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...
In light of scientific advances such as genomics, predictive diagnostics, genetically engineered agriculture, nuclear transfer cloning, and the manipu...
As new medical technologies are developed, more and more human tissues such as skin, bones, heart valves, embryos, and stem cell lines are stored and distributed for therapeutic and research purposes. The accelerating circulation of human tissue fragments raises profound social and ethical concerns related to who donates or sells bodily tissue, who receives it, and who profits or does not from the transaction. Catherine Waldby and Robert Mitchell survey the rapidly expanding economies of exchange in human tissue, explaining the complex questions raised and suggesting likely developments....
As new medical technologies are developed, more and more human tissues such as skin, bones, heart valves, embryos, and stem cell lines are stored and ...
Emerging in the 1940s, the first cybernetics the study of communication and control systems was mainstreamed under the names artificial intelligence and computer science and taken up by the social sciences, the humanities, and the creative arts. In Emergence and Embodiment, Bruce Clarke and Mark B. N. Hansen focus on cybernetic developments that stem from the second-order turn in the 1970s, when the cyberneticist Heinz von Foerster catalyzed new thinking about the cognitive implications of self-referential systems. The crucial shift he inspired was from first-order cybernetics...
Emerging in the 1940s, the first cybernetics the study of communication and control systems was mainstreamed under the names artificial intelligence a...
"The Heavens on Earth" explores the place of the observatory in nineteenth-century science and culture. Astronomy was a core pursuit for observatories, but usually not the only one. It belonged to a larger group of "observatory sciences" that also included geodesy, meteorology, geomagnetism, and even parts of physics and statistics. These pursuits coexisted in the nineteenth-century observatory; this collection surveys them as a coherent whole. Broadening the focus beyond the solitary astronomer at his telescope, it illuminates the observatory's importance to technological, military,...
"The Heavens on Earth" explores the place of the observatory in nineteenth-century science and culture. Astronomy was a core pursuit for observatories...
On the Modern Cult of the Factish Gods continues the project that the influential anthropologist, philosopher, and science studies theorist Bruno Latour advanced in his book We Have Never Been Modern. There he redescribed the Enlightenment idea of universal scientific truth, arguing that there are no facts separable from their fabrication. In this concise work, Latour delves into the belief in naive belief, the suggestion that fetishes objects invested with mythical powers are fabricated and that facts are not. Mobilizing his work in the anthropology of science, he uses the...
On the Modern Cult of the Factish Gods continues the project that the influential anthropologist, philosopher, and science studies theorist Bru...
