anna maerker_review why do they look like that three dimensonal models in science
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8/4/2019 Anna Maerker_Review Why Do They Look Like That Three Dimensonal Models in Science
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Review: Why Do They Look like That? Three-Dimensional Models in ScienceAuthor(s): Anna MaerkerSource: Social Studies of Science, Vol. 37, No. 6 (Dec., 2007), pp. 961-965Published by: Sage Publications, Ltd.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25474558 .
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8/4/2019 Anna Maerker_Review Why Do They Look Like That Three Dimensonal Models in Science
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SISIS
REVIEW
Why Do They Look Like That} Three
dimensional Models in Science
Anna Maerker
de Chadarevian, Soraya & Nick Hopwood (eds) (2004) Models: TheThird Dimension ofScience (Stanford: Stanford University Press), 488
pp, $70.00 / 42.95 / 58.90 (hbk),$25.95 / 18.50 / 22.00 (pbk),ISBN 0804739714 (hbk),0804739722 (pbk)
For the past three decades, work in science studies has been fruitfully
engaged with scientific practice and with the material culture of science
more generally. Although no doubt unintended, the choice of topics that
characterize thiswork have served to reinforce one aspect of the traditional
image of science that the focus on practice and culture aims to supplant.
By focusing on those places and objects that are conventionally seen to be
more 'scientific', science studies has tended to ignore spaces and thingsthat seemed to be 'merely educational', popular, or commercial. As a
result, science studies researchers appear to prefer laboratories over muse
ums, research over teaching, texts over images, and instruments over mate
rials when choosing their research sites. In contrast, Models: The Third
Dimension ofScience forms part of a recent movement to challenge thesetendencies, and take Science studies into the neglected areas of scientific
practice and itsmaterial culture.1
In the edited volume, the contributors single out three-dimensional
models as objects which warrant the analyst's attention. Historians,
philosophers, sociologists of science, and museum practitioners present
case studies ranging from eighteenth-century archaeological models to
twentieth-century computer models of molecules. The common focus, as
highlighted in the editorial preface, is the three-dimensionality ofmodels.
This focus, de Chadarevian and Hopwood argue, affords a new perspectiveon science that tended to be neglected in thewake ofBruno Latour's claim
that the power of science stems from its ability to reduce phenomena to two
dimensions, and thus to facilitate their domination.
The contributions are also of interest for readers not primarily inter
ested in the three-dimensionality ofmodels, however. As the editors point
Social Studies ofScience 37/6 (December 2007) 961-965
? SSS and SAGE Publications (Los Angeles, London, New Delhi and Singapore)ISSN 0306-3127 DOI: 10.1177/0306312707087013
www. sagepublications. com
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962 Social Studies of Science 37/6
out, and as the individual contributions show, the initial focus on three
dimensionality leads scholars to address a number of crucial issues con
cerning practices of model production and model use. Who are the
practitioners making models, and how do they relate to the scientific com
munities models should belong to?What role does a model's materiality
play? How are these objects linked to other types ofmedia? What are the
forms of bodily engagement around these three-dimensional representations? Inwhat institutional and disciplinary contexts aremodels employed?
How is knowledge produced through models? How, when, and why are
models challenged? In following scientificmodels through different spaces
and communities, these trajectories highlighthow themodels'
precariousstatus as 'scientific objects' depends on where, how, and bywhom they are
made and used. As several of the case studies in the volume show, models
travel between different spaces, between workshops and factories, between
lecture halls and classrooms, and between laboratories and museums.
Thus, accounts ofmodel production and use lead to the resurrection of
forgotten, or at least neglected, spaces of science.2
While the individual chapters are each interesting in their own right, it is
the two short final commentaries by James Griesemer and Ludmilla
Jordanova that highlight general issues of interest for the analyst of sciencewhen dealing with three-dimensional models and provide themost helpful
entry points into the collection. Griesemer stresses that engagement with
three-dimensional models enlarges the traditional philosophical perspectiveon science by drawing philosophers' attention to gestural and performativeelements of themaking of scientific knowledge. Importantly,Griesemer high
lights ambivalence as a central feature ofmodels: '3-D models can be both
models of... and models for" (p. 435); they aremade to stand in for objects of
scientific enquiry, and at thesame
time provide 'guidesof action'
(p. 435).When these two potential functions of a model are conflated, models can
become intenselypolitical by playing significant roles inpower struggles.Due
tomodels' potential slippage between description and prescription, model
makers may claim not only the authority to produce accurate representations
of nature, but also the power to determine how things ought to be.
Ludmilla Jordanova arrives at related issues from a different perspec
tive. She calls for increased attention to the aesthetic qualities ofmodels.
Since no three-dimensional model is identical with the object it represents,
it is useful to ask 'why do they look like that?' (p. 446). This question,
Jordanova argues, opens up at least two areas of enquiry: Firstly, what is
the place of amodel within the visual culture of itsday- what are the aes
thetic conventions of which a particular model partakes? Secondly, what
different kinds of viewings are possible? These questions draw attention
both to amodel's specific features, and to the object's uses and reception.
Jordanova highlights the fact thatmodels can be perceived in different,
unintended ways and that, as a result, it is often difficult formodel makers
andusers to
maintainamodel's
status as a scientificobject. Separating
wax
models from pornography, molecular models from tinker toys, 'proper sci
ence' frommere entertainment/education/commerce are all difficult and
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Book Review 963
precarious acts of boundary work. This problem further points to the
importance of concomitant rhetorical strategies for establishing and stabi
lizingmodels as scientific objects. As Jordanova stresses, it is in the practices ofmodel making and model use that 'relations of power and authority,both political and intellectual, make themselves manifest' (p. 445).
It is no coincidence that such questions of power and authority are
among themost conspicuous aspects of the volume's contributions. As
Barry Barnes, David Bloor and John Henry (1996: 108-09) have noted,
modeling is a 'pragmatic accomplishment': it is an activity done for a particular purpose. As such, it raises a number of issues that bear on the role
of authority in the practice of scientific knowledge-making. The selectionof an object formodeling turns it into an object worthy of imitation, or of
scientific enquiry.Who, then, has the authority to determine what isbeing
modeled, and what the purpose of thismodeling is?Who has the authorityto produce such representations of nature? And, finally, who determines
what constitutes a successful model? While the essays contained in the vol
ume foreground diverse aspects of models, all thirteen attempt to givedetailed accounts ofmodels' production, uses, and/or reception and most,
explicitly or implicitly, address the question 'Why do models look like that?'
Both Lynn Nyhart in her study of natural history displays in Germanmuseums around 1900 ('Science, Art, and Authenticity inNatural History
Displays'), and James Secord in his essay on models of antediluvian animals
at theCrystal Palace innineteenth-century London ('Monsters at theCrystal
Palace') show how the construction of such representations was inextricablytied up with considerations of the proper relationship of art and science, the
image of the public and the educational message thatwas to be conveyed.Both essays highlight the importance of themodel producers' professional
authority for the scientific status of the three-dimensional representations.Similarly, Nick Hopwood's study of the production and dissemination of
embryological models inGermany in the second half of thenineteenth century
('Plastic Publishing inEmbryology') highlights the role of intra-disciplinarypolitics in ascribing authority tomodels and theirmakers. Hopwood showsthat publishing in embryology was closely linked to three-dimensional
modeling, and thus demonstrates that a focus on models (and, by implication, other neglected objects of scientific practice) can fruitfullyenrich our
understanding of even well-researched fields such as scientific publishing.
Some case studies show very clearly the political consequences of con
flating amodel's status as a (descriptive) 'representation of structure' and a
(prescriptive) 'object of imitation' (Oxford English Dictionary). In 'Fish and
Ships: Models in theAge of Reason', a study ofmodels inBritain around
1800, Simon Schaffer shows how scientists used miniature ships in argumentsfor the superiority of their own theoretical knowledge over thepractical skillsof shipwrights. However, winning this argument required institutional and
legal transformations both at the dockyards and in the academies in order to
adapt the realities of ship production to their purported representations.Christoph Meinel's investigation of the emergence of three-dimensionalmolecular models in the nineteenth century ('Molecules and Croquet Balls')
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964 Social Studies of Science 37/6
shows how these molecular construction kits demonstrated the vision of the
synthetic chemist as the 'builder of a new world out ofman-made materials'
(p. 269). At the same time, these stick-and-ball models, initiallyconceived ofas 'mere' teaching aids, increasingly came to be seen as representing the 'real'
structure of chemical molecules, e.g. the stiffness of chemical bonds.
Meinel's contribution thus highlights another crucial feature of three-dimen
sional models: models' materiality can have unintended consequences.Such examples demonstrate that the notion ofmodeling as purposive
activity has to be supplemented by the recognition of a potential mismatch
between a model's intended and actual use. A number of case studies in
the volumepoint beyond
a models' function as a means to an end. The
interplay between a three-dimensional representation's features and the
context of its reception may lead to important shifts in themodel's mean
ing and use over time. Secord's antediluvian animals, for instance, were
appropriated as monsters rather than as evidence of the power of modern
science and industry. The protein models discussed by Soraya de
Chadarevian ('Models and theMaking ofMolecular Biology') were ini
tially constructed as an integral part of protein crystallography, but theysoon became powerful tools for the communication ofmolecular biology to
non-specialist audiences on television and inmuseums.
While the volume's editors stress three-dimensionality as the feature
which distinguishes models from other objects of enquiry, the individual case
studies also provide evidence of important continuities between models and
other representations of nature-
maps and images, toys and specimens,
instruments and laboratories. Such similarities link the present case studies
onmodels to core issues in science studies: the construction of authority and
expertise, problems of representation and intelligibility,and themutual con
stitution of scientific objects and their social, political,and
culturalcontext.
All thismakes this collection of essays rich food for thought, and a valuable
source ofmaterial for comparison that goes well beyond the study of three
dimensional models and includes, for example, the history of science as
material culture, relationships between science and the public, and the rela
tionship between differentmedia in scientific practice.
Notes
1 For museums see the focusMuseums and theHistory of Science' in Isis 96(4) (2005):
559-608. For recent contributions on science teaching see Kohlstedt (2005), and
Rudolph (2006). For images see the focus 'Science and Visual Culture' in Isis 97(1)
(2006): 75-132. For materials see Klein (2005).
2 For exemplary 'biographies of scientific objects' see also the contributions in Daston
(2000 and 2004).
References
Barry Barnes, David Bloor & John Henry (1996) Scientific Knowledge: a Sociological Analysis
(Chicago: The University of Chicago Press).
Daston, Lorraine (ed.) (2000) Biographies ofScientific Objects (Chicago: The University of
Chicago Press).
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Book Review 965
Daston, Lorraine (ed.) (2004) Things that Talk: Object Lessons fromArt and Science (New
York: Zone Books).
Klein, Ursula (2005) 'Shifting Ontologies, ChangingClassifications: Plant Materials from
1700 to 1830', Studies inHistory and Philosophy ofScience 36: 261-329.
Kohlstedt, Sally Gregory (2005) 'Nature, Not Books: Scientists and the Origins of the
Nature-Study Movement in the 1890s', Isis 96: 324-52.
Rudolph, John L. (2006) 'Turning Science toAccount: Chicago and theGeneral Science
Movement in Secondary Education, 1905-1920', Isis 96: 353-89.
Anna Maerker isa postdoctoral research fellow at the Max Planck Institute
for the History of Science, Berlin. She isworking on an historical study of
anatomical modeling and the articulation of expertise, Model Experts: TheProduction and Uses of Anatomical Models in Florence and Vienna around1800.
Address: Max-Planck-lnstitut furWissenschaftsgeschichte, Abt. Personal /
NWG,WilhelmstraGe 44# 10117 Berlin; e-mail: maerker@mpiwgberlin.mpg.de
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