Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-p9bg8 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-23T16:39:28.912Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

What Happened to Molecular Biology?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 September 2008

Hans-Jörg Rheinberger
Hans-Jörg Rheinberger
Affiliation:
Department III, Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Boltzmannstraße 22, 14195 BerlinGermany E-mail: [email protected]
Get access

Abstract

‘Molecular biology’ emerged in the first half of the twentieth century as a fundamentally novel type of biology. Its coming into being was by no means simply a linear continuation of classical genetics, the biological Leitwissenschaft of the time, and it took much more than new methods and technologies for the new discipline to arise. In this article I outline the development of molecular biology—from its beginnings to its zenith and dissolution as a discipline in its own right—in its historical context and from an epistemological perspective.

Keywords

AssemblageHistoryMolecular Biology
Type
Articles
Information
BioSocieties , Volume 3 , Issue 3 , September 2008 , pp. 303 - 310
Copyright
Copyright © London School of Economics and Political Science 2008

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Abir-Am, P. (2002). The Rockefeller Foundation and the rise of molecular biology. Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology, 3, 65–70.Google Scholar
Abir-Am, P. (1982). The discourse of physical power and biological knowledge in the 1930s: A reappraisal of the Rockefeller Foundation’s ‘policy’ in molecular biology. Social Studies of Science, 12, 341–382.Google Scholar
Braudel, F. (1975[1949]). The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean world in the age of Philip II. London: Fontana.Google Scholar
Forman, P. (1997). Recent science: Late modern and post-modern. In: Söderqvist, T. (Ed.), The historiography of contemporary science and technology, 179–213. Amsterdam: Harwood Academic Publishers.Google Scholar
Foucault, M. (1973). The order of things: An archaeology of the human sciences. New York: Vintage.Google Scholar
Holmes, F.L. (1997). Writing about scientists of the near past. In Söderqvist, T. (Ed.), The historiography of contemporary science and technology, 165–177. Amsterdam: Harwood Academic Publishers.Google Scholar
Holmes, F.L. (2002). Meselson, Stahl, and the replication of DNA: A history of the most beautiful experiment in biology. New Haven, CT: Yale UP.Google Scholar
Holmes, F.L. (2006). Reconceiving the gene: Seymour Benzer’s adventure in phage genetics. New Haven, CT: Yale UP.Google Scholar
Jacob, F. (1993). The logic of life: A history of heredity. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP.Google Scholar
Jacob, F. (1970). La logique du vivant : Une histoire de l’hérédité. Paris: Gallimard.Google Scholar
Kohler, R.E. (1991). Partners in science: Foundations and natural scientists 1900–1945. Chicago, IL: U Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Morange, M. (1998). A history of molecular biology. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP.Google Scholar
Morange, M. (1994). Histoire de la biologie moléculaire. Paris: La Découverte.Google Scholar
Olby, R.C. (1974). The path to the double helix. Seattle, WA: Washington UP.Google Scholar
Rabinow, P. (2004). Anthropologie der Vernunft. Studien zu Wissenschaft und Lebensführung. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.Google Scholar
Rabinow, P. (2000). Epochs, presents, events. In Lock, M., Young, A., & Cambrosio, A. (Eds), Living and working with the new medical technologies, 31–46. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge UP.Google Scholar
Rheinberger, H.-J. (2000). Beyond nature and culture: Modes of reasoning in the age of molecular biology and medicine. In Lock, M., Young, A., & Cambrosio, A. (Eds),Living and working with the new medical technologies, 19–30. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge UP.Google Scholar
Rheinberger, H.-J. (1997). Conjunctures, hybrids, bifurcations, experimental cultures. In Rheinberger, H.-J., Toward a history of epistemic things: Synthesizing proteins in the test tube, 133–142. Stanford, CA: Stanford UP.Google Scholar
Rockefeller Foundation. (1938). Annual report. New York: Rockefeller Foundation.Google Scholar
Shinn, T., & Joerges, B. (2002). The transverse science and technology culture: Dynamics and roles of research-technology. Social Science Information, 41, 207–251.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Szybalski, W., & Skalka, A. (1978). Editorial: Nobel prizes and restriction enzymes. Gene, 4, 181–182.Google Scholar
Vettel, E. (2006). Biotech: The countercultural origins of an industry. Philadelphia, PA: U Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar