Models: The Third Dimension of ScienceStanford University Press, 2004 - 464 pages Now that '3-D models are so often digital displays on flat screens, it is timely to look back at the solid models that were once the third dimension of science. This book is about wooden ships and plastic molecules, wax bodies and a perspex economy, monuments in cork and mathematics in plaster, casts of diseases, habitat dioramas, and extinct monsters rebuilt in bricks and mortar. These remarkable artefacts were fixtures of laboratories and lecture halls, studios and workshops, dockyards and museums. Considering such objects together for the first time, this interdisciplinary volume demonstrates how, in research as well as in teaching, 3-D models played major roles in making knowledge. Accessible and original chapters by leading scholars highlight the special properties of models, explore the interplay between representation in two dimensions and three, and investigate the shift to modelling with computers. The book is fascinating reading for anyone interested in the sciences, medicine, and technology, and in collections and museums. |
Contents
Dimensions of Modelling | 1 |
Representing Invention Viewing Models | 19 |
Plastic Anatomies and Artificial Dissections | 43 |
Fish and Ships Models in the Age of Reason | 71 |
Modelling Monuments and Excavations | 109 |
Monsters at the Crystal Palace | 138 |
Plastic Publishing in Embryology | 170 |
Casting Skin Meanings for Doctors Artists and Patients | 207 |
Mathematical Models | 276 |
Science Art and Authenticity in Natural History Displays | 307 |
Models and the Making of Molecular Biology | 339 |
Secrets Hidden by TwoDimensionality The Economy as a Hydraulic Machine | 369 |
From Model Kits to Interactive Computer Graphics | 402 |
ThreeDimensional Models in Philosophical Perspective | 433 |
Material Models as Visual Culture | 443 |
| 453 | |
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3-D models anatomist anatomy animals Anschauung Archaeological architecture artist atoms ball-and-stick models Berlin biological groups body chemical chemistry Christoph Meinel collection colour computer graphics construction Crystal Palace crystallographers culture depicted dermatology display drawing Ecker economic eighteenth-century electric embryology embryos engineering excavation exhibits Felice Fontana Figure Florence Fontana Freiburg Hawkins Hofmann Hopwood hydraulic iguanodon illustrations images Institute John Kekulé Kendrew Klein Krumbach La Specola laboratory lectures Levinthal London mathematical models mathematicians Mazzolini mechanical molecular biology molecular graphics molecular models molecules moulage mouleurs or mouleuses Museum myoglobin natural history naval Naval Architecture nineteenth century objects Owen patients Phillips machine Philosophical photographs physical models Pitt Rivers produced Project MAC protein published reconstruction represent representation Royal Schnalke scientific scientists sculpture Society Standlake stocks and flows Stoiber structure teaching theory three-dimensional tion University Press visual visualisation wax models Ziegler Zürich