Life Among the Scientists: An Anthropological Study of an Australian Scientific CommunityThis book provides a fascinating study of a community of scientists at the prestigious Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Science in Melbourne, Australia. These scientists are mainly concerned with investigating the immune system, which enables us to cope with the many bacteria and viruses that invade our bodies. The Hall Institute scientists are part of a distinctive subculture, with its own myths and rites of passage, which can be investigated in much the same way as anthropologists investigate 'primitive' cultures. The volume shows how scientific programs and methods are shaped by cultural factors, including social, political, and economic constraints, and by the Institute's setting and the ethos of the new biology. The emphasis is on how science is actually done in concrete situations as distinct from what scientists say they do, and what philosophers and historians and sociologists of science theorize about what they do. Life Among the Scientists will be of great interest to scientists, students of the philosophy, history, and sociology of science, anthropologists and social scientists, and the general reader who wants to know what the scientific life is really like. |
Contents
Ancestor Worship and Culture Heroes 20 2822 | 20 |
The Emergence of the New Biology | 38 |
The Institutes Setting | 52 |
Copyright | |
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Other editions - View all
Life Among the Scientists: An Anthropological Study of an Australian ... Maxwell John Charlesworth No preview available - 1989 |
Common terms and phrases
Adams and Cory American anthropologist antibodies antigen Australian Barbara McClintock Basel Institute biologists biomedical research biotechnology Bruno Latour cancer cell clonal selection theory collaboration competitive Crick culture Director discipline discovery disease Eliza Hall Institute Evelyn Fox Keller example experience experimental fact factors field funding gene genetic engineering human idea immune system immunology important Institute of Medical Institute scientists Institute's interest involved Jacques Miller kind laboratory Macfarlane Burnet malaria vaccine Medical Research medicine Melbourne merozoites mice Mitchell molecular biology mouse Nobel Prize Nossal observer organization papers Papua New Guinea parasite parasitology physicists physics PNGIMR political postdoctoral problem produced protein rDNA recombinant DNA research institutes says scientific knowledge scientific research social sociology sociology of science sporozoite structure technicians techniques things Third World tropical Walter and Eliza women