Description
Book SynopsisArgues that our tools are not just neutral intermediaries between humans and the natural world, but are devices that demand new ideas about reality. This work explores the ways in which instrumentation advances a philosophical stance about an instrument's power, an experimenter's skills, and a specimen's properties.
Trade Review"Exceptional for its clarity of prose and argument. . . . Rothbart integrates profound issues of ontology and epistemology with compelling case studies that traverse the seventeenth to twenty-first centuries."--Technology and Culture
Table of ContentsCoverTitleCopyrightContentsForeword by Rom HarréPreface1. Science, Technology, and Philosophy2. Analogies of Design3. Testing Design Plans4. Icons of Design and Images of Art5. Microscopes, Machines, and Matter6. Atoms: Easier than Ever Before7. Specimens as MachinesAfterwordNotesGlossaryReferencesCreditsIndexBack cover
