A Feeling for the Organism: The Life and Work of Barbara McClintock. Evelyn Fox Keller

1985 ◽  
Vol 52 (2) ◽  
pp. 323-324
Author(s):  
C. R. Grontkowski
Keyword(s):  
Barbara Mcclintock ◽  
Evelyn Fox Keller

Feminist Criticisms of Metaphors in Bacon's Philosophy of Science

Philosophy ◽  
1998 ◽  
Vol 73 (1) ◽  
pp. 47-61 ◽  
Author(s):  
IDDO LANDAU
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Experimental Method ◽  
Modern Science ◽  
Francis Bacon ◽  
Early Modern Science ◽  
Sexual Imagery ◽  
Sandra Harding ◽  
Witch Trials ◽  
Scientific Mind ◽  
Evelyn Fox Keller

Francis Bacon has received much attention from feminist philosophers of science. Many of their discussions revolve around his use of sexist, or supposedly sexist, metaphors. According to Sandra Harding, for example, ‘Bacon appealed to rape metaphors to persuade his audience that the experimental method is a good thing.’ Moreover, she claims that ‘when we realize that the mechanistic metaphors that organized early modern science themselves carried sexual meanings, it is clear that these meanings are central to the ways scientists conceptualize both the methods of inquiry and the models of nature’ (ibid.). Carolyn Merchant asserts that witch trials ‘influenced Bacon's philosophy and literary style’. And according to Evelyn Fox Keller, Bacon's explanation of the means by which science will endow humans with power ‘is given metaphorically — through his frequent and graphic use of sexual imagery.’ Fox Keller concludes that Bacon's theory is sexist, but in a more troubled and ambivalent way than Merchant and Harding believe it to be. Thus, she writes that ‘behind the overt insistence on the virility and masculinity of the scientific mind lies a covert assumption and acknowledgment of the dialectical, even hermaphroditic, nature of the “marriage between Mind and Nature.”‘ (p. 40; emphasis added). Likewise, ‘the aggressively male stance of Bacon's scientist could, and perhaps now should, be seen as driven by the need to deny what all scientists, including Bacon, privately have known, namely, that the scientific mind must be, on some level, a hermaphroditic mind.’ (p. 42).

scholarly journals How Barbara McClintock discovered transposable elements in maize

2012 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 3-13
Author(s):  
Keyword(s):  
Transposable Elements ◽  
Chromosomal Location ◽  
Chromosome Breakage ◽  
Dna Transposons ◽  
Barbara Mcclintock ◽  
Controlling Elements ◽  
Earthquake Event ◽  
Maize Kernels ◽  
The Relationship

The paper describes the early part of Barbara McClintock`s work on DNA transposons in maize, in which she discovered the Ac-Ds family of mobile "controlling elements". An account is first given of the cytology of the system that was used to generate intact chromosomes having "sticky" (broken) ends. Cytogenetical aspects of the chromatid and chromosome breakage-fusion-bridge cycles, deriving from breakage, are then described, which leads on to the way in which variegation in phenotypes of the maize kernels could be "read" in terms of chromosome breakage. The "genetic earthquake" event of 1944, triggered by introducing broken chromosomes into a zygote from both parents, lead to the discovery of Ds and Ac. Finding mobility of Ds from one chromosomal location to another was pure serendipity: the transposition showed itself while experiments were being undertaken to accurately map Ds. A similar chance observation revealed transposition of Ac as well, and then the relationship between the two elements was elucidated in terms of their autonomous and non-autonomous nature.

scholarly journals Barbara McClintock, 16 June 1902 - 2 September 1992

1994 ◽  
Vol 40 ◽  
pp. 265-280 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Biological Sciences ◽  
Turn Of The Century ◽  
Genetic Knowledge ◽  
Natural Knowledge ◽  
William Bateson ◽  
Exact Determination ◽  
History Of ◽  
Barbara Mcclintock ◽  
The Impact

Barbara McClintock’s remarkable life spanned the history of genetics in the 20th century. Though technically rooted in Mendel’s experiments carried out decades earlier, the science of genetics began with the rediscovery of his work at the turn of the century. In 1902, the year of McClintock’s birth, William Bateson wrote prophetically that ‘an exact determination of the laws of heredity will probably work more change in man’s outlook on the world, and in his power over nature, than any other advance in natural knowledge that can be clearly foreseen’. Indeed, the science of genetics, to which McClintock made seminal contributions, both experimental and conceptual, has come to dominate all of the biological sciences, from molecular biology, through cell and developmental biology, to medicine and agriculture. And Bateson’s immodest guess was arguably an underestimate of the impact of genetic knowledge on humanity.

Refiguring Life: Metaphors of Twentieth-Century Biology. Evelyn Fox Keller

Isis ◽  
1997 ◽  
Vol 88 (1) ◽  
pp. 159-160
Author(s):  
Paul N. Edwards
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Evelyn Fox Keller
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