As the final installment of "Public Culture'"s Millennial Quartet, "Cosmopolitanism" assesses the pasts and possible futures of cosmopolitanism--or ways of thinking, feeling, and acting beyond one's particular society. With contributions from distinguished scholars in disciplines such as literary studies, art history, South Asian studies, and anthropology, this volume recenters the history and theory of translocal political aspirations and cultural ideas from the usual Western vantage point to areas outside Europe, such as South Asia, China, and Africa.
By examining new archives,...

This collection addresses a post-WWII shift in the hierarchy of scientific explanations, where the highest goal moves from reductionism towards some understanding of how elementary objects get built up, or "grown up," into complex, objects whose

A leading scholar of the history and philosophy of economic thought, Philip Mirowski argues that there has been a top-to-bottom transformation in how scientific research is organized and funded in Western countries over the past two decades and that these changes necessitate a reexamination of the ways that science and economics interact. Mirowski insists on the need to bring together the insights of economics, science studies, and the philosophy of science in order to understand how and why particular research programs get stabilized through interdisciplinary appropriation, controlled...

For much of the twentieth century scientists sought to explain objects and processes by reducing them to their components--nuclei into protons and neutrons, proteins into amino acids, and so on--but over the past forty years there has been a marked turn toward explaining phenomena by building them up rather than breaking them down. This collection reflects on the history and significance of this turn toward "growing explanations" from the bottom up. The essays show how this strategy--based on a widespread appreciation for complexity even in apparently simple processes and on the capacity of...

A leading scholar of the history and philosophy of economic thought, Philip Mirowski argues that there has been a top-to-bottom transformation in how scientific research is organized and funded in Western countries over the past two decades and that these changes necessitate a reexamination of the ways that science and economics interact. Mirowski insists on the need to bring together the insights of economics, science studies, and the philosophy of science in order to understand how and why particular research programs get stabilized through interdisciplinary appropriation, controlled...

In light of scientific advances such as genomics, predictive diagnostics, genetically engineered agriculture, nuclear transfer cloning, and the manipulation of stem cells, the idea that genes carry predetermined molecular programs or blueprints is pervasive. Yet new scientific discoveries--such as rna transcripts of single genes that can lead to the production of different compounds from the same pieces of dna--challenge the concept of the gene alone as the dominant factor in biological development. Increasingly aware of the tension between certain empirical results and interpretations of...

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...

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...

An examination, by a diverse field of experts, of Pickering's mangle theory and its applicability (or lack thereof) beyond the limited cases he presented in the seminal book that introduced this theory.

In light of scientific advances such as genomics, predictive diagnostics, genetically engineered agriculture, nuclear transfer cloning, and the manipulation of stem cells, the idea that genes carry predetermined molecular programs or blueprints is pervasive. Yet new scientific discoveries--such as rna transcripts of single genes that can lead to the production of different compounds from the same pieces of dna--challenge the concept of the gene alone as the dominant factor in biological development. Increasingly aware of the tension between certain empirical results and interpretations of...