Robert E Kohler - Böcker

What is it like to do field biology in a world that exalts experiments and laboratories? How have field biologists assimilated laboratory values and practices and crafted an exact, quantitative science without losing their naturalist souls? In "Landscapes and Labscapes", Robert E. Kohler explores the people, places and practices of field biology in the United States from the 1890s to the 1950s. He takes readers into the fields and forests where field biologists learned to count and measure nature and to read the imperfect records of "nature's experiments". He shows how field researchers use nature's particularities to develop "practices of place" that achieve in nature what laboratory researchers can only do with simplified experiments. Using historical frontiers as models, Kohler shows how biologists created vigorous new border sciences of ecology and evolutionary biology.

What is it like to do field biology in a world that exalts experiments and laboratories? How have field biologists assimilated laboratory values and practices and crafted an exact, quantitative science without losing their naturalist souls? In "Landscapes and Labscapes", Robert E. Kohler explores the people, places and practices of field biology in the United States from the 1890s to the 1950s. He takes readers into the fields and forests where field biologists learned to count and measure nature and to read the imperfect records of "nature's experiments". He shows how field researchers use nature's particularities to develop "practices of place" that achieve in nature what laboratory researchers can only do with simplified experiments. Using historical frontiers as models, Kohler shows how biologists created vigorous new border sciences of ecology and evolutionary biology.

The common fruit fly, Drosophila, has long been one of the most productive of all laboratory animals. From 1910 to 1940, the centre of Drosophila culture in America was the school of Thomas Hunt Morgan and his students, Alfred Sturtevant and Calvin Bridges. They first created "standard" flies through inbreeding and by organizing a network for exchanging stocks of flies which spread their practices around the world. In "Lords of the Fly", Robert E. Kohler argues that fly laboratories are a special kind of ecological niche in which the wild fruit fly is transformed into an artificial animal with a distinctive natural history. He shows that the fly was essentially a laboratory tool whose startling productivity opened many new lines of genetic research. Kohler also explores the moral economy of the "Drosophilists": the rules for regulating access to research tools, allocating credit for achievements, and transferring authority from one generation of scientists to the next. By closely examining the Drosophilists' culture and customs, Kohler reveals essential features of how experimental scientists do their work.

Context and situation always matter in both human and animal lives. Unique insights can be gleaned from conducting scientific studies from within human communities and animal habitats. Inside Science is a novel treatment of this distinctive mode of fieldwork. Robert E. Kohler illuminates these resident practices through close analyses of classic studies: of Trobriand Islanders, Chicago hobos, corner boys in Boston's North End, Jane Goodall's chimpanzees of the Gombe Stream Reserve, and more. Intensive firsthand observation; a preference for generalizing from observed particulars, rather than from universal principles; and an ultimate framing of their results in narrative form characterize these inside stories from the field. Resident observing takes place across a range of sciences, from anthropology and sociology to primatology, wildlife ecology, and beyond. What makes it special, Kohler argues, is the direct access it affords scientists to the contexts in which their subjects live and act. These scientists understand their subjects not by keeping their distance but by living among them and engaging with them in ways large and small. This approach also demonstrates how science and everyday life--often assumed to be different and separate ways of knowing--are in fact overlapping aspects of the human experience. This story-driven exploration is perfect for historians, sociologists, and philosophers who want to know how scientists go about making robust knowledge of nature and society.

This penetrating case study of institution building and entrepreneurship in science shows how a minor medical speciality evolved into a large and powerful academic discipline. Drawing extensively on little-used archival sources, the author analyses in detail how biomedical science became a central part of medical training and practice. The book shows how biochemistry was defined as a distinct discipline by the programmatic vision of individual biochemists and of patrons and competitors in related disciplines. It shows how discipline builders used research programmes as strategies that they adapted to the opportunities offered by changing educational markets and national medical reform movements in the United States, Britain and Germany. The author argues that the priorities and styles of various departments and schools of biochemistry reflect systematic social relationships between that discipline and biology, chemistry and medicine. Science is shaped by its service roles in particular local contexts: This is the central theme. The author's view of the political economy of modern science will be of interest to historians and social scientists, scientific and medical practitioners, and anyone interested in the ecology of knowledge in scientific institutions and professions.