Between 1940 and 1970 pioneers in the new field of cell biology discovered the operative parts of cells and their contributions to cell life. They offered mechanistic accounts that explained cellular phenomena by identifying the relevant parts of cells, the biochemical operations they performed, and the way in which these parts and operations were organised to accomplish important functions. Cell biology was a revolutionary science but in this book it also provides fuel for yet another revolution, one that focuses on (...) the very conception of science itself. Laws have traditionally been regarded as the primary vehicle of explanation, but in the emerging philosophy of science it is mechanisms that do the explanatory work. Bechtel emphasises how mechanisms were discovered, focusing especially on the way in which new instruments made these inquiries possible. He also describes how new journals and societies provided institutional structure to this new enterprise. (shrink)

Acknowledgments THROUGHOUT this book I cite the many people who have provided information on individual programs and activities. ...

This article is about the beginnings of tissue culture-the culture of living, reproducing cells of complex organisms outside the body. It argues that Ross Harrison's experiments in nerve culture between 1907 and 1910 should be viewed as part of a larger shift in early twentieth-century laboratory practice from in vivo to in vitro experimentation. Via a focus on the temporality of experiment-contrasting the live object of Harrison's investigation with the static object of histological representations-this article details the production of a (...) new and surprising form of life, cellular life in vitro. Tissue culture, developed from Harrison's experiments, was greeted with great surprise and disbelief, despite Harrison's protestations that he had merely juxtaposed extant techniques. An analysis of these initial reactions to tissue culture illuminates the extent to which cells living visibly outside of the body in glass broke with in vivo practices and assumptions of the hiddenness and interiority of certain processes of growth and change. (shrink)

Between 1940 and 1970 pioneers in the new field of cell biology discovered the operative parts of cells and their contributions to cell life. They offered mechanistic accounts that explained cellular phenomena by identifying the relevant parts of cells, the biochemical operations they performed, and the way in which these parts and operations were organised to accomplish important functions. Cell biology was a revolutionary science but in this book it also provides fuel for yet another revolution, one that focuses on (...) the very conception of science itself. Laws have traditionally been regarded as the primary vehicle of explanation, but in the emerging philosophy of science it is mechanisms that do the explanatory work. Bechtel emphasises how mechanisms were discovered, focusing especially on the way in which new instruments made these inquiries possible. He also describes how new journals and societies provided institutional structure to this new enterprise. (shrink)

Creative Intelligence: Essays in the Pragmatic Attitude represents an attempt at intellectual cooperation. No effort has been made, however, to attain unanimity of belief nor to proffer a platform of "planks" on which there is agreement. The consensus represented lies primarily in outlook, in conviction of what is most likely to be fruitful in method of approach. As the title page suggests, the volume presents a unity in attitude rather than a uniformity in results. Consequently each writer is definitively responsible (...) only for his own essay. The reader will note that the Essays endeavor to embody the common attitude in application to specific fields of inquiry which have been historically associated with philosophy rather than as a thing by itself. Beginning with philosophy itself, subsequent contributions discuss its application to logic, to mathematics, to physical science, to psychology, to ethics, to economics, and then again to philosophy itself in conjunction with esthetics and religion. The reader will probably find that the significant points of agreement have to do with the ideas of the genuineness of the future, of intelligence as the organ for determining the quality of that future so far as it can come within human control, and of a courageously inventive individual as the bearer of a creatively employed mind. (shrink)

Studies examining the ways in which the training of engineers and scientists shapes their research strategies and scientific identities.