The Right Tools for the Job
：At Work in Twentieth-Century Life Sciences
( Princeton Legacy Library )
Publication subTitle ：At Work in Twentieth-Century Life Sciences
Publication series ：Princeton Legacy Library
Author： Clarke Adele E.;Fujimura Joan H.;;
Publisher： Princeton University Press
Publication year： 2014
E-ISBN: 9781400863136
P-ISBN(Paperback): 9780691085814
Subject： F406.2 production management, production organization
Keyword： 自然科学理论与方法论
Language： ENG
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Description
This volume examines scientific practice through studies of research tools in an array of twentieth-century life sciences. The contributors draw upon and extend the multidisciplinary perspectives in current science studies to understand the processes through which scientific researchers constructed the right--and, in some cases, the wrong--tools for the job. The articles portray the crafting or accessing of specific materials, techniques, instruments, models, funds, and work arrangements involved in doing scientific work. They demonstrate the historical and local contingencies of scientific problem construction and solving by highlighting the articulation between the tools and jobs. Indeed, the very "rightness" of the tools is contingently constructed, maintained, lost, and refashioned.
The cases examined include evolutionary biology laboratory systems (James R. Griesemer), the plasmid prep procedure in molecular biology (Kathleen Jordan and Michael Lynch), models in the human ecology of African pastoralists (Peter Taylor), the micromanometer in metabolic studies (Frederic L. Holmes), genetics research and the role played by Planaria (Gregg Mitman and Anne Fausto-Sterling) and by corn (Barbara A. Kimmelman), quantitative data in field biology (Yrj Haila), taxidermy in natural history (Susan Leigh Star), technical standardization in bacteriology (Patricia Peck Gossell), and the discipline of immunology as the tool for stabilizing conceptual definitions in the field (
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