Science without Laws: Model Systems, Cases, Exemplary Narratives (Science and Cultural Theory) [Paperback]

Angela N. H. Creager (Editor), Elizabeth Lunbeck (Editor), M. Norton Wise (Editor)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0822340682 | ISBN-13: 978-0822340683 | Publication Date: September 3, 2007

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 subjects—such as flies, mice, worms, or microbes—or, as they are known in biology, “model systems.” Across the natural and social sciences, other disciplinary fields have developed canonical examples that have played a role comparable to that of biology’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 earth’s crust in geology, and meteorological models in climatology. They analyze the intensive study of the prisoner’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 exemplars—from the fruit fly to Freud’s Dora—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

Editorial Reviews

Review

“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

“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.”—Arkady Plotnitsky, author of Complementarity: Anti-Epistemology after Bohr and Derrida

From the Publisher

"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."--Arkady Plotnitsky, author of Complementarity: Anti-Epistemology after Bohr and Derrida

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 296 pages
• Publisher: Duke University Press Books (September 3, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0822340682
• ISBN-13: 978-0822340683
• Product Dimensions: 3.3 x 2.6 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #362,987 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)