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Making Sense of Life:

Explaining Biological Development with Models, Metaphors, and Machines
Front Cover
1 Review
Harvard University Press, 2002 - Science - 388 pages
Publisher's description: What 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. In particular, Keller asks, what counts as an "explanation" of biological development in individual organisms? Her inquiry ranges from physical and mathematical models to more familiar explanatory metaphors to the dramatic contributions of recent technological developments, especially in imaging, recombinant DNA, and computer modeling and simulations. A history of the diverse and changing nature of biological explanation in a particularly charged field, Making Sense of Life draws our attention to the temporal, disciplinary, and cultural components of what biologists mean, and what they understand, when they propose to explain life.
  

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Review: Making Sense of Life

User Review  - Cahners Business Information.

Keller (The Century of the Gene), professor of history and philosophy of science at MIT, analyzes the history of developmental biology. She explains the type of information scientists have accepted ... Read full review

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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
50
Untimely Births of a Mathematical Biology
79
Metaphors Genes and Developmental Narratives
113
Genes Gene Action and Genetic Programs
123
Taming the Cybernetic Metaphor
148
Machines Understanding Development with Computers Recombinant DMA and Molecular Imaging
199
The Visual Culture of Molecular Embryology
205
New Roles for Mathematical and Computational Modeling
234
Synthetic Biology ReduxComputer Simulation and Artificial Life
265
Understanding Development
295
Notes
305
References
351
Index
382

Positioning Positional Information
173

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References from web pages

JAMA -- Making Sense of Life: Explaining Biological Development ...
Making Sense of Life: Explaining Biological Development With Models, Metaphors, and Machines. by Evelyn Fox Keller, 388 pp, $29.95, ISBN 0-674-00746-8, ...
jama.ama-assn.org/ cgi/ content/ full/ 288/ 24/ 3170?ck=nck

John C. Avise - Making Sense of Life: Explaining Biological ...
Making Sense of Life: Explaining Biological Development with Models, Metaphors, and Machines. By Evelyn Fox Keller. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, ...
muse.jhu.edu/ journals/ perspectives_in_biology_and_medicine/ v047/ 47.1avise.html

The Big Morph - New York Times
The Big Morph. E-MAIL · Print · Single-Page; Save. By LEWIS WOLPERT. Published: May 12, 2002. MAKING SENSE OF LIFE Explaining Biological Development ...
query.nytimes.com/ gst/ fullpage.html?res=9D01E5DF1331F931A25756C0A9649C8B63

Evelyn Fox Keller, <Emphasis Type="Italic">Making Sense of Life ...
REVIEWS. WHAT COUNTS AS AN EXPLANATION? Evelyn Fox Keller, Making Sense of Life: Explaining Biological. Development with Models, Metaphors, and Machines. ...
www.springerlink.com/ index/ X66664T6381UUN86.pdf

deodands: Making Sense of Life
Writing for pleasure with a target audience of one. Turing, Fibonacci phyllotaxis, neutron teaspoons and proteotymology all apparently counting as pleasure ...
www.swintons.net/ deodands/ archives/ 000079.html

Facts, Interpretations, and Explanations: A Review of Evelyn Fox ...
EJ696779 - Facts, Interpretations, and Explanations: A Review of Evelyn Fox Keller
www.eric.ed.gov/ ERICWebPortal/ recordDetail?accno=EJ696779

Heredity - Abstract of article: Making sense of life: explaining ...
Making sense of life: explaining biological development with models, metaphors and machines. Reviewed by M Cobb. A philosopher looks at developmental ...
www.nature.com/ hdy/ journal/ v92/ n3/ abs/ 6800414a.html

Dr. Evelyn Fox Keller
... The Century of the Gene; and Making Sense of Life: Explaining Biological Development with Models, Metaphors, and Machines, and over 100 articles. ...
www.isepp.org/ Pages/ 04-05%20Pages/ Fox-Keller.html

16 Science
16. Science. MARGRET GREBOWICZ. This chapter is entitled 'Feminist Visions, Revised: New Work by Helen E. Longino. and Evelyn Fox Keller'. ...
ywcct.oxfordjournals.org/ cgi/ reprint/ 12/ 1/ 236.pdf

[Review of: Evelyn Fox Keller, Making sense of life: explaining ...
[Review of: Evelyn Fox Keller, Making sense of life: explaining biological development with models, metaphors, and machines. ...
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/ pubmed/ 15366125

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