Description
Book SynopsisNatasha Myers shows in this ethnography how scientists who build three-dimensional models of proteins use their senses and bodies to create, represent, and evaluate otherwise imperceptible molecules. These modelers often consider matter to be made up of living, moving, and sometimes breathing entities, and Myers' study of them rethinks the objectivity of science.
Trade Review"Essential reading for those interested biopolitics, bioethics, science studies, and genetics, genomics, and the new omics." -- Rebecca Scott Yoshizawa * New Genetics and Society *
"One of the most exciting books published this year, Natasha Myer’s
Rendering Life Molecular: Models, Modelers, and Excitable Matter, is an ethnography of protein modellers, the first such study of this new and central area of biological research." -- Sherryl Vint * Year’s Work in Critical and Cultural Theory *
"Amplifying instances of haptic and creative thinking opens avenues for a different kind of science than one may find presented in popular media.... The result is not only intellectually invigorating but also abounds in amusing curiosities. One might say 'eye opening,' but in the spirit of the book, it would perhaps be better to say 'vivifying.'" -- Jonathan G. Wald * Current Anthropology *
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Rendering Life Molecular offers an engaging view into the world of scientists who describe the unseeable." -- R. M. Denome * Choice *
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Rendering Life Molecular is a thought-provoking book, a whirlwind ethnography pregnant with epistemological and empirical insights on movements, practices, knowledge and reasoning around proteins, which can and should inform future philosophical studies of modeling as well as STS work on experimental practices in and beyond biology." -- Sabina Leonelli * Metascience *
"... logical, theoretically and methodologically iterative, and, most importantly, ethnographically rich and robust."
-- Udo Krautwurst * Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute *
Table of ContentsPreface ix
Acknowledgments xiii
Introduction 1
Part One. Laboratory Entanglements
1. Crystallographic Renderings 35
2. Tangible Media 74
3. Molecular Embodiments 99
Part Two. Ontics and Epistemics
4. Rending Representation 121
5. Remodeling Objectivity 136
Part Three. Forms of Life
6. Machinic Life 159
7. Lively Machines 182
8. Molecular Calisthenics 204
Conclusion: What Is Life Becoming? 230
Appendix: A Protein Primer 239
Notes 243
Bibliography 277
Index 299
