Models: The Third Dimension of Science (Writing Science) - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0804739722 ISBN 13: 9780804739726

Publisher: Stanford University Press, 2004

Synopsis

Now that ‘3-D models’ are so often digital displays on flat screens, it is timely to look back at the solid models that were once the third dimension of science. This book is about wooden ships and plastic molecules, wax bodies and a perspex economy, monuments in cork and mathematics in plaster, casts of diseases, habitat dioramas, and extinct monsters rebuilt in bricks and mortar. These remarkable artefacts were fixtures of laboratories and lecture halls, studios and workshops, dockyards and museums. Considering such objects together for the first time, this interdisciplinary volume demonstrates how, in research as well as in teaching, 3-D models played major roles in making knowledge. Accessible and original chapters by leading scholars highlight the special properties of models, explore the interplay between representation in two dimensions and three, and investigate the shift to modelling with computers. The book is fascinating reading for anyone interested in the sciences, medicine, and technology, and in collections and museums.

About this title

About the Author

Soraya de Chadarevian is Senior Research Associate in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Cambridge. She is the author, most recently, of Designs for Life: Molecular Biology after World War II (2002). Nick Hopwood is Lecturer in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Cambridge. His publications include Embryos in Wax: Models from the Ziegler Studio (2002).

From the Back Cover

"This finely focused theme and the historical specificity of each author's contribution sustain and propel the reader through this rich, provocative collection,"--Science Magazine
" . . . [T]he wide-ranging chapters suggest intriguing aproaches to the investigation of objects which readers may wish to emulate."--Rittenhouse: Journal of the Scientific Instrument Enterprise

From the Inside Flap

Now that '3-D models' are so often digital displays on flat screens, it is timely to look back at the solid models that were once the third dimension of science. This book is about wooden ships and plastic molecules, wax bodies and a perspex economy, monuments in cork and mathematics in plaster, casts of diseases, habitat dioramas, and extinct monsters rebuilt in bricks and mortar. These remarkable artefacts were fixtures of laboratories and lecture halls, studios and workshops, dockyards and museums. Considering such objects together for the first time, this interdisciplinary volume demonstrates how, in research as well as in teaching, 3-D models played major roles in making knowledge. Accessible and original chapters by leading scholars highlight the special properties of models, explore the interplay between representation in two dimensions and three, and investigate the shift to modelling with computers. The book is fascinating reading for anyone interested in the sciences, medicine, and technology, and in collections and museums.

Edition details

• Publisher: Stanford University Press
• Publication date: 2004
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0804739722
• ISBN 13: 9780804739726
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 488
• Editor: De Chadarevian Soraya, Hopwood Nick