Hans-Jörg Rheinberger Book order

"Esteemed historian and philosopher of science Hans-Jèorg Rheinberger explores the incredible diversity of scientific experimentation in his new book, which extends his ground-breaking epistemological studies of the life sciences and the experimental practices that have made them so productive. Rheinberger explores the materiality of experiment, of its objects and instruments, the construction of models, and myriad ways of making things visible. The first part of the book is devoted to the circumstances and conditions that give the process of experimentation its structural cachet and make it a device from which novelty can emerge. Then, in the second part, Rheinberger focuses on the relations that experimental systems develop among each other, specifically their characteristic temporal, spatial, and narrative dimensions. The concepts that guide his investigation emerge through accessible examples, most of which are drawn from molecular biology, including from the author's own laboratory notebooks from his years researching ribosomes. This is a tour de force by one of today's most influential theorists of scientific practice"--

Focusing on the interplay between the experimenter's hands and the artist's, this book explores the intricate relationship between science and art. It offers a deep intellectual engagement that reveals how these two fields influence and enrich one another, inviting readers to consider the creative processes that bridge scientific inquiry and artistic expression.

Few concepts played a more important role in twentieth-century life sciences than that of the gene. Yet at this moment, the field of genetics is undergoing radical conceptual transformation, and some scientists are questioning the very usefulness of the concept of the gene, arguing instead for more systemic perspectives. The time could not be better, therefore, for Hans-Jörg Rheinberger and Staffan Müller-Wille's magisterial history of the concept of the gene. Though the gene has long been the central organizing theme of biology, both conceptually and as an object of study, Rheinberger and Müller-Wille conclude that we have never even had a universally accepted, stable definition of it. Rather, the concept has been in continual flux—a state that, they contend, is typical of historically important and productive scientific concepts. It is that very openness to change and manipulation, the authors argue, that made it so useful: its very mutability enabled it to be useful while the technologies and approaches used to study and theorize about it changed dramatically.

This book shows how, from the late nineteenth to the late twentieth century, the philosophy of science was increasingly confronted with historical questions and how it became historicized accordingly.

Brings together case studies and theoretical reflections on the history and epistemology of the life sciences by Hans-Joerg Rheinberger, one of the foremost philosophers of science.

Arguing for the primacy of the material arrangements of the laboratory in the dynamics of modern molecular biology, the author develops a new epistemology of experimentation in which research is treated as a process for producing epistemic things.