Book ID: CBB580929859

Collecting Experiments: Making Big Data Biology (2019)

unapi

Strasser, Bruno J. (Author)


University of Chicago Press


Publication Date: 2019
Physical Details: 392
Language: English

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.

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Reviewed By

Review Yi-Tang Lin (2021) Review of "La recherche scientifique à l'ère des big data: cinq façons dont les big data nuisent à la science et comment la sauver (Scientific research in the age of big data: five ways big data is hurting science and how to save it)". East Asian Science, Technology and Society: An International Journal (pp. 395-401). unapi

Review Mary F. E. Ebeling (2020) Review of "Collecting Experiments: Making Big Data Biology". Isis: International Review Devoted to the History of Science and Its Cultural Influences (pp. 440-441). unapi

Review Edna Suárez-Díaz (2019) Review of "Collecting Experiments: Making Big Data Biology". Journal of the History of Biology (pp. 733-735). unapi

Review Dominic J. Berry (January 2021) Review of "Collecting Experiments: Making Big Data Biology". Technology and Culture (pp. 283-285). unapi

Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB580929859/

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Authors & Contributors
Drage, Matthew
Siibak, Andra
Włodzimierz Gogołek
Jessica Pykett
Shi, Yong
Tempini, Niccolò
Concepts
Data collection; methods
Big data
Biology
Life sciences
Technology and society
Information technology
Time Periods
21st century
20th century
19th century
18th century
20th century, late
Places
Great Britain
Institutions
American Physical Society
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