The Construction of Analogy-Based Research Programs
The Lock-and-Key Analogy in 20th Century Biochemistry
1st Edition
Published on 20. March 2019
224 pages
978-3-8394-4442-9 (ISBN)
Description
When the German chemist Emil Fischer presented his lock-and-key hypothesis in 1899, his analogy to describe the molecular relationship between enzymes and substrates quickly gained vast influence and provided future generations of scientists with a tool to investigate the relation between chemical structure and biological specificity.Rebecca Mertens explains the appeal of the lock-and-key analogy by its role in model building and in the construction of long-term, cross-generational research programs. She argues that a crucial feature of these research programs, namely ascertaining the continuity of core ideas and concepts, is provided by a certain way of analogy-based modelling.
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Rebecca Mertens
The Construction of Analogy-Based Research Programs
The Lock-and-Key Analogy in 20th Century Biochemistry
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03/2019
1st Edition
transcript
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Person
Rebecca Mertens (PhD), born in 1984, is a postdoctoral researcher in the history and philosophy of science at Bielefeld University. She works on the role of analogies, models and forms of comparison in the history of molecular genetics and is a member of the collaborative research program 'Practices of Comparison: Ordering and Changing the World'.
Content
- Cover
- Table of contents
- Preface
- 1 The lock-and-key analogy and its influence on 20th century biochemistry
- 2 The lock-and-key analogy in Emil Fischer's program on sugar fermentation, 1890-1907
- 3 The making of the lock-and-key model of the antibody-antigen relationship, 1886-1930
- 4 Lock-and-key foundations for molecular biology: Linus Pauling and the Caltech group, 1930-1960
- 5 Lock-and-key-based modeling and its influence on the development of biochemical research programs
- 6 Concluding remarks on the construction of analogy-based research programs
- Literature
