September 9, 2022, 8:00 pm,
nKathryn Maxson Jonesn,
Beitrag.
Abstract
Employing and extending Hans-Jörg Rheinberger's analytical concept of epistemic things, this essay proposes one reason why squid giant axons, unusually large invertebrate nerve fibers, had such great impacts on twentieth-century neurobiology. The 1930s characterizations of these axons by John Zachary Young reshaped prevailing assumptions about nerve cells as epistemic things, I argue. Specifically, Young's preparations of these axons, which consisted of fibers attached to laboratory technologies, highlighted similarities between giant axons and more familiar ones via lines of comparative study common to aquatic biology. Young's work convinced other biologists that the squid giant fibers were, in fact, axons, despite their unusual fused (syncytial) structures, thereby promoting further studies, such as intracellular measurements, made possible by the fiber's size. Tracing direct relations between preparations of squid axons and broader interpretations of neurons as epistemic things, this paper renders an actors’ category, “preparations,” into an analytical one. In turn, it offers glimpses into how aquatic organisms shaped twentieth-century neurobiology and how local experiments can drive broader, disciplinary changes.
Quelle: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/bewi.202200021?af=R
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September 9, 2022, 8:00 pm,
nEsther Chen, nLara Keuck, nKärin Nickelsenn,
Beitrag.
Abstract
[I] want to single out one phenomenon that could be called the ‘politics of sources’. It points to the extent to which the histories that both scientists and historians can write are artifacts of the available sources. The Rockefeller Foundation not only opened its archives very early on for historical work but also invested a lot in making the archives readily available for historical exploration. During the 1980s, many young historians took advantage of this opportunity. Thus, in a relatively early phase of the professional historiography of molecular biology, one could have gained the impression that the development of the new biology as a whole was a bio-politically directed enterprise of the Rockefeller Foundation sustained by the vision that social processes could ultimately be controlled by biological processes.
Quelle: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/bewi.202200035?af=R
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September 9, 2022, 8:00 pm,
nCornelius Borckn,
Beitrag.
Abstract
Hans-Jörg Rheinberger constructed his historical epistemology of epistemic things by analyzing experimental practices in molecular biology during the 1970s and 80s. With genetic sequencing and multi-omics approaches, data has become a new resource in the life sciences, questioning the applicability of his concept of experimental system. By historicizing Rheinberger's epistemology, the paper focuses on its relatedness to Ludwik Fleck's notion of an aviso of resistance and points to a gradual shift in Rheinberger's emphasis, moving from an initial focus on writing and its differentiality to work on materials, preparations, and representations. By anchoring visualization in these material practices, Rheinberger also sheds new light on the changing conditions of experimentation in the life sciences due to big data, where visualization emphasizes patterns and correlations rather than substrates.
Quelle: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/bewi.202200032?af=R
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September 9, 2022, 8:00 pm,
nStephen Hilgartnern,
Beitrag.
Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte, Volume 45, Issue 3, Page 428-433, September 2022.
Quelle: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/bewi.202200014?af=R
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September 9, 2022, 8:00 pm,
nHans‐Jörg Rheinbergern,
Beitrag.
Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte, Volume 45, Issue 3, Page 517-523, September 2022.
Quelle: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/bewi.202200028?af=R
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September 9, 2022, 8:00 pm,
nMichael F. Zimmermannn,
Beitrag.
Abstract
When Hans-Jörg Rheinberger proposed the concept of epistemic things, he drew inspiration from the art historian George Kubler, who had considered the aesthetic object as resulting from problem-solving processes in The Shape of Time (1962). Kubler also demonstrated that a sequence of objects could retrace the progress that led to a solution that was afterwards accepted as the most classical. Parallel to Kubler, Rheinberger demonstrates how temporally extended activities of experimentation are condensed in the object, revealing the moments of innovation that lead to it. In the history of science as well as in art history, various trajectories can thus be grasped in the materially given. Rheinberger conceives of an object as a network of heterogeneous time strings. However, these are manifold: they cannot be thought of as making up a homogeneous temporality encompassing all the others as a temporal container and synchronizing them within it. Since the discovery of the Anthropocene, we no longer separate natural from cultural time, and no hegemonic historical narrative can be taken as unifying all the others. Historical epistemology as proposed by Rheinberger will be read as a contribution to constructing new models of natural as well as of cultural time.
Quelle: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/bewi.202200045?af=R
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September 9, 2022, 8:00 pm,
nAngela N. H. Creagern,
Beitrag.
Abstract
This essay considers the mid-twentieth century adoption of genetic explanations for three biological phenomena: nutritional adaptation, antibiotic resistance, and antibody production. This occurred at the same time as the hardening of the neo-Darwinian Synthesis in evolutionary theory. I argue that these concurrent changes reflect an ascendant narrative of genetic selfhood, which prioritized random hereditary variation and selection through competition, and marginalized physiological or environmental adaptation. This narrative was further reinforced by the Central Dogma of molecular biology and fit well with liberal political thought, with its focus on the autonomous individual. However, bringing biological findings into line with this narrative required modifying the notion of the gene to account for various kinds of non-Mendelian inheritance. Hans-Jörg Rheinberger's reflections on narrative and experiment are valuable in thinking about the friction between the postwar ideal of genetic selfhood and actual observations of how organisms adapt in response to the environment.
Quelle: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/bewi.202200022?af=R
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September 9, 2022, 8:00 pm,
nIlana Löwyn,
Beitrag.
Abstract
In 2013, Hans Jörg Rheinberger proposed that Mendelian genetics and molecular biology were “scientific ideologies,” that is, for him they are systems of thought whose objects are hyperbolic; they are not, or not yet, in the realm of and not, or not yet, under the control of that system. This article proposes that precision medicine today is a scientific ideology and analyses the implications of this statement for historians of biology, genetics, and medicine.
Quelle: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/bewi.202200023?af=R
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September 9, 2022, 8:00 pm,
nEdna Suárez‐Díazn,
Beitrag.
Abstract
This paper uses zone electrophoresis, one of the most frequently used tools in molecular biology, to explore two ideas derived from Hans-Jörg Rheinberger's reflections on experiments. First, the constraining role played by technical objects—instrumentation and material conditions—in the production of knowledge or epistemic things. Second, the production of interconnected experimental systems by such technical objects, which results in the unexpected entanglement of research fields and experimental cultures. By the beginning of the 1960s, the inception of zone electrophoresis in laboratories around the world transformed—some say, revolutionized—the study of proteins. Even today, electrophoresis continues to open research venues and questions in biomedicine, molecular biology, human genetics, and in the field of molecular evolution. In my essay, I seek to look at the interconnected lives of zone electrophoresis and address the broader social, and even global context, in which this apparently humble technique became a salient tool in the production of biological knowledge. In so doing, I aim to take the past and present of the history and historiography of experimental systems to the future, where experiments and technologies are interrogated as they are used in different geographies and contexts, including contexts of poverty.
Quelle: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/bewi.202200024?af=R
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September 9, 2022, 8:00 pm,
nSoraya Chadareviann,
Beitrag.
Abstract
Just when molecular biology is arguably delivering on some of its long-promised medical applications—think mRNA vaccines, monoclonal antibody drugs, PCR testing, and gene therapies—the history of molecular biology has lost much of its shine. What not too long ago seemed like a burgeoning field of research with endless possibilities, is now often reduced to the “central dogma” that saw its apotheosis in the effort to sequence the human genome but has since unraveled. The essay will discuss several possible answers to this apparent paradox.
Quelle: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/bewi.202200025?af=R
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