Technology in scientific practice : how H. J. Muller used the fruit fly to investigate the X-ray machine

Komel, Svit (author)

Since the practice turn, the role technologies play in the production of scientific knowledge has become a prominent topic in science studies. Much existing scholarship, however, either limits technology to merely mechanical instrumentation or uses the term for a wide variety of items. This article argues that technologies in scientific practice can be understood as a result of past scientific knowledge becoming sedimented in materials, like model organisms, synthetic reagents or mechanical instruments, through the routine use of these materials in subsequent research practice. The proposed theoretical interpretation of technology is examined through a case where a model organism—Drosophila melanogaster—acted as a technology for investigating a contested biological effect of a mechanical instrument: Hermann J. Muller’s experiments on X-ray mutagenicity in the 1920s. The article reconstructs how Muller employed two synthetic Drosophila stocks as tests for measuring X-rays’ capacity to cause genetic aberration. It argues that past scientific knowledge sedimented in the Drosophila stocks influenced Muller’s perception of X-ray-induced mutation. It further describes how Muller’s concept of X-ray mutagenicity sedimented through the adoption of X-ray machines as a ready-made resource for producing mutants by other geneticists, for instance George Beadle and Edward Tatum in their experiments on Neurospora crassa, despite ongoing disputes surrounding Muller’s conclusions. Technological sedimentation is proposed as a potential explanation why sedimentation and disputation may often coexist in the history of science.

• Language: English
• Keywords: technology, sedimentation, model organisms, instruments, Hermann J. Muller
• Work type: Article
• Typology: 1.01 - Original Scientific Article
• Organization: PF - Faculty of Law
• Publication status: Published
• Publication version: Version of Record
• Year: 2023
• Number of pages: 34 str.
• Numbering: Vol. 45, iss. 2, art. 22
• PID: 20.500.12556/RUL-148128
• UDC: 3
• ISSN on article: 1742-6316
• DOI: 10.1007/s40656-023-00572-9
• COBISS.SI-ID: 154740227
• Publication date in RUL: 27.07.2023

Record is a part of a journal

• Title: History and philosophy of the life sciences
• Shortened title: Hist. philos. life sci.
• Publisher: Springer Nature, Stazione Zoologica Anton Dohrn
• ISSN: 1742-6316
• COBISS.SI-ID: 527287321

Licences

• License: CC BY 4.0, Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International
• Link: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
• Description: This is the standard Creative Commons license that gives others maximum freedom to do what they want with the work as long as they credit the author.