IsisCB Explore

Article ID: CBB001221635

Stages in the Development of a Model Organism as a Platform for Mechanistic Models in Developmental Biology: Zebrafish, 1970--2000 (2012)

Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences
Volume: 43
Pages: 522--531

Outside Links

WorldCat

Google Scholar

JSTOR

Academia.edu

Biology Developmental biology Mechanism; mechanical philosophy Animal physiology Experimental organisms Animal experimentation Animal genetics Molecular biology 20th century, late

Model organisms became an indispensable part of experimental systems in molecular developmental and cell biology, constructed to investigate physiological and pathological processes. They are thought to play a crucial role for the elucidation of gene function, complementing the sequencing of the genomes of humans and other organisms. Accordingly, historians and philosophers paid considerable attention to various issues concerning this aspect of experimental biology. With respect to the representational features of model organisms, that is, their status as models, the main focus was on generalization of phenomena investigated in such experimental systems. Model organisms have been said to be models for other organisms or a higher taxon. This, however, presupposes a representation of the phenomenon in question. I will argue that prior to generalization, model organisms allow researchers to built generative material models of phenomena -- structures, processes or the mechanisms that explain them -- through their integration in experimental set-ups that carve out the phenomena from the whole organism and thus represent them. I will use the history of zebrafish biology to show how model organism systems, from around 1970 on, were developed to construct material models of molecular mechanisms explaining developmental or physiological processes.

...More

Citation URI

http://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB001221635/

Citations Indexes

Similar Citations

Article Morange, Michel; (2011)
Recent Opportunities for an Increasing Role for Physical Explanations in Biology (/isis/citation/CBB001023998/)

Article Logan, Cheryl A.; (2007)
Overheated Rats, Race, and the Double Gland: Paul Kammerer, Endocrinology and the Problem of Somatic Induction (/isis/citation/CBB000773240/)

Article McManus, Fabrizzio; (2012)
Development and Mechanistic Explanation (/isis/citation/CBB001221636/)

Article Karen A. Rader; (2022)
Reflections on Making Mice (2004) (/isis/citation/CBB321873815/)

Book Endersby, Jim; (2007)
A Guinea Pig's History of Biology: The Plants and Animals Who Taught Us the Facts of Life (/isis/citation/CBB000774282/)

Article Schlünder, Martina; (2012)
Wissens-Hunger im Stall: Die Entstehung von Knochen-Schafen als Versuchstiere in der Unfallchirurgie (/isis/citation/CBB001211075/)

Article Angela N. H. Creager; (2022)
Model Organisms Unbound (/isis/citation/CBB532396920/)

Article Kirk, Robert G. W.; (2010)
A Brave New Animal for a Brave New World: The British Laboratory Animals Bureau and the Constitution of International Standards of Laboratory Animal Production and Use, circa 1947--1968 (/isis/citation/CBB000954051/)

Chapter Markel, Arkady L.; Trut, Lyudmila N.; (2011)
Behavior, Stress, and Evolution in Light of the Novosibirsk Selection Experiments (/isis/citation/CBB001500095/)

Book Franklin, Sarah; (2007)
Dolly Mixtures: The Remaking of Genealogy (/isis/citation/CBB000772371/)

Book Rheinberger, Hans-Jörg; (2010)
An Epistemology of the Concrete (/isis/citation/CBB001023158/)

Thesis Brigandt, Ingo; (2006)
A Theory of Conceptual Advance: Explaining Conceptual Change in Evolutionary, Molecular, and Evolutionary Developmental Biology (/isis/citation/CBB001560506/)

Article Parascandola, John; (2007)
Physiology, Propaganda, and Pound Animals: Medical Research and Animal Welfare in Mid-Twentieth-Century America (/isis/citation/CBB000774463/)

Book Brown, Andrew; (2003)
In the Beginning Was the Worm: Finding the Secrets of Life in a Tiny Hermaphrodite (/isis/citation/CBB000671279/)

Article Morgan, Gregory J.; (2001)
Bacteriophage Biology and Kenneth Schaffner's Rendition of Developmentalism (/isis/citation/CBB000100691/)

Book Sarkar, Sahotra; Plutynski, Anya; (2008)
A Companion to the Philosophy of Biology (/isis/citation/CBB000831085/)

Article Nathan Crowe; Michael R. Dietrich; Beverly S. Alomepe; Amelia F. Antrim; Bay Lauris ByrneSim; Yi He; (2015)
The diversification of developmental biology (/isis/citation/CBB641771292/)

Article Chadarevian, Soraya de; (2000)
Mapping Development, or How Molecular is Molecular Biology? (/isis/citation/CBB000770053/)

Article Gerovitch, Slava; (2002)
Love-Hate for Man-Machine Metaphors in Soviet Physiology: From Pavlov to “Physiological Cybernetics” (/isis/citation/CBB000300217/)

Article Morange, Michel; (2000)
François Jacob's Lab in the Seventies: The T-Complex and the Mouse Developmental Genetic Program (/isis/citation/CBB000770054/)