Contextualizing Systems Biology : Presuppositions and Implications of a New Approach in Biology

This collective monograph aims at contributing to an improved understanding of the epistemic presumptions, sociocultural implications and historically backgrounds of the newly emerging and currently expanding approach of systems biology. In doing so, it offers empirically grounded, valuable and reflexive information about a paradigmatic shift in the biosciences for a wide range of scientists working in the interdisciplinary areas of systems biology, synthetic biology, molecular biology, biology, the philosophy of science, the sociology of science and scientific knowledge, science and technology studies, technology assessment and the like. The authors of this monograph share the theoretical methodological premise that science is a culturally and socially embedded practice which characterizes our culture as a scientific one and at the same time draws its innovative potential from its socio-cultural context. This dialectic relationship lies at the heart of the current development of systems biology which is conceived as a so-called successor of ‘-omics’ research and triggered by high-throughput information technologies. At the same time a need for a holistic conceptualization of complex biological processes emerges. The title Contextualizing Systems Biology suggests that this book analyzes the development and advent of systems biology from different theoretical and methodological perspectives. We investigate a variety of contexts ranging from the analysis of cognitive contexts (such as basic theoretical concepts) to regulative contexts (policies) to the concrete application of a systems biology in the socio-scientific context of a European research project. In empirically analyzing these different and interrelated layers and dimensions of systems biology, the scope of the book goes beyond present attempts to investigate the advent of new approaches in the biological sciences as it frames and assesses systems biology from an interdisciplinary and integrated perspective. This collective monograph aims at contributing to an improved understanding of the epistemic presumptions, sociocultural implications and historically backgrounds of the newly emerging and currently expanding approach of systems biology. In doing so, it offers empirically grounded, valuable and reflexive information about a paradigmatic shift in the biosciences for a wide range of scientists working in the interdisciplinary areas of systems biology, synthetic biology, molecular biology, biology, the philosophy of science, the sociology of science and scientific knowledge, science and technology studies, technology assessment and the like. The authors of this monograph share the theoretical methodological premise that science is a culturally and socially embedded practice which characterizes our culture as a scientific one and at the same time draws its innovative potential from its sociocultural context. This dialectic relationship lies at the heart of the current development of systems biology which is conceived as a so-called successor of ĺl-omicsĺl research and triggered by high-throughput information technologies. At the same time a need for a holistic conceptualization of complex biological processes emerges. As the title Contextualizing Systems Biology suggests, this book analyzes the development and advent of systems biology from different theoretical and methodological perspectives. In empirically analyzing these different and interrelated layers and dimensions of systems biology, the scope of the book goes beyond present attempts to investigate the advent of new approaches in the biological sciences as it frames and assesses systems biology from an interdisciplinary and integrated perspective. ℗l Front Matter....Pages i-xi Understanding Systems Biology: A Place for Social Science Analysis....Pages 1-26 Basic Concepts of Systems Biology as Seen Through Systems Biologists’ Eyes: Metaphorical Imagination and Epistemic Presuppositions....Pages 27-118 Systems-Oriented Approaches in Biology: System Biologist’s Narratives of Present, Past, and Future....Pages 119-146 Systems Biology, Information Technology, and Cancer Research....Pages 147-211 Science Policy of Systems Biology....Pages 213-260 Systems Biology Goes Public: Representations in German and Austrian Print Media....Pages 261-281 Back into Future: The Systems Biology to Come....Pages 283-301 Back Matter....Pages 303-316 Print Began With Vol. 1 (1966). Refereed/peer-reviewed Published: Elsevier, Oct. 2003- Mode Of Access: World Wide Web.