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  • Published: 15 July 2011
  • ISBN: 9781556434747
  • Imprint: North Atlantic
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 256
  • RRP: $32.99

Crystals, Fabrics, and Fields

Metaphors That Shape Embryos



Acclaimed theorist and social scientist Donna Jeanne Haraway uses the work of pioneering developmental biologists Ross G. Harrison, Joseph Needham, and Paul Weiss as a springboard for a discussion about a shift in developmental biology from a vitalism-mechanism framework to organicism. The book deftly interweaves Thomas Kuhn's concept of paradigm change into this wide-ranging analysis, emphasizing the role of model, analogy, and metaphor in the paradigm and arguing that any truly useful theoretical system in biology must have a central metaphor.

  • Published: 15 July 2011
  • ISBN: 9781556434747
  • Imprint: North Atlantic
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 256
  • RRP: $32.99