A Simpler LifePub Date : 2021-03-15DOI: 10.7591/cornell/9781501753442.003.0002
Talia Dan-Cohen
{"title":"Labs, Lives, Technoscience","authors":"Talia Dan-Cohen","doi":"10.7591/cornell/9781501753442.003.0002","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7591/cornell/9781501753442.003.0002","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter looks at Sharon Traweek's classic study of physicists, which tracks the way the experimental particle physics community reproduces itself through the training of novices. It identifies the patterns through which education and inculcation occur, and by which particle physicists learn the criteria for a successful career. It also examines the images Traweek conveys of community, stability, and gendered reproduction that can be discerned only within a sufficiently entrenched discipline. The chapter describes synthetic biology as an unstable and ambiguously bounded field in which idiosyncratic individual paths are figured prominently, especially for members of the first generation of practitioners whose training took place within the reproductive mechanisms of established disciplines. It explores paths that are embedded with different concepts and logics within the synthetic organisms that were made in different labs.","PeriodicalId":422351,"journal":{"name":"A Simpler Life","volume":"119 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-03-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"132068030","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
A Simpler LifePub Date : 2021-03-15DOI: 10.7591/cornell/9781501753442.003.0003
Talia Dan-Cohen
{"title":"The Virtues of the Naïve View","authors":"Talia Dan-Cohen","doi":"10.7591/cornell/9781501753442.003.0003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7591/cornell/9781501753442.003.0003","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter approaches the relationship between knowledge and intervention in synthetic biology by considering the uses of ignorance among practitioners. It introduces the notion of an “epistemic wager” in order to articulate the element of conjecture at the heart of synthetic biologists' attempts to refigure relations between making and not knowing. It also argues that practitioners adjust relations between knowledge and intervention, as both means and ends on the go. The chapter takes the destabilization of knowledge in the postgenomic era to mean that the question concerning how not knowing will shape the century of biology is as pressing as the one that takes relations between knowledge and intervention as its starting point. It mentions James Collins, a prominent synthetic biologist and originator of the ground-breaking genetic switch, who mythologizes “naïveté” among an early crop of parts-based practitioners.","PeriodicalId":422351,"journal":{"name":"A Simpler Life","volume":"87 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-03-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133732130","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
A Simpler LifePub Date : 1900-01-01DOI: 10.1515/9781501753459-006
{"title":"Chapter 4 To the Editor","authors":"","doi":"10.1515/9781501753459-006","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/9781501753459-006","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":422351,"journal":{"name":"A Simpler Life","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1900-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130399527","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
A Simpler LifePub Date : 1900-01-01DOI: 10.1515/9781501753459-004
{"title":"Chapter 2 The Virtues of the Naïve View","authors":"","doi":"10.1515/9781501753459-004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/9781501753459-004","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":422351,"journal":{"name":"A Simpler Life","volume":"23 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1900-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116859751","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}