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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.
256 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1976
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About the author
Donna J. Haraway
74 books1,252 followersDonna J. Haraway is an American Professor Emerita in the History of Consciousness Department and Feminist Studies Department at the University of California, Santa Cruz, United States. She is a prominent scholar in the field of science and technology studies, described in the early 1990s as a "feminist, rather loosely a postmodernist". Haraway is the author of numerous foundational books and essays that bring together questions of science and feminism, such as "A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century" (1985) and "Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective". Additionally, for her contributions to the intersection of information technology and feminist theory, Haraway is widely cited in works related to Human Computer Interaction (HCI). Her Situated Knowledges and Cyborg Manifesto publications in particular, have sparked discussion within the HCI community regarding framing the positionality from which research and systems are designed. She is also a leading scholar in contemporary ecofeminism, associated with post-humanism and new materialism movements. Her work criticizes anthropocentrism, emphasizes the self-organizing powers of nonhuman processes, and explores dissonant relations between those processes and cultural practices, rethinking sources of ethics.
Haraway has taught Women's Studies and the History of Science at the University of Hawaii and Johns Hopkins University. Haraway's works have contributed to the study of both human-machine and human-animal relations. Her works have sparked debate in primatology, philosophy, and developmental biology. Haraway participated in a collaborative exchange with the feminist theorist Lynn Randolph from 1990 to 1996. Their engagement with specific ideas relating to feminism, technoscience, political consciousness, and other social issues, formed the images and narrative of Haraway's book Modest_Witness for which she received the Society for Social Studies of Science's (4S) Ludwik Fleck Prize in 1999. In 2000, Haraway was awarded the Society for Social Studies of Science's John Desmond Bernal Prize for her distinguished contributions to the field of science and technology studies. Haraway serves on the advisory board for numerous academic journals, including differences, Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, Contemporary Women's Writing, and Environmental Humanities.
Haraway has taught Women's Studies and the History of Science at the University of Hawaii and Johns Hopkins University. Haraway's works have contributed to the study of both human-machine and human-animal relations. Her works have sparked debate in primatology, philosophy, and developmental biology. Haraway participated in a collaborative exchange with the feminist theorist Lynn Randolph from 1990 to 1996. Their engagement with specific ideas relating to feminism, technoscience, political consciousness, and other social issues, formed the images and narrative of Haraway's book Modest_Witness for which she received the Society for Social Studies of Science's (4S) Ludwik Fleck Prize in 1999. In 2000, Haraway was awarded the Society for Social Studies of Science's John Desmond Bernal Prize for her distinguished contributions to the field of science and technology studies. Haraway serves on the advisory board for numerous academic journals, including differences, Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, Contemporary Women's Writing, and Environmental Humanities.
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
March 1, 2021
Did a fundamentally new way of viewing the organism appear in the early twentieth century? In what ways does an organicist perspective of the organism transcend vitalism-mechanism debates? While we’re at it, we get some priceless signature DJH axiomatic nuggets relevant to all spheres of life such as:
“A metaphor is important to the nature of explanation because it leads to the testing of the neutral parts of the analogy. It leads to a search for the limits of the metaphoric system and thus generates the anomalies important in paradigm change.”
“The point at issue here is that the metaphor Needham chose caused him to assemble a great deal of material that might otherwise have appeared unrelated.”
“Each approach encounters its own limitations.”
“A metaphor is important to the nature of explanation because it leads to the testing of the neutral parts of the analogy. It leads to a search for the limits of the metaphoric system and thus generates the anomalies important in paradigm change.”
“The point at issue here is that the metaphor Needham chose caused him to assemble a great deal of material that might otherwise have appeared unrelated.”
“Each approach encounters its own limitations.”
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December 30, 2022Haraway reads three influential developmental biologists of the early 20th century as comprising a Kuhnian paradigm community of 'organicists'. Organicism is the 'third way' out of vitalism and mechanism – non-vitalist but also non-reductionist. Haraway interprets them as structuralists: Ross, Needham and Weiss studied approached organisms according to their principles of composition, constitutive and formative internal relations, and hierarchies of activity and self-regulation. The concept of 'structure' underpinned and guided these studies aided by the concepts of form, symmetry, field, particle, polarity and pattern. The most important upshot of this organicist structuralism is that their work centred on a robust sense of 'the organism' as the critical object of biological enquiry – not the gene or the population.
Haraway argues (as one might guess from the title) that good scientific work is guided by analogies and metaphors. The machine metaphor was, by the early 20th century, already clearly inadequate in the eyes of the biologists addressed here. They turned to concepts from field physics, thermodynamics, topology and engineering to explain the phenomena of morphogenesis. Many of them were committed to the view that biology ought to have its own autonomous principles of explanation, and actively sought to establish new concepts that would be specific to the biosciences. What sort of ontological commitments these explanatory ambitions carry with them is difficult to evaluate and still a problem today. Michael Levin, a contemporary developmental biologist who works on 'regenerative medicine' by studying stem cell behaviour and regeneration capacities in salamanders and planaria is a good example of someone still grappling with these issues. He talks about fields, 'top-down' modelling and non-reductive causal explanation – all of which raise alarm bells for the more sober-minded reductionists in biology.
The substantive chapters on Ross, Needham and Weiss are very complex and track their actual experimental work in great detail. Haraway's introductory and concluding chapters are probably all you need if you're just interested in her overall interpretation of organicism and its theoretical implications.
Haraway argues (as one might guess from the title) that good scientific work is guided by analogies and metaphors. The machine metaphor was, by the early 20th century, already clearly inadequate in the eyes of the biologists addressed here. They turned to concepts from field physics, thermodynamics, topology and engineering to explain the phenomena of morphogenesis. Many of them were committed to the view that biology ought to have its own autonomous principles of explanation, and actively sought to establish new concepts that would be specific to the biosciences. What sort of ontological commitments these explanatory ambitions carry with them is difficult to evaluate and still a problem today. Michael Levin, a contemporary developmental biologist who works on 'regenerative medicine' by studying stem cell behaviour and regeneration capacities in salamanders and planaria is a good example of someone still grappling with these issues. He talks about fields, 'top-down' modelling and non-reductive causal explanation – all of which raise alarm bells for the more sober-minded reductionists in biology.
The substantive chapters on Ross, Needham and Weiss are very complex and track their actual experimental work in great detail. Haraway's introductory and concluding chapters are probably all you need if you're just interested in her overall interpretation of organicism and its theoretical implications.
March 9, 2017
definitely the most difficult of her work to get through.
July 20, 2012
Donna Haraway is known today mostly for her work on theories of the cyborg in feminist discourse and also for her groundbreaking theories on primatology. Her contributions to the general philosophy of science are also highly worthwhile, but what may surprise even some of her fans is that she started her career as a biologist working on concepts of morphology. This book is her doctoral dissertation in biology from Johns Hopkins University and is thankfully availible as a printed book and is fairly easy to locate—at least from large academic libraries.
Haraway's genius in this book is her ability to look at natural form but also how we interpert such: her research presented here may seem an uncommon basis for the better-known work she's done, but really, it is highly essential to her later efforts because it lays down her epistemological foundations well including her interest in metaphor, cultural meaning, reproduction, and form. Haraway's approach to Thomas Kuhn is especially impressive and holds a gravitas that in itself makes this book very powerful. The expansive and deep treatment that we know from Haraway the established scholar is somewhat absent here, but as her first major work, that should not surprise anyone at all. It's a book that every serious fan/student of Haraway needs to read and also very interesting in its own right and I would recommend it to biologists and historians of science even if they are not fans of Haraway.
Haraway's genius in this book is her ability to look at natural form but also how we interpert such: her research presented here may seem an uncommon basis for the better-known work she's done, but really, it is highly essential to her later efforts because it lays down her epistemological foundations well including her interest in metaphor, cultural meaning, reproduction, and form. Haraway's approach to Thomas Kuhn is especially impressive and holds a gravitas that in itself makes this book very powerful. The expansive and deep treatment that we know from Haraway the established scholar is somewhat absent here, but as her first major work, that should not surprise anyone at all. It's a book that every serious fan/student of Haraway needs to read and also very interesting in its own right and I would recommend it to biologists and historians of science even if they are not fans of Haraway.
September 16, 2015
I went into Haraway's book expecting to find something a little closer to an innovative, feminist analysis of embryology using the methods of her approach to Science and Technology Studies. The book wasn't that, and I should've probably tempered the expectation with some awareness of the fact that the book was written fairly early on in her career. With that in mind, the book is a worthwhile read; it gives an engaging account of the history of embryology that is critical of some of the methodologies and offers interesting intellectual history of the metaphors, which is the explicit purpose of the book. It just doesn't go further than that, pulling apart those metaphors and looking forward to something more progressively minded. I think that this would be a good subject of future work.
August 24, 2016
I love Harraway, she is a hero of mine. This book is great both metaphorically and literally.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews