What do you think?
Making Sense of Life: Explaining Biological Development with Models, Metaphors, and Machines
What do biologists want? If, unlike their counterparts in physics, biologists are generally wary of a grand, overarching theory, at what kinds of explanation do biologists aim? How will we know when we have "made sense" of life? Such questions, Evelyn Fox Keller suggests, offer no simple answers. Explanations in the biological sciences are typically provisional and partial, judged by criteria as heterogeneous as their subject matter. It is Keller's aim in this bold and challenging book to account for this epistemological diversity--particularly in the discipline of developmental biology.
In particular, Keller asks, what counts as an "explanation" of biological development in individual organisms? Her inquiry ranges from physical and mathematical models to more familiar explanatory metaphors to the dramatic contributions of recent technological developments, especially in imaging, recombinant DNA, and computer modeling and simulations.
A history of the diverse and changing nature of biological explanation in a particularly charged field, Making Sense of Life draws our attention to the temporal, disciplinary, and cultural components of what biologists mean, and what they understand, when they propose to explain life.
In particular, Keller asks, what counts as an "explanation" of biological development in individual organisms? Her inquiry ranges from physical and mathematical models to more familiar explanatory metaphors to the dramatic contributions of recent technological developments, especially in imaging, recombinant DNA, and computer modeling and simulations.
A history of the diverse and changing nature of biological explanation in a particularly charged field, Making Sense of Life draws our attention to the temporal, disciplinary, and cultural components of what biologists mean, and what they understand, when they propose to explain life.
400 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2002
About the author
Evelyn Fox Keller
41 books62 followersEvelyn Fox Keller (born 1936) is an American physicist, author, and feminist and is currently a Professor of History and Philosophy of Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Keller has also taught at New York University and in the department of rhetoric at the University of California, Berkeley.
Keller received her B.A. in physics from Brandeis University in 1957 and continued her studies in theoretical physics at Harvard University graduating with a Ph.D. in 1963. She became interested in molecular biology during a visit to Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory while completing her Ph.D. dissertation. Her subsequent research has focused on the history and philosophy of modern biology and on gender and science.
She is also on the advisory board of FFIPP-USA (Faculty for Israeli-Palestinian Peace-USA), a network of Palestinian, Israeli, and International faculty, and students, working in for an end of the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories and just peace.
Keller received her B.A. in physics from Brandeis University in 1957 and continued her studies in theoretical physics at Harvard University graduating with a Ph.D. in 1963. She became interested in molecular biology during a visit to Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory while completing her Ph.D. dissertation. Her subsequent research has focused on the history and philosophy of modern biology and on gender and science.
She is also on the advisory board of FFIPP-USA (Faculty for Israeli-Palestinian Peace-USA), a network of Palestinian, Israeli, and International faculty, and students, working in for an end of the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories and just peace.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
October 1, 2026
Evelyn Fox Keller was a unique and stunningly brilliant quantitative biophysicist-turned-philospher of science history at MIT. I think this is her best book - and to me one of the most important science books ever written. The objective is: we know what physicists want ( a theory for everything) - but what do biologists want?
To understand the function of every single gene and gene product in interaction with every other gene or gene product in every cell at any given point of development? Or find 'general principles' or models that explain all the exploding details? What would such an explanation actually look like? In practical term, what constitutes, for example, an explanation for the function of a gene, given that the gene product is, say, a boring enzyme, but its disruption may lead to a specific neurodevelopmental disorder? To understand, to explain, requires to agree on what constitutes an 'explanation' and here, it turns out, history of science gives us ample material to appreciate how any given field changed its perception of what explains anything.
The biggest and maybe most obvious divide in biology is the idea of an explanation as a model that allows to simulate and predict how a system behaves - independent of the components (think genes and gene products) that actually execute it; on the other end of the spectrum: only genes and gene product interaction are real stuff and can be explanations, while abstract models may or may not explain anything in biology. Fox Keller calls this 'epistemological aesthetics' - and in the process takes apart 'causal dynamics' in the same wonderful thought process. Now this sounds terribly academic and philosophical - but not so. The writing is simple, crystal clear, the concept something you probably thought of before (we all think in different narratives when we try to explain something...) but you probably never read it written in such clarity, with both historical and evidence-based context.
One of my absolute all-time underrated favorites and most important science books ever.
To understand the function of every single gene and gene product in interaction with every other gene or gene product in every cell at any given point of development? Or find 'general principles' or models that explain all the exploding details? What would such an explanation actually look like? In practical term, what constitutes, for example, an explanation for the function of a gene, given that the gene product is, say, a boring enzyme, but its disruption may lead to a specific neurodevelopmental disorder? To understand, to explain, requires to agree on what constitutes an 'explanation' and here, it turns out, history of science gives us ample material to appreciate how any given field changed its perception of what explains anything.
The biggest and maybe most obvious divide in biology is the idea of an explanation as a model that allows to simulate and predict how a system behaves - independent of the components (think genes and gene products) that actually execute it; on the other end of the spectrum: only genes and gene product interaction are real stuff and can be explanations, while abstract models may or may not explain anything in biology. Fox Keller calls this 'epistemological aesthetics' - and in the process takes apart 'causal dynamics' in the same wonderful thought process. Now this sounds terribly academic and philosophical - but not so. The writing is simple, crystal clear, the concept something you probably thought of before (we all think in different narratives when we try to explain something...) but you probably never read it written in such clarity, with both historical and evidence-based context.
One of my absolute all-time underrated favorites and most important science books ever.
September 26, 2026
Thinkers who like their self-help with logic instead of platitudes should check out this guide. The author is a physics PhD who asks you to develop your own testable theory of life rather than follow one-size advice. The intellectual rigor is satisfying though the concept of Individual Correlationism may feel dense. It's best for the philosophically inclined.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews