1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910459359303321

Autore

Kohler Robert E

Titolo

Landscapes & labscapes [[electronic resource] ] : exploring the lab-field border in biology / / Robert E. Kohler

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Chicago, : University of Chicago Press, c2002

ISBN

1-282-90195-8

9786612901959

0-226-45011-2

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (343 p.)

Classificazione

NU 1500

Disciplina

570/.7/2

Soggetti

Biology - Fieldwork

Electronic books.

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Description based upon print version of record.

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references.

Nota di contenuto

Front matter -- CONTENTS -- List of Illustrations -- Preface -- Chapter 1. Borders and History -- Chapter 2. A New Natural History -- Chapter 3. Border Crossings -- Chapter 4. Taking Nature's Measure -- Chapter 5. Experiments in Nature -- Chapter 6. Troubled Lives -- Chapter 7. Nature's Experiments -- Chapter 8. Border Practices -- Chapter 9. Border Biology: A Transect -- Abbreviations -- Bibliography -- Index

Sommario/riassunto

What is it like to do field biology in a world that exalts experiments and laboratories? How have field biologists assimilated laboratory values and practices, and crafted an exact, quantitative science without losing their naturalist souls? In Landscapes and Labscapes, Robert E. Kohler explores the people, places, and practices of field biology in the United States from the 1890's to the 1950's. He takes readers into the fields and forests where field biologists learned to count and measure nature and to read the imperfect records of "nature's experiments." He shows how field researchers use nature's particularities to develop "practices of place" that achieve in nature what laboratory researchers can only do with simplified experiments. Using historical frontiers as models, Kohler shows how biologists created vigorous new border sciences of ecology and evolutionary biology.