Collecting Experiments: Making Big Data Biology - Hardcover

Strasser, Bruno J.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 022663499X ISBN 13: 9780226634999

Publisher: University of Chicago Press, 2019

Synopsis

Databases have revolutionized nearly every aspect of our lives. Information of all sorts is being collected on a massive scale, from Google to Facebook and well beyond. But as the amount of information in databases explodes, we are forced to reassess our ideas about what knowledge is, how it is produced, to whom it belongs, and who can be credited for producing it.
 
Every scientist working today draws on databases to produce scientific knowledge. Databases have become more common than microscopes, voltmeters, and test tubes, and the increasing amount of data has led to major changes in research practices and profound reflections on the proper professional roles of data producers, collectors, curators, and analysts.
 
Collecting Experiments traces the development and use of data collections, especially in the experimental life sciences, from the early twentieth century to the present. It shows that the current revolution is best understood as the coming together of two older ways of knowing—collecting and experimenting, the museum and the laboratory. Ultimately, Bruno J. Strasser argues that by serving as knowledge repositories, as well as indispensable tools for producing new knowledge, these databases function as digital museums for the twenty-first century.

About this title

About the Author

Bruno J. Strasser is professor at the University of Geneva and adjunct professor at Yale University.

Review

"We often think of big data as an explosive departure from the past. Science historian Bruno Strasser reveals it as part of a historic continuum. The sense of ‘information overload’ has existed since the Renaissance, and today’s data tsunami emerged from two traditions in biology: natural-history collecting and the lab. Hybridized, they led to vast accumulations of knowledge. Strasser’s case studies compel, from geneticists’ ‘museums’ of maize (corn) varieties to a groundbreaking mine of digital data, the 1965 Atlas of Protein Structure and Sequence, coproduced by bioinformatics pioneer Margaret Dayhoff." (Nature)

"A long-awaited piece of work, and worth the wait. . . . Strasser’s book is important in many ways, no less because it feels like the culmination of a historiographical trend, one that has put to rest a simplified view of the history of biology as the opposition of a 'mere descriptive' approach and an analytical/interventionist attack on the study of living beings. . . . Collecting Experiments offers a sophisticated view of the life sciences that cuts across traditional dichotomies thanks to a careful reconstruction of episodes where two modes of working, the comparative and the exemplary, came together. Strasser’s book is a thoroughly researched and well written book that will appeal to many readers, both within the field of the history of science and those who want to understand contemporary developments in the life sciences." (Journal of the History of Biology)

"Strasser presents a hybrid schema, reflecting the early collection approach to gathering scientific information, as favored by naturalists and paleontologists, in conjunction with the later experimental approach favored by molecular biologists. This is a fascinating read, with ample notes and references and occasional figures supporting the assertions. . . . Highly recommended." (CHOICE)

"Amidst all the hype surrounding Big Data and the life sciences, Bruno Strasser uncovers the deep continuities of collecting and comparing that link the latest data banks to venerable natural history museums. This bold book rethinks the relationship between field, laboratory, and archive, with important implications for the ethos of open publication in science." (Lorraine Daston, Max Planck Institute for the History of Science)

"The long-contested line between experimental life sciences and those that collect, compare, and classify is once more unsettled. It is now accepted that comparative sciences are open to experiment and always have been. And Bruno Strasser now argues that the celebrated achievements of experimental biology have similarly depended on practices of collecting and curating. And not just in our own new world of digital databases, but historically: from when experimenters first thought to make collecting forever obsolete. Strasser supports his bold revision with case studies of a broad range of sciences, from taxonomy to serology, experimental and then molecular biology, and bio-informatics. In its historical depth and breadth this is a benchmark book; and for all who want to know how life sciences really work, it's a must read." (Robert E. Kohler, University of Pennsylvania)

"Collecting Experiments is an exciting and welcome addition to the historiography of the long-standing debates about the changing roles of experimentation and description in the life sciences. Rejecting the older notion of an impassable dichotomy, Bruno J. Strasser suggests that the rise of experimental approaches to biology in the  nineteenth century did not eclipse the more descriptive work of natural history, but rather became a part of an overall 'way of knowing' that included both approaches. 'Big data,' whether obtained by experimental or observational methods had to be analyzed in the same manner. Strasser has done a great service to clarify the historical relationship between these two methodologies.  It is a must  for all scholars in the history of biology." (Garland Allen, Washington University in Saint Louis)

"A masterful, groundbreaking work: Strasser explores collecting activities in multiple branches of biology and medicine across several centuries, covering the territory from natural historical specimens to blood and proteins, and on to DNA sequences and contemporary big-data biology. His book assesses issues of lasting salience, including control of the collections, access to specimens and data, modes of publication, and assignment of authorship and credit. Strasser contends that big-data biology is not a sharp departure from the past but a hybrid, a joining of the experimentalist-reductionist inquiries into model organisms with the practices of collectors who classified and characterized their specimens and compared them with others. Strasser’s research is wide and deep, his prose lucidly informative, and his analysis subtle, discerning, and persuasive."
  (Daniel J. Kevles, Yale University)

"You might think that museums are for collecting and laboratories for experimenting. Bruno J. Strasser tracks the creation of a hybrid culture—a 'way of knowing' that was comparative and experimental at the same time. Molecular biologists used the protein sequences of very various species to crack the genetic code. From bacteria to blood and protein to DNA, this engaging book restores collecting to the experimentalist tradition and gives 'big data' biology the history it needs." (Nick Hopwood, author of Haeckel’s Embryos: Images, Evolution, and Fraud)

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Publication date: 2019
• ISBN 10: 022663499X
• ISBN 13: 9780226634999
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 392