disciplinary fields have developed canonical examples that have played a role comparable to that of biologyandrsquo;s model systems, serving not only as points of reference and illustrations of general principles or values but also as sites of continued investigation and reinterpretation. The essays in this collection assess the scope and function of model objects in domains as diverse as biology, geology, and history, attending to differences between fields as well as to epistemological commonalities.
Contributors examine the role of the fruit fly Drosophila and nematode worms in biology, troops of baboons in primatology, box and digital simulations of the movement of the earthandrsquo;s crust in geology, and meteorological models in climatology. They analyze the intensive study of the prisonerandrsquo;s dilemma in game theory, ritual in anthropology, the individual case in psychoanalytic research, and Athenian democracy in political theory. The contributors illuminate the processes through which particular organisms, cases, materials, or narratives become foundational to their fields, and they examine how these foundational exemplarsandmdash;from the fruit fly to Freudandrsquo;s Doraandmdash;shape the knowledge produced within their disciplines.
Contributors
Rachel A. Ankeny
Angela N. H. Creager
Amy Dahan Dalmedico
John Forrester
Clifford Geertz
Carlo Ginzburg
E. Jane Albert Hubbard
Elizabeth Lunbeck
Mary S. Morgan
Josiah Ober
Naomi Oreskes
Susan Sperling
Marcel Weber
M. Norton Wise
Review
andldquo;Science without Laws inspires with its breathtaking scope. Delving from ethology to economics, molecular biology to microhistory, the authors illuminate crucial congruences in the way experts make their cases. Generations of scholars have taken physics as their model for right thinking, in science and beyond. This volume demonstrates that we are all biologists now.andrdquo;andmdash;David Kaiser, author of Drawing Theories Apart: The Dispersion of Feynman Diagrams in Postwar Physics
Review
andldquo;Science without Laws is a superb book. It is a very strong collection, sharply defined yet impressive in scope and reach, rich in substance and deep in analysis.andrdquo;andmdash;Arkady Plotnitsky, author of Complementarity: Anti-Epistemology after Bohr and Derrida
Review
andldquo;[Science without Laws] offers an interesting and eclectic set of essays. . . . Consciously self-reflexive, these essays are model studies of model studies and exemplary narratives of exemplary narratives. The book itself is an exemplary collection of model essays for historians and philosophers interested in model systems, and will be an engaging read for anyone interested in the vicissitudes of practices and reasoning strategies in science without laws.andrdquo;
Review
andldquo;The range of scholarship represented here is vast, providing a valuable overview of models and cases (or what functions similarly, like exemplary narratives in history and psychoanalysis or ritual systems in anthropology) in a broad range of disciplines. . . . Sociology is not explicitly represented in this essays, but the implications for sociological knowledge are clear and significant, if also controversial. They merit serious consideration by all sociologists.andrdquo;
Synopsis
""Science without Laws "inspires with its breathtaking scope. Delving from ethology to economics, molecular biology to microhistory, the authors illuminate crucial congruences in the way experts make their cases. Generations of scholars have taken physics as their model for right thinking, in science and beyond. This volume demonstrates that we are all biologists now."--David Kaiser, author of "Drawing Theories Apart: The Dispersion of Feynman Diagrams in Postwar Physics"
Synopsis
This collection on case-based reasoning in the natural- and human sciences showcases some ways that scholars think with small instances while en route, or not, to more general laws.
Synopsis
A comparison of the use of model systems and exemplary cases across fields in the natural and social sciences.
About the Author
Angela N. H. Creager is Professor of History at Princeton University. She is the author of The Life of a Virus: Tobacco Mosaic Virus as an Experimental Model, 1930andndash;1965.
Elizabeth Lunbeck is the Nelson Tyrone Jr. Professor of American History at Vanderbilt University. Her books include The Psychiatric Persuasion: Knowledge, Gender, and Power in Modern America.
M. Norton Wise is Professor of History and Co-Director of the Center for Society and Genetics at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is the editor of Growing Explanations: Historical Perspectives on Recent Science, also published by Duke University Press.
Table of Contents
Introduction / Angela N.H. Creager, Elizabeth Lunbeck, and M. Norton Wise 1
Part 1: Biology
Redesigning the Fruit Fly: The Molecularization of Drosophila / Marcel Weber 23
Wormy Logic: Model Organisms as Case-Based Reasoning / Rachel A. Ankeny 46
Model Organisms as Powerful Tools for Biomedical Research / E. Jane Albert Hubbard 59
The Troop Trope: Baboon Behavior as a Model System in the Postwar Period / Susan Sperling 73
Part 2: Simulations
From Scaling to Simulation: Changing Meanings and Ambitions of Models in Geology / Naomi Oreskes 93
Models and Simulations in Climate Change: Historical, Epistemological, Anthropological, and Political Aspects / Amy Dahan Dalmedico 125
The Curios Case of the Prisonerandrsquo;s Dilemma: Model Situation? Exemplary Narrative? / Mary S. Morgan
Part 3: Human Sciences
The Psychoanalytic Case: Voyeurism, Ethics, and Epistemology in Robert Stollerandrsquo;s Sexual Excitement / John Forrester 189
andldquo;To Exist Is to Have Confidence in Oneandrsquo;s Way of Beingandrdquo;: Rituals as Model Systems / Clifford Geertz 212
Democratic Athens as an Experimental System: History and the Project of Political Theory / Josiah Ober 225
Latitude, Slaves, and the Bible: An Experiment in Microhistory / Carlo Ginzburg 243
Afterword: Reflections on Exemplary Narratives, Cases, and Model Organisms / Mary S. Morgan 264
Contributors 275
Index 279