Data-Centric Biology

A Philosophical Study

By: Sabina Leonelli

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Hardcover | 18 November 2016 | Edition Number 1

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In recent decades, there has been a major shift in the way researchers process and understand scientific data. Digital access to data has revolutionized ways of doing science in the biological and biomedical fields, leading to a data-intensive paradigm for research that uses innovative methods to produce, store, distribute, and interpret huge amounts of data. In Data-Centric Biology, Sabina Leonelli probes the implications of these advancements and confronts the questions they pose. Are we witnessing the rise of an entirely new scientific epistemology? If so, how does that alter the way we study and understand life including ourselves? Leonelli is the first scholar to use a study of contemporary data-intensive science to provide a philosophical analysis of the epistemology of data. In analyzing the rise, internal dynamics, and potential impact of data-centric biology, she draws on scholarship across diverse fields of science and the humanities as well as her own original empirical material to pinpoint the conditions under which digitally available data can further our understanding of life. What, under these new conditions, counts as scientific evidence?And how do we actually turn data into new knowledge? Bridging the divide between historians, sociologists, and philosophers of science, Data-Centric Biology offers a nuanced account of an issue that is of fundamental importance to our understanding of contemporary scientific practices.

Industry Reviews

"Has there been a shift in what "data" means that is key to understanding the future of science? Sabina Leonelli's new book, Data-Centric Biology: A Philosophical Study, argues for an important and fruitful answer outside the comfort zone of many philosophers. Along the way, she also delivers valuable insights into expanding efforts to standardize, automate, and communicate how scientists handle, share, reproduce, interpret, and store data."

-- "Philosophy of Science"
"Going far beyond the epistemic concerns that preoccupy many philosophers, Data-Centric Biology brilliantly shows readers the practices that make data informative and meaningful, the biocurators who carefully attend to data's forms, and the social, economic, and political resources on which our systems of Big Data Sciences depend. Leonelli is a leader in this area of scholarship, commanding a vast comprehensive knowledge of the historical, philosophical, and social studies of the life sciences and the data practices that sustain them."-- "Mike Fortun, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute"
"In Data-Centric Biology: A Philosophical Study, Sabina Leonelli provides the first book-length study of what is novel about data-centric research in the life sciences. . . . Her book is a laudable achievement in integrating insights from a methodologically permissive and pluralistic outlook."-- "Quarterly Review of Biology"
"The dynamic, procedural themes running throughout Leonelli's book usefully shift our philosophical focus from the abstracta of understanding how science works from a frozen perspective to a more useful analysis of how scientists in fact get the job done (when they do) and--more critically--how they might do it better."-- "BJPS Review of Books"
"The first critical book-length study of data centrism in the life sciences and beyond, Data-Centric Biology sheds new and surprising light on the phenomenon of big data. Analytically competent, historically informed, sociologically sensitive, this book is a brilliant and successful demonstration of what bringing together philosophy, history, and social studies of science can achieve."-- "Hans-Joerg Rheinberger, Max Planck Institute for the History of Science"

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