Dreamers, Visionaries, and Revolutionaries in the Life Sciences
Oren Harman
(Editor)
Michael R Dietrich
(Editor)
Description
What are the conditions that foster true novelty and allow visionaries to set their eyes on unknown horizons? What have been the challenges that have spawned new innovations, and how have they shaped modern biology? In Dreamers, Visionaries, and Revolutionaries in the Life Sciences, editors Oren Harman and Michael R. Dietrich explore these questions through the lives of eighteen exemplary biologists who had grand and often radical ideas that went far beyond the run-of-the-mill science of their peers. From the Frenchman Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, who coined the word "biology" in the early nineteenth century, to the American James Lovelock, for whom the Earth is a living, breathing organism, these dreamers innovated in ways that forced their contemporaries to reexamine comfortable truths. With this collection readers will follow Jane Goodall into the hidden world of apes in African jungles and Francis Crick as he attacks the problem of consciousness. Join Mary Lasker on her campaign to conquer cancer and follow geneticist George Church as he dreams of bringing back woolly mammoths and Neanderthals. In these lives and the many others featured in these pages, we discover visions that were sometimes fantastical, quixotic, and even threatening and destabilizing, but always a challenge to the status quo.Product Details
Price
$51.60
Publisher
University of Chicago Press
Publish Date
July 20, 2018
Pages
336
Dimensions
6.0 X 0.9 X 8.9 inches | 1.0 pounds
Language
English
Type
Paperback
EAN/UPC
9780226569901
BISAC Categories:
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About the Author
Oren Harman, who has a doctorate from Oxford University, is the Chair of the Graduate Program in Science Technology and Society at Bar Ilan University and a professor of the history of science. He is the author of The Man Who Invented the Chromosome, a documentary film maker, and a frequent contributor to The New Republic. He lives in Tel Aviv and New York.
Michael R. Dietrich is professor of history and philosophy of science at the University of Pittsburgh. He is coeditor of Rebels, Mavericks, and Heretics in Biology.
Reviews
"They may infuriate even as they inspire; destabilize, as well as advance. The visionaries of biology, note science historians Oren Harman and Michael Dietrich, are masters of 'dramatically bold, even fantastic' thinking about big problems. This compelling edited volume explores the work of 19 innovators, including Iranian-American cancer researcher Mina Bissell, who studies tumour microenvironments; Canadian John Todd, who engineered solar aquatic sewage treatment; and Peter Kropotkin, the Russian biologist who championed mutualism in nature during the Darwinian revolution."--Nature
"Sciences stay lively only thanks to regular injections of big, bold thinking and doing. Dreamers, Visionaries, and Revolutionaries in the Life Sciences tells the stories of some of biology's greatest boundary-pushers, from Lamarck (who gave biology its name) to Lovelock and beyond. Prepare to be instructed, inspired, amazed, and--occasionally--appalled."--Gregory Radick, University of Leeds
"This spirited collection not only provides intriguing biographies of life scientists whose histories have often been overlooked, but also forces us to revisit our usual narratives of how biological change is generated to consider the role of true novelty, especially in the hands and minds of quirky, eccentric, and oftentimes plain ornery characters in the right places at opportune times. Scientific advances come not only from experiments and theories but from creative and even outlandish dreams, and this volume brings together some of these radical dreamers and their stories to generate as many new questions as are answered, much as these scientists did in their own times."
--Rachel A. Ankeny, University of Adelaide, Australia
"Dreamers, Visionaries, and Revolutionaries in the Life joins Rebels, Mavericks, and Heretics in Biology (Yale, 2008) and Outsider Scientists: Routes to Innovation in Biology (Chicago, 2013) in presenting looks at individual scientists who are non-standard in illuminating ways. Harmon and Dietrich have enticed their contributors to think about the role of individual scientists and how they helped shape science in society. They then pull together the individual biographies with valuable cross-cutting interpretive introductions. Joan Roughgarden's epilogue captures the book's message beautifully. To those who feel they don't quite fit: "If you're a scientist dreamer, let it happen; don't fight it. Really, you have no choice. It's what you are. In the end, you might be correct, after all. And remember, be a disciplined dreamer. The scientist dreamer must aim to tell a true story, not a fantasy." To the rest of us: "If you're not a scientific dreamer yourself, but know someone who is, be kind to them." We should be kind because the dreamers stimulate us all ro think and be better than we otherwise would. The brilliant Lynn Margulis might have infuriated almost everybody, as the editors note, but she also provoked us in the best possible ways and changed our thinking about life."
--Jane Maienschein, Arizona State University
"The volume is insightful and engaging; readers will come away with a desire to explore the lives and works of these scientists in more detail. . . . Recommended."--CHOICE
"Sciences stay lively only thanks to regular injections of big, bold thinking and doing. Dreamers, Visionaries, and Revolutionaries in the Life Sciences tells the stories of some of biology's greatest boundary-pushers, from Lamarck (who gave biology its name) to Lovelock and beyond. Prepare to be instructed, inspired, amazed, and--occasionally--appalled."--Gregory Radick, University of Leeds
"This spirited collection not only provides intriguing biographies of life scientists whose histories have often been overlooked, but also forces us to revisit our usual narratives of how biological change is generated to consider the role of true novelty, especially in the hands and minds of quirky, eccentric, and oftentimes plain ornery characters in the right places at opportune times. Scientific advances come not only from experiments and theories but from creative and even outlandish dreams, and this volume brings together some of these radical dreamers and their stories to generate as many new questions as are answered, much as these scientists did in their own times."
--Rachel A. Ankeny, University of Adelaide, Australia
"Dreamers, Visionaries, and Revolutionaries in the Life joins Rebels, Mavericks, and Heretics in Biology (Yale, 2008) and Outsider Scientists: Routes to Innovation in Biology (Chicago, 2013) in presenting looks at individual scientists who are non-standard in illuminating ways. Harmon and Dietrich have enticed their contributors to think about the role of individual scientists and how they helped shape science in society. They then pull together the individual biographies with valuable cross-cutting interpretive introductions. Joan Roughgarden's epilogue captures the book's message beautifully. To those who feel they don't quite fit: "If you're a scientist dreamer, let it happen; don't fight it. Really, you have no choice. It's what you are. In the end, you might be correct, after all. And remember, be a disciplined dreamer. The scientist dreamer must aim to tell a true story, not a fantasy." To the rest of us: "If you're not a scientific dreamer yourself, but know someone who is, be kind to them." We should be kind because the dreamers stimulate us all ro think and be better than we otherwise would. The brilliant Lynn Margulis might have infuriated almost everybody, as the editors note, but she also provoked us in the best possible ways and changed our thinking about life."
--Jane Maienschein, Arizona State University
"The volume is insightful and engaging; readers will come away with a desire to explore the lives and works of these scientists in more detail. . . . Recommended."--CHOICE
